Kay Connelly

Fat finger worries: how older and younger users physically interact with PDAs

There has been a steady growth in the global population of elderly people, challenging researchers in the HCI community to design technologies to help them remain independent and preserve their quality of life. One approach has been to create assistive technology solutions using Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs). However, some have questioned whether older people can use PDAs because of age related problems with dexterity, coordination, and vision. This paper presents an initial usability study that shows there are no major differences in performance between older and younger users when physically interacting with PDAs and completing conventional (e.g. pressing buttons, viewing icons, recording messages) and non-conventional tasks (e.g. scanning bar codes).

Toward total quality of experience: A QoE model in a communication ecosystem

In recent years, the quality of experience notion has become a major research theme within the telecommunications community. QoE is an assessment of the human experience when interacting with technology and business entities in a particular context. A communication ecosystem encompasses various domains such as technical aspects, business models, human behavior, and context. For each aspect of a communication ecosystem, various models have been developed. However, few models have been designed to integrate all aspects of a communication ecosystem to understand human behavioral needs in a detailed and structured way. While existing models have produced the basic sketch of QoE modeling, more concepts and interdomain mapping are to be incorporated in order to have a clear picture of QoE in communication ecosystems. The aim of the current work is to build on the existing research being conducted in disparate disciplines about human behavior in order to provide a high-level model that can be adapted to many specific contexts and to encourage future research which examines these crossdomain relationships.

Why it's worth the hassle: the value of in-situ studies when designing Ubicomp

How should Ubicomp technologies be evaluated? While lab studies are good at sensing aspects of human behavior and revealing usability problems, they are poor at capturing context of use. In-situ studies are good at demonstrating how people appropriate technologies in their intended setting, but are expensive and difficult to conduct. Here, we show how they can be used more productively in the design process. A mobile learning device was developed to support teams of students carrying out scientific inquiry in the field. An initial in-situ study showed it was not used in the way envisioned. A contextualized analysis led to a comprehensive understanding of the user experience, usability and context of use, leading to a substantial redesign. A second in-situ study showed a big improvement in device usability and collaborative learning. We discuss the findings and conclude how in-situ studies can play an important role in the design and evaluation of Ubicomp applications and user experiences.

Context-aware telephony: privacy preferences and sharing patterns

The proliferation of cell phones has led to an ever increasing number of inappropriate interruptions. Context-aware telephony applications, in which callers are provided with context information about the receivers, has been proposed as a solution for this problem. This approach, however, raises many privacy issues that may render it infeasible. In this paper, we report on an in-situ study of user privacy preferences and patterns of sharing different types of context information with different social relations. We found that participants disclosed their context information generously, suggesting that context-aware telephony is not only feasible, but also desirable. Our data shows a distinct sharing pattern across social relations and different types of context information. We discuss the implications of the results for designers of context-aware telephony in particular and context-aware applications in general.

Enhancing learning: a study of how mobile devices can facilitate sensemaking

Mobile technologies are increasingly being promoted as tools to enhance learning. They can be used to augment ongoing activities, such as exploring outdoors, by enabling users to move back and forth between the physical environment and a variety of digital resources and representations. In so doing, they have the potential to facilitate sensemaking activities, where people seek to find structure in an uncertain situation through using a combination of information, communication and computation. However, continuous switching of attention between different representations and activities can be distracting. Our research is concerned with how mobile devices can be used to engender collaborative sensemaking activities during scientific tasks. We present two studies showing how different versions of a mobile learning application, LillyPad, were used by teams to make sense of their ongoing observations, when measuring the effects of different planting methods for an environmental restoration site. The findings show marked differences in the amount and type of sensemaking. We discuss reasons for this in terms of task demands and workload, information type and distribution of devices.

Encouraging physical activity in teens Can technology help reduce barriers to physical activity in adolescent girls

Physical activity levels of girls decline dramatically during adolescence and may be a contributor to the increasing number of obese teens in the United States. Research has shown that social support is positively correlated with physical activity levels in adolescents, particularly girls. We present the findings from a three week field study of a mobile phone application designed to create a support group for physical activity within an existing social network of adolescent girls. Our findings suggest design considerations for technologies that encourage physical activity for this user group.

When Do We Eat? An Evaluation of Food Items Input into an Electronic Food Monitoring Application

We present a formative study that examines what, when, and how participants in a chronic kidney disease (stage 5) population input food items into an electronic intake monitoring application. Participants scanned food item barcodes or voice recorded food items they consumed during a three week period. The results indicated that a learning curve was associated with barcode scanning; participants with low literacy skills had difficulty describing food items in voice recordings; and participants input food items depending on when they had dialysis treatment. Participants thought this electronic self monitoring application would be helpful for chronically ill populations in their first year of treatment

Improving cell phone awareness by using calendar information

The many benefits that cell phones provide are at times overshadowed by the problems they create, as when one person’s cell phone disrupts a group activity, such as a class, meeting or movie. Cell phone interruption is only highlighted by the ever increasing number of mobile devices we carry. Many tools and techniques have been proposed in order to minimize interruption caused by mobile devices. In the current study, we use calendar information to infer users’ activity and to automatically configure cell phones accordingly. Our in-situ experiment uses PDAs that run a cell phone simulator to examine the feasibility and design factors of such a solution. Our results show that both structured activities and appropriate cell phone configuration can be predicted with high accuracy using the calendar information. The results also show consistent mapping of activities to configuration for each individual. However there was a poor consistency of mapping activity to configuration across different participants. We discuss the results in relation to inaccuracy, spontaneous activities, and user reactions.

Issues in evaluating ambient displays in the wild: two case studies

In this paper we discus the complex task of evaluating ambient displays, concentrating on issues within in-situ deployments. We start by describing how these technologies have been evaluated in lab settings, where the focus has been primarily on issues of usability, and argue strongly for the necessity of in-situ evaluation. We then present two case studies involving in-situ evaluations, and from these derive issues that hindered the researchers from being able to delve more deeply into the overall impact of their implementations. We conclude with our own suggestions on possible alternatives to explore for evaluating ambient displays, which are based on the issues derived from our case studies.

Mobile interface design for low-literacy populations

Despite the proliferation of mobile health applications, few target low literacy users. This is a matter of concern because 43% of the United States population is functionally illiterate. To empower everyone to be a full participant in the evolving health system and prevent further disparities, we must understand the design needs of low literacy populations. In this paper, we present two complementary studies of four graphical user interface (GUI) widgets and three different cross-page navigation styles in mobile applications with a varying literacy, chronically-ill population. Participants navigation and interaction styles were documented while they performed search tasks using high fidelity prototypes running on a mobile device. Results indicate that participants could use any non-text based GUI widgets. For navigation structures, users performed best when navigating a linear structure, but preferred the features of cross-linked navigation. Based on these findings, we provide some recommendations for designing accessible mobile applications for varying-literacy populations.