Thesis (M.A.I.S.)--Oregon State University, 2008. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 76-80). Also available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.S.) in Teaching--University of Maine, 2006. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 75-77).

Th. 3e cycle--Océanogr. phys.--Brest, 1977.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wyoming, 2007. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Mar. 5, 2009). Includes bibliographical references.

The thesis discusses the question of how unfamiliar computing systems, particularly those with graphical user interfaces, are learned and used. In particular, the approach of basing the design and behaviour of on-screen objects in the system's model world on a coherent theme and employing a metaphor is explored. The drawbacks, as well as the advantages, of this approach are reviewed and presented. The use of metaphors is also contrasted with other forms of users' mental models of interactive systems, and the need to provide a system image from which useful mental models can be developed is presented. Metaphors are placed in the context of users' understanding of interactive systems and novel application is made of the Qualitative Process Theory (QPT) qualitative reasoning model to reason about the behaviour of on-screen objects, the underlying system functionality, and the relationship between the two. This analysis supports reevaluation of the domains between which user interface metaphors are said to form mappings. A novel user interface design, entitled Medusa, that adopts guidelines for the design of metaphor-based systems, and for helping the user develop successful mental models, based on the QPT analysis and an empirical study of a popular metaphor-based system, is described. The first Medusa design is critiqued using well-founded usability inspection method. Employing the Lakoff/lohnson theory, a revised verSIOn of the Medusa user interface is described that derives its application semantics and dialogue structures from the entailments of the knowledge structures that ground understanding of the interface metaphor and that capture notions of embodiment in interaction with computing devices that QPT descriptions cannot. Design guidelines from influential existing work, and new methods of reasoning about metaphor-based designs, are presented with a number of novel graphical user interface designs intended to overcome the failings of existing systems and design approaches.

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From being a fictional element in sci-fi movies, voice user interaction has become reality with intelligent personal assistants like Apple’s Sir iand Google’s Assistant. The development opens up for new exciting user experiences and challenges when designing for these experiences. This thesis has aimed to investigate the user experience of different ways of onboarding new users to intelligent personalassistants. The process has included interviews with experienced users, a test of a Google Home for three months and a wizard of oz (WOZ) test. The interviews and the long term test was done in correlation with a literature study to determine how users interact with an intelligent personal assistant (IPA) their flaws, benefits, what added value they have etc. The goal of the WOZ test was to compare two different teaching methods during the onboarding of a new user. The methods were a voice tutorial by the IPA and a visual interaction on a mobile device. The outcome was to see if the users memory retention was different between the two methods for features learned during the test as well as the users opinions of the two different methods. The results from the interviews show that the benefits of using an IPA is in situations where it reduces friction, e.g when both hands are occupied. They also showed that there are still issues with IPAs and there is a long way to go before they can a accomplish a more human-to-human like conversation. In the WOZ test the results showed that there were no significant difference in user remembrance of learnt features between the two teaching methods. However the user insights showed that the majority of users would like to have a multimodal interaction, a combination of voice and visual interaction when being taught to use an IPA.

La connaissance de la viscosité est un défi majeur dans les technologies de pointe (biomédical, pétrochimie, imprimerie, cosmétique, agroalimentaire, etc). Cette étude présente un capteur de viscosité qui exploite la vibration transversale forcée d’une poutre mince. L’amortissement induit par le fluide permet d’évaluer sa viscosité et sa masse volumique par la seule connaissance des caractéristiques à la résonance de la poutre (amplitude et fréquence). Cette mesure est réalisée par un circuit électromagnétique. Dans ce travail, la simulation numérique et l’étude expérimentale du viscosimètre sont réalisées en vue de mieux cerner les paramètres influençant le fonctionnement du capteur. Les différentes investigations menées dans ce travail sont d’une grande importance pour l’optimisation du viscosimètre d’une part. D’autre part, c’est une contribution à l’ensemble des études qui traitent de l’aspect du couplage fluide-structure-électromagnétisme. / Knowing the viscosity becomes increasingly a major challenge in leading-edge technologies (biomedical, petrochemical, printing, cosmetic, food industry, etc). This study presents a viscosity sensor based on a thin beam immersed in a newtonian fluid and subjected to transverse vibrations due to an electromechanical excitation system. The damped vibration can be used to evaluate the fluid viscosity and density by measuring the beam’s resonance characteristics (amplitude, frequency). This measurement is done by an electromagnetic feedback circuit. In this work, numerical model and experimental studies of the vibrating viscometer are conducted to better understand the influencing factors of the sensor’s operation. The different investigations carried out in this work are of great importance for the viscometer optimization on one hand. On the other hand, it’s a contribution to all studies dealing with the aspect of fluid-structure-electromagnetism coupling.

