Users’ viewpoint of usability and user experience testing procedure - gaining methodological insights in a case of an interactive HbbTV application

We present a novel meta-methodological approach for the user experience and usability methodology procedure evaluation, shown in an example of the user experience and usability study of an interactive HbbTV application. The idea behind this research is not only to evaluate and improve the TV-WEB service but also to gain insights how the participants perceived the whole Ux evaluation procedure itself. The research questions focused mainly on the time complexity (temporal demand) and the frustration level of the TV-WEB evaluation procedure. Additionally the appropriateness of the selected content used, interface and interaction design, and the service impressions and satisfaction/payment related questions was sought. A special questionnaire based on the NASA TLX standard test is presented. The concept has been successfully implemented in several live field trials in three countries (BiH, Serbia and Montenegro). In the user experience and usability study of the service itself more than 150 participants were involved, of those 35 took part in the meta-methodology study. The feedback was quantitatively evaluated on a 7-point Likert scale, with “1” indicating the best positive feedback, “4” neutral/undecided feedback and “7” the most negative feedback. The quantitative average summary results obtained in the three evaluation studies were 1.30 for both the BiH and Serbia test study cases and the score of 1.22 for the test study case in Montenegro. These results show that a great majority of the participants found the whole evaluation procedure time-wise and frustration-wise undemanding, with appropriate content, presentation style and overall attitude towards them. By using this approach it was possible to improve the user experience and usability methodology used, producing more reliable results and providing better user experience in the final version of the product as well as providing a pleasant experience during the testing of the product.     

Prompting,feedback and error correction in the design of a scenario machine

A scenario machine limits the user to a single action path through system functions and procedures. Four scenario machines were designed to embody different approaches to prompting, feedback, and automatic error correction for a “learning-by-doing” training simulator for a commercial, menu-based word processor. Compared with users trained directly on the commercial system, scenario machine users demonstrated an overall advantage in the “getting started” stage of learning. Initial training on a “prompting + automatic correction” system was particularly efficient, encouraging a DWIM (or “do what I mean”) approach to training system design. Curiously, training on a “prompting + feedback” system led to relatively impaired performance on a set of transfer of learning tasks. It was suggested that too much training information support may obscure the task coherence of the action scenario itself relative to a design that provides less explicit direction.     

Multidimensional audio window management

This paper proposes and organization of presentation and control that implements a flexible audio management system we call “audio windows”. The result is a new user interface integrating and enhanced spatial sound presentation system, an audio emphasis system, and a gestural input recognition system. We have implemented these ideas in a modest prototype, also described, designed as an audio server appropriate for a teleconferencing system. Our system combines a gestural front end (currently based on a DataGlove, but whose concepts are appropriate for other devices as well) with an enhanced spatial sound system, a digital signal processing separation of multiple sound sources, augmented with “filtears”, audio feedback cues that convey added information without distraction or loss of intelligibility. Our prototype employs a manual front end (requiring no keyboard or mouse) driving an auditory back end (requiring no CRT or visual display).     

The Relative Importance of Usability and Functionality Factors for E‐Health Web Sites

With the growing usage of the Internet, the demand for online health care information and advice as well as the number of health‐related Web sites are increasing. In case of online health information and advice, the user interface replaces face‐to‐face communication. To ensure that the users' needs are met, it is critical to balance functionality and usability in the design of the Web site. The present study seeks to identify the complex interrelationships among the various factors of usability and functionality concerning e‐health Web sites. Two Turkish e‐health Web sites were assessed for evaluation in this study. The findings show that the users of the health information Web sites give a higher priority to functionality and its factors, whereby the highest relative importance is on “services/facilities” and “personalization/categorization of information.” The most important usability factors related to the e‐health Web sites are “memorability” and “interaction.” © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Multi‐Criteria Usability Evaluation of Electronic Devices in a Fuzzy Environment

