Representing older people: towards meaningful images of the user in design scenarios

Designing for older people requires the consideration of a range of design problems, which may be related to difficult and sometimes highly personal matters. Issues such as fear, loneliness, dependency, and physical decline may be hard to observe or discuss in interviews. Pastiche scenarios and pastiche personae are techniques that employ characters to create a space for the discussion of new technological developments and user experience. This paper argues that the use of fictional characters can help to overcome restrictive notions of older people by disrupting designers’ prior assumptions. In this paper, we reflect on our experiences using pastiche techniques in two separate technology design projects that sought to address the needs of older people. In the first pastiche scenarios were developed by the designers of the system and used as discussion documents with users. In the second pastiche personae were used by groups of users themselves to generate scenarios which were scribed for later use by the design team. We explore how the use of fictional characters and settings can generate new ideas and undercut the potential in scenarios, for weak characterisation of “the user” to permit scenario writers to fit characters to technology rather than vice versa. To assist in future development of pastiche techniques in designing for older people, we provide an array of fictional older characters drawn from literary and popular culture.     

Simplicity in cognitive assistive technology: a framework and agenda for research

Technology offers substantial benefits to the many people with some form of cognitive disability. But the power of technology often comes in a package whose complexity is a barrier to many users, leading to calls for designs, and especially designs for user interfaces, that are “simple”. This paper analyzes the idea of simplicity, and suggests (a) that simplicity in a user interface is not a unified concept, but rather has distinguishable facets, and (b) that simplicity must be defined in terms of the cognitive capabilities of a user, so that what is “simpler” for one user may be “more complex” for another. Despite (b), the prospects for universal design in this area are good, in that interface technology with the flexibility needed to produce “simple” interfaces for a range of users with different cognitive strengths will be of value in addressing the overall design space of interfaces for a broad audience. While it is possible to sketch the outlines of a useful theory of simplicity, the sketch reveals much that is not fully understood. It also reveals opportunities to rethink the architecture of user interfaces in a way that will benefit user interface development generally.     

Programming by example: The human face of AI

It is argued that “human-centredness” will be an important characteristic of systems that learn tasks from human users, as the difficulties in inductive inference rule out learning without human assistance. The aim of “programming by example” is to create systems that learn how to perform tasks from their human users by being shown examples of what is to be done. Just as the user creates a learning environment for the system, so the system provides a teaching opportunity for the user, and emphasis is placed as much on facilitating successful teaching as on incorporating techniques of machine learning. If systems can “learn” repetitive tasks, their users will have the power to decide for themselves which parts of their jobs should be automated, and teach the system how to do them — reducing their dependence on intermediaries such as system designers and programmers. This paper presents principles for programming by example derived from experience in creating four prototype learners: for technical drawing, text editing, office tasks, and robot assembly. A teaching metaphor (a) enables the user to demonstrate a task by performing it manually, (b) helps to explain the learner's limited capabilities in terms of a persona, and (c) allows users to attribute intentionality. Tasks are represented procedurally, and augmented with constraints. Suitable mechanisms for attention focusing are necessary in order to control inductive search. Hidden features of a task should be made explicit so that the learner need not embark on the huge search entailed by hypothesizing missing steps.     

The use of theatre in requirements gathering and usability studies

This paper discusses the use of theatrical techniques to communicate to designers the user requirements for IT interfaces – particularly those of “extreme users” such as older people. The methodology and processes of producing such material in a video form are described, together with the strengths and weaknesses of this approach. The paper concludes by suggesting the various roles live theatre can play in user centered design. Although the research, on which this paper is based, focuses on the challenges presented by older and disabled users, the techniques described are applicable to a wider range of users.     

How map designers can represent their ideas in thematic maps

Problem analysis in designing thematic maps and user interfaces which assist map designers in incorporating their ideas into maps are presented. Problems in designing choropleth maps are analyzed from the map designers point of view. A graphical user interface, called “Histogram Interface”, is implemented as countermeasure for problems in designing choropleth maps. The user interface can assist map designers in representing their ideas and achieving the desired maps through the designing process. The user interface operations, which correspond to the map designer's ideas, are explained. The user interface effectiveness is confirmed by resulting map examples and the corresponding graphical patterns on the interface. A concept is proposed concerning the importance in any computer graphics field, which the designers should consider in determining how to incorporate their ideas into pictures.     

