Muzafar Khan

Development of usability evaluation framework for haptic systems

This paper presents the development of conceptual usability evaluation framework that provides a structured approach for evaluating haptic systems. The proposed framework is based on “top-down” approach and ISO standard for guidance on haptic and tactile interaction. Interview and card sorting methods are used for the development of this framework. The framework is expected to be equally applicable for user testing and expert evaluation but it still needs refinement and empirical evaluation to assess the expected benefits.

Classification of usability issues for haptic systems

Usability evaluation of any system helps to identify usability problems to improve system design as well as user interaction. Many usability studies for haptic systems have been conducted but no effort is done to collect usability problems reported in these studies. This paper is an attempt to collect these usability problems to provide better insight of these studies. It classifies these problems in terms of usability factors and tasks. This study may help researchers to propose usability measures for the effective evaluation of haptic systems.

Qualitative study to identify icons characteristics on mobile phones applications interfaces

Modern mobile phone applications offer much support to various age group users. Unfortunately, there are still issues with the interfaces in terms of its learnability. Many users find it hard to learn and use the modern mobile phone application interfaces. Despite a lot of ongoing research examining the mobile phone applications interfaces learnability issues, very little research has explored on the difficulty faced by the users when interacting with graphical icons, the most important element of an interface. This paper presents an exploratory study to identify which icons characteristics support the initial icon usability for various age group users. Twenty five (25) test participants from two different age groups took part in the study. The first group consists of 12 younger adults (age 20-40) and the second consists of 13 older adults (age 50+). From the study findings, both age group users stated that there are issues with the existing mobile phone applications interfaces. The study reveals that specific icon characteristics - complexity (i.e. how difficult is icon to identify and interpret), familiarity (how familiar are users with the icon) and semantic distance could improve icon learnability. This led to a discussion on how the findings could help mobile phone application interface developers to develop mobile phone icons that best suits to the requirements of various age group users.

Usability studies in haptic systems

Haptic systems that deal with force and tactile feedback are widely used in different domains. Usability evaluation plays an important role to assess these systems and users experience. Many usability evaluation studies for haptic systems have been reported but no effort is made to effectively summarize those works; thus, little is known on the extent in which the methods applied are useful for these systems. Literature survey is performed to find out the patterns related to different evaluation methods and haptic devices used in various domains. The survey findings indicate for a need of new usability methods that would be applicable to many haptic systems in different domains.

Mobile phone Icons recognition and cultural aspects

There is a rapid growth in the development of mobile phone applications which are widely used around the globe. Different cultures may affect the usage of such applications; there is a need to explore the cultural differences in this context. In order to study such differences, those icons which interpretability might be affected by culture differences are taken into consideration and hypothesized. Two groups of ten subjects (twenty in total) from two different countries i.e. Malaysia and Estonia participated in the study. The factors considered in the study were navigation time, working with menu icons, and recognition test. The results indicated that Malaysian subjects performed well while interpreting the third generation of icons which were operating system provided icons. On the other hand, Estonian subjects were not much familiar with modern icons. There was no difference found in the both groups to interpret the most familiar icons. The results reveal that there are possible cultural differences on icons interpretability based on their levels of abstraction.

Human finger input properties for precise target selection on multi-touch screen

In recent years, touch enabling technologies potentially have supported to design and develop small and large sizes of multi-touch screens. These sensitive devices assist users to select and manipulate the target objects using their bare fingers. However, it is reported that user fingertips cause the imprecise selection of small size targets and subsequently users get frustrated during interaction. Keeping in view this problem, it is attempted to provide an overview on human finger input properties and their possible use for the selection of targets on multi-touch screens. This survey paper helps in understanding the finger touch input and some inherited finger input properties. It also provides a rational to explore the finger input properties that may help in proposing new interaction techniques to avoid the imprecision problem.