A. Ant Ozok

SEIPS 2.0: A human factors framework for studying and improving the work of healthcare professionals and patients

Healthcare practitioners, patient safety leaders, educators and researchers increasingly recognise the value of human factors/ergonomics and make use of the disciplines person-centred models of sociotechnical systems. This paper first reviews one of the most widely used healthcare human factors systems models, the Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety (SEIPS) model, and then introduces an extended model, ‘SEIPS 2.0’. SEIPS 2.0 incorporates three novel concepts into the original model: configuration, engagement and adaptation. The concept of configuration highlights the dynamic, hierarchical and interactive properties of sociotechnical systems, making it possible to depict how health-related performance is shaped at ‘a moment in time’. Engagement conveys that various individuals and teams can perform health-related activities separately and collaboratively. Engaged individuals often include patients, family caregivers and other non-professionals. Adaptation is introduced as a feedback mechanism that explains how dynamic systems evolve in planned and unplanned ways. Key implications and future directions for human factors research in healthcare are discussed. Practitioner Summary: SEIPS 2.0 is a new human factors/ergonomics framework for studying and improving health and healthcare. It describes how sociotechnical systems shape health-related work done by professionals and non-professionals, independently and collaboratively. Work processes, in turn, shape patient, professional and organisational outcomes. Work systems and processes undergo planned and unplanned adaptations.

Online Communities and Social Computing

With the emergence of smarthphones and social networks, a very large proportion of communication takes place on short texts. This type of communication, often anonymous, has allowed a new public participation in political issues. In particular, electoral phenomena all over the world have been greatly influenced by these networks. In the recent elections in Mexico, Twitter became a virtual place to bring together scientists, artists, politicians, adults, youth and students trying to persuade people about the candidate: Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). Our research is based on the collection of all tweets sent before, during and after the presidential elections of July 1, 2012 in Mexico containing the hashtag #AMLO. The aim of this study is to analyze the behavior of users on three different times. We apply SentiWordNet 3.0 in order to know how user behavior changes depending of the political situation and whether this is reflected on the tweets.

Time to accelerate integration of human factors and ergonomics in patient safety

Progress toward improving patient safety has been slow despite engagement of the health care community in improvement efforts. A potential reason for this sluggish pace is the inadequate integration of human factors and ergonomics principles and methods in these efforts. Patient safety problems are complex and rarely caused by one factor or component of a work system. Thus, health care would benefit from human factors and ergonomics evaluations to systematically identify the problems, prioritize the right ones, and develop effective and practical solutions. This paper gives an overview of the discipline of human factors and ergonomics and describes its role in improving patient safety. We provide examples of how human factors and ergonomics principles and methods have improved both care processes and patient outcomes. We provide five major recommendations to better integrate human factors and ergonomics in patient safety improvement efforts: build capacity among health care workers to understand human factors and ergonomics, create market forces that demand the integration of human factors and ergonomics design principles into medical technologies, increase the number of human factors and ergonomic practitioners in health care organizations, expand investments in improvement efforts informed by human factors and ergonomics, and support interdisciplinary research to improve patient safety. In conclusion, human factors and ergonomics must play a more prominent role in health care if we want to increase the pace in improving patient safety.

Perceived security determinants in e-commerce among Turkish university students

Perceived security is defined as the level of security that users feel while they are shopping on e-commerce sites. The aims of this study were to determine items that positively influence this feeling of security by users during shopping, and to develop guidelines for perceived security in e-commerce. An experiment allowed users with different security assurances to shop on simulated e-commerce sites. The participants were divided into three groups, shopping for cheap, mid-range, and expensive products, respectively. Following the shopping environment, the virtual shopping security questionnaire (VSSQ), consisting of fourteen perceived security items, was presented to the users. The VSSQ was presented to the participants to validate these perceived security items. The VSSQ had a Cronbachs alpha internal reliability value of 0.70. With the exception of two items, there were no significant differences in item ratings between the groups of different shopping item values. A factor analysis procedure determined two main factors concerning perceived security in e-commerce. The perceived operational factor includes: the sites blocking of unauthorized access; emphasis on login name and password authentication; funding and budget spent on security; monitoring of user compliance with security procedures; integration of state-of-the-art systems; distribution of security items within the site; websites encryption strategy; and consolidation with network security vendors. The perceived policy-related factor includes: the websites emphasis on network security; top management commitment; effort to make users aware of security procedures; the websites keeping up-to-date with product standards; the websites emphasis on security in file transfers; and issues concerning the web browser.

