Andrew F. Monk

The Inference of Perceived Usability From Beauty

A review of 15 papers reporting 25 independent correlations of perceived beauty with perceived usability showed a remarkably high variability in the reported coefficients. This may be due to methodological inconsistencies. For example, products are often not selected systematically, and statistical tests are rarely performed to test the generality of findings across products. In addition, studies often restrict themselves to simply reporting correlations without further specification of underlying judgmental processes. The present studys main objective is to re-examine the relation between beauty and usability, that is, the implication that “what is beautiful is usable.” To rectify previous methodological shortcomings, both products and participants were sampled in the same way and the data aggregated both by averaging over participants to assess the covariance across ratings of products and by averaging over products to assess the covariance across participants. In addition, we adopted an inference perspective to qualify underlying processes to examine the possibility that, under the circumstances pertaining in most studies of this kind where participants have limited experience of using a website or product, the relationship between beauty and usability is mediated by goodness. A mediator analysis of the relationship between beauty, the overall evaluation (i.e., “goodness”) and pragmatic quality (as operationalization of usability) suggests that the relationship between beauty and usability has been overplayed as the correlation between pragmatic quality and beauty is wholly mediated by goodness. This pattern of relationships was consistent across four different data sets and different ways of data aggregation. Finally, suggestions are made regarding methodologies that could be used in future studies that build on these results.

Some advantages of video conferencing over high-quality audio conferencing

There are many commercial systems capable of transmitting a video image of parties in a conversation over a digital network. Typically, these have been used to provide facial images of the participants. Experimental evidence for the advantages of such a capability has been hard to find. This paper describes two experiments that demonstrate significant advantages for video conferencing over audio-only conferencing, in the context of a negotiation task using electronically shared data. In the video condition there was a large, high-quality image of the head and upper torso of the participant(s) at the other end of the link and high-quality sound. For the audio-alone condition the sound was the same but there was no video image. The criteria by which these two communication conditions were compared were not the conventional measures of task outcome. Rather, measures relating to conversational fluency and interpersonal awareness were applied. In each of the two experiments, participants completed the same task with data presented by a shared editor. In Experiment 1, they worked in pairs and in Experiment 2 they worked at quartets with two people at each end of the link. Fluency was assessed from transcripts in terms of length of utterance, overlapping speech and explicit questions. Only the latter measure discriminated between the two communication conditions in both experiments. The other measures showed significant effects in Experiment 2 but not in Experiment 1. Given this pattern of results it is concluded that video can result in more fluent conversation, particularly where there are more than two discussants. However, in the case of dyadic conversation auditory cues to turn taking, etc., would seem to suffice. In both experiments there was a large and significant effect on interpersonal awareness as assessed by ratings of the illusion of presence, and most clearly, awareness of the attentional focus of the remote partner (s). In Experiment 2, the ratings for the remote partners were similar to those for the co-located discussants, demonstrating the effectiveness of the video link with regard to these subjective scales.

Memorability, word frequency and negative recognition

Brown (1976) has provided an analysis of the effect of the memorability of an item on the confidence with which it is accepted or rejected in a test of recognition or recall. When the subject has no clear recollection of the inclusion of an item in an input list, he is assumed to evaluate its memorability in the context of the experiment before he decides whether to accept or reject it. If the judged memorability is high, the absence of a clear recollection is stronger evidence against the item than if it is low. A specific prediction is that memorable distractors in a recognition test will be more confidently rejected than non-memorable ones. This prediction was tested and confirmed in three experiments in which recognition was tested by 4-category rating. Except in Experiment I, items memorable to individual subjects were identified by administering a questionnaire. For example, in Experiment III forenames of immediate family were assumed to have high memorability. This experiment also included word frequency as a variable. Low-frequency distractors were rejected significantly more firmly than high-frequency distractors: extraction of memorable names enhanced this effect. The relationship of memorability to word frequency is discussed.

A cost-effective evaluation method for use by designers

A strong case has been made for iterative design, that is, progressing through several versions of a user interface design using feedback from users to improve each prototype. One obstacle to wider adoption of this approach is the perceived difficulty of obtaining useful data from users. This paper argues that quantitative experimental methods may not be practical at early stages of design, but a behavioural record used in conjunction with think-aloud protocols can provide a designer with the information needed to evaluate an early prototype in a cost-effective manner. Further, it is proposed that a method for obtaining this data can be specified which is straightforward enough to be used by people with little or no training in human factors. Two studies are reported in which trainee designers evaluated a user interface by observing a user working through some set tasks. These users were instructed to think aloud as they worked in a procedure described as “cooperative evaluation”. The instruction received by the designers took the form of a brief how-to-do-it manual. Study 1 examines the effectiveness of the trainee designers as evaluators of an existing bibliographic database. The problems detected by each team were compared with the complete set of problems detected by all the teams and the problems detected by the authors in a previous and more extensive evaluation. Study 2 examined the question of whether being the designer of a system makes one better or worse at evaluating it and whether designers can predict the problems users will experience in advance of user testing.

