Catherine Wallace

Modelling Web-based banking systems: Story boarding and user profiling

Electronic Business applications are often implemented using web-based Information Systems, in which human-to-human interaction is replaced by human-computer interaction. To design systems that meet both the users’ needs and the business intentions of the service provider requires anticipating the users’ behaviour. User profiles can be used to classify user needs as well as the various kinds of system support for them. For this end also analysis and description of story boards, i.e., navigation paths of users through the system can used. In this article the problems of story boarding and user profiling are approached in the context of loan application systems as a typical banking application.

Emphasizing the communication aspects for the successful development of electronic business systems

Abstract.In order to be successful, web-based electronic business systems have to be developed in such a way that both the customers’ needs and the business intentions of the provider are met. As human-to-human interaction is partly replaced by human-computer interaction in such systems, this requires anticipating the users’ behaviour and paying a lot of attention to the communication aspects.In this article a development method is suggested that emphasizes the communication aspects in web-based systems. It is based on user profiling and story boarding. User profiles can be used to classify user needs as well as the various kinds of system support for them. The story board describes stories, i.e. navigation paths of users through the system, which can be used to model the behaviour of users.To discover user profiles and stories, two interleaved activities are suggested: communication analysis and linguistic analysis. Communication analysis addresses typical human-to-human interaction in the application domain and classifies typical communication barriers. We argue that using localisation abstraction and metaphors can help to overcome communication barriers, implying that their use may enhance the users’ understanding and successful navigation through a web site. Linguistic analysis addresses how the activities of the users would be described in natural language. Analysing the used word fields and metaphorical structures may provide guidance for centering the story board around the central activities. We use a typical banking application, on-line loan systems, as an example to illustrate our method.

Communication: Key to success on the Web

Much has been written about what constitutes good principles of web design. Significantly less attention has been paid to the related communication issues. Critical success factors taken from a pilot study of nine organisations are listed in this paper. We show that they imply that communication aspects of design and implementation of web presence of organisations are key. We point out and classify typical communication barriers. We argue that using localisation abstraction and metaphors can help to overcome communication barriers, implying that their use may enhance the user’s understanding and successful navigation through a web site. Our overall implication is that methods for the development of web applications need to shift their focus from technical aspects of applications to communication aspects in particular and on human factors in general.

Information systems design: through adaptivity to ubiquity

In a globalised economy the accessibility of services becomes increasingly important for businesses. This has led to a demand that information systems should be ubiquitous in the sense that they are available to all users under all circumstances, everywhere and at all times, and independent of the access devices and channels used. The authors believe the key to meeting that demand is existence of an omnipresent media of interaction and existence of information systems that within that media adapt themselves to context parameters at run-time. The World Wide Web is considered as that omnipresent media. Thus, the task is left to design adaptive information systems in a way that avoids unnecessary replication. In this article it will be shown how context parameters can be utilised to enable system adaptivity. The latter is supposed to increase usability and targets the quality of use, the content, and the functionality. We propose using an algebraic approach that aids in providing the leanest appropriate interface via user typing and story boarding. Our approach furthermore limits the content delivered to a user to the amount that can be dealt with in a usage scenario. The latter is based on defining hyphenation points within the content.

Tyranny of Distance: Is This the Case?

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Crafting a Cyber Assignment: The First Cut

Task Description Pairs of students were asked to collaborate on a two-part assignment. The first part was an analysis of four Websites. The second part was an assessment of how the technology mediated their assignment communication. To complete the first part, students selected four Websites from one of three categories: business, sports, or education. They applied the following criteria: layout and design elements, con-

Information Solutions: Working with "Strangers" Within.

0; H ~T ’ S IT ! &dquo; the analyst at Information Solutions said as she stood HAT’S !&dquo;the up from the table where she’d been reviewing details that needed to be handled to finalise a deal. &dquo;We’ve pulled out all the stops on this one, and once again it’s the so-called support staff who don’t deliver. Do you people realise how long we’ve spent on developing the Web prototype for Eastern Pacific Industries? We can’t afford to let down high-profile clients like this, particularly as we’ve only just established this Indonesian joint venture. Sure, the project took a bit longer than