Jacquelyn A. Martino

Biometric authentication on a mobile device: a study of user effort, error and task disruption

We examine three biometric authentication modalities -- voice, face and gesture -- as well as password entry, on a mobile device, to explore the relative demands on user time, effort, error and task disruption. Our laboratory study provided observations of user actions, strategies, and reactions to the authentication methods. Face and voice biometrics conditions were faster than password entry. Speaking a PIN was the fastest for biometric sample entry, but short-term memory recall was better in the face verification condition. None of the authentication conditions were considered very usable. In conditions that combined two biometric entry methods, the time to acquire the biometric samples was shorter than if acquired separately but they were very unpopular and had high memory task error rates. These quantitative results demonstrate cognitive and motor differences between biometric authentication modalities, and inform policy decisions in selecting authentication methods.

Supporting enterprise stakeholders in software projects

Today, large enterprises create a significant body of commercially available software. As a result, the key stakeholders include not only those typically responsible for software development, but also stakeholders not typically involved in software engineering discussions. Current software development approaches ignore or poorly manage these enterprise level concerns. This hampers the ability to create connections among the stakeholders responsible for enterprise wide issues, the development team, and the artifacts with which they are concerned. In this paper we identify a set of propositions for coordination in enterprise software engineering environments and describe a preliminary framework to support such interactions.

Using the “Physics” of notations to analyze a visual representation of business decision modeling

Visual representations are common in communicating about artifacts such as computer programs, software architectures, and business rules. Yet, generally speaking, these representations seem much harder to learn and to use than many of the representations in other domains. Moody [1] has pointed this out and proposed a set of principles for visual representations based on a wide review of relevant literature in cognitive psychology and software engineering. The real test of this framework is to use it. In this paper, we apply the principles set forth in Moody to examine and improve a proposed representation for business rules and business decisions.

Sketching tools for ideation (NIER track)

Sketching facilitates design in the exploration of ideas about concrete objects and abstractions. In fact, throughout the software engineering process when grappling with new ideas, people reach for a pen and start sketching. While pen and paper work well, digital media can provide additional features to benefit the sketcher. Digital support will only be successful, however, if it does not detract from the core sketching experience. Based on research that defines characteristics of sketches and sketching, this paper offers three preliminary tool examples. Each example is intended to enable sketching while maintaining its characteristic experience.

SketchGraph: gestural data input for mobile tablet devices

As tablets become ever more powerful and popular, people want to use them broadly, including for business applications like spreadsheet data graphing. Tablets are better suited to informal exploration through sketching, however, than to inputting data into a spreadsheet. It would be much more appealing, and suitable to the medium, to sketch a graph as if you were drawing on a napkin. We describe an early prototype to support a gestural, graphical interface for inputting and updating graph data that is as easy as drawing a few strokes. With it, users can focus on exploring their domain, rather than on the mechanics of data entry.

A dive into online community properties

As digital communities grow in size their feature sets also grow with them. Different users have different experiences with the same tools and communities. Enterprises and other organizations seeking to leverage these communities need a straightforward way to analyze and compare a variety of salient attributes of these communities. We describe a taxonomy and tool for crowd-sourcing user based evaluations of enterprise relevant attributes of digital communities and present the results of a small scale study on its usefulness and stability across multiple raters.

Sketching data: lessons learned from a formative user evaluation

Mobile devices require new interaction approaches for working with data, as inputting numbers into a spreadsheet on a tablet is especially tedious. Last year we presented SketchGraph [Martino et al. 2012] for sketching data in a fluid manner (Fig. 1). Here, we discuss observations of usability based on a user study.

Travel Stones

For the last decade, Jacquelyn Martino has focused her artistic practice on the design of a rule-based computational language to generate works in the visual design language of her evolving style. Travel Stones is an installation that applies this computational language to the creation of a collection of cultural artifacts from a fictitious ancient culture. Martino makes use of her rule system to generate a series of realistic cultural artifacts made plausible by the combination of their consistent design language and their grounding in a number of historical references. In the installation, the viewer reads a museum-style exhibition text detailing the origins of the artifacts. The imagined culture derives from an ancient people who carry their travel stones -- much as house keys -- as a way to access their home center, which is ultimately more spiritual than physical. The text leads the viewer to believe that the four accompanying paintings document a first-hand exposure to the stones by someone external to the culture. Passed from generation to generation, the stones further serve as resonant objects in the tracing of the peoples history. Prompted by the drawings on the stones, the ancients recount tales of their origins to the next generations as well as to those they meet in travel. Through their stories, they maintain their sense of identity and place while simultaneously transferring fragments of their culture to others. In this piece, the enabling algorithmic production system is integral to Martinos process, but not particularly apparent to the viewer. The visual separation of high-tech process from pseudo-historic product calls into question any easy distinction between technology and culture in our own place and time.

The immediacy of the artist's mark in shape computation

This paper contributes to the area of computation in the production of artistic form. The author-artist describes a computational system in the form of a curvilinear, parametric shape grammar. Based on an analysis of over 3,000 entries in her traditionally hand-drawn sketchbooks, she describes the grammar that synthesizes drawings in the design language of her evolving style and serves as a tool for self-understanding of her artistic process.