Les interactions des aérosols avec les nuages en Arctique peuvent avoir de fortes conséquences sur le forçage radiatif. Néanmoins cette interaction reste encore mal comprise. Dans cette étude nous utilisons les instruments satellitaires POLDER-3 & MODIS pour obtenir des informations sur les propriétés microphysiques des nuages que nous co-localisons temporellement et spatialement avec la concentration en monoxyde de carbone, traceur passif du contenu en aérosols, issue des modèles numériques GEOS-Chem et FLEXPART. Nous co-localisons également les données avec les réanalyses de ERA-Interim pour pouvoir contrôler les paramètres météorologiques tel que l’humidité spécifique et la stabilité de la basse troposphère. Afin d’étudier l'impact des panaches de pollution sur la microphysique des nuages, nous définissons le paramètre ACInet qui décrit l'interaction aérosol nuage. Nos résultats suggèrent que les parcelles d'air venant de feux de biomasses ont un effet limité sur la microphysique des nuages. Au contraire, l'effet des aérosols venant de sources anthropiques ont un effet proche d'un maximum théorique. Nous étudions alors l'impact de différents paramètres météorologiques sur l'ACInet. Nous avons également analysé l'impact des aérosols d'origine anthropiques sur la transition de phase liquide-glace des nuages. Nos résultats indiquent que le contenu en aérosols a un effet net de diminution de la température de transition de phase, ce qui est susceptible d'avoir de fortes conséquences sur la durée de vie des nuages. / The Arctic region is warming particularly rapidly. The aerosol-cloud interaction (ACI) plays an important role on cloud radiative properties and climate change but aerosol impact on cloud microphysical parameters is still poorly understood.In this study we combine measurements from the satellite instruments POLDER-3 and MODIS to temporally and spatially co-localize cloud microphysical properties with carbon monoxide concentrations, passive tracer of aerosol content, from GEOS-Chem and FLEXPART. We also add ERA-I reanalysis of meteorological parameters to stratify meteorological parameters, such as specific humidity and lower tropospheric stability. Thus, observed differences in cloud-microphysical-parameters can be attributed to differences in aerosol content and not in meteorological parameters. We define a net ACI (ACInet) which can be interpreted as a measure of the sensitivity of a cloud at any given location to pollution plumes from distant sources. We study the impact of aerosols from anthropogenic and biomass-burning sources on liquid-cloud microphysical properties in Arctic, between 2005 and 2010, above ocean, and for different meteorological regimes. Our results suggest that the effect of biomass pollution plumes is smaller than the effect of anthropogenic pollution plumes. Meteorological parameters can significantly influence the ACI. We analyze the impact of anthropogenic aerosol on thermodynamic phase transition. The smaller the effective radius, the greater the supercooled temperature, whereas the greater the aerosol concentration, the smaller the supercooled temperature.

Smartphones and applications are becoming more and more popular. Although, the user knowledge varies. Onboarding has been described in other previous studies as a tool for costumers to get a better understanding of applications. This thesis aims to develop guidelines for onboarding by investigating previous studies and by comparing different applications. By investigating to what extent onboarding is beneficial for an application, the question of if it is worth the time and effort for a company to develop an onboarding is discussed. A hi- fi onboarding prototype will be developed to be able to test the guidelines. Simplicity, knowledge of the user, smooth navigation and user satisfaction are a few things that were kept in mind from previous studies when developing the guidelines. To be able to develop guidelines, questions regarding mobile devices, application developing, user behaviour and manuals have also been studied. Interviews combined with observations allowed for an analysis of the guidelines by conducting an A/B test. One group of test subjects received an application with onboarding, and the other group received the same application without onboarding. The result of the A/B test showed that onboarding helped the user to find functions that could be considered difficult to locate. The test also showed that many people often skip onboarding, but people that complete the onboarding process gets a better understanding of the application faster. Guidelines for an efficient development of an onboarding are presented. In conclusion, onboarding is a tool that should be utilized if the developer aims to allow as many users as possible to understand the full potential of the application as fast as possible.