Reading music from screens vs paper

The reading of music text from a computer screen was compared to paper in a laboratory controlled study. Computer-based animated score tracking devices of three types were tested, as well as a static screen representation of the music text and its paper-based counterpart. A proof-reading exercise was given to subjects, which involved them listening to pieces of music and identifying intentional errors in the score. Their subjective views were also recorded. No significant difference between the five presentation styles were apparent in the proofreading study. However, subjects showed a significant preference for animation over paper and static representation. The most popular style of animation was where each note on the score was marked in time to the music. The medium of paper performed better overall than the static screen representation.     

Does modality play a role? Visual‐verbal cognitive style and multimedia learning

The study presented in this paper aimed to examine the effect of visual and verbal cognitive style on learning from different types of visualization and modalities of explanatory text. Learning materials in the form of either computer‐based animation or a series of static pictures with written or spoken explanations were presented to 197 students. We found that a more developed visual cognitive style was related to a better learning outcome, when learning from a combination of static pictures and written text. Higher developed visualizers achieved poorer learning outcomes when learning with an animation and written text. The results are partially in line with an ability‐as‐compensator effect and the expertise reversal effect. Additionally, we found a modality effect as the versions with spoken text provided better results on learning outcome than the versions with written text regardless of the prominence of visual cognitive style. No significant interaction effects were found regarding verbal cognitive style.     

Proof-reading texts on screen and paper

Abstract

This study examined the speed and accuracy of proof-reading a text presented on a CRT, relative to performance with print on paper. Two groups of 16 people each proof-read four published texts, roughly 1500 words per text For all readers, half the texts were presented as print on paper and half were presented on a 12 in. CRT screen. The two groups differed in whether the errors found in the screened text were recorded on the screen or on paper. The results suggested that the method of recording errors on the screen was quickly learned, but that both speed and accuracy were impaired when the text was presented on the screen. The implications of this for refereeing electronic journals is discussed.     

Luminance effects influencing perception of 3‐D TV imagery

Abstract— This study investigates whether screen luminance or ambient illumination has a significant effect on the perception of 3‐D TV imagery for static images and dynamic films. Two types of stimuli were shown on a multi‐view stereoscopic display: the static image, which included computer‐generated and photographic images, and dynamic film, which contained real‐life and animation images. In each treatment with a different level of screen luminance, subjects completed psychophysical and physiological measurements and subjective comfort evaluations. The results showed that when subjects viewed 3‐D static images, the ambient illumination affected psychophysical visual fatigue and screen luminance had a significant effect on subjective comfort evaluation and visual discrimination performance. However, when subjects viewed 3‐D dynamic films, screen luminance was the major factor causing psychophysical visual fatigue, and ambient illumination significantly affected subjective comfort evaluation. The outcomes contribute to knowledge concerning the suitable viewing conditions for the 3‐D viewing experience. Future work will explore the intolerance threshold of the lowest display luminance or the effect of decomposition of the screen on other physiological measurements.     

An empirical evaluation of multi-media based learning of a procedural task

The present study investigated the effects of multi-media modules and their combinations on the learning of procedural tasks. In the experiment, 72 participants were classified as having either low- or high spatial ability based on their spatial ability test. They were randomly assigned to one of the six experimental conditions in a 2 × 3 factorial design with verbal modality (on-screen text procedure vs. auditory procedure) and the format of visual representation (static visual representation vs. static visual representation with motion cues vs. animated visual representation). After they completed their learning session, the ability to perform the procedural task was directly measured in a realistic setting. The results revealed that: (1) in the condition of static visual representation, the high spatial ability group outperformed the low spatial ability group, (2) for the low spatial ability participants, the animated visual representation group outperformed the static visual representation group, however, the static visual representation with motion cues group did not outperform the static visual representation group, (3) the use of animated visual representation helped participants with low spatial ability more than those with high spatial ability, and (4) a modality effect was found for the measure of satisfaction when viewing the animated visual representation. Since the participants with low spatial ability benefited from the use of animation, the results might support an idea that people are better able to retrieve the procedural information by viewing animated representation. The findings also might reflect a preference for the auditory mode of presentation with greater familiarity with the type of visual representation.     

