Noboru Nakamichi

Detecting low usability web pages using quantitative data of users' behavior

The purpose of this research is to detect low usability web pages from the behavior of users, such as browsing time, mouse movement and eye movement. We experimented to investigate the relation between the quantitative data viewing behavior of users and web usability evaluation by subjects. We analyzed the data to detect low usability web pages using discriminant analysis. Low usability web pages, 94.4% (17pages / 18pages = detectable pages / low usability pages) were detectable from the moving speed of gazing points and the amount of wheel rolling of a mouse. Moreover, this detection reduced the number of web pages which should be evaluated by half (46% = 89 pages / 192 pages = detected pages / all pages).

WebTracer: A new web usability evaluation environment using gazing point information

WebTracer is a new usability evaluation environment that supports recording, replaying, and analysis of a gazing point and operation while a user is browsing a website. WebTracer can record a users gazing point and operation compactly. Results of an experimental evaluation showed that the size of the operation history recorded by WebTracer was from 1/10 to 1/20 of the size of data recorded by an MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 format. With its compact form, the results of usability testing with the gazing point can be efficiently shared. It is expected to easily share empirical data between researchers. Also, evaluators can easily send the testing results as a feedback to the developers over the Internet. Moreover, the results show a possibility that gazing points related to usability. For example, when the menu of a Web page is divided into two panes, gazing points move more quickly. It seems that WebTracer efficiently improves usability evaluation, with gazing point data helping to identify problems on Web pages.

Remote Touch Pointing for Smart TV Interaction

Increasing in the size of TV, Smart TV in connected to internet is spreading. Remote-control of TV is complicate by increase of contents. In this research, we propose a Remote Touch TV that is able to operate at a large screen intuitively. Remote Touch TV is a new remote-control method for smart TV using Remote Touch Pointing. Remote Touch Pointing set on the base point and the operating point as part of the body. It points out objective area using the extended line of them. It is start up by a user stands in front of TV. And it power down by moving away from the TV. Menu for selecting the contents is displayed by raising users hand. The user is able to select an objective content by Pointing and Tap. The operation procedures in remote control and in the Remote Touch TV were compared using the sequence diagrams. As a result, we clarified that the actor element and recognition target are less than the remote-control in the proposal method. Also we clarified to reduce the operational procedure by proposal method.

Attribute-Based Architecture Patterns for Lightweight Service-Oriented Architectures

Extending the applications of SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) to embedded/mobile service systems requires the asynchronous and lightweight messaging. However, conventional SOA focuses on the synchronous and heavyweight messaging such as SOAP. Furthermore, the lightweight messaging is diverse. Designing lightweight SOA, a class of SOA based on the lightweight messaging, is complicated. To accommodate the complexity of designing lightweight SOA, we propose ABAP (Attribute-Based Architecture Pattern), a set of architecture patterns of lightweight SOA and mode-based development method of ABAP by focusing on the attributes of the structure and behavior of lightweight SOA. ABAP enables to systematically design lightweight SOA with model and patterns. We demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method with an example.

Extraction of user interaction patterns for low-usability web pages

Our goal is to point out usability problems in web pages in order to improve the web usability. We investigate the relation between user interaction behaviors in web-viewing and evaluation results of web usability by subjects. And we extract discriminative patterns for user interaction behaviors in visited web pages with low usability by using the PrefixSpan based subsequence boosting (Pboost).