A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, for the Degree of Master of Arts. / Increasingly complex technology in modern times has changed the nature of many work activities. Mechanisation and automation have served to emphasise the importance of mental workload to productivity, physicaI and mental health. The study uses a simulated routine office stocktaking task to compare subjective experiences of mental workload between traditional pen and paper methods and the more recently developed computer techniques. An analysis is also made of assessments of difficulty by subjects free to adopt a working method of their choice (ie. in a flexible environment) and subjects whohave no freedom of working method (ie. a rigid externally imposed working strategy). Also included is an analysis of the cognitive strategies adopted during task performance and across the different t.reatmerrt conditions. Research findings are of particular relevance to the design of jobs in the modern office environment where human-computer interaction is becoming increasingly prevalent, the effective design of man-machine systems, and to the general field of workload research. / AC2018

abstract: An old proverb claims that “two heads are better than one”. Crowdsourcing research and practice have taken this to heart, attempting to show that thousands of heads can be even better. This is not limited to leveraging a crowd’s knowledge, but also their creativity—the ability to generate something not only useful, but also novel. In practice, there are initiatives such as Free and Open Source Software communities developing innovative software. In research, the field of crowdsourced creativity, which attempts to design scalable support mechanisms, is blooming. However, both contexts still present many opportunities for advancement. In this dissertation, I seek to advance both the knowledge of limitations in current technologies used in practice as well as the mechanisms that can be used for large-scale support. The overall research question I explore is: “How can we support large-scale creative collaboration in distributed online communities?” I first advance existing support techniques by evaluating the impact of active support in brainstorming performance. Furthermore, I leverage existing theoretical models of individual idea generation as well as recommender system techniques to design CrowdMuse, a novel adaptive large-scale idea generation system. CrowdMuse models users in order to adapt itself to each individual. I evaluate the system’s efficacy through two large-scale studies. I also advance knowledge of current large-scale practices by examining common communication channels under the lens of Creativity Support Tools, yielding a list of creativity bottlenecks brought about by the affordances of these channels. Finally, I connect both ends of this dissertation by deploying CrowdMuse in an Open Source online community for two weeks. I evaluate their usage of the system as well as its perceived benefits and issues compared to traditional communication tools. This dissertation makes the following contributions to the field of large-scale creativity: 1) the design and evaluation of a first-of-its-kind adaptive brainstorming system; 2) the evaluation of the effects of active inspirations compared to simple idea exposure; 3) the development and application of a set of creativity support design heuristics to uncover creativity bottlenecks; and 4) an exploration of large-scale brainstorming systems’ usefulness to online communities. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Computer Science 2019

Prior research has indicated that laypeople construct mental representations of physical symptoms in order to attempt to understand illness (e.g., Leventhal, Safer, Panagis, 1983; Leventhal & Contrada, 1987; Lau, Bernard, & Hartman, 1989). These "illness representations" are influenced by prior experience with and prior knowledge about illness as well as efforts to seek additional information through social channels or media. More and more, the internet is a prominent source of health information, especially for older adults (aged 50 year and up). Yet, few studies have systematically examined how older adults search for health information online. Similarly, recent trends in healthcare such as health consumerism assume that patients will be more empowered if they have access to more information. However, little has been done to investigate whether patients, in fact, feel more empowered after acquiring online health information. The current study examined the online health information seeking of older adults (N = 79) in order to determine the cognitive and diagnostic processes that older adults use to acquire information. Older adults read a vignette which depicted one of two common illnesses and then were asked to "think-aloud" while they attempted to diagnose the illness. Older adults then diagnosed the illness using either a traditional search engine (Google) or popular self-diagnosis tool (WebMD Symptom Checker), and answered questions about illness representations, cognitive effort, web interactivity, and feelings of empowerment after the search. Quantitative results showed inconsistent change in illness representations. Plausible reasons for a lack of findings are discussed. Participants who used WebMD perceived greater cognitive effort while using the computer program than those who used Google, and participants who were inaccurate in their diagnosis perceived greater cognitive effort of diagnosing than those who were accurate. Accuracy was unrelated to perceived interactivity, age, or search method. Participants 50-64 years old found a new version of WebMD to be less interactive than Google. In contrast, participants 65 years or older perceived no difference in interactivity depending upon search method. In terms of empowerment, participants who used Google perceived greater choice than WebMD. There were no differences in feelings of competence depending upon search method. Qualitative results showed that participants spent the majority of time navigating the computer and processing health information. Most participants diagnosed the illness by eliminating diseases whose symptoms did not match the symptoms of the illness vignette. Participants tended to visit commercial health websites such as Everyday Health and begin their information search by typing a vignette symptom into the search bar. Participants who were 65 years or older were less confident about their diagnosis than 50-64 year old participants. Finally, participants who used Google to diagnose were more likely to comment about the credibility of the information found when compared to those who used WebMD. The current study found no change in illness representations after an online information search. However, this produces questions as to the amount of time in which the layperson constructs his/her illness representation. In addition, few differences in interactivity, accuracy, or empowerment were found between an online health information search conducted with a search engine as compared to a self-diagnosis tool. However, individual differences suggest that different age cohorts may prefer information to be presented in different ways which could influence web design. Further studies in human-computer interaction and health cognition may be able to answer the questions that arose.

