Georgios Fiotakis

Considering Cost in Usability Evaluation of Mobile Applications: Who, Where and When

As computing moves from desktop to outdoor everyday life activities, usability evaluation must take into account new aspects, related with mobility and space. In this paper the effectiveness of established usability evaluation methods is examined through an extensive case study. The usability of an educational mobile museum application was tested using three different methods: inspection by experts, use in lab setting and use in the field. Results indicate that each method uncovers different types of problems at different cost. We believe that a combination of these methods may be worthwhile since their produced results seem to be complementary.

On tools for analysis of collaborative problem solving

Analysis of collaborative problem solving involves analysis of dialogue and interaction, analysis of tasks and social roles through ethnographic and other field studies. Use of tools to facilitate this process can be very useful. We discuss first the key requirements of a new generation of interaction and collaboration analysis tools. We then present how these requirements have lead to the design of prototype tools, recently developed. These tools can relate and synchronize various streams of field data. An important characteristic of the tools is their support for a multilayer structure of annotations of various levels of abstraction, through which the activity can be interpreted and presented.

Bridging the Gap between Physical and Abstract Worlds: Capturing Observed Phenomena in Abstract Models through MODELLINGSPACE

Observation and understanding of real world activities and phenomena is a basis of inquiry and reasoning and subsequently building of scientific knowledge. This involves moving from the perception of real world phenomena to constructing and exploring qualitative and quantitative relations that hold among the main elements. The transition between the two phases is not always smooth for the learners involved. In this paper, we present tools and activities that attempt to bridge the gap between the physical world experience and the abstract modeling and reasoning phase. Firstly, we discuss a modeling approach and the various representations involved. Then, we present the Video2Frames tool of ModellingSpace which is proposed to be used in order to create educational material by allowing the creation of abstract entities from video recordings of phenomena. Next an example of creation of educational material, using this approach is presented and discussed.