Nazlena Mohamad Ali

A study of smartphone usage and barriers among the elderly

A wide range of smartphone applications aimed at encouraging healthy diets and active lifestyles have been developed in recent years. However, the use of these smartphone applications among the elderly population that should benefit the most from them remains low. This paper reports on the barriers to smartphone usage among the elderly. In-depth interviews were conducted with the elderly to gather information about their demographics, experiences and the perceived barriers to using smartphones. Twenty-one participants were interviewed using a semi-structured interview method. Results show that the elderly have difficulties in using smartphones due to multiple reasons such as financial limitations, vision impairments, and lack of interest and knowledge in using technological devices and their advanced functionalities.

Measuring user engagement attributes in social networking application

This paper describes our work in performing an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to measure the engagement attributes in social network application (i.e. Facebook). We adapted the measuring user engagement scales from the previous work that have been done in an online shopping environment. By using factor analysis, we found that there are four attributes of engagement while interacting with social network application namely; Focus Attention, Novelty Endurabilty, Perceived Usability and Aesthetics. A number of 103 Facebook users responded to the administered questionnaires in two weeks duration. The findings show that respondents preferred using non-mobile devices as compared to both mobile and non-mobile devices in accessing and interacting with social network application.

Understanding Big Picture and Its Challenges: Experts and Decision Makers Perspectives

The big picture of an organization plays an important role in providing insight into the decision making process. Thus, the objectives of this paper are to investigate how experts and decision makers obtain the features of the big picture, and then identify related challenges (problems and issues). Data analysis and interpretation show that experts and decision makers gain the big picture through a process of collaboration. Basically there are four main sequences in the collaboration process of constructing the big picture. These are: (i) understanding the big picture requirements, (ii) extracting content from the tools, (iii) collaborating on pieces of information and (iv) using the collaborative information for decision making. In addition, the challenges of attaining the big picture were identified and then clustered into the 3 main components from the perspective of knowledge visualization (KV) on user perception, namely cognition, perception and communication. Data was collected using semi structured interviews following qualitative methods. The sketching technique was used in the one-to-one interviews to represent mental models which are important for later use in the design stage.

Factors Facilitating Cultural Learning in Virtual Architectural Heritage Environments: End User Perspective

Besides being a medium for exhibiting three-dimensional heritage objects, the design and development of virtual heritage environments could also facilitate cultural learning. The aim of this article is to present some consideration on factors that could facilitate cultural learning in virtual heritage environment. Cultural learning in the context of this study refers to the acquisition of knowledge that encourages cultural awareness and appreciation. In this study, we explore virtual heritage environment design features, and cultural information characteristics and presentation formats that are important to facilitate cultural learning, from the casual users perspective. We conducted experiments that required users to explore virtual heritage environments (focusing on architectural heritage) from selected heritage-related websites, followed by interview sessions. Four contributing factors were identified: information design, information presentation, navigation mechanism, and environment setting. The results suggest the need to reduce users’ cognitive load when exploring virtual heritage environments while simultaneously presenting information that adds value to their understanding. The results also suggest that the inclusion of cultural information in virtual heritage environments is essential for cultural learning to take place.

Design of an interactive digital nutritional education package for elderly people

Designing a system for the elderly is crucial, as aging is associated with physiological changes that may impair perception, cognition and other social aspects; therefore, many aspects need consideration, especially in interface design. This study was conducted to develop a digital nutritional education package (WE Sihat) by following appropriate guidelines for elderly people to achieve better design interface and interaction. Touch-screen technology was used as a platform for user interaction. The nutritional content was based on previous nutrition studies and a lifestyle education package on healthy aging, which contains four modules. The questionnaires were distributed to 31 Malay subjects aged 60–76 years old, containing an evaluation about the overall content, graphics, design layout, colour, font size, audio/video, user-perceived satisfaction and acceptance levels. The findings showed positive feedback and acceptance. Most subjects agreed that the digital nutritional education package can increase their nutritional knowledge for a healthy lifestyle and is easy to use. The touch-screen technology was also well accepted by elderly people and can be used as a kiosk for disseminating nutrition education for healthy aging.

