Karin Kappel

show-me: water consumption at a glance to promote water conservation in the shower

Water is a scarce resource worldwide. Yet, we have many opportunities to conserve it. One particular opportunity for water conservation is the shower, because depending on the shower head and shower habits, an individual can save many liters of fresh water each day. Feedback proved to be an effective method to promote sustainable behavior. Therefore, in this paper we suggest to promote water conservation by providing feedback in form of an ambient display that can easily be integrated in current shower types. We built a prototype to study the potential of such a feedback device. These shower water meter (show-me) display the amount of water, that is used during one shower in form of LEDs assembled on a stick. Thus, an increasing water level is visualized. The user study revealed two groups. The subjects who considered themselves as ecologically conscious changed their behavior and turned the water down or off while soaping. Also, they are willing to pursue this behavior. Other subjects who did not have the goal to act more sustainable, were surprised about their water consumption and tried to reduce it. However, after the removal of the show-me device they did not maintain their behavior and fell back into their previous habit.

Gamification of online surveys: conceptual foundations and a design process based on the MDA framework

Gamification has been employed to make online surveys more engaging to fill. Related work has evaluated the psychological and behavioral outcome of gamified surveys, but has been unclear about design methods and best practices. This work discusses foundations, relevant design dimensions (game elements, survey areas and the design process), and critical issues concerning validity. It then proposes a structured process for survey gamification based on the MDA (mechanics, dynamics, aesthetics) framework. An evaluation of the proposed process within a case study is briefly presented along with preliminary, but promising results. The gamification process is put forth in the CHI community for further discussion, evaluation, and application.

Implications for designing the user experience of DVD menus

DVD menus often miss out on usability and are complex and difficult to navigate through. One of the main problems is the lack of design standards. By conducting an expert walkthrough we identified typical usability issues of DVD menus and verified them with usability testing and a user survey. Our research goal is to develop a set of specific solutions for designing usable DVD menus to improve the overall user experience. As a first step towards this goal we present an initial set of usability issues that are specifically relevant for DVD menu design.

Developing user interface guidelines for DVD menus

Watching DVDs can be a frustrating experience, because DVD menus often miss out on usability and are complex and difficult to navigate through. Similar to the early years of web development, there is a lack of design standards. In this paper, we show the development of user interface guidelines for DVD menus. These guidelines can be used to design and evaluate DVD menus. We built a prototype according to the guidelines, conducted usability tests with the prototype and evaluated other movie DVDs using the guidelines to show the applicability, utility and usability of the guidelines.

Gamification of Online Surveys: Design Process, Case Study, and Evaluation

Online surveys are an important means of data collection in marketing and research, but conventional survey designs are often perceived as dull and unengaging, resulting in negative respondent behavior. Gamification has been proposed to make online surveys more pleasant to fill and, consequently, to improve the quality of survey results. This work applied gamification to an existing survey targeted at teenagers and young adults. The gamified survey was evaluated in a study with 60 participants regarding the psychological and behavioral outcomes of gamification. Results indicate that gamification successfully increased the users’ perceived fun, the average time spent, as well as their willingness to use and recommend the survey, without introducing a strong bias in survey results, albeit with a lower overall response rate.

Pervasive Computing Approaches to Environmental Sustainability

This issues Works in Progress department lists eight projects with a focus on environmental sustainability. The first three projects explore sensing and pervasive computing techniques for monitoring environmental conditions in outdoor situations. The next four projects use pervasive computing in indoor environments to inform individuals about their energy and resource consumption with the goal of positively influencing their behaviors. The final project aims to develop an energy generation infrastructure that combines multiple types of renewable energy sources.

Navigation in Long Forms on Smartphones: Scrolling Worse than Tabs, Menus, and Collapsible Fieldsets

Mobile applications provide increasingly complex functionality through form-based user interfaces, which requires effective solutions for navigation on small-screen devices. This paper contributes a comparative usability evaluation of four navigation design patterns: Scrolling, Tabs, Menus, and Collapsible Fieldsets. These patterns were evaluated in a case study on social network profile pages. Results show that memorability, usability, overview, and subjective preference were worse in Scrolling than in the other patterns. This indicates that designers of form-based user interfaces on small-screen devices should not rely on Scrolling to support navigation, but use other design patterns instead.

