Corina Sas

Exploring the facebook experience: a new approach to usability

The focus of this paper is to explore social networking sites such as Facebook in order to understand their recent success and popularity. Recent developments within Web 2.0 have provided users with more freedom to create their own unique user experiences. The conflict between traditional usability methods and user experiences are addressed through carrying out a Heuristic Evaluation to assess how well Facebook complies with usability guidelines and by conducting a user study to unveil unique user experiences. The findings of this study calls for a more holistic method of evaluation that redefines usability to encompass the user experience in line with future technology.

Exploring bluetooth based mobile phone interaction with the hermes photo display

One of the most promising possibilities for supporting user interaction with public displays is the use of personal mobile phones. Furthermore, by utilising Bluetooth users should have the capability to interact with displays without incurring personal financial connectivity costs. However, despite the relative maturity of Bluetooth as a standard and its widespread adoption in todays mobile phones, little exploration seems to have taken place in this area - despite its apparent significant potential. This paper describe the findings of an exploratory study involving our Hermes Photo Display which has been extended to enable users with a suitable phone to both send and receive pictures over Bluetooth. We present both the technical challenges of working with Bluetooth and, through our user study, we present initial insights into general user acceptability issues and the potential for such a display to facilitate notions of community.

Presence equation: an investigation into cognitive factors underlying presence

The relationship between presence and cognitive factors such as absorption, creative imagination, empathy, and will ingness to experience presence was investigated. Presence was defined, operationalized, and measured using a ques tionnaire that we devised. Absorption and creative imagina tion were measured using questionnaires developed in the area of hypnosis, and empathy was assessed through an interpersonal reactivity index. Results indicated significant correlations between presence and each cognitive factor. They showed that persons who are highly fantasy prone, more empathic, more absorbed, more creative, or more willing to be transported to the virtual world experienced a greater sense of presence. Regression analysis led to a pres ence equation, which could be used to predict presence based on the investigated cognitive factors. Findings are congruent with user characteristics presented by the pres ence literature and support the position that individual dif ferences are important for the study of presence.

Exploring Issues of User Model Transparency and Proactive Behaviour in an Office Environment Control System

It is important that systems that exhibit proactive behaviour do so in a way that does not surprise or frustrate the user. Consequently, it is desirable for such systems to be both personalised and designed in such a way as to enable the user to scrutinise her user model (part of which should hold the rules describing the behaviour of the system). This article describes on-going work to investigate the design of a prototype system that can learn a given user’s behaviour in an office environment in order to use the inferred rules to populate a user model and support appropriate proactive behaviour (e.g. turning on the user’s fan under appropriate conditions). We explore the tension between user control and proactive services and consider issues related to the design of appropriate transparency with a view to supporting user comprehensibility of system behaviour. To this end, our system enables the user to scrutinise and possibly over-ride the ‘IF-THEN’ rules held in her user model. The system infers these rules from the context history (effectively a data set generated using a variety of sensors) associated with the user by using a fuzzy-decision-tree-based algorithm that can provide a confidence level for each rule in the user model. The evolution of the system has been guided by feedback from a number of real-life users in a university department. A questionnaire study has yielded supplementary results concerning the extent to which the approach taken meets users’ expectations and requirements.

Introduction to this special issue on designing for personal memories: past, present and future

This special issue focuses on new uses of digital media to help people remember in everyday situations. We begin this introduction by describing the field’s origins (personal memories past), using this to contextualise the papers presented here (personal memories present). We conclude by identifying a number of important research challenges that we feel must be addressed by future work in this area (personal memories future)

Designing for reflection on experience

This paper outlines the rationale for the workshop and offers an outline of its objectives.

Generating implications for design through design research

A central tenet of HCI is that technology should be user-centric, with designs being based around social science findings about users. Nevertheless a repeated but critical challenge in design is translating empirical findings into actionable ideas that inform design, or generating implications for design. Despite various design methods aiming to bridge this gap, knowledge informing design is still seen as problematic. However there has been little empirical exploration into what design researchers understand by such design knowledge, the functions and principles behind their creation. We report on interviews with twelve expert HCI design researchers probing the roles and types of design implications, and the process of generating and evaluating them. We synthesize different types of design implications into a framework to guide their generation. Our findings identify a broader range than previously described, additional sources and heuristics supporting their development as well some important evaluation criteria. We discuss the value of these findings for interaction design research.

AffectCam: arousal- augmented sensecam for richer recall of episodic memories

This paper describes the design and evaluation of AffectCam, a wearable system integrating SenseCam and BodyMedia SenseWear for capturing galvanic skin response as a measure of bodily arousal. AffectCams algorithms use arousal as a filtering mechanism for selecting the most personally relevant photos captured during peoples ordinary daily life, i.e. high arousal photos. We discuss initial findings showing that emotional arousal does improve the quality of memory recall associated with emotionally arousing events. In particular, the high arousal photos support richer recall of episodic memories than low arousal ones, i.e. over 50% improvement. We also consider how various phenomenological characteristics of autobiographical memories such as event, emotions, thoughts, place and time are differently cued by the AffectCam.

Individual differences in virtual environments

This paper summarises the results of several studies of individual differences among users navigating in virtual environments. These differences relate to performance of navigational tasks, and the degree of sense of presence experienced by the users. The individual differences addressed in this paper refer primarily to personality and demographic factors. The possibility of improving the design of virtual environments for a better accommodation of these differences is discussed.

MeditAid: a wearable adaptive neurofeedback-based system for training mindfulness state

Abstract A recent interest in interaction design is towards the development of novel technologies emphasizing the value of mindfulness, monitoring, awareness, and self-regulation for both health and well-being. Whereas existing systems have focused mostly on relaxation and awareness of feelings, there has been little exploration on tools supporting the self-regulation of attention during mindfulness sitting meditation. This paper describes the design and initial evaluation of MeditAid, a wearable system integrating electroencephalography technology with an adaptive aural entrainment for real-time training of mindfulness state. The system identifies different meditative states and provides feedback to support users in deepening their meditation. We report on a study with 16 meditators about the perceived strengths and limitations of the MeditAid system. We demonstrate the benefits of binaural feedback in deepening meditative states, particularly for novice meditators.