Melodic analysis with segment classes

This paper presents a representation for melodic segment classes and applies it to music data mining. Melody is modeled as a sequence of segments, each segment being a sequence of notes. These segments are assigned to classes through a knowledge representation scheme which allows the flexible construction of abstract views of the music surface. The representation is applied to sequential pattern discovery and to the statistical modeling of musical style. Editor: Gerhard Widmer     

A framework for development of fuzzy GOMS model for human‐computer interaction

The objective of this study was to examine usefulness of fuzzy methodologies in the analysis and design of human‐computer interaction. A framework for generalization of the Goals‐Operators‐Methods‐Selection Rules (GOMS) model, and its fuzzy version was proposed. An experimental verification of the fuzzy GOMS model was also provided. A total of six subjects participated in two laboratory experiments. These experiments were performed in order to validate the proposed fuzzy GOMS model for the text editing task described in information processing terms. The subjects were not familiar with the text files to be edited, and the task was performed from the subject's own office and desk. All subjects were familiar with and regularly used the VI screen editor. The experiments consisted of the following steps: (1) the subject performed a familiar text editing task using a screen editor (VI); (2) the methods by which the subject achieved his goals (word location) as well as selection rules were elicited; (3) several compatibility functions for fuzzy terms used by the subject were derived; and (4) once all the rules, methods, and corresponding membership functions have been elicited, the theory of possibility was used to model the expert's rule selection process. For this purpose, each of the potential rules was assigned a possibility measure equal to the membership value(s) derived during the elicitation phase of experiment Finally, the selected methods were compared to non‐fuzzy predictions and actual experimental data. It was shown that overall, across all subjects and trials of the main editing task, the fuzzy‐based COMS model predicted significantly more of the subject responses, than did the non‐fuzzy COMS model.     

The influence of screen size and text layout on the study of text

This study investigates the effects of screen size (12 inch versus 15 inch) and text layout (well structured and ill structured) on the learning of text presented on the monitor of a personal computer. Two aspects of learning are assessed. A summary and a multiple-choice test are employed to measure the amount of information retained. Efficacy of learning is assessed by learning time and by cognitive effort, as measured by the performance on a secondary task. The results indicate that neither screen size nor text layout has a significant influence on the required cognitive effort or on the amount of information acquired. There is, however, a significant (main) effect of screen size on learning time: subjects using a 15 inch screen need less learning time than subjects using a 12 inch screen, with no difference in learning performance. It is suggested that more efficient integration processes in constructing the semantic representation are responsible for this reduction in learning time. Implications for future research are discussed.     

Document segmentation and classification into musical scores and text

A new algorithm for segmenting documents into regions containing musical scores and text is proposed. Such segmentation is a required step prior to applying optical character recognition and optical music recognition on scanned pages that contain both music notation and text. Our segmentation technique is based on the bag-of-visual-words representation followed by random block voting (RBV) in order to detect the bounding boxes containing the musical score and text within a document image. The RBV procedure consists of extracting a fixed number of blocks whose position and size are sampled from a discrete uniform distribution that “over”-covers the input image. Each block is automatically classified as either coming from musical score or text and votes with a particular posterior probability of classification in its spatial domain. An initial coarse segmentation is obtained by summarizing all the votes in a single image. Subsequently, the final segmentation is obtained by subdividing the image in microblocks and classifying them using a N-nearest neighbor classifier which is trained using the coarse segmentation. We demonstrate the potential of the proposed method by experiments on two different datasets. One is on a challenging dataset of images collected and artificially combined and manipulated for this project. The other is a music dataset obtained by the scanning of two music books. The results are reported using precision/recall metrics of the overlapping area with respect to the ground truth. The proposed system achieves an overall averaged F-measure of 85 %. The complete source code package and associated data are available at https://github.com/fpeder/mscr under the FreeBSD license to support reproducibility.     