Learning from a distributed denial of service attack against a legally binding electronic election: scenario, operational experience, legal consequences

E-voting is the stress point of e-government regarding security requirements. This paper discusses the first known distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) worldwide against a legally binding remote electronic voting channel. In particular, the security considerations, the topology of the attack, and the specific countermeasures are described. The focus of this paper is on analyzing the experience and providing lessons learned. The lessons based on the concrete experience of this case study have been classified by the legal, technical, and operational aspects for handling DDoS attacks against egovernment. Furthermore the relationships and interactions between these three aspects are illustrated.

Design space for focus+context navigation in web forms

Navigation in long forms commonly employs user interface design patterns such as scrolling, tabs, and wizard steps. Since these patterns hide contextual form fields outside the viewport or behind other tabs or pages, we propose to apply the focus+context principle from information visualization to form design. This work presents a design space analysis to support usability engineering of focus+context form navigation. We evaluated the design spaces usefulness and applicability in a case study and found the design space has fostered creativity and helped to clearly document design decisions, indicating it can be a valuable support for engineering intelligent, form-based user interfaces.

“Show-Me” — Ein ambientes Informationssystem zur Reduktion des Wasserverbrauchs

Zusammenfassung Der weltweite Wasserverbrauch steigt stetig, während die existierenden Süßwasserressourcen immer geringer werden. Aus diesem Grund ist es unerlässlich, sich auch über den täglichen Wasserverbrauch Gedanken zu machen und neuartige Lösungen in diesem Bereich anzuwenden, um insgesamt zu einer Verbrauchsreduktion beizutragen. Ein ausgezeichneter Ansatzpunkt ist dabei die tägliche Dusche, die für eine Vielzahl von Menschen ein wichtiges Ritual darstellt. Je nach Badarmatur oder Duschgewohnheit wird so jeden Tag eine große Menge an Wasser — meist sogar unbewusst — verbraucht. Die Dusche birgt daher ein dementsprechendes Einsparungspotential. Um nachhaltiges Verhalten zu fördern und eine permanente Verhaltensänderung herbeizuführen, hat sich Feedback laut diversen Studien aus unterschiedlichen Bereichen bewährt. Eine Erweiterung des Feedbacks in Form von subtilem Feedback mit Hilfe von Licht, ermöglicht es den Benutzer auf seinen persönlichen Wasserverbrauch aufmerksam zu machen und stimuliert bzw. fördert so ein nachhaltigeres Duschverhalten. Zu diesem Zweck haben wir einen Prototyp entwickelt, mit dem der Effekt von visuellem Feedback auf das Duschverhalten untersucht wurde. Der Wasserverbrauch wird durch das Aufleuchten von je einer LED pro 5 Liter Verbrauch angezeigt. Durch das Design des Prototyps wird ein steigender Wasserspiegel dargestellt und so dem Benutzer ein Gefühl für seinen Wasserverbrauch geben. Durch eine mit dem Prototyp durchgeführte Studie konnten zwei unterschiedliche Benutzergruppen identifiziert werden. Personen, die einen umweltbewussten Lebensstil pflegen und auch in anderen Bereichen auf die Umwelt achten, konnten durch das Feedback ihren Wasserverbrauch reduzieren und ihr Verhalten, z.B. Abdrehen des Wassers während des Einseifens, nachhaltig ändern. Die zweite Benutzergruppe hatte bereits zu Beginn der Studie nicht das vorrangige Ziel Wasser einzusparen und die Personen waren im Allgemeinen und auch in anderen Lebensbereichen nicht umweltbewusst eingestellt. Bei dieser Gruppe hat der Einsatz des Prototyps zwar kurzzeitig zu einer Reduktion des Wasserverbrauchs geführt, allerdings war dies nicht von Dauer und führte zu keiner permanenten Verhaltensänderung. Abstract Resource conservation has become a pressing issue around the world. Therefore it is necessary to create an increased awareness. Besides the prominent topic of energyconservation the conservation of water is still often neglected. Yet, there exist many opportunities to conserve it In order to address this issue the present research deals with the daily water consumption in the shower. Since feedback proved to be an effective method to promote sustainable behavior a prototype was built that delivers feedback on the water consumption during a shower. The feedback is provided by an ambient display. The shower water meter (show-me) displays the increasing amount of water that is used during one shower in form of LEDs assembled on a stick. In a user study it has shown that this approach is an effective way for initiating a change towards a more sustainable behavior. Furthermore, it turned out that this transition proceeds in three distinct phases until finally a permanent sustainable behavior is reached.