The effects of graphic metaphor,gesture interaction,and form factor on e‐book performances and preferences

Reading e‐books on touch‐based mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet personal computer (PCs) are increasing. We conducted a comparative study on the usability of e‐books provided on smartphones and tablet PCs, which are typical touch‐based mobile devices. An experiment was carried out to see the effects of graphic metaphor and gesture interaction. This study evaluated reading speed, readability, similarity, and satisfaction for 16 combinations of e‐book interfaces (two Metaphor levels × four Display size and Screen modes × two Gesture levels). Overall, performance and subjective ratings showed better results on tablet PCs with larger fonts on a larger screen than on smartphones with smaller fonts on smaller screens. In the smartphone‐landscape mode, the effect of turning a page is a factor that hinders the speed of user reading. In contrast, the users’ readability, similarity, and satisfaction were higher when the page‐turning effect was provided. It showed faster reading speeds when a flicking interaction is provided on tablet PCs. From the standpoint of readability, the portrait mode was better on smartphones. Also, the tablet PC‐portrait mode was the most satisfactory.     

Browsing large online data tables using generalized query previews

Companies, government agencies, and other organizations are making their data available to the world over the Internet. They often use large online relational tables for this purpose. Users query such tables with front-ends that typically use menus or form fillin interfaces, but these interfaces rarely give users information about the contents and distribution of the data. Such a situation leads users to waste time and network/server resources posing queries that have zero- or mega-hit results. Generalized query previews enable efficient browsing of large online data tables by supplying data distribution information to users. The data distribution information provides continuous feedback about the size of the result set as the query is being formed. Our paper presents a new user interface architecture and discusses three controlled experiments (with 12, 16, and 48 participants). Our prototype systems provide flexible user interfaces for research and testing of the ideas. The user studies show that for exploratory querying tasks, generalized query previews can speed user performance for certain user domains and can reduce network/server load.     

Internet browsing application based on electrooculography for disabled people

This paper describes an Internet browsing application based on electrooculography (EOG) aimed at people with a severe motor disability, i.e., people who cannot move their arms. This application is made up of two subsystems: writing and browser. It allows the user to navigate through Internet introducing text, clicking on active elements and moving around the screen using only their eyes. It also includes a word predictor to increase navigation speed. An EOG algorithm is capable of detecting four different directions of the users’ eyes movement: left, right, up and down, and the blink. With these five commands, the user has full control of the application. Six healthy volunteers tested the Internet browsing application by performing three different tests that consisted of writing, searching and mouse controlling tasks. The results show that all users are capable of completing the whole tests in a reasonable time and they improve their speed with training. These results suggest that the Internet browsing application could be used by disabled people, improving their integration in the information society.     

Beyond the mouse: Understanding user gestures for manipulating 3D objects from touchscreen inputs

Multi-touch interfaces have emerged with the widespread use of smartphones. Although a lot of people interact with 2D applications through touchscreens, interaction with 3D applications remains little explored. Most 3D object manipulation techniques have been created by designers who have generally put users aside from the design creation process. We conducted a user study to better understand how non-technical users tend to interact with a 3D object from touchscreen inputs. The experiment consists of 3D cube manipulations along three viewpoints for rotations, scaling and translations (RST). Sixteen users participated and 432 gestures were analyzed. To classify data, we introduce a taxonomy for 3D manipulation gestures with touchscreens. Then, we identify a set of strategies employed by users to perform the proposed cube transformations. Our findings suggest that each participant uses several strategies with a predominant one. Furthermore, we conducted a study to compare touchscreen and mouse interaction for 3D object manipulations. The results suggest that gestures are different according to the device, and touchscreens are preferred for the proposed tasks. Finally, we propose some guidelines to help designers in the creation of more user friendly tools.     

Speech Versus Touch: A Comparative Study of the Use of Speech and DTMF Keypad for Navigation

This article reports on an experiment that critically tests user preference for an input modality (speech vs. Dual Tone Multiple Frequency[DTMF])in a phone-based message retrieval system. Unlike previous studies that compared these two modalities, the speech system used in this study was a fully functioning natural language system, and participants in this study were working professionals, rather than college students. Results indicate that (a) DTMF was more effective and efficient for linear tasks, whereas speech was better for nonlinear tasks; (b) speech was preferred to DTMF by a majority of users; (c) speech was judged as being more satisfying, more entertaining, and easier to use than DTMF; and (d) user preference for a particular modality was better predicted by user performance in nonlinear tasks rather than linear ones. Possible reasons for users' continuing preference for the speech modality even after experiencing fairly high recognition errors are discussed. Finally, the importance of examining speech user interfaces from other perspectives, in addition to efficiency maximization, is emphasized. The results of this study have theoretical, as well as practical, implications for the design of speech user interfaces and interactive voice response applications.     