The user‐oriented design is the most important competition issue in today's market. In recent years, user‐oriented design (i.e., usability) has become expected, particularly in electronic devices. Usability considers high user satisfaction in conjunction with user performance. Usability of electronic products is essential for high customer satisfaction as well as product life cycles in companies. Therefore, MP3 players were selected among the electronic products. Designing usable MP3 players is extremely important for users who have close interaction with them. In this study, MP3 players of different types and sizes were selected and their usability evaluated. The usability criteria used in the MP3 players' evaluation were divided into two major categories: performance and emotional expectations. The alternatives were ranked with fuzzy multi‐criteria decision‐making methods, namely, Fuzzy TOPSIS (FTOPSIS), Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP), and Fuzzy Axiomatic Design Theory (FADT), and the results were compared. Although the same decision matrices and data obtained from semantic differential experiment were used for all fuzzy multi‐criteria decision‐making methods, it is shown that different rankings were obtained. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Product interface design: A participatory approach based on virtual reality

The usability of the user interface is a key aspect for the success of several industrial products. This assumption has led to the introduction of numerous design methodologies addressed to evaluate the user-friendliness of industrial products. Most of these methodologies follow the participatory design approach to involve the user in the design process. Virtual Reality is a valid tool to support Participatory Design, because it facilitates the collaboration among designers and users.The present study aims to evaluate the feasibility and the efficacy of an innovative Participatory Design approach where Virtual Reality plays a ‘double role’: a tool to evaluate the usability of the virtual product interface, and a communication channel that allows users to be directly involved in the design process as co-designers.In order to achieve these goals, we conducted three experiments: the purpose of the first experiment is to determine the influence of the virtual interface on the usability evaluation by comparing “user–real product” interaction and “user–virtual product” interaction. Subsequently, we tested the effectiveness of our approach with two experiments involving users (directly or through their participation in a focus group) in the redesign of a product user interface. The experiments were conducted with two typologies of consumer appliances: a microwave oven and a washing machine.     

Improving the quality and usability of everyday products: A case for report systems

Quality is “fit for purpose” and not a feature inherent to an entity. For products designed for interactive use, the concept of usability has expanded the term quality in consideration of ergonomic features. The user perceived quality (UPQ) of products represents one face of quality, the other face being the objective quality. Designing a product in consideration of UPQ requires the translation of user centered criteria into product related. In determining UPQ, various reasons may exist for not being able to fully recognize users' needs. In addition, the vendor may fail in materializing recognized needs of users. The “Survival Path Model for Undocumented Features” demonstrates that causes of failure introduced during the planning phase of a product can survive all phases of the life cycle and become efficient with the help of latent failures. These reasons suggest that installing a report system that conveys relevant information from the practice can be beneficial. This article discusses the outcome of a successful simulation of a report system and its contribution to the product quality of a well‐designed printing unit. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Correcting menu usability problems with sound

Future human-computer interfaces will use more than just graphical output to display information. In this paper we suggest that sound and graphics together can be used to improve interaction. We describe an experiment to improve the usability of standard graphical menus by the addition of sound. One common difficulty is slipping off a menu item by mistake when trying to select it. One of the causes of this is insufficient feedback. We designed and experimentally evaluated a new set of menus with much more salient audio feedback to solve this problem. The results from the experiment showed a significant reduction in the subjective effort required to use the new sonically-enhanced menus along with significantly reduced error recovery times. A significantly larger number of errors were also corrected with sound.     

