Kirsten Thomson

Usability and open-source software development

Open-source is becoming an increasingly popular software development method. This paper reports a usability study of the open-source Greenstone Digital Library collection-building software. The problems highlighted by the study are analysed to identify their likely source within the social context of Greenstones development environment. We discuss how characteristics of open-source software development influence the usability of resulting software products.

On the use of mobile tools in everyday life

This paper explores how mobile tools are used in everyday life and investigates the issues surrounding their usage, or indeed, their lack of usage. Personal computers support us in a wide range of our desk-bound activities, but there is still relatively little use of computer-based tools in other parts of our day-to-day lives. We hypothesise that this is because certain barriers-to-use exist that discourage their use in everyday environments, namely that the tools are not readily to hand at the time of need and/or that they distract the users attention too much from the surrounding environment or main task at hand. We briefly present our concept of a Smartwatch -- a wrist-worn form of a general-purpose wearable computer -- that aims to overcome these barriers. However, we strongly believe that a prerequisite to the successful development of this, and other types of mobile devices, is a better understanding of the use, or disuse, of mobile tools in everyday life (including traditional and paper-based solutions). To gain this understanding we conducted a diary study in which a group of twelve volunteers recorded their usage of mobile tools over a period of 2 days. With the large volume of data that was collected we performed a qualitative analysis based on grounded theory techniques, resulting in a comprehensive and detailed picture of the use of mobile tools in everyday life. From this understanding we have drawn out nine key themes which we present in some detail in this paper, including: situational versus portability strategies, the mobility of information, new behaviours derived from mobile phone usage, the importance of creative expression, concern over privacy and security issues, and the demonstrated existence of the barriers-to-use.

Context-awareness in the wild: an investigation into the existing uses of context in everyday life

It is common for literature on context-awareness to focus on specific application domains or on the development of models and frameworks to facilitate context-awareness. In this study, however, we take a step back from such work in order to investigate how regular people may already be employing, or trying to employ, context-awareness in their everyday lives using existing mobile tools (such as mobile phones, paper notepads, etc.). We believe that an understanding of these existing real-world uses and needs of context-awareness will help to better inform and direct research efforts in this domain. Towards this aim we present the findings of a user study in which twelve randomly selected individuals recorded a diary on their use of mobile tools over the period of two days. The findings clearly demonstrate that people do indeed currently employ a wide variety of contexts and context-aware behaviours, albeit in a manner that is often imperfect and at a sub-conscious level.

A User Evaluation of Hierarchical Phrase Browsing

Phrase browsing interfaces based on hierarchies of phrases extracted automatically from document collections offer a useful compromise between automatic full-text searching and manually-created subject indexes. The literature contains descriptions of such systems that many find compelling and persuasive. However, evaluation studies have either been anecdotal, or focused on objective measures of the quality of automatically-extracted index terms, or restricted to questions of computational efficiency and feasibility. This paper reports on an empirical, controlled user study that compares hierarchical phrase browsing with full-text searching over a range of information seeking tasks. Users found the results located via phrase browsing to be relevant and useful but preferred keyword searching for certain types of queries. Users’ experiences were marred by interface details, including inconsistencies between the phrase browser and the surrounding digital library interface.

Exploring the user experience through collage

We explore the use of collage in requirements elicitation, as a tool to support potential end-users in expressing their impressions, understanding, and emotions regarding a system.

The University of Waikato usability laboratory

The University of Waikato Usability Laboratory is an environment where researchers are able to study and assess the usability of products while being used by their intended users. It allows for flexible configuration, and in particular can accommodate studies involving groups of collaborating users. This paper describes the Usability Laboratory with a particular emphasis on its background---why the Laboratory was established---and the facilities and services that it provides.