Designing Motion Gesture Interfaces in Mobile Phones for Blind People

Despite the existence of advanced functions in smartphones, most blind people are still using old-fashioned phones with familiar layouts and dependence on tactile buttons. Smartphones support accessibility features including vibration, speech and sound feedback, and screen readers. However, these features are only intended to provide feedback to user commands or input. It is still a challenge for blind people to discover functions on the screen and to input the commands. Although voice commands are supported in smartphones, these commands are difficult for a system to recognize in noisy environments. At the same time, smartphones are integrated with sophisticated motion sensors, and motion gestures with device tilt have been gaining attention for eyes-free input. We believe that these motion gesture interactions offer more efficient access to smartphone functions for blind people. However, most blind people are not smartphone users and they are aware of neither the affordances available in smartphones nor the potential for interaction through motion gestures. To investigate the most usable gestures for blind people, we conducted a user-defined study with 13 blind participants. Using the gesture set and design heuristics from the user study, we implemented motion gesture based interfaces with speech and vibration feedback for browsing phone books and making a call. We then conducted a second study to investigate the usability of the motion gesture interface and user experiences using the system. The findings indicated that motion gesture interfaces are more efficient than traditional button interfaces. Through the study results, we provided implications for designing smartphone interfaces.     

The influence of image interactivity upon user engagement when using mobile touch screens

Touch screens are a key component of consumer mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, as well as an increasingly common self-service component of information retrieval on fixed screens and mobile devices in-store. The ubiquity of touch screens in daily life increases consumer accessibility and extended use for shopping, whilst software innovations have increased the functionality of touch screens, for example the extent to which images respond to fingertip control. This study examines how users engage with interactive visual rotation and tactile simulation features while browsing fashion clothing products on touch screen devices and thus contributes to retail touch screen research that previously focused on in-store kiosks and window displays. Findings show that three dimensions of user engagement (endurability, novelty and felt involvement) are positively influenced by both forms of manipulation. In order to examine the extent to which touch screen user engagement varies with individual preferences for an in-store experience, the paper also examines whether user engagement outcomes are mediated by an individual's need for physical touch. Findings indicate that the need for touch does not explain the variance between individuals. We conclude that touch screen technology complements the physical retail environment.     

基于FLaAT的模糊用户偏爱浏览模式的增量挖掘

挖掘用户偏爱的浏览模式就是从Web日志中发现多数用户偏爱的浏览路径.网页上的浏览时间被转换成一个模糊语言变量来体现网页上浏览时间的特征,最后从建立的包含所有用户浏览信息的FLaAT(Frequent Link and Access Tree)中挖掘增量式带有模糊语言变量的用户偏爱浏览模式.     

Do size and structure matter to mobile users? An empirical study of the effects of screen size, information structure, and task complexity on user activities with standard web phones

The small screens of mobile Internet devices, combined with the increasing complexity of mobile tasks, create a serious obstacle to usability in the mobile Internet. One way to circumvent the obstacle is to organize an information structure with efficient depth/breadth trade-offs. A controlled lab experiment was conducted to investigate how screen size and information structure affect user behaviours and perceptions. The moderating effects of task complexity on the relationship between screen size/information structure and user navigation/perceptions were also investigated. Study results indicate that both information structure and screen size significantly affect the navigation behaviour and perceptions of mobile Internet users. Task complexity was also found to heighten the influence of information structure on user behaviour and perceptions. The paper ends with a discussion of theoretical and practical implications, among them a key implication for mobile Internet businesses: for corporate intranet systems as well as m-commerce transaction systems, the horizontal depth of information structures should be adapted to task complexity and anticipated screen size.     

基于Web日志挖掘用户的浏览兴趣路径

提出一种基于Web日志发现用户浏览偏爱路径算法。引入了支持-兴趣度概念。建立用户访问矩阵以表示用户浏览网页行为,并获得访问矩阵的海明距离矩阵。通过对距离矩阵与相似度阈值的计算获得偏爱路径的候选2项子路径,再利用支持-兴趣度对候选集做进一步的过滤,最后进行合并并生产浏览偏爱路径。实验表明该算法可以有效地反映用户的浏览兴趣。     

Location of navigation menus in websites: an experimental study with Arabic users

