Caroline Parker

An examination of the effects of a wearable display on informal face-to-face communication

Wearable computers have the potential to support our memory, facilitate our creativity, our communication and augment our physical senses [15] but, like email and cell-phones, they also have the potential to interrupt, displace or downgrade our social interactions. This paper presents the results of a simple laboratory-based study which examines the impact of a xybernaut head-mounted Shimadzu display on conversation between two people. We hypothesized that the wearable, by reducing eye-contact and attention in the wearer would have a detrimental effect. Pairs of friends discussed pre-defined topics under three conditions, no wearable, wearable present but inactive, wearable present and active. Likert scale statements were used to record the wearers level of attention, concentration, listening, eye contact, naturalness and relaxation, and the impact of the wearable. The presence of the wearable without an active display did not have an effect on the conversation. The quality of the interaction was however impaired in the active wearable condition and eye-contact was effected. This effect may be the result of the nature of the information type, the interface used, the characteristics of its presentation or the novelty of the display to the user. Additional research to identify design implications is discussed.

The Design Considerations of a Virtual Reality Application for Heart Anatomy and Pathology Education

Anatomy and pathology of the human body are complex subjects that cannot be elucidated easily to the medical students through traditional description and illustration methods. The proposed interactive system aims to present clear information on demand. For enhancing further the three-dimensional understanding of the anatomical information, a virtual reality environment was developed in order to accommodate different 3D models of the human body. In this case we opted for the heart model as it presents a unique section of the body that can produce motion and sound. The produced model was further simplified for use by patients who wish to understand better the generic anatomy and typical pathologies of the heart. Additionally the paper presents the data results of the system evaluation performed by ten users. The derived results although promising, highlighted some benefits and drawbacks of the proposed system that we aim, to improve in the near future. Finally the paper concludes with a plan of future work which will entail further interactivity through audio incorporation and gesture recognition.

Improving Usability in Decision Support Systems

The function of Decision Support Systems (DSS) is to help their users to make more effective decisions by providing information in a way that actively assists the decision process. However despite widespread development and investment very few agricultural DSS in the UK have been taken up by end users. This paper describes the use of a method for requirements analysis based on Arinze’s (1992) Decision Enquiry approach and on the use of workshops, in three agriculturally based DSS developments’. It concludes that the method provides a cost-effective and practical means of gathering information about the task of decision making, organising it and using it as the basis for design decisions and could usefully be applied in other sectors beyond agriculture. The approach is being widely used in UK agricultural DSS production and the next stage in the development of the methodology is the specification of design and evaluation procedures.

Supporting Complex Decisions Through Selection of Appropriate Graphical Layout

Decision support tools are designed to improve a user’s ability to take complex decisions and the choice of presentation format is highly relevant to this. Many papers have demonstrated a link between graphical format and decision choice but there has been less evaluation within the context of complex decision making and uncertainty. This study examines the impact of data representation (a) within a univariate and continuous choice decision context and (b) within a multivariate context with discrete choices. Participants in each study were randomly allocated to different display conditions and the impact of the display on their performance recorded, in (a) accuracy of the response and (b) the ease of decision making and comfort with the decision choice. The results suggest that while it is possible to identify graphical representations that produce better decision responses in a single-variable problem scenario this is not necessarily true in a multivariate discrete-choice situation.