Design and analysis of a video-on-demand server

The availability of high-speed networks, fast computers and improved storage technology is stimulating interest in the development of video on-demand services that provide facilities similar to a video cassette player (VCP). In this paper, we present a design of a video-on-demand (VOD) server, capable of supporting a large number of video requests with complete functionality of a remote control (as used in VCPs), for each request. In the proposed design, we have used an interleaved storage method with constrained allocation of video and audio blocks on the disk to provide continuous retrieval. Our storage scheme interleaves a movie with itself (while satisfying the constraints on video and audio block allocation. This approach minimizes the starting delay and the buffer requirement at the user end, while ensuring a jitter-free display for every request. In order to minimize the starting delay and to support more non-concurrent requests, we have proposed the use of multiple disks for the same movie. Since a disk needs to hold only one movie, an array of inexpensive disks can be used, which reduces the overall cost of the proposed system. A scheme supported by our disk storage method to provide all the functions of a remote control such as “fast-forwarding”, “rewinding” (with play “on” or “off”), “pause” and “play” has also been discussed. This scheme handles a user request independent of others and satisfies it without degrading the quality of service to other users. The server design presented in this paper achieves the multiple goals of high disk utilization, global buffer optimization, cost-effectiveness and high-quality service to the users.     

Implicit: a multi-agent recommendation system for web search

For people with non-ordinary interests, it is hard to search for information on the Internet because search engines are impersonalized and are more focused on “average” individuals with “standard” preferences. In order to improve web search for a community of people with similar but specific interests, we propose to use the implicit knowledge contained in the search behavior of groups of users. We developed a multi-agent recommendation system called Implicit, which supports web search for groups or communities of people. In Implicit, agents observe behavior of their users to learn about the “culture” of the community with specific interests. They facilitate sharing of knowledge about relevant links within the community by means of recommendations. The agents also recommend contacts, i.e., who in the community is the right person to ask for a specific topic. Experimental evaluation shows that Implicit improves the quality of the web search in terms of precision and recall.     

Designing accessible experiences for older users: user requirement analysis for a railway ticketing portal

This article presents the results of a survey that shows that older users differ in their attitude and experience towards the Internet not only according to their age or to their previous knowledge with Internet services, but also according to what they are expecting from this media. The aim of this study was to collect information about barriers on usage and perception of an online ticketing service for a nationwide public railway company, in order to enhance the notion of “accessibility” toward a broader understanding including non-technical accessibility factors as semantic accessibility and/or procedural accessibility. The results of the survey with 1,208 participants and additionally focus groups, interviews and qualitative analysis of user feedback indicate that in order to improve and optimize the usage of the online system for older adults, it is necessary to develop a system which is not only universally accessible, but also satisfies the specific expectations of senior users. This article concentrates on designing accessible user experiences and presents several recommendations to the area and for WCAG 2.0 according to the results.     

The Unknown Modulor: the “2.058” Rectangle

Geometer Mark Reynolds examines a ratio that is related to the golden section but is relatively unknown to many architects and designers. Equal to phi times its square root, ϕ√ϕ, the ratio mu, μ = 1:2.058, offers its user an opportunity to work with the golden section but with a different “look.”     

Worth-centred mobile phone design for older users

The twenty-first century society fights against an inherent tendency to over-classify and label people. In the case of the aged, despite all efforts, the perception of the helpless, feeble older person still prevails. The truth of the matter is that people over sixty often do not fit this profile. The aged are a heterogeneous group with varying different skills and abilities in many different areas. This paper challenges prevalent mobile phone design decisions that appear to have been made based on the erroneous pre-conception of the incapable elder. Designers currently produce “senior” mobile phones that are, at best, inadequate and, at worst, insulting to a sector of society that deserves respect and consideration. Age does indeed influence mobile phone usage, and people over sixty often have specific and special needs, quite apart from age-related limitations, that predict their use of mobile phones. Most mobile phones designed for older users simply reduce the number of features: the so-called simplification approach. Apart from reducing the effectiveness of the phone, this approach often incorporates the fatal design flaw of using numbers or letters, on speed-dial buttons, which requires the user to remember the button–person mappings. In fact, this design rationale reduces the value of the phone to the user. This paper argues that mobile phone design for older users should be worth-centred (Cockton G in Designing worth is worth designing. In: Proceedings of the 4th Nordic conference on human–computer interaction: changing roles. Oslo, Norway, pp 165–174, 2006) rather than simplification-driven. The worth-centred approach maximises worth to the user of the phone. This is achieved by maximising effectiveness while accommodating reduced capabilities. To maximise ease of use, and consequent accessibility, features may have to be reduced in an informed way. To facilitate this, a mapping process is proposed whereby user needs are linked to uses of the phone, and then to the features that facilitate these uses. Needs fall into a number of categories, and each category is characterised by a number of different uses, which form a usage space. Features can be linked to one or more usage spaces, and thus be used to support needs. The first step in the conducted research entailed the identification of the needs of the older mobile phone user. Then, it was determined whether these needs were indeed being met by the uses afforded in existing phones. Having concluded that most users’ needs were not being met, the next step was to capture data on the needs, limitations and expectations of people over the age of sixty. This was achieved by conducting a series of one-to-one interviews with a number of older mobile phone users and also supervising a participatory design experiment. Using the findings of the analysis, a usage space model is proposed, which serves to align feature inclusion with user needs. Based on this usage space model (the theoretical contribution), a prototype mobile phone design is presented as the practical contribution of the paper.     

