Prototyping is generally acknowledged as an effective method for generating cost-effective, preliminary designs of various products including web and mobile user interfaces. Out of the existing types of prototyping, paper prototyping is known for being the most cost-effective of them all, as well as the most constrained for the realistic user experience elements it can render. High-Fidelity prototypes on the other hand offer a richer experience to the user, at the high cost of developing sophisticated software/hardware-based demonstrations. Although both of these types of prototypes continue to be widely and successfully used in product and interface design, there is no evidence of a cost-effective technique that would elicit user’s feedback which as rich as high-fidelity prototypes but without implementation effort. This study proposes an innovative prototyping technique called “Paper in Screen” (Bolchini, Pulido, Faiola, 2009) which enables designers to cheaply and rapidly prototype a mobile application in its key components (interface design and mobile device integration) without the need for implementing a high-fidelity prototype. A study was performed with 10 user experience professionals to evaluate their perception of the technique’s effectiveness, from which a number of benefits and drawbacks of the “Paper in Screen” were learned. The obtained results point to areas of future research in mobile prototyping.

This thesis describes a new method of calculating data priority by using adaptive mobile user and device profiles which change with user location, time of the day, available networks and data access history. The profiles are used for data prefetching, selection of most suitable wireless network and cache management on the mobile device in order to optimally utilize the device�s storage capacity and available bandwidth. Some of the inherent characteristics of mobile devices due to user movements are �non-persistent connection, limited bandwidth and storage capacity, changes in mobile device�s geographical location and connection (eg. connection can be from GPRS to WLAN to Bluetooth). New research is being carried out in making mobile devices work more efficiently by reducing and/or eliminating their limitations. The focus of this research is to propose, evaluate and test a new user profiling technique which specifically caters to the needs of the mobile device users who are required to access large amounts of data, possibly more than the device storage capability during the course of the day or week. This work involves the development of an intelligent user profiling system along with mobile device caching system which will first allocate weight (priority) to the different sets and subsets of the total given data based on user�s location, user�s appointment information, user�s preferences, device capabilities and available networks. Then the profile will automatically change the data weights with user movements, history of cached data access and characteristics of available networks. The Adaptive User and Device Profiles were designed to handle broad range of the issues associated with: �Changing network types and conditions �Limited storage capacity and document type support of mobile devices �Changes in user data needs due to their movements at different times of the day Many research areas have been addressed through this research but the primary focus has remained on the following four core areas. The four core areas are : selecting the most suitable wireless network; allocating weights to different datasets & subsets by integrating user�s movements; previously accessed data; time of the day with user appointment information and device capabilities.

This thesis describes a new method of calculating data priority by using adaptive mobile user and device profiles which change with user location, time of the day, available networks and data access history. The profiles are used for data prefetching, selection of most suitable wireless network and cache management on the mobile device in order to optimally utilize the device�s storage capacity and available bandwidth. Some of the inherent characteristics of mobile devices due to user movements are �non-persistent connection, limited bandwidth and storage capacity, changes in mobile device�s geographical location and connection (eg. connection can be from GPRS to WLAN to Bluetooth). New research is being carried out in making mobile devices work more efficiently by reducing and/or eliminating their limitations. The focus of this research is to propose, evaluate and test a new user profiling technique which specifically caters to the needs of the mobile device users who are required to access large amounts of data, possibly more than the device storage capability during the course of the day or week. This work involves the development of an intelligent user profiling system along with mobile device caching system which will first allocate weight (priority) to the different sets and subsets of the total given data based on user�s location, user�s appointment information, user�s preferences, device capabilities and available networks. Then the profile will automatically change the data weights with user movements, history of cached data access and characteristics of available networks. The Adaptive User and Device Profiles were designed to handle broad range of the issues associated with: �Changing network types and conditions �Limited storage capacity and document type support of mobile devices �Changes in user data needs due to their movements at different times of the day Many research areas have been addressed through this research but the primary focus has remained on the following four core areas. The four core areas are : selecting the most suitable wireless network; allocating weights to different datasets & subsets by integrating user�s movements; previously accessed data; time of the day with user appointment information and device capabilities.

Mobile Geographical Information Systems are becoming a more and more important tool for presenting geographical data. They are used to support decision making processes, present an overview of distributed information or are in a form of location based services. The problem lies in the fact that mobile devices have limited resources and should still be able to present massive amounts of content. Ideally, the user and the conditions in which the program runs are well defined, but this is usually not the case. This thesis provides a sample prototype implementation of a mobile GIS developed as an alternative to an existing web-based user interface (UI). It focuses on specific conditions present on mobile devices, ways of presenting the data and possibilities of reusing existing elements from the web UI that could be suitable for the mobile environment.

