Andrés Solano

Evaluating interactive digital television applications through usability heuristics

Interactive Digital Television (iDT) is considered as the convergence of television and computer technologies. Usability evaluation for applications based on emerging information technology brings new challenges. The main iDT feature is that the user may interact with the application; therefore usability should be a main concern when designing iDT applications. Current research usually focuses on iDT applications from a technical point of view, rather than a user–centered approach. There is a need for new usability evaluation methods or at least for the use of traditional evaluations in novel ways. A set of specific usability heuristics was defined and validated, in order to help the usability evaluations of iDT applications. A usability checklist to be used when applying iDT heuristics is also proposed.

Proposing Formal Notation for Modeling Collaborative Processes Extending HAMSTERS Notation

As it has been shown in several studies, work in a collaborative manner leads to a better achievement of the goals. There is a large number and variety of processes to achieve a certain goal; however, a lot of these processes have been designed to be carried out in individual work environments. For that reason, in the area of Collaboration Engineering it has been proposed a Methodology for the Development of Collaborative Processes, which allows obtaining the collaborative specification of a process. This methodology provides the Facilitation Process Model to represent the process flow, however, it has been identified the need to complement this model with elements that contribute to the understanding and future use. Thus, this paper presents a formal notation for modeling collaborative process extending HAMSTERS (Human-centered Assessment and Modeling to Support Task Engineering for Resilient Systems) notation, in order to complement the graphical representation of the model.

Collaborative learning as educational strategy for deaf children: a systematic literature review

The education of people with disabilities requires special attention and the use of teaching and learning strategies that can be adapted to every particular disability. This study focuses on the education of deaf children as part of a larger project that aims to mix teaching strategies like Logogenia and Fitzgerald Key with interactive storytelling and collaborative learning to support literacy teaching to these children. Since deaf people learn using the visual channel as main input, we believe that technology could play a key role in the development of such environments where user interfaces should be specifically designed to attract childrens attention. We conducted a systematic literature review in order to find what researchers have done to apply Collaborative or Cooperative Learning in the education of deaf children and also what kind of emerging technologies are used to enhance collaborative environments. A total of 229 studies were found in 7 different databases. The results of this study show that Collaborative Learning has been used along with different kinds of technology in the education of deaf people with positive outcomes like improving skills in sign language, literacy and communication.

Facilitation Process Model including elements of the HAMSTERS notation

There is a large number and variety of processes to achieve a certain goal; however, a lot of these processes have been designed to be carried out in individual work environments. For that reason, in the area of Collaboration Engineering it has been proposed a Methodology for the Development of Collaborative Processes, which allows obtaining the collaborative specification of a process. This methodology provides the Facilitation Process Model (FPM) to represent the process flow, which has been updated from a series of elements that provides the HAMSTERS (Human-centered Assessment and Modeling to Support Task Engineering for Resilient Systems) notation, in order to contribute to its understanding and future use. Thus, this paper presents a preliminary evaluation of the elements included in the FPM through a case study that compares a traditional FPM versus one that includes HAMSTERS elements.

Proposing interaction patterns for designing videogames supported in Smartphones

Finding common solutions to recurring design problems or creating computer programs is one way to improve communication between designers of software products and multiple users. Nowadays, one of the practices used to find these solutions is through patterns, which have their origin in architecture and have been used since the 90s in the software world. Still, it is not easy to decide which of the existing patterns are more appropriate for use in videogames design, so that it can contribute to the ease of use of videogames. For this reason, this paper presents a proposal to obtain a set of interaction patterns focused on ease of use, which are related to the design of videogames supported in Smartphones. This, from gathering information about interaction patterns of traditional software and entertainment software.

Setting Usability iTV Heuristics in Open-HEREDEUX

Usability evaluation is one of the most important stages inside the user-centered design. Heuristic evaluation is a highlighted method due to its great capability to detect a high number of usability issues, its low cost and simplicity; however, the search and selection of the best heuristics is probably the most difficult task of the methodology. This paper describes the process carried out to enter a set of heuristics (for interactive digital television environments) to Open Repository of the Open-HEREDEUX, which aims to minimize the effort to select the most suitable heuristics to evaluate an interactive system.

Usability guidelines related to ease of learning and ease of use in the design of interactive digital television applications, considering user profiles

Interactive Digital Television (IDTV) has grown in popularity, thanks to new innovations in technology, it occupies an important place in society. Although there are guidelines, principles, standards, among others, to design interactive systems in the field of guidelines for designing IDTV applications it is relatively a little that has been stated. This article presents a set of usability guidelines related to ease of learning and use in design IDTV applications, which focus on user profiles. These guidelines have been generated from tests conducted at the IDTV Laboratory of University of Cauca (Colombia).