Sheue-Ling Hwang

Effects of anti-glare surface treatment, ambient illumination and bending curvature on legibility and visual fatigue of electronic papers

This study examined the effects of anti-glare surface treatment, ambient illumination and bending curvature on legibility and visual fatigue in reading electronic papers. Results showed that surface treatment significantly affected legibility and visual fatigue, and surface treatment can improve legibility and reduce visual fatigue under intense ambient illumination. However, there is no significant difference on bending curvature. In addition, due to no significant difference between anti-glare 43% haze and anti-glare 7.5% haze, it is suggested that electronic paper manufacturers may use cheaper options for cost consideration.

Knowledge architecture and framework design for preventing human error in maintenance tasks

Abstract Effective and efficient problem solving mechanism is one of the critical processes that ensure a good service quality in the maintenance environment. Maintenance errors can be easily induced by the time stress due to frequent task varieties and logistic decision uncertainties. In the sense, comprehensive maintenance support to the maintainers in critical events to reduce maintainer errors was strongly suggested. A practical framework is proposed for analyzing cognitive types and enhancing fault recovery ability through knowledge-based system. It has shown that a suggested hybrid cognitive model that was consistent with maintainers’ cognitive types was reciprocally affected by fault recovery. On the other hand, a vast amount of maintenance data, which included lots of implicit information, could indicate critical events for the policymaker by statistical analyses in the maintenance domain. These same data were used to reassess which kind of issue should be treated as the first priority. Through interviewing professional maintenance engineers and analyzing documents at maintenance tasks, the development process of a maintenance protocol is applied in the knowledge acquisition implementation. Based on human experts’ domain-specific knowledge sharing and well-preserved documents utilizing, a fault recovery management mechanism (FRMM) was developed. Such integration of reliability-centered maintenance method and expert system provided a systematic procedure for maintenance engineers and managers to retrieve fault cases quickly and accurately, and to effectively accumulate their expertise for logistic adaptation. The FRMM conceptual model could serve as a guide for other similar logistic systems to prevent maintainer errors.

A reappraisal on advanced planning and scheduling systems

Purpose – This paper sets out to present a reappraisal on advanced planning and scheduling (APS) systems in industrial settings and propose an effective approach for APS implementation.Design/methodology/approach – A case study approach is adopted, and a research framework comprising human‐, technological‐, and organizational‐dimensions is developed to analyze the evidence database which includes business flows, system design documents, archival records, post‐system assessment, participant‐observation and semi‐structured interviews.Findings – The findings indicate that real‐world production planning problems are ill‐defined, complex and dynamic. A post‐implementation evaluation reveals major pitfalls in the technology‐dominant approach, whose negative ramifications are usually overlooked. Besides, these APS implementation pitfalls are found to be attributable to the real‐world context, human factors and organizational aspects.Research limitations/implications – Despite advances in information technology (...

An integrated framework for continuous improvement on user satisfaction of information systems

Purpose – The primary purpose of this paper is to present an integrated framework for user interface prototyping and evaluation for the development of information systems and to present architecture for evaluating generic applications.Design/methodology/approach – The framework is constructed through combining two distinctive methods of prototyping and evaluation, statechart and goals, operators, methods, and selection rules. Relevant methods and architectures of the integrated framework are presented in unified modeling language when possible.Findings – The importance of the usability of information systems is highlighted in this research. However, it still lacks an integrated framework for information system development and usability evaluation. This paper provides a framework that evaluation method is intertwined with user interface prototyping to shorten the time of development lifecycle. The architecture for evaluating generic applications is also invaluable for motion and time study and the procurem...

Evaluation research of information and supporting interface in electronic commerce web sites

The purpose of this paper is to find a better B2C environment through collecting what information and supporting interfaces are provided on current B2C web sites. We build a checklist based on the framework of B2C consumer behavior model and used it to evaluate current B2C web sites among three categories: purchasing process, types of products, and the source of web sites. The results indicated that poor information or supporting interface design was provided on web sites during the “evaluating and comparing” process. More information or supporting interface design was provided on the internet bookstore, less information or supporting interface design was provided on web sites that sell tickets and flowers. The local web sites provided more information or supporting interface design than international web sites. The results also showed that the difference is highly significant.

