Ratvinder Singh Grewal

Neurophysiological correlates in interface design: An HCI perspective

Objective: The current study examines the changes in functional connectivity that occurs when expert users adapt to an alternate mapping. Background: Research has indicated that interfaces that are similar will result in more errors and may contribute to confusion. Methods: Six volunteers were recruited to determine the neurophysiological changes that occur when users are exposed to an alternate mapping once an internal mental model is formed. Results: The results indicated a change in synchronization after alterations to the button mappings occurred. By altering the layout or order of the task, a difference in the activation pattern was observed. New areas became synchronized while synchronized activity that was present in the developed internal model became desynchronized. Altering the complexity of the task resulted in different patterns of activation recorded on the quantitative electroencephalogram (QEEG). Conclusion: Users often form a schema when learning a device and subsequent interactions are compared to the mental model formed during the initial learning phase. If the newer interface differs significantly a new schema is formed, resulting in a different pattern of synchronization recorded on the QEEG. Application: The use of this knowledge can assist in the development of new interfaces. If the intent is to create a similar interface design, the activation pattern should remain the same indicating that the old schema can be applied. An interface that displays a different cognitive pattern will indicate that a new schema was developed.

A visual representation of search-engine queries and their results

The paper presents a visual technique for representing search engine results: the R-Wheel. The paper shows how the R-Wheel can be adapted to weight the relevance of individual terms of a multi-term query for input to a search engine. Five experiments are described requiring users to differentiate the importance of terms in a multi-term query; rank R-Wheels with the same and differing overall relevance; shade segments of an R-Wheel in proportion to the relevance of a query term; compare the R-Wheel with other representations and rank the representations in order of ease of interpretation. The paper concludes that the R-Wheel appears to be a valuable tool in visualising search engine results.

The relationship between scan path direction and cognitive processing

Researchers have tracked eye movement in order to determine focal attention for the last hundred years. As technology has advanced the tools and equipment utilized has led to greater insights into the psychology and physiology associated with scanning patterns which are not solely limited to attention processes. This research expands upon this by incorporating neurophysiological techniques to assess cognitive processing associated with directional scan paths and the potential associations of task dependent neural networks when interacting with the interface. It is hypothesized that the scan path direction reflects a users cognitive processing. The results of this study indicate that the cognitive processing involved with the direction of the scan path differ with increased activity in networks involved with encoding, spatial attention, short term memory and error processing when eye scanning is towards the right. These results may be utilized to understand perceptual limitations within an interface which may be utilized for design purposes.

Minimizing the Impact of Change on User Productivity

In order to stay abreast of technological advancements in the business world, companies must weigh the benefits of adopting new technology with the setbacks associated with new implementation and training. Understanding the interactions between the end users and new technology is crucial for a successful transition from the present day technology to future technology. Users are required to learn new technology quickly, retaining knowledge of old technology while transferring this knowledge base to the new technology. Understanding of good design and interpersonal user characteristics as well as use of mental models can have a significant impact on maintaining user expert level when the change is introduced. Ability to maintain high expertise among users and use knowledge transfer will ultimately result in diminishing the time it takes to reach an expert level and translate to minimizing costs related to learning.

Blackboard vs. Desire2Learn: A system administrator's perspective on usability

Ease of use and navigation are important features when selecting a Content Management System (CMS). In this paper we compare two Learning Management Systems (LMS): Blackboard and Desire2Learn. For select administrative tasks we track the number of mouse clicks necessary, number of pages traversed, and data fields inputted. This comparison highlights some of the benefits and limitations between the two systems.

Attacking the Web Cancer with the Automatic Understanding Approach

The new method, based on automatic understanding is proposed for fighting spam in web information exchange (especially email correspondence). The web cancer term is used to reflect the variety and sophistication of web contaminations. The notable oncology achievements in medicine could inspire more research towards finding solutions to what can easily turn into an analogous civilization crisis. Automatic understanding is appropriate for the semantic-level content analysis and is expected to substantially reduce the wasted user time for semi-automatic analysis needed for the massive processing as most filters are too tight or too loose.

Quantitative measurements of cognitive processing involved with gaze fixations

Studying eye movement has proven to be useful in the study of users and interfaces. Cognitive processing can be inferred by the length of time a user fixates on certain elements of the screen as well as the number of fixations on each element of the display. Our research looks to expand on this with the addition of neurophysiological measurements to quantify cognitive processing and ascertain whether increased fixations on differential element placements on a display alter cognitive processing. Results indicate that placements of the main and secondary menus do alter the number of fixations required for task completion. The number of fixations were also shown to be related to sustained attentional processes. Our preliminary results indicate that the addition of neurophysiological measurements corroborate and expand on theories of fixation counts.

Design Challenges and Solutions: Review of the 4th International Workshop on Ubiquitous Computing (iUBICOM 2009)

This paper provides an overview of several approaches, methods and techniques, of ubiquitous and collaborative computing, discussed in the papers submitted to the International Workshop on Ubiquitous Computing (iUBICOM-09). In this workshop, we aimed to balance discussion of technological factors with human aspects in order to explore implications for better design. The theme was information retrieval, decision making processes, and user needs in the context of ubiquitous computing. This paper includes work carried out on different dimensions focusing on technological as well as social aspects of ubiquitous and collaborative computing.