Technology skill and age: what will be the same 20?years from now?

Is current research on computing by older adults simply looking at a short-term problem? Or will the technology problems that plague the current generation also be problematic for today’s tech-savvy younger generations when they become “old”? This paper considers age-related and experience-related issues that affect ability to use new technology. Without more consideration of the skills of older users, it is likely that applications and devices 20 years from now will have changed such that this “older” generation finds themselves confronting an array of technologies that they little understand and find generally inaccessible. Recent evidence suggests that older adults bring specific strengths to Web browsing. A fuller investigation of these strengths and how to design to optimize for strengths of older users has the potential to address the need for usable technology for this increasingly important demographic.     

SpaceGlue: linking spaces for adaptive service location

We describe a mechanism called SpaceGlue for adaptively locating services based on the preferences and locations of users in a distributed and dynamic network environment. In SpaceGlue, services are bound to physical locations, and a mobile user accesses local services depending on the current space he/she is visiting. SpaceGlue dynamically identifies the relationships between different spaces and links or “glues” spaces together depending on how previous users moved among them and used those services. Once spaces have been glued, users receive a recommendation of remote services (i.e., services provided in a remote space) reflecting the preferences of the crowd of users visiting the area. The strengths of bonds are implicitly evaluated by users and adjusted by the system on the basis of their evaluation. SpaceGlue is an alternative to existing schemes such as data mining and recommendation systems and it is suitable for distributed and dynamic environments. The bonding algorithm for SpaceGlue incrementally computes the relationships or “bonds” between different spaces in a distributed way. We implemented SpaceGlue using a distributed network application platform Ja-Net and evaluated it by simulation to show that it adaptively locates services reflecting trends in user preferences. By using “Mutual Information (MI)” and “F-measure” as measures to indicate the level of such trends and the accuracy of service recommendation, the simulation results showed that (1) in SpaceGlue, the F-measure increases depending on the level of MI (i.e., the more significant the trends, the greater the F-measure values), (2) SpaceGlue achives better precision and F-measure than “Flooding case (i.e., every service information is broadcast to everybody)” and “No glue case” by narrowing appropriate partners to send recommendations based on bonds, and (3) SpaceGlue achieves better F-measure with large number of spaces and users than other cases (i.e., “flooding” and “no glue”). Tomoko Itao is an alumna of NTT Network Innovation Laboratories     

Gaze interaction with virtual on-line communities: levelling the playing field for disabled users

This paper introduces the concept of enabling gaze-based interaction for users with high-level motor disabilities to control an avatar in a first-person perspective on-line community. An example community, Second Life, is introduced that could offer disabled users the same virtual freedom as any other user, and so allow disabled users to be able-bodied (should they wish) within the virtual world. A survey of the control demands for Second Life and a subsequent preliminary experiment show that gaze control has inherent problems particularly for locomotion and camera movement. These problems result in a lack of effective gaze control of Second Life, such that control is not practical and show that disabled users who interact using gaze will have difficulties in controlling Second Life (and similar environments). This suggests that these users could once again become disabled in the virtual world by the difficulties in effectively controlling their avatars, and their ‘disability privacy’, or the right to control an avatar as effectively as an able bodied user, and so appear virtually able bodied, will be compromised. Methods for overcoming these difficulties such as the use of gaze aware on-screen assistive tools could overcome these problems, but games manufacturers must design inclusively, so that disabled users may have the right to disability privacy in their Second (virtual) Lives.     

Look, Ma, My homepage is Mobile!

Much of the ongoing research in ubiquitous computing has concentrated on providing context information, e.g. location information, to the level of services and applications. Typically, mobile clients obtain location information from their environment which is used to provide “locally optimal” services. In contrast, it may be of interest to obtain information about the current context a mobile user or device is in, from a client somewhere on the Web, i.e. to use the mobile device as an information provider for Internet clients. As an instance of such services we propose the metaphor of a “location-aware” Web homepage of mobile users providing information about, e.g. the current location a mobile user is at. Requesting this homepage can be as easy as typing a URL containing the mobile user's phone number such ashttp://mhp.net/+49123456789 in an off-the-shelf browser. The homepage is dynamically constructed as Web users access it and it can be configured in various ways that are controlled by the mobile user. We present the architecture and implementation and discuss issues around this example of “inverse” ubiquitous computing.     