Effects of design features of train electronic guidance interface on visual search,behavior, and usability

In urban rail trains, traditional printed guide information interfaces are being replaced by digital interfaces. An electronic guide screen is an important device for passengers to obtain information about the ride because the train is running underground. In particular, when the train is crowded, passengers must obtain information in advance and make appropriate decisions. Therefore, it is important to efficiently search for guidance interfaces. In this study, use scenarios of the guidance interface were simulated. The typical information layout and display mode in the current electronic guidance interface were the experimental variables. Through eye tracking and subjective evaluation, the effects of design features on user search performance, visual behavior, and usability satisfaction were discussed. The experimental results showed that the information layout and display mode of the guidance interface had an interactive effect on the task completion time, fixation counts, and usability score; they also had a significant effect on the recall accuracy and saccade ratio. Task completion time had a strong positive correlation with usability satisfaction and was correlated with visual behavior. The study confirmed that the split-screen display mode combined with interlaced layout could improve search performance and subjective satisfaction.Relevance to industryPrinted guide signs in subway cars are being replaced by electronic guide screens of different styles. Passengers must search for the required information within a limited period. In this study, the effects of different interface layouts and display modes on search performance, visual behavior, and usability were studied. This had a positive significance in improving user experience.     

Digital halftoning by iterative isotropic error feedback

An error diffusion scheme for digital halftoning is proposed. The scheme is an iterative and isotropic error feedback process. Also, to compensate for the nonlinear tone reproduction by laser printers due to ink drop overlaps, we incorporate Pappas-Neuhoff's simplified printer model into the new error diffusion scheme. It appears that the proposed halftoning technique enhances the perceived tone continuity of halftone hard copies, and it alleviates the objectionable structured halftone textures of some existing methods. In addition, a mechanism is suggested to preview a halftone print on a gray-level CRT monitor. The user can interactively set the desired brightness of the halftone print and balance image contrast and tone continuity, which are two mutually exclusive subjective criteria for halftone reproduction.     

A Measurement and Structural Model for Usability Evaluation of Shared Workspace Groupware

This study presents the development process of a set of questionnaire items to establish a measurement model for the usability of shared workspace groupware systems, which is suggested as a usability scale called SWUS, the Shared Workspace Usability Scale. Manifest variables and latent variables are based on the various dimensions of teamwork collated through the literature. A structural model was built on the measurement model. Models were evaluated through PLS-SEM methods. Data acquired on candidate questionnaire items from 398 international respondents who are users of five different online collaborative word processors was used for the model analysis. Of 37 candidate manifest variables, 22 were retained, which were measuring seven latent constructs: “3C Mechanisms,” “Grounding,” “Team Integration,” “Communication,” “Shared Access,” “Awareness,” and “Usability.” The data provided empirical evidence for the structural model based on these latent variables. The responses of the participants were not sensitive to differences between users in terms of gender and native language but showed sensitivity to age, experience with the evaluated software, and different shared workspace groupware evaluated in the study. Our structural model attempts to integrate several frameworks and models of usability for CSCW environments and provides empirical evidence for its reliability and validity based on subjective responses from users of shared workspace groupware.     

Enabling user-oriented management for ubiquitous computing: The meta-design approach

This paper presents iPlumber, a user-oriented management system for ubiquitous computing environments. Different from previous low-benefit “zero-configuration” systems or high cognitive-cost “end user programming” tools, our work attempts to attain a better balance between user benefits and cost by exploring the meta-design approach. A set of typical management activities in ubicomp environments are supported, from basic-level software sharing, foraging, and low-cost software configuration to advanced-level cooperative software co-design and error handling. These activities are elaborated through a smart home control scenario. The usability of our system is validated through an initial user study with a total of 33 subjects to test the management activities from an open exhibition environment and a controlled university environment.     