Much of the developed world is experiencing an aging population. This requires society to adapt to take care of a growing elderly population and improve their quality of life. Today, mobile systems are available that makes it possible to monitor and improve health (m-health). Even though these systems could be immensely helpful for the elderly population, this has not been the primary demographic for the current m-health systems. This case study aimed at examining how persuasive technology (technology for changing behavior and/or attitude) can be used to promote usage of m-health applications by the elderly. For this purpose, a theoretical framework for supporting m-health systems is proposed. This framework consist of persuasive technology (for motivation and support for fulfillment of human needs), knowledge of elderly issues in interacting with mobile interfaces, smartphone usability heuristics and the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle (to support goalsetting and incremental progress). To determine how persuasive technology can be used to motivate elderly and find effective strategies for this purpose, the case study examined health behavior, motivations for healthy behavior, attitude to health, general goal setting behavior, needs, preferences, technological experience and self-efficacy, as well as usage of m-health systems using qualitative and participatory methods. Methods used included semi-structured interviews, future workshop, revolutionary rapid prototyping and usability evaluation. The findings of the interviews and the future workshop suggested the primary motivation for healthy behavior was derived from social aspects. Thus, the most effective persuasive strategies for the elderly likely target their need for social belonging and socialization. Based on the findings, an interactive prototype was developed. The prototype proposed an m-health application with self-monitoring that implemented an elderly community around healthy behavior, with opportunities to earn digital rewards and challenge other users to competition. The interactive prototype was then used in a usability evaluation to gauge its usability by the elderly and revised in higher fidelity according to their feedback.

Mobile edge computing (MEC) has been considered as a promising technology to handle computation-intensive and latency-sensitive tasks for mobile user equipments (UEs) in next-generation mobile networks. Mobile UEs can offload these tasks to nearby edge servers, which are typically deployed on base stations (BSs) that are equipped with computation resources. Thus, the task execution latency as well as the energy consumption of mobile devices can be reduced. Mobility management has played a fundamental role in MEC, which associates UEs with the appropriate BSs. In the existing handover decision-making process, the communication costs dominate. However, in edge scenario, the computation capacity constraints should also be considered. Due to user mobility, mobile UEs are nonuniformly distributed over time and space. Edge servers in hot-spot areas can be overloaded while others are underloaded. When edge servers are densely deployed, each UE may have multiple choices to offload its tasks. Instead, if edge servers are sparsely deployed, UEs may only have one option for task offloading. This aggravates the unbalanced workload of the deployed edge servers. Therefore, how to serve the dynamic hot-spot areas needs to be addressed in different edge server deployment scenarios. Considering these two scenarios discussed above, two problems are addressed in this thesis: 1) with densely deployed edge servers, for each mobile UE, how to choose the appropriate edge servers independently without full system information is inves- tigated, and 2) with sparsely deployed edge servers, how to serve dynamic hot-spot areas in an efficient and flexible way is emphasized. First, with BSs densely de- ployed in hot-spot areas, mobile UEs can offload their tasks to one of the available edge servers nearby. However, precise full system information such as the server workload can be hard to be synchronized in real time, which also introduces extra signaling overhead for mobility management decision-making. Thus, a user-centric reinforcement-learning-based mobility management scheme is proposed to handle sys- tem uncertainties. Each UE observes the task latency and automatically learns the optimal mobility management strategy through trial and feedback. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme manifests superiority in dealing with system uncer- tainties. When compared with the traditional received signal strength (RSS)-based handover scheme, the proposed scheme reduces the task execution latency by about 30%. Second, fixed edge servers that are sparsely deployed around mobile UEs are not flexible enough to deal with time-varying task offloading. Dispatching mobile servers is formulated as a variable-sized bin-packing problem with geographic constraints. A novel online unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-mounted edge server dispatching scheme is proposed to provide flexible mobile-to-mobile edge computing services. UAVs are dispatched to the appropriate hover locations by identifying the hot-spot areas sequen- tially. Theoretical analysis is provided with the worst-case performance guarantee. Extensive evaluations driven by real-world mobile requests show that, with a given task finish time, the mobile dispatching scheme can serve 59% more users on aver- age when compared with the fixed deployment. In addition, the server utilization reaches 98% during the daytime with intensive task requests. Utilizing both the fixed and mobile edge servers can satisfy even more UE demands with fewer UAVs to be dispatched and a better server utilization. To sum up, not only the communication condition but also the computation lim- itation have an impact on the edge server selection and mobility management in MEC. Moreover, dispatching mobile edge servers can be an effective and flexible way to supplement the fixed servers and deal with dynamic offloading requests. / Graduate