Flash动画在网页中的应用

多媒体技术是当今Internet持续流行的一个重要动力。早期的网页大多是文字或图像构成,由于多媒体技术的发展,音乐、动画、视频等媒体的应用越来越广泛,极大丰富了网页的内容,主要介绍网页中如何嵌入Flash动画以及如何实现Flash动画与网页相互调用的方法。     

Special Issue in Honor of Ben Shneiderman's 60th Birthday: Reflections on Human-Computer Interaction

Abstract

Unlike most Web portals in the world, Chinese Web portals are characterized by a huge amount of information, excessive visual stimuli, and very long Web pages. The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of such rich Web portal designs and floating animations on visual search, emphasizing a comparison between Chinese users and German users. Two experiments were conducted to test 2 proposed hypotheses. Experiment 1 studied the effect of Web portal design (rich and simple) on visual search performance (performance time, errors, and satisfaction) with both Chinese and German participants. Experiment 2 studied the effects of static animations (leaderboards, couplets, and large squares) and floating animations (moving down, moving up/down, and random movement) on visual search performance on Web portals. The dependent variables were the performance time, error, satisfaction, and animation recognition. The results indicated that participants using simple Web portals searched faster, made fewer errors, and were more satisfied than participants using rich Web portals. No significant differences were found between the performance time of Chinese participants and German participants. However, satisfaction of Chinese participants was found to be less influenced by the differences between simple and rich Web portal designs, compared with German participants. No significant differences were found in performance time and animation recognition between static animations and floating animations, which indicated that users are able to detect the pattern of animation movements and were able to avoid floating animations as well as static animations. People searching pages with randomly floating animations were found to use significantly more time compared with those searching pages with no animations. Furthermore, users' satisfaction for pages with randomly floating animations, moving down animations, and moving up/down animations was significantly lower than for pages with no animations. Implications for designers and for future research are discussed.     

A Hands-Free Music Score Turner Using Google Glass

ABSTRACT

This article presents an innovative use of wearable technology for music performers, allowing them to interact with a mobile application that runs as a hands-free music score turner between Google Glass and a portable device such as a smartphone or a tablet. Using wink detection feature and head motion sensing of Google Glass, the application enables users to send a trigger without using their hands to turn pages of documents displayed on a nearby mobile device. The impetus for this work was music instrument players who need to turn music score sheets during their performance.

Beyond serving music performers, this project has potential benefits to users in any setting where restricted hand use makes it difficult to read documents or perform other computer-related tasks.     

Attention to eSports advertisement: effects of ad animation and in-game dynamics on viewers’ visual attention

ABSTRACT

ESports refers to professional video gaming that is typically broadcasted with a live commentary on TV or the Internet. Despite the rapid growth of eSports industry and its potential for a valuable advertising platform, there has not been much discussion about effective advertising strategies for the placement of virtual ads in eSports. Based on previous research, one advertisement factor (i.e. ad animation) and one in-game factor (i.e. in-game dynamics) are identified and tested in an experiment (N?=?116) with a 2 (ad animation: static vs. animated ads)?×?2 (in-game dynamics: battle vs. non-battle scenes) mixed design. The results show that both ad animation and in-game dynamics have a significant impact on viewers’ visual attention, in terms of fixation count and duration measured by an eye-tracking device. The results also show a significant interaction in which the impact of ad animation on fixation duration is more magnified when in-game play is less busy (i.e. non-battle scenes), compared to when it is busy (i.e. battle scenes). Theoretical implications based on the limited-capacity model, as well as practical implications for practitioners are discussed.     

How consistent is your web design?

Previous studies have indicated that when interfaces are designed consistently with regards to structure and physical attributes, higher performance and lower error rates are achieved than when interfaces are designed inconsistently. The objective of the current study was to develop a methodology to measure all aspects of computer interface consistency and assess the impact of linguistic inconsistency of interface design on user performance. Based on the background literature, seven factors were identified as affecting overall consistency. Based on this identification, a structured questionnaire of 125 items was developed and a factor analysis was conducted which reduced the number of items in the questionnaire to 94 and identified the following nine factors which contribute to consistency: text structure, general text features, information representation, lexical categories, meaning, user knowledge, text content, communicational attributes and physical attributes. A series of four experiments were conducted with 140 subjects using four different tasks and eight different interface types. The internal reliability of the questionnaire was 0.81, and the inter-rater reliability was 0.75. The instrument effectively identified all of the inconsistencies in interface designs. The instrument can be utilized both as an evaluation and as a design tool for Web-based interfaces.     