EFFECTS ON DRIVING BEHAVIOR OF CONGESTION INFORMATION AND OF SCALE OF IN-VEHICLE NAVIGATION SYSTEMS

The purpose of this research was to compare the usage of a traditional paper map and electronic route maps during driving, and to consider the effects of congestion information and map scale sizes on driving performance, workload and subjective feelings. Experiments were conducted in desktop virtual driving environments with a 17-in. color monitor simulating driving environments and a 14-in. color monitor showing different kinds of navigation systems. A total of 20 undergraduate students of National Tsing Hua University were paid to participate in the Experiment I. The criteria for driving performance were trip duration, driving speed and number of navigation errors. Heart rate was measured as an index for workload. The 5-point Likert-type questionnaire was used to reflect the perceived nervousness, fatigue and task difficulty. Results indicated that the performance difference between a paper map and electronic route maps depended on the design characteristics of electronic route maps. Comparisons among four electronic maps revealed two significant main effects of congestion information and scale sizes on trip duration. Besides, it seemed that the availability of congestion information was useful for reducing navigation errors. Neither statistically significant main effects nor interaction was found on subjective feelings and driving speed. Another 18 subjects were used in the Experiment II to determine the optimum map scale size. Finally, the implications of the findings may provide suggestions on designing safer and more efficient in-vehicle navigation systems.

A framework of perceptual quality assessment on LCD-TV

Abstract This study constructed an evaluation framework to obtain the perceptual quality on liquid crystal display-television (LCD-TV) from the user’s point of view. Due to the difficulty for subjects to evaluate too many LCD-TVs simultaneously, the pairwise comparison of analytical hierarchy process (AHP) method was implemented in this study. After investigating the relationship between subjective assessments and physical measurements, some useful information can be provided for the industry to improve the quality of LCD-TVs. Results indicated that luminance, contrast and response time are the important factors in selecting an LCD-TV from a user’s point of view. However, after realizing the effect of sharpness, subjects considered that it is the most differentiable factor for selecting an LCD-TV. Therefore, LCD-TV manufactures should emphasize these important factors to improve the quality.

Analysis of keyword‐based tagging behaviors of experts and novices

Purpose – Expert and novice readers tag documents with different descriptions; this study is intended to discover which readers would generate the most reliable and most representative sets of tags.Design/methodology/approach – One group of experts and one group of novices were recruited. These two groups were asked to provide tags for document bookmarks in a Mozilla Firefox browser. In the experimental analysis we defined two measures – similarity and relevance – to describe the differences between the two groups.Findings – Tags chosen by experts yielded better similarity and relevance values in all analyses. Tags chosen by the expert group had higher commonality in pairwise similarity analysis; moreover, the relevance analysis showed that tags chosen by experts reflected better understanding of the content.Originality/value – Tagging behavior has become highly popular on the web, and its study has commercial merit. Tags from experts represent the structure behind the knowledge involved; expert represent...

Ergonomic evaluation of electronic paper: Influences of anti-reflection surface treatment, illumination, and curvature on legibility and visual fatigue

— The intent of this study is to investigate some critical factors that affect legibility and visual fatigue while reading on an electronic-paper display in terms of ergonomics. Anti-reflection surface treatment, ambient illumination, and bending curvature are taken into account to evaluate their effects by using the method of letter-search task. The results showed that the surface treatment with high degrees of anti-reflection significantly improved the legibility and reduces visual fatigue. Thus, electronic-paper manufacturers may choose a much better surface treatment in order to meet ergonomic demand. In addition, the findings in the present study also indicate that subjects reported less visual fatigue on a bending surface of a visual display unit, in comparison with a plane surface. It is proven that these ergonomic evaluations for electronic paper provide manufactures with useful information to design suitable products for users.

A developed model of expert system interface (DMESI)

Abstract Cognitive compatibility plays an important role in the development of the human–computer interface. A good user interface will lead to better user/expert system interaction and task performance. In this study, we examined what and how cognitive types affect problem-solving and analyzed the theoretical development of the relationship between human cognition and the use of intelligent machines in the domain of maintenance. The implementation of the knowledge acquisition (KA) presented the development process of the maintenance protocol which derived from using ICAM DEFinition0 (IDEF0) and Data Flow Diagram (DFD). From the maintenance process modeling, the formal representation of what the user does with the resulting interface can be defined. The knowledge base of the system is represented by a fault decision tree diagram, and is incorporated to communicate between the maintainers and the computer. Furthermore, we also evaluated and compared the effectiveness of expert system interface with the traditional maintenance handbook. As a case study, a fault recovery expert system for the Maintenance Department of the diesel engine bus system of Taipei City has been developed. Findings of the study have important implications in expert system interface design, including the specific features of changeability, traceability, plenitude, and qualitative description in this maintenance area.