While Arabic users represent by far the fastest growing language population on the Internet, research about how the peculiarities of Arabic language may shape users’ web interactions is still scarce. The preferences of Arabic users for menu location in websites have been studied. Two competing arguments have been proposed regarding the best location of menus in websites: conventional design (navigation menu should be placed on that side where users expect it based on previous experience) and reading direction (navigation menu should be placed on that side where readers are used to start off reading, so that the navigation menu is likely to be attended first). In an experiment, twenty-five participants with Arabic as mother language (who also spoke English) were briefly presented with screenshots from websites presented in Arabic or English and with menus located either on the left or the right, and rated their perceived visual appeal, usability, and trustworthiness. Results showed that participants judged the Arabic websites more positive when menus were located in the right- rather than in the left-hand side. In contrast, no differences for menu location were observed for English websites. These results are discussed in light of the conventional design and reading direction hypothesis and with regard to their implications for the design of Arabic websites.     

Multiple spatial sounds in hierarchical menu navigation for visually impaired computer users

This paper describes a user study on the benefits and drawbacks of simultaneous spatial sounds in auditory interfaces for visually impaired and blind computer users. Two different auditory interfaces in spatial and non-spatial condition were proposed to represent the hierarchical menu structure of a simple word processing application. In the horizontal interface, the sound sources or the menu items were located in the horizontal plane on a virtual ring surrounding the user’s head, while the sound sources in the vertical interface were aligned one above the other in front of the user. In the vertical interface, the central pitch of the sound sources at different elevations was changed in order to improve the otherwise relatively low localization performance in the vertical dimension. The interaction with the interfaces was based on a standard computer keyboard for input and a pair of studio headphones for output. Twelve blind or visually impaired test subjects were asked to perform ten different word processing tasks within four experiment conditions. Task completion times, navigation performance, overall satisfaction and cognitive workload were evaluated. The initial hypothesis, i.e. that the spatial auditory interfaces with multiple simultaneous sounds should prove to be faster and more efficient than non-spatial ones, was not confirmed. On the contrary—spatial auditory interfaces proved to be significantly slower due to the high cognitive workload and temporal demand. The majority of users did in fact finish tasks with less navigation and key pressing; however, they required much more time. They reported the spatial auditory interfaces to be hard to use for a longer period of time due to the high temporal and mental demand, especially with regards to the comprehension of multiple simultaneous sounds. The comparison between the horizontal and vertical interface showed no significant differences between the two. It is important to point out that all participants were novice users of the system; therefore it is possible that the overall performance could change with a more extensive use of the interfaces and an increased number of trials or experiments sets. Our interviews with visually impaired and blind computer users showed that they are used to sharing their auditory channel in order to perform multiple simultaneous tasks such as listening to the radio, talking to somebody, using the computer, etc. As the perception of multiple simultaneous sounds requires the entire capacity of the auditory channel and total concentration of the listener, it does therefore not enable such multitasking.     

A cross-cultural analysis of the effect of language on perceived risk online

This paper investigates whether perceived risk online is affected by the language in which a user browses a given website. In order to achieve this objective and test the proposed hypotheses, a 2 × 2 between-subjects experimental design was chosen, using two independent variables with two levels each, namely: culture (Spanish vs. British) and processing language (Spanish vs. English). The final sample comprised 491 individuals (264 Spanish and 227 British). Half the sample browsed in their mother tongue, and the other half in a second language. The results showed that Spanish users perceive less risk when browsing in English than in Spanish, while for the British there was no difference, in terms of perceived risk, between browsing in Spanish or English. Another interesting finding is the moderating effect of message involvement on the processing of information from the website, and thus its effect on the user’s perception of risk.     

基于LPC2138的超市收银机设计

系统采用LPC2138实验开发板为核心控制器,实现了PS/2协议键盘输入、条形码信息输入、中英文打印、液晶屏显示等功能。采用VB程序设计语言设计了用户操作界面,并进行了开机登录界面测试、存货测试及销售测试、销售记录部分测试、打印机测试,最后调试成功。     

UIML: an appliance-independent XML user interface language

Today's Internet appliances feature user interface technologies almost unknown a few years ago: touch screens, styli, handwriting and voice recognition, speech synthesis, tiny screens, and more. This richness creates problems. First, different appliances use different languages: WML for cell phones; SpeechML, JSML, and VoxML for voice enabled devices such as phones; HTML and XUL for desktop computers, and so on. Thus, developers must maintain multiple source code families to deploy interfaces to one information system on multiple appliances. Second, user interfaces differ dramatically in complexity (e.g, PC versus cell phone interfaces). Thus, developers must also manage interface content. Third, developers risk writing appliance-specific interfaces for an appliance that might not be on the market tomorrow. A solution is to build interfaces with a single, universal language free of assumptions about appliances and interface technology. This paper introduces such a language, the User Interface Markup Language (UIML), an XML-compliant language. UIML insulates the interface designer from the peculiarities of different appliances through style sheets. A measure of the power of UIML is that it can replace hand-coding of Java AWT or Swing user interfaces.     