Networks of Names: Visual Exploration and Semi‐Automatic Tagging of Social Networks from Newspaper Articles

Understanding relationships between people and organizations by reading newspaper articles is difficult to manage for humans due to the large amount of data. To address this problem, we present and evaluate a new visual analytics system, which offers interactive exploration and tagging of social networks extracted from newspapers. For the visual exploration of the network, we extract “interesting” neighbourhoods of nodes, using a new degree of interest (DOI) measure based on edges instead of nodes. It improves the seminal definition of DOI, which we find to produce the same “globally interesting” neighbourhoods in our use case, regardless of the query. Our approach allows answering different user queries appropriately, avoiding uniform search results. We propose a user‐driven pattern‐based classifier for discovery and tagging of non‐taxonomic semantic relations. Our approach does not require any a‐priori user knowledge, such as expertise in syntax or pattern creation. An evaluation shows that our classifier is capable of identifying known lexico‐syntactic patterns as well as various domain‐specific patters. Our classifier yields good results already with a small amount of training, and continuously improves through user feedback. We conduct a user study to evaluate whether our visual interactive system has an impact on how users tag relationships, as compared to traditional text‐based interfaces. Study results suggest that users of the visual system tend to tag more concisely, avoiding too abstract or overly specific relationship labels.     

Usability Study of Two In-Vehicle Information Systems Using Finger Tracking and Facial Expression Recognition Technology

In this study, an experiment is conducted to compare the usability of two in-vehicle information systems (IVISs), namely, the newly developed “Calink” and the commercially available “Carlife.” The interface style of Calink is similar to that of smartphones, while that of Carlife is similar to the interface style of traditional IVISs. This study establishes a usability index system based on the International Organization for Standardization’s definition of usability, and each evaluation index has a corresponding subjective or objective measurement method. Five new indexes, namely, angular velocity, velocity, turn angle, distance of finger movements, and valence and arousal value of facial expression, are used in the usability test. Participants are asked to complete three tasks (namely, music, telephone, and navigation) to test the usability of the IVIS interface. The results show that in the case of most of the indexes Calink performs better than Carlife. Finally, the consistency of subjective experience and objective performance is discussed.     

A synthetical development approach for rehabilitation assistive smart product–service systems: A case study

Digital transformation (DT), the combination of information, computing, communication and connectivity technologies, which has triggered an effective upgrade of different aspects of market strategy, customer experience etc. Nowadays, rehabilitation assistive devices (RADs) are evolving to be more digital, intelligent and personalized. Digitalization and servitization have fostered to an emerging business model—the smart product–service system (Smart PSS). Therefore, DT of the RADs’ industry advocates not only the design of products and functions, the more important is the management of service processes and resource integration. With the increase in the elderly and disabled population, the requirement for RADs is becoming more urgent. However, research on Smart PSS for RAD is still limited. The rehabilitation assistive smart product–service systems (RASPSS) was introduced into the development of RADs based on the “Design and Management of DT” strategy through the service design of assistive devices and user requirements analysis. Further, an integrated design of RAD and Smart PSS has been created, a development method of RASPSS proposed, the theoretical model of the Smart PSS based on RADs built. To specify the service framework, this case study discusses the development of a home rehabilitation assistive system for femoral stem fracture patients. This paper evaluates the usability of the system, the results of which prove usability and effectiveness of the RASPSS development method. The RASPSS development model is designed to meet needs of stakeholders, improve the user rehabilitation experience, promote the service innovation of Smart PSS, bring certain market benefits of rehabilitation aids and create social value.     

Exploring the inbound and outbound strategies enabled by user generated big data: Evidence from leading smartphone applications

The Open Innovation paradigm has been increasingly considered as a relevant approach to innovation. Among the different sources, end users are particularly meaningful. Scholars have highlighted several methods and strategies to involve them in the innovation process by asking, observing, and giving them the chance to actually co‐create. Digital technologies are expanding the span of opportunities in this direction, gathering a huge amount and variety of data, while the end user enjoys a digital product; these data can be called “user generated big data” (UGBD). The aim of this research is to understand whether UGBD can contribute in user innovation and to highlight the enabled strategies to create value through them. Leveraging on a multiple case study (Twitter, Spotify, Strava, and Deliveroo), the paper first classifies UGBD among the methods to foster user centered innovation, and then it defines two strategies to create value relying on UGBD. First, companies can leverage on a “using data” strategy—addressing both the end user or other player in the ecosystem—fostering service innovation through an inbound approach. Second, a “selling data” strategy can be pursued, addressing new clients and fostering business model innovation, enlarging the company's value chain in an outbound perspective.     