Using Socio-ecological Model to Inform the Design of Persuasive Applications

Diverse persuasive applications that aim for behavioural changes have been developed. However, the method in which particular persuasive design principles are chosen over others remains unclear. Meanwhile, the use of socio-ecological model has been widely utilized in clinical research, as a basis to understand the factors in the entire ecological system that influences behavioural patterns. Because persuasive technology aims to change the behaviour and attitudes of users, we believe that the use of socio-ecological model would be beneficial to inform the design of persuasive applications. Accordingly, in this paper, we attempt to demonstrate the mapping of the socio-ecological factors and persuasive design principles by conducting interviews and expert reviews. Based on our approach, 12 socio-ecological factors that influence physical activity behaviour, and corresponding relevant persuasive design principles to deal with these factors, are identified.

A Study on the Naturalness of Gesture-Based Interaction for Children

The emergence of new gesture-technologies that use bare-hands without any remote control or tools to hold is a good indicator that the technology is implementing naturalness in an input control system. However, the concept of naturalness that is commonly applied is interpreted from the adult users perspective without realizing that the equally importance users of gesture-based technology are children. For this reason, this study was undertaken to describe the natural elements of gesture-based interaction in terms of how they influence the behavior of children using gesture-based technology devices, and to what extent the children benefit from their use. This includes the identification of issues and opportunities related to naturalness in using the latest gesture-based technologies, Kinect and iPad. Our observations show that the naturalness in gesture-control devices enabled children to reflect real world situations into the interaction, thus, aiding them to call back (recall and demonstrate) the gesture command easily and sparking positive feelings during the interaction. We conclude that understanding naturalness from a childrens perspective can offer potential benefits to children in the utilization of gesture-based technologies.

i-JEN: visual interactive Malaysia crime news retrieval system

Supporting crime news investigation involves a mechanism to help monitor the current and past status of criminal events. We believe this could be well facilitated by focusing on the user interfaces and the event crime model aspects. In this paper we discuss on a development of Visual Interactive Malaysia Crime News Retrieval System (i-JEN) and describe the approach, user studies and planned, the system architecture and future plan. Our main objectives are to construct crime-based event; investigate the use of crimebased event in improving the classification and clustering; develop an interactive crime news retrieval system; visualize crime news in an effective and interactive way; integrate them into a usable and robust system and evaluate the usability and system performance. The system will serve as a news monitoring system which aims to automatically organize, retrieve and present the crime news in such a way as to support an effective monitoring, searching, and browsing for the target users groups of general public, news analysts and policemen or crime investigators. The study will contribute to the better understanding of the crime data consumption in the Malaysian context as well as the developed system with the visualisation features to address crime data and the eventual goal of combating the crimes.

Cultural learning in virtual heritage: an overview

The aim of this paper is to present the overview of cultural learning in virtual heritage. In the past, works done on virtual heritage were mostly focused on replicating and visualizing heritage objects for presentation using virtual reality. However, accurate and realistic representation of heritage objects is not enough when it comes to cultural learning in virtual environment. This paper attempts to identify issues that impede cultural learning in virtual environment. In order to develop a virtual environment that is able to facilitate cultural learning, we argue that there is a need to understand what the end users really want to know when it comes to learning culture. We propose a thorough user study to be carried out at the beginning of virtual heritage project development and discuss the outline of our intended approach.

Personal information management systems and interfaces: An overview

In this paper we present an overview of a Personal Information Management (PIM) System and some examples of the interface applications. PIM involves methods and procedures to store, manage, retrieve and show information. PIM systems are becoming more ubiquitous and present a need for their functions toward improving and enhancing information search results. Therefore, studying the current PIM systems becomes unavoidable in order to develop newer systems. The purpose of this review is to discover and describe the criteria of user interfaces in PIM systems. We first describe the state of the art in PIM systems and present reviews on the elements of PIM user interfaces. Then we discuss the interface components between applications and illustrate the features provided in each.