Shopping behaviour and preferences in e-commerce of Turkish and American university students: Implications from cross-cultural design

With internationalization of commerce and business and with increased use of e-business and e-commerce, it is important to ensure that these systems can be effectively utilized across cultural boundaries. To increase effectiveness, appropriate changes and modifications in the systems may be required. With this in mind, a survey of 300 Turkish university students was undertaken to assess their on-line shopping and behaviour preferences, and these were compared with the results derived from 64 US university students. The results provide guidelines for specific design of features for the Turkish population that may not be necessary for the US population.

A Comparative Study Between Tablet and Laptop PCs: User Satisfaction and Preferences

Despite their popularity, usability studies concerning Tablet PCs are lacking. This study aimed at determining user satisfaction and preference aspects of Tablet PCs in comparison to laptop PCs and pen-and-paper environments. Several common computer tasks were examined in an experimental environment on 34 college student participants. User satisfaction and preferences were measured by comprehensive questionnaires. An analysis of variance was used for the empirical comparisons. Participants did not have any difficulty in reading, direct manipulation, and form filling tasks. There was a perception of a high number of errors by the participants for the writing task in Tablet PCs. Overall, participants found the general computing capabilities and portability of Tablet PCs impressive. However, the majority did not prefer Tablet PCs to laptop PCs to meet their everyday computing needs. Results can help designers improve the overall usability of the Tablet PC and help its development as a major computing medium.

Computer Usage by Children with Down Syndrome: Challenges and Future Research

Children with Down syndrome, like neurotypical children, are growing up with extensive exposure to computer technology. Computers and computer-related devices have the potential to help these children in education, career development, and independent living. Our understanding of computer usage by this population is quite limited. Most of the software, games, and Web sites that children with Down syndrome interact with are designed without consideration of their special needs, making the applications less effective or completely inaccessible. We conducted a large-scale survey that collected computer usage information from the parents of approximately six hundred children with Down syndrome. This article reports the text responses collected in the survey and is intended as a step towards understanding the difficulties children with Down syndrome experience while using computers. The relationship between the age and the specific type of difficulties, as well as related design challenges are also reported. A number of potential research directions and hypotheses are identified for future studies. Due to limitations in survey methodology, the findings need to be further validated through hypothesis-driven, empirical studies.

An empirical comparison of consumer usability preferences in online shopping using stationary and mobile devices: results from a college student population

To determine the differences in user preferences between electronic and mobile commerce in consumer shopping, a 25-item survey concerning usability aspects of the two media was implemented on one hundred and eighteen college e-shoppers with experience in mobile devices. The Mobile Commerce Comparison Survey (MCCS) had four validated comparison factors: human factors-related, interface features, product-, and service-related factor. The comparison concludes that usability issues are perceived to be behind in m-commerce, and that m-commerce should be a shopping medium complementary to classic e-commerce rather than a direct alternative to it. Future studies may include empirical usability experiments for m-commerce tasks.

Measuring consistency of web page design and its effects on performance and satisfaction

This study examines the methods for measuring the consistency levels of web pages and the effect of consistency on the performance and satisfaction of the world-wide web (WWW) user. For clarification, a home page is referred to as a single page that is the default page of a web site on the WWW. A web page refers to a single screen that indicates a specific address on the WWW. This study has tested a series of web pages that were mostly hyperlinked. Therefore, the term ‘web page’ has been adopted for the nomenclature while referring to the objects of which the features were tested. It was hypothesized that participants would perform better and be more satisfied using web pages that have consistent rather than inconsistent interface design; that the overall consistency level of an interface design would significantly correlate with the three elements of consistency, physical, communicational and conceptual consistency; and that physical and communicational consistencies would interact with each other. The hypotheses were tested in a four-group, between-subject design, with 10 participants in each group. The results partially support the hypothesis regarding error rate, but not regarding satisfaction and performance time. The results also support the hypothesis that each of the three elements of consistency significantly contribute to the overall consistency of a web page, and that physical and communicational consistencies interact with each other, while conceptual consistency does not interact with them.

Development of a web‐based mobile airline ticketing model with usability features

Purpose – Development of mobile commerce (m‐commerce) environments that have user‐friendly features is important to accelerate the adoption of m‐commerce. The current research studies web‐based features that are crucial to the success of mobile air ticketing commerce.Design/methodology/approach – There are two phases involved. In the first phase, the current research develops a web‐based mobile airline ticketing (W‐MAT) model to study usability features necessary to perform mobile air ticketing commerce. Thirty‐six features are mapped and identified based on the W‐MAT model. In the second phase, the air ticketing web sites for 27 most popular airline companies and online air travel agencies are examined to analyze their existing implementation patterns on these 36 features. The pattern analysis is based on web site features analysis and web site versatility analysis.Findings – The analysis of web site features resulted in the development of an adoption feature pyramid that classified the 36 features into ...