“Turn that frown upside-down”: A contextual account of emoticon usage on different virtual platforms

Evidence highlights the prevalent usage of emoticons within digital forms of textual communication and the impact on the recipient. However, little evidence demonstrates the interpersonal functions for the user and whether this varies as a product of virtual platform. This formed the basis for the current study in which participants (N = 92) provided open-ended accounts of their reasons for using emoticons across three virtual platforms (email, text message, and social networking site), and their general emoticon usage across these. Responses revealed a number of themes on reasons for emoticon usage. The first was; “aiding personal expression”, with sub-themes of; “establishing emotional tone”; and “to lighten the mood”. Other themes were “reducing ambiguity of discourse” and “appropriateness of context”. Overall, there was consistency across platforms, on both the personal and interpersonal functions which emoticons served. However, some disparity was identified as email platforms were deemed inappropriate for emoticon use, regardless of the fact that emoticons were recognised as important emotional aids for communication. Taken together these findings highlight the importance of emoticon usage for the user, through a contextual lens to recognise the influential factors upon these behaviours and the implications this has for digital text-based communication. In this regard, this contributes further conceptualisation of one aspect of hyperpersonal communication within virtual interactions, and how different platforms may permit these self-presentational efforts to a greater or lesser extent.     

Scheduling home control devices: design issues and usability evaluation of four touchscreen interfaces

This article describes four different user interfaces supporting scheduling two-state (ON/OFF) devices over time periods ranging from minutes to days. The touchscreen-based user interfaces including a digital 12-h clock, 24-h linear and 24-h dial prototypes are described and compared on a feature by feature basis. A formative usability test with 14 subjects, feedback from more than 30 reviewers, and the flexibility to add functions favour the 24-h linear version.     

An evaluation tool for research of user behavior in a realistic mobile environment

User behavior is significantly influenced by the surrounding environment. Especially complex and dynamically changing environments (like mobile environment) are represented by a wide variety of extraneous variables, which influence the user behavior in an unpredictable and mostly uncontrolled way. For researchers, it is challenging to measure and analyze the user behavior in such environments. We introduce a complex tool—the IVE tool—which provides a unique way of context visualization and synchronization of measured data of various kinds. Thanks to this tool it is possible to efficiently evaluate data acquired during complex usability tests in a mobile environment. The functionality of this tool is demonstrated on the use case “Navigation of visually impaired users in the building with support of a navigation system called NaviTerier.” During the experiment, we focused on collection and analysis of data that may show user stress and which may influence his/her ability to navigate. We analyzed objective data like Galvanic Skin Response parameter (GSR), Heart Rate Variability parameters (HRV) and audio video recordings and also subjective data like the user’s subjective stress feeling and observation of the user’s behavior.     

A pretreatment to improve the quality metrics performance for encoding H264/AVC

The study of the human visual system is very interesting to quantify the quality of an image or to predict perceived information. The contrast sensitivity function is one of the main ways to incorporate the human visual system properties in an imaging system. It characterizes its sensitivity to spatial frequencies. In this paper, we are interested in establishing a pretreatment for existing metrics with full reference (“peak signal‐to‐noise ratio”, “digital video quality”) for the H.264/MPEG‐4 (Motion Picture Expert Group) advanced video coding standard. We realize in our algorithm the FFT transformation to apply the contrast sensitivity function. Our method is applicable to any size of image and video sequence by increasing its size at powers of two. This increase is achieved by adding “mirror image.” We evaluate the performance of the proposed pretreatment by using subjective “LIVE” video databases. The performance metrics, that is, Pearson (PLCC), Spearman correlation coefficients (SROCC) and root mean square prediction error (RMSE) indicate that the proposed method gives a good performance in H264 codec distortions.