Intresset för chattbotar är idag mycket stort och de används i många olika områden. Det finns många tillvägagångssätt för att implementera chattbotar, ett av dessa sätt är med verktyget Hubot. Detta arbete undersöker hur effektiv en chattbot utvecklad med Hubot är med avseende på användbarhet och responstid. Användbarheten bedömdes med hjälp av System Usablity Scale (SUS) med 8 testpersoner. Resultatet visade att chattboten hade en relativt låg användbarhet (64,38 poäng enligt SUS), men mycket snabba responstider. Detta indikerade att Hubot inte är en effektiv chattbotlösning i detta arbetes kontext

Målet med den genomförda studien var att se om det aktivt går att träna planeringsförmåga. I studien ingick två grupper; barn i åldern sju till nio år med typisk utveckling (TU) samt ungdomar i särskolan med åldern 15 till 21 år med intellektuell funktionsnedsättning (IF). Studien vill se eventuella skillnader i planeringsförmåga mellan dessa båda grupper. I studien genomfördes en datainsamling där försöksdeltagarna fick utföra tester vid två separata tillfällen. Mellan dessa testtillfällen fick deltagarna träna sin planeringsförmåga med hjälp av programvaran Planera Mera under fyra veckor. Detta för att möjliggöra mätningen av effekten av den träning som försökspersonerna genomfört mellan de båda testtillfällena.   Testerna som använts i studien för att mäta deltagarnas utveckling är fyra olika typer av planeringstester: Vad kommer först, Receptplanering, Zoo karta och Ärendeplanering.  Resultatet i studien visade inte på någon utveckling av planeringsförmågan på hela testgruppen enligt testresultaten före och efter träning med Planera mera. Vad det gäller resultatet på hur väl gruppen TU och gruppen IF klarade av att utföra varje enskilt test, så visade testerna Vad kommer först, Receptplanering och Zoo karta inte någon skillnad mellan grupperna. I testet Ärendeplanering klarade gruppen TU sig bättre med hur väl de genomförde testet gentemot gruppen med IF. Studien tittade även på om de båda grupperna TUs och IFs resultat förändrades över tiden. Det skedde inte någon förändring av resultatet inom de båda grupperna mellan första testomgången och den andra testomgången.   Rekommendationen för fortsatta studier är att kombinera de planeringtester som utförs i ett digitalt spel med träning av motsvarande planeringsmoment i personernas vardag för att tydligare koppla övningen till en verklig situation.

Through eye tracking technology, scientists have explored the eyes diverse aspects and capabilities. There are many potential applications that benefit from eye tracking. Each benefit from advances in computer technology as this results in improved quality and decreased costs for eye-tracking systems.This thesis presents a computer vision-based eye tracking system for human computer interaction. The eye tracking system allows the user to indicate a region of interest in a large data space and to magnify that area, without using traditional pointer devices. Presented is an iris tracking algorithm adapted from Camshift; an algorithm originally designed for face or hand tracking. Although the iris is much smaller and highly dynamic. the modified Camshift algorithm efficiently tracks the iris in real-time. Also presented is a method to map the iris centroid, in video coordinates to screen coordinates; and two novel calibration techniques, four point and one-point calibration. Results presented show that the accuracy for the proposed one-point calibration technique exceeds the accuracy obtained from calibrating with four points. The innovation behind the one-point calibration comes from using observed eye scanning behaviour to constrain the calibration process. Lastly, the thesis proposes a non-linear visualisation as an eye-tracking application, along with an implementation.

This dissertation presents interaction techniques for 3D modelling of large structures in outdoor augmented reality environments. Augmented reality is the process of registering projected computer-generated images over a user's view of the physical world. With the use of a mobile computer, augmented reality can also be experienced in an outdoor environment. Working in a mobile outdoor environment introduces new challenges not previously encountered indoors, requiring the development of new user interfaces to interact with the computer. Current AR systems only support limited interactions and so the complexity of applications that can be developed is also limited. This dissertation describes a number of novel contributions that improve the state of the art in augmented reality technology. / thesis (PhD)--University of South Australia, 2004.

From a user's perspective, product quality has typically been equated to usability, where the primary focus is performance (i.e. efficiency and effectiveness) and user satisfaction. This view on quality has been adequate to validate the 'fitness for purpose' for many products. However, many other products, such as computer games or at-home-technologies, are not based solely on performance-based qualities. By defining and validating the quality of these non-performance-based technologies using the same measures as performance-based technologies fails to address a key quality � the ability of the product to create fun, enjoyment, or other user affective experiences. This thesis investigates system quality issues in non-performance-based technologies, primarily addressing affect. It explores what affect is in relation to system quality, how can affect impact quality in use, what product characteristics can aid in the creation of positive user affect, and how to validate whether a product successfully created the desired user affect. To begin, current knowledge about the relationship between systems development, quality in use, and affect is summarised. Concepts used synonymously with affect were studied (e.g. satisfaction, user experience, emotion). It was found that these are related to affect, but are not affect themselves. Following this, a broad survey asking users to identify product characteristics that create positive affect during use is reported on. Results showed that the system characteristics of learnability, feedback, curiosity, and user cooperation can each increase and enhance positive user affect experienced. If it is an aim for the system to create an affective experience in a user then this should be considered a requirement of the system; and as a requirement, it is necessary to validate that it achieves this aim. To this end, a laboratory study exploring psycho-physiology and cued-recall debrief as methods to evaluate user affect was conducted. Results revealed that both methods show promise for evaluating user affect. Cued-recall is capable of identifying specific user affects, but is limited because it relies on the user to report these affects. Physiological measures can objectively identify when a person is experiencing affect, but is limited because it is not possible to determine what affect is being experienced. Combined, these methods represent an optimal and viable evaluation method for user affect.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Nevada, Reno, 2006. / "May 2006." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 131-137). Online version available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Nevada, Reno, 2006. / "May, 2006." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 77-80). Online version available on the World Wide Web.