Socially dependable design: The challenge of ageing populations for HCI

This paper considers the needs of an ageing population and the implications for Human Computer Interaction (HCI) research. The discussion is structured around findings from interviews with medical and care professionals and older people. Various technologies are being successfully used to monitor for falls and other emergencies, and also to assess and manage risk. The design of this technology is currently driven by a medical model of client needs and takes little account of the social context of the home. The design challenges for HCI are to make this technology attractive, provide privacy, allow informed choice and reduce rather than increase the isolation currently felt by many older people. It is argued that the ageing population presents a fundamental challenge to HCI in the need for socially dependable systems. Socially dependable systems take account of social context, the need for sociability and are accessible to all who need them.

Technological opportunities for supporting people with dementia who are living at home

Recent advances in pervasive computing raise new possibilities for supporting people with dementia who wish to live in their own homes. Interviews were conducted in order to identify the daily activities of people living at home that might most usefully be supported. In Study 1, nine interviews and one focus group were conducted with occupational therapists and other professional caregivers. In Study 2, interviews were conducted with eight people with mild to moderate dementia in their own homes and 10 informal caregivers. A grounded theory analysis of the transcripts revealed specific areas where support was needed and suggestions concerning the kinds of prompting and sensing required to support: dressing, taking medication, personal hygiene, preparing food, and socialising. The findings demonstrate the value of consulting directly with people with dementia and their caregivers. The design challenge is to provide flexible prompting systems that are sensitive to the intentions, capabilities, and values of their users.

Methods & tools: the rich picture: a tool for reasoning about work context

A monocrystalline silicon ingot is grown from molten silicon by progressively lifting a monocrystalline seed from the molten silicon, which is disposed within a crucible in a furnace, through mounting the seed on a graphite pull shaft. The pull shaft is surrounded by a bellows, which is connected to a carriage to which the pull shaft also is connected. A seal, which is carried by the bellows structure, seals the pull shaft in its rotary motion. Because the bellows structure and the pull shaft are both connected to the carriage, there is no relative linear motion therebetween so that there is no necessity to seal for linear motion of the pull shaft. A pair of lifting mechanisms is connected to diametrically opposite sides of the carriage to support the carriage and to exert a lifting force on the pull shaft along its longitudinal axis. The crucible also must be raised as the level of the molten silicon is depleted due to the formation of the ingot on the seed at the end of the pull shaft. This is because there is an optimum heating zone, which is an isothermal zone and is relatively small, within the furnace, and it is necessary for the level of the molten silicon to be maintained within this zone. The crucible is lifted through being connected to a carriage, which is supported and lifted by a similar arrangement to that for lifting the carriage to which the pull shaft is connected.

Funology: designing enjoyment

Although the general interest of the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research community in pleasure and fun as a goal of software design is growing (see for example [3, 10, 13]) we are far from having a coherent understanding of what enjoyment actually is and how it can be addressed by products and processes (see [7]). We might question whether designing for fun, pleasure and enjoyment is a desirable goal (e.g., [8]) and whether the processes and topics involved differ in any significant way from designing for usability.

Ambient kitchen: designing situated services using a high fidelity prototyping environment

The Ambient Kitchen is a high fidelity prototype for exploring the design of pervasive computing algorithms and applications for everyday environments. The environment integrates data projectors, cameras, RFID tags and readers, object mounted accelerometers, and under-floor pressure sensing using a combination of wired and wireless networks. The Ambient Kitchen is a lab-based replication of a real kitchen where careful design has hidden the additional technology, and allows both the evaluation of pervasive computing prototypes and the simultaneous capture of the multiple synchronized streams of sensor data. Previous work exploring the requirements for situated support for people with cognitive impairments motivated the design of the physical and technical infrastructure and we describe both our motivations and previous work on interaction design in kitchen environments. Finally, we describe how our lab-based prototype has been put to use as: a design tool for designers; a design tool for users; an observatory to collect sensor data for activity recognition algorithm development, and an evaluation test bed. The limitations and advantages of lab-based, as opposed to in situ home-based testing, are discussed

An experimental study of common ground in text-based communication

An experiment was performed to examine predictions from Clark’s contribution theory of discourse. Pairs were asked to use a text-based synchronous messaging system to solve a problem involving the layout of a bank. Contribution theory suggests that in such text-only communication common ground will be difficult to achieve. This was shown to be the case. A parallel system, where participants could use a common report space in addition to the messaging space, significantly reduced these probIems. The implications for design are discussed in terms of providing additional channels for communicating the results of discussion separate from the conversation itself.