David Lamas

The evaluation of interface aesthetics

There are many factors that contribute towards good user experience (Roto, Law, Vermeeren and Hoonhout, 2011). These factors include the content and its organization, the functionality and features, the information and interaction design, as well as the visual design (Garett, 2002; Morvilles, 2004; and Hassenzahl, 2005). This paper builds on the contribution of visual design into user experience as grounds to tackle the assessment of visual aesthetics evaluation methods. The intention of the study is to test objective and subjective evaluation methods with the same objects for comparison. Finding out the correlations between the objective and subjective evaluation results enables the usage of computerized image analysis for the purposes of evaluating aesthetics. The work reported in this paper thus contributes towards identifying a suitable objective method for a mathematical description of beauty.

Learning flow management and semantic data exchange between blog-based personal learning environments

The use of blogs as Personal Learning Environment is an emerging trend in higher education. While many teaching and learning tasks are easy to implement in a blog-based PLE, this type of tools still lacks some of the important features that made traditional Learning Management Systems efficient for both teachers and learners. This paper addresses the challenges of enhancing blog-based learning environments with two new functionalities: learning workflow management and semantic data exchange.

(Un)structured sources of inspiration: comparing the effects of game-like cards and design cards on creativity in co-design process

The article investigates two different ways of stimulating idea generation in the co-design process. In a quasi-experimental manner we compared effectiveness of structured and unstructured sources of inspiration. Based on the obtained data, we report on two idea-generation techniques: structured and unstructured, for stimulating group creativity. The article ends with a discussion regarding applicability of design cards and game-like cards in the ideation process.

Theory, Practice and Policy: An Inquiry into the Uptake of HCI Practices in the Software Industry of a Developing Country

ABSTRACT With almost four decades of existence as a community, human–computer interaction (HCI) practice has yet to diffuse into a large range of software industries globally. A review of existing literature suggests that the diffusion of HCI practices in software organizations lacks theoretical guidance. Although many studies have tried to facilitate HCI uptake by the software industry, there are scarce studies that consider HCI practices as innovations that software organizations could or should adopt. Furthermore, there appears to be a lack of structure in the facilitation of HCI methodological development within the specialized emerging regions field such as Sub-Saharan Africa. In order to address this gap, an exploratory investigation regarding the state of uptake of HCI practices in Nigeria is conducted. The aim of this article is to improve our understanding regarding the state of HCI uptake in developing countries and the challenges prevailing. The findings show that HCI practice still remains within its infancy stage in most software companies. Universities are also lacking the required knowledge transfer of HCI to the students, and in effect themselves contributing to the lack of HCI skills in industry. Furthermore, government policies are in need of refinement and end-users’ involvement in software development is not prioritized.

Methods for Human-Computer Interaction Research

This course delivers an introduction to a range of methods used in the exploration of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) problems. Guided by leading HCI researchers and educators, attendees will be introduced to both qualitative and quantitative research methods that have been used to understand people and interactional contexts. We will also consider some of the major philosophical traditions in HCI research along with contemporary framings of HCI approaches, such as Interaction Science.

Enhancing Learning Analytics in Distributed Personal Learning Environments

This paper describes LePress, a WordPress plug-in that enhances blog-based personal learning environment (PLE) with features and semantics that facilitate planning, implementation, and analysis of learning flows. The paper introduces learning flows in LePress, and then explains learning semantics the LePress supports. In order to demonstrate the advantages of LePress for learning analytics, we describe how it can facilitate explicit data collection and analysis of learning activities in blog-based PLEs. In order to demonstrate the advantages of LePress for learning analytics, we describe how it can facilitate explicit data collection and analysis of learning activities in blog-based PLEs.

A Design Space for Trust-enabling Interaction Design

The purpose of this article is to introduce and assess the expressiveness of a design space for trust-enabling interaction design; or in other words aims to assess the extent to which the design space can explain/describe trust-enabling interactions. It starts by situating trust in the domains of Human-Computer Interaction and Computer-Mediated Interactions. Then, presents the proposed design space analytical tool. A tool, which serves for moving away from artifact-centered design to an intentional creation of value, i.e. support interaction designers on further reflecting on trust-enabling interactions design values. These design spaces dimensions are rationally derived from the model of Human-computer Trust, which builds on uses perceived trust. This model has been previously validated and was also used as a research lens for providing a greater understanding of how individuals interact with systems, in interaction processes like openness, knowledge sharing, users privacy awareness, and collaboration. The article concludes with two examples of application through a comparative inspection of 2 peer-production platforms: Wikipedia and Wordpress. And a reflection on how the proposed analytical tool can be used as a facilitator for supporting trust-enabling interaction design processes.

Towards a comprehensive call ontology for Research 2.0

A Call for Papers (CfP) is a small, but well-structured and information-rich message with a relatively short lifespan. CfP plays an important role in academic life, not just as an advertisement format, but also as a trigger of and advance organiser for collaborative academic writing. This paper explores the possibilities to create a comprehensive ontology for CfP so that is would be relevant and useful in Research 2.0 context for two main target groups: authors involved in collaborative writing of academic papers, and conference organisers or journal editors. Our study is conducted in three phases. First, we identify existing ontologies and other representation frameworks, which could provide concepts relevant for CfP. Next, a sample of conference CfPs is analysed and compared, to find out the common structures and peculiarities, which could be used for extending the existing ontologies. Finally, we propose Call ontology together with two usage scenarios.

The Interrelation between Communities, Trust and Their Online Social Patterns

This paper describes an attempt to explore possible interrelations between todays online communities, trust and their online social patterns. It reports on a study in progress to provide a deeper understanding of how and at what level such relations affect the development of learning social contexts, i.e contexts that represent individuals needs, group commitments, their responsibilities, goals and loyalties towards the need to progress, to bound and gain knowledge or become skilled. The paper starts by discussing this studys rational, and proceeds on discussing alternative ways of depicting and understanding how our attitudes regarding online relationships can be related with trust. It terminates with a briefly presentation and discussion of the early results the ongoing work.

Towards a Pattern Language for Distributed User Interfaces

Design patterns were initially proposed in architecture and later appropriated in software engineering and HCI. Over the years they have proved to be useful for modelling design experience in these domains. We introduce patterns for designing distributed user interfaces (DUIs) as an aid for HCI researchers and practitioners. The patterns are foreseen to work as building blocks meant for scaffolding the design process. We describe the procedure for collecting the patterns, as well as the effort undertaken towards development of a pattern language by identifying relationships between individual patterns and organising them into a hierarchy. Finally, an overview is given of the future steps for assessing the expressiveness of this pattern language for analysing existing and specifying new DUIs.