Investigation of Chinese reading comprehension performance on mass rapid transit

The purpose of this study is to explore the effect of display type, reading content, and background music on accuracy, change of critical fusion frequency (CFF) and subjective visual fatigue while performing a reading comprehension task on mass rapid transit (MRT). Thirty-two participants were recruited in a three-way mixed factorial experiment to investigate the influence of three types of display (liquid crystal display, electronic paper display, and plain paper), three types of reading content (science, literature, and magazine) and four types of background music (none, light music, pop music and heavy metal music). The results showed that display type was significant in all indices, where electronic paper displays and plain papers showed the better accuracy and lower change of CFF than liquid crystal displays. Plain papers demonstrated the lowest subjective visual fatigue. The results also indicated that reading content was significant on accuracy and subjective visual fatigue, where reading comprehension was better with magazines than with science- and literary-related texts. The results further demonstrated that background music was significant on subjective visual fatigue, where heavy metal music resulted in the greater visual fatigue than the three other kinds of music. Based on the results of this study, reading paper magazines and avoiding noisy music will lead to the lowest level of visual fatigue and, thus, enhance Chinese comprehension on MRT. Participants who are used to listening to music should be included as a test group in future studies.Relevance to industryThis study provides suggestions for using suitable displays while reading on MRT. This information could serve as a reference for mobile display manufacturers in designing their future products.     

A study of presentations of mobile web banners for location-based information and entertainment information websites

Compared to the Internet, mobile telecommunication has the characteristics of being anywhere, anytime and always online. As the growth of the Internet advertisements market slows down, there is a substantial increase in mobile advertisements. This research investigates the effectiveness of the presentation (static text and graphics, static text and graphics with audio, and animation) of mobile advertisements on the recognition of advertisements. The two types of websites for mobile advertisements - entertainment information and location-based information - are also compared. An experiment was carried out to test the proposed hypotheses. The results show that the effects of static banners with audio mobile advertisement, and animation mobile advertisement were better than static banners in advertisement recognition and memorisation. The participants of websites providing location-based information had higher advertisement attitude and purchase intention than their web-based counterparts providing entertainment information.     

A study of presentations of mobile web banners for location-based information and entertainment information websites

Compared to the Internet, mobile telecommunication has the characteristics of being anywhere, anytime and always online. As the growth of the Internet advertisements market slows down, there is a substantial increase in mobile advertisements. This research investigates the effectiveness of the presentation (static text and graphics, static text and graphics with audio, and animation) of mobile advertisements on the recognition of advertisements. The two types of websites for mobile advertisements – entertainment information and location-based information – are also compared. An experiment was carried out to test the proposed hypotheses. The results show that the effects of static banners with audio mobile advertisement, and animation mobile advertisement were better than static banners in advertisement recognition and memorisation. The participants of websites providing location-based information had higher advertisement attitude and purchase intention than their web-based counterparts providing entertainment information.     

Integrating textual and pictorial information via pop-up windows: An experimental study

Following previous research in cognitive psychology, this paper deals with the effect of the spatial display of textpicture information on the user's cognitive processes. Two experiments were carried out to compare three displays on a computer screen: 'split' display (text and picture information displayed in separate areas on the screen), 'integrated' display (text information close to the part of the picture to which it refers), and 'pop-up' display (text information integrated in pop-up fields which appeared only via the user's action). In both experiments, the results showed that the integrated display and to a greater extent the pop-up display led to higher performances for an equal or lower learning time. Thus, these experiments reinforce the hypothesis that material where text and picture are integrated improves learning, especially if text information appears in pop-up fields. Results are discussed from a theoretical and a practical point of view.