基于用户行为个性化学习研究

Web日志中包含了大量的用户浏览信息,对Web日志进行分析可以发现用户偏好路径容。本文提出了一种基于Web日志挖掘出用户浏览偏爱的路径,根据路径对应的文档内容提取用户偏爱的主题,并向用户推荐偏爱主题内容,从而为个性化学习服务。     

Using large tables on small display devices

The next evolutionary step in wireless Internet information management is to provide support for tasks, which may be collaborative and may include multiple target devices, from desktop to handheld. This means that the information architecture supports the processes of the task, recognizes group interaction, and lets users migrate seamlessly among internet-compatible devices without losing the thread of the session. If users are free to migrate amongst devices during the course of a session then intelligent transformation of data is required to exploit the screen size and input characteristics of the target appliance with minimal loss of task effectiveness.In this paper we first review general characteristics related to the performance of users on small screens and then examine the navigation of full tables on small screens for users in multi-device scenarios. We examine the methodologies available for access to full tables in environments where the full table cannot be viewed in its entirety. In particular, we examine the situation where users are collaborating across platform and referring to the same table of data. We ask three basic questions: Does screen size affect the performance of table lookup tasks? Does a search function improve performance of table lookup based tasks on reduced screen sizes? Does including context information improve the performance of table lookup based tasks on reduced screen sizes? The answers to these questions are important as individual and intuitive responses are used by the designers of small screen interfaces for use with large tables of data. We report on the results of a user study that examines factors that may affect the use of large tables on small display devices. The use of large tables on small devices in their native state becomes important in at least two circumstances. First, when collaboration involves two or more users sharing a view of data when the individual screen sizes are different. Second, when the exact table structure replication may be critical as a user moves quickly from a larger to a smaller screen or back again mid-task. Performance is measured by both effectiveness, correctness of result, and efficiency, effort to reach a result.     

An empirical analysis of smartphone personalisation: measurement and user variability

The present report is an empirical analysis of smartphone personalisation. We collected data from two groups of users to measure how they adapt the content, interface and physical appearance of their devices. This user-driven personalisation is measured with a simple heuristic approach to quantify the behaviour. Using these scores, we explore how users differ from each other in how they personalise their smartphones with a focus on gender differences, usability and device usage in the wild. Among our findings are that not all users personalise their smartphones, females and males personalise their iPhones differently, and those who personalised their phones more tended to rate it as more usable. The users who personalised more also used their device for greater periods of time on a broader range of applications. For instance, individuals who adapted their iPhones to a greater degree also accessed the Web more often and spent more time browsing once it was accessed. We conclude with a discussion of possible factors underlying the large user diversity of smartphone personalisation found in this research.     

Development of an Adaptive EC Website With Online Identified Cognitive Styles of Anonymous Customers

This study developed an adaptive electronic commerce (EC) website based on users' cognitive styles without asking users to complete any evaluation forms. In this system, a multilayer feed forward neural network (MLFF) was designed to identify the cognitive styles of anonymous users by observing their browsing behavior. Then the system presented the adaptive interfaces, designed by investigating the relationships between users' cognitive styles and browsing behavior, to users based on the identified cognitive styles. Experiments were conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the system. The experimental results verified the potential benefits of MLFF in identifying anonymous users' cognitive styles during browsing of EC applications and provided evidence that an adaptive EC website that presents product data consistent with the users' cognitive styles can be beneficial to one-to-one Internet marketing not only for users whose cognitive styles are known before browsing but also for anonymous users whose cognitive styles are identified during browsing.     

Effects of font size and font style of Traditional Chinese characters on readability on smartphones

This study investigated the effects of Traditional-Chinese character sizes and typefaces on both reading time and subjective preference when participants used 5.5-inch smartphones without limiting their viewing distance. An experiment of 3 × 3 completely randomized design with eighteen replicates was employed. One hundred and sixty-two participants performed reading comprehension tasks and subjective preference ratings which were used to measure the readability of nine design combinations. The results suggested that the smaller character size was better than the larger one for reading tasks. Additionally, the most favorite typeface was the Kai or Hei style. These findings might be more appropriate than those of previous studies to be generalized for Traditional-Chinese typographic design on smartphones because the real conditions of operating smartphones were considered in this study.