Efficient fuzzy full-text type-ahead search

Traditional information systems return answers after a user submits a complete query. Users often feel “left in the dark” when they have limited knowledge about the underlying data and have to use a try-and-see approach for finding information. A recent trend of supporting autocomplete in these systems is a first step toward solving this problem. In this paper, we study a new information-access paradigm, called “type-ahead search” in which the system searches the underlying data “on the fly” as the user types in query keywords. It extends autocomplete interfaces by allowing keywords to appear at different places in the underlying data. This framework allows users to explore data as they type, even in the presence of minor errors. We study research challenges in this framework for large amounts of data. Since each keystroke of the user could invoke a query on the backend, we need efficient algorithms to process each query within milliseconds. We develop various incremental-search algorithms for both single-keyword queries and multi-keyword queries, using previously computed and cached results in order to achieve a high interactive speed. We develop novel techniques to support fuzzy search by allowing mismatches between query keywords and answers. We have deployed several real prototypes using these techniques. One of them has been deployed to support type-ahead search on the UC Irvine people directory, which has been used regularly and well received by users due to its friendly interface and high efficiency.     

Representing older and disabled people in virtual user trials: data collection methods

A database was developed to support the creation of a computer-based tool which will support design teams in evaluating the usability of a design during early prototyping and indicate which individuals are effectively excluded or designed out. Methods are described for the collection of multivariate data on 100 real individuals covering a range of physical characteristics and capabilities. These data were tested to ensure a breadth of representation of individuals (particularly older and disabled people) in terms of anthropometry, joint constraints, postural capabilities and task behaviours. The concept of the design tool itself is explored by conducting virtual user trials in the computer-aided design environment. The novel approach of the research encourages empathy with individual users and allows generic abilities, such as bending, reaching and lifting to be assessed.     

User interfaces for communication bridges across the digital divide

Connecting people across the “digital divide” is as much a social effort as a technological one. We are developing a community-centred approach to learn how interaction techniques can compensate for poor communication across the digital divide. We have incorporated the lessons learned regarding social intelligence design in an abstraction and in a device called the SoftBridge. The SoftBridge allows communication to flow from endpoints through adapters, getting converted if necessary, and out to destination endpoints. Field trials are underway with two communities in South Africa: disadvantaged Deaf users and an isolated rural community. Initial lessons learned show that we have to design user interfaces that allow users to understand and cope with delay. We also learned that social concerns are often more important than the technical issues in designing such systems.     

A Design Thinking Rationality Framework: Framing and Solving Design Problems in Early Concept Generation

The concept of “Design Thinking” opens up debate regarding the prevalent human–computer interaction design practice. This article focuses specifically on the cognitive processes of designers during their early design activities. Two groups of designers—experts and novices—were asked to develop a fictitious vacuum cleaner. We then examined the different ways in which these groups manage their design thinking processes and how the groups choose design concepts. The empirical study revealed that expert designers are effective at framing design problems. They make quick decisions (through the use of the affect heuristic) but are more wedded to their own previously developed design concepts, which they do not change in subsequent design stages. In contrast, novice designers are less skilled in framing new design problems but better able to renounce their initial design concepts. These diverse design thinking approaches are linked to potential problems. We then discuss how to address these concerns in conjunction with empathy for the artifact (i.e., artifact empathy via the mediated self) or user (i.e., user empathy via the simulated self), problem framing with second-order semantic connotations, and irrationality when analyzing design solutions. Finally, we propose a design thinking rationality framework that can establish a designer's view of design activities and thereby assist designers educated in both creative and rational design decisions.     

Finding Similar Users in Social Networks

We consider a system where users wish to find similar users. To model similarity, we assume the existence of a set of queries, and two users are deemed similar if their answers to these queries are (mostly) identical. Technically, each user has a vector of preferences (answers to queries), and two users are similar if their preference vectors differ in only a few coordinates. The preferences are unknown to the system initially, and the goal of the algorithm is to classify the users into classes of roughly the same preferences by asking each user to answer the least possible number of queries. We prove nearly matching lower and upper bounds on the maximal number of queries required to solve the problem. Specifically, we present an “anytime” algorithm that asks each user at most one query in each round, while maintaining a partition of the users. The quality of the partition improves over time: for n users and time T, groups of [(O)\tilde](n/T)\tilde{O}(n/T) users with the same preferences will be separated (with high probability) if they differ in sufficiently many queries. We present a lower bound that matches the upper bound, up to a constant factor, for nearly all possible distances between user groups.