Emma Nicol

Designed with Older Adults to SupportBetter Error Correction in SmartPhone Text Entry: The MaxieKeyboard

Through our participatory design with older adults a need for improved error support for texting on smartphones emerged. Here we present the MaxieKeyboard based on the outcomes from this process. The keyboard highlights errors, auto-corrections and suggestion bar usage in the composition area and gives feedback on the keyboard on typing correctness. Our older adult groups have shown strong support for the keyboard.

Using children's drawings to elicit feedback on interactive museum prototypes

In this paper we describe our experience of designing and running a user evaluation of early prototypes of digital installations prior to their deployment in a new national heritage museum. Children, their parents, siblings and friends were invited to participate in the study, We focus on the effectiveness of using childrens drawings to elicit responses from the child participants. Drawings provided us with insight into childrens experience of the installations. Moreover, they proved a useful entry point for interviewing young children, avoiding some of the known challenges in this.

Contextual factors affecting the utility of surrogates within exploratory search

In this paper we investigate how information surrogates might be useful in exploratory search and what information it is useful for a surrogate to contain. By comparing assessments based on artificially created information surrogates, we investigate the effect of the source of information, the quality of an information source and the date of information upon the assessment process. We also investigate how varying levels of topical knowledge, assessor confidence and prior expectation affect the assessment of information surrogates. We show that both types of contextual information affect how the information surrogates are judged and what actions are performed as a result of the surrogates.

Vademecum for Innovation through Knowledge Transfer: Continuous Training in Universities, Enterprises and Industries

In the current work we present a first state of the art in technology transfer from the university –public-private environment to the enterprises and industries in Spain and Italy and vice versa. In it are described the main causes that boost and damage that two-way relationship. Additionally, a first vademecum is established to avoid those environments where technology transfer is either nonexistent or difficult to carry out because of the human factors this process entails. This short guide allows one to detect easily through the Internet whether we are in a real or false technology transfer process.

Research and development: business into transfer information and communication technology

A set of techniques of industrial qualitative evaluation is presented to verify the distance existing between the real internal functional reality and the false corporative image towards the outside of the great textile firms. The current work is focused on three main aspects related to the software such as are management applications, the textile CAD and the human factors. It is also demonstrated how the theories, models and paradigms of software engineering and systems engineering generated in the American continent may serve to detect the antimodels inside the Southern Europe over-centennial textile industrial sector. Finally, it will be seen how the ISO quality rules in the services are used simply with commercial or publicity purposes.

2nd Workshop on Designing with Older Adults: Towards a Complete Methodology

The ageing process can interfere considerably with the use of mobile devices, e.g. due to changes in vision, attention, and motor control. Designing mobile technology with older adults poses its own challenges. In the absence of a complete methodology for working with older users, researchers and designers are often left to improvise their own methods. This can result in co-design relationships being compromised and weak design insights emerging. How can we best adapt or modify existing methods for working with this group?

How Many Roles Can Children Play

This workshop explores the many roles children can play in the design of technology for their own use. Much literature has reported on how children have been mainly playing co-designer roles. By looking closer it emerges that children have mostly been involved in the ideation phase of design. More rarely were they actively engaged in other design phases e.g. conducting Contextual Inquiry, elaborating User Data Analysis, producing Personas, preparing Sketches and Story Boards and crafting Low and High resolution Prototypes. When it comes to evaluation, children are still mostly considered as final users while only rarely are they invited to run heuristic evaluations or even to have a more active role during the process. We would like to invite all relevant stakeholders: researchers, teachers, parents, and of course children, to share their experiences. The purpose of the workshop is also to bring their open questions and requests for guidelines and suggestions as to when and how to involve children in the various process stages. We hope to produce good definitions of the many roles children can play as co-researchers as well as to explore the benefits each participant will get from engaging with the overall design experience.

Advances in human-computer interaction: graphics and animation components for interface design

We present an analysis of communicability methodology in graphics and animation components for interface design, called CAN (Communicability, Acceptability and Novelty). This methodology has been under development between 2005 and 2010, obtaining excellent results in cultural heritage, education and microcomputing contexts. In studies where there is a bi-directional interrelation between ergonomics, usability, user-centered design, software quality and the human-computer interaction. We also present the heuristic results about iconography and layout design in blogs and websites of the following countries: Spain, Italy, Portugal and France.

Re-imagining commonly used mobile interfaces for older adults

Many countries have an increasingly aging population. In recent years, mobile technologies have had a massive impact on social and working lives. As the size of the older user population rises, many people will want to continue professional, social and lifestyle usage of mobiles into 70s and beyond. Mobile technologies can lead to increased community involvement and personal independence. While mobile technologies can provide many opportunities, the aging process can interfere with their use. This workshop brings together researchers who are re-imagining common mobile interfaces so that they are more suited to use by older adults.

Intra-assessor consistency in question answering

In this paper we investigate the consistency of answer assessment in a complex question answering task examining features of assessor consistency, types of answers and question type.