Animations in interfaces, when designed correctly, are shown to be beneficial for usability and user experience (UX). However, most designers create their animations from personal preference without knowledge of how their animated transitions affect the user experience, which increases the risk of them becoming distracting and ruining the experience. Current studies on the topic focus mostly on the usability aspects of animations while the research regarding the emotional impact and aesthetics remain sparse. By understanding how the properties of transitions impact the whole user experience of a user interface, well thought out design choices can be made for improving the experience. The aim of this thesis was to investigate how three transforms and five easing types in animated transitions affect user emotions and perceived user experience. These properties were examined and compared using the mixed method approach of semi-structured interviews, Think-Aloud and the shortened version of AttrakDiff. The results of this thesis indicate that both easings and transforms can affect the perceptions of speed, and that faster perceived transitions are generally more preferred. Also, that the transforms can be more or less suitable for communicating certain changes, and that easings can convey certain impressions suiting different contexts in mobile UIs. The insights of this study can be used for guidance in designing or choosing transitions for specific affective purposes for an improved user experience. / Animationer i gränssnitt sägs gynna användbarhet och användarupplevelse när de är utformade korrekt. De flesta designers skapar dock sina animationer utifrån personliga preferenser utan kunskap om hur deras animerade övergångar påverkar användarupplevelsen, vilket ökar risken för att distraherande animationer som kan förstöra upplevelsen istället. I dagsläget fokuserar studier inom detta område främst på användbarhet av animationer medan forskningen kring emotionell påverkan och estetik är begränsad. Genom att förstå hur egenskaperna för animerade övergångar påverkar hela användarupplevelsen för ett användargränssnitt kan mer genomtänkta designval göras för att förbättra upplevelsen. Syftet med denna avhandling var att undersöka hur tre transformationer och fem olika accelerationer i animerade övergångar påverkar användarnas känslor och användarupplevelse när de används i ett mobilt gränssnitt. Dessa egenskaper undersöktes och jämfördes med genom semi-strukturerade intervjuer, Think-Aloud metoden och den förkortade versionen av AttrakDiff. Resultaten tyder på att både accelerationer och transformationer kan påverka uppfattningen av animationens hastighet, och att snabbare upplevda övergångar i allmänhet är mer föredragna. Dessutom kan transformationerna kan vara mer eller mindre lämpliga för att kommunicera vissa förändringar i gränssnittet, och olika accelerationer kan förmedla vissa intryck som passar i olika sammanhang i mobila användargränssnitt. Resultaten av denna studie kan användas som vägledning vid utformning av övergångar för specifika affektiva ändamål och för en förbättrad användarupplevelse.

The rapid growth of e-commerce has many associated security concerns. Thus, several studies to develop secure online authentication systems have emerged. Most studies begin with the premise that the intermediate network is the primary point of compromise. In this thesis, we assume that the point of compromise lies within the end-host or browser; this security threat is called the man-in-the-browser (MITB) attack. MITB attacks can bypass security measures of public key infrastructures (PKI), as well as encryption mechanisms for secure socket layers and transport layer security (SSL/TLS) protocol. This thesis focuses on developing a system that can circumvent MITB attacks using a two-phase secure-user authentication system, with phases that include challenge and response generation. The proposed system represents the first step in conducting an online business transaction. The proposed authentication system design contributes to protect the confidentiality of the initiating client by requesting minimal and non-confidential information to bypass the MITB attack and transition the authentication mechanism from the infected browser to a mobile-based system via a challenge/response mechanism. The challenge and response generation process depends on validating the submitted information and ensuring the mobile phone legitimacy. Both phases within the MUAS context mitigate the denial-of-service (DOS) attack via registration information, which includes the client's mobile number and the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) of the client's mobile phone. This novel authentication scheme circumvents the MITB attack by utilising the legitimate client's personal mobile phone as a detached platform to generate the challenge response and conduct business transactions. Although the MITB attacker may have taken over the challenge generation phase by failing to satisfy the required security properties, the response generation phase generates a secure response from the registered legitimate mobile phone by employing security attributes from both phases. Thus, the detached challenge- and response generation phases are logically linked.

In this thesis I address the topic of a non-visual approach for interaction on mobile,as an alternative to their existing visual displays in situations where hands free usageof the device is preferred. The current technology will be examined through existingwork with special attention to its limitations, which user groups are currently using anysort of speech recognition or voice command functions and look at in which scenariosare these the most used and most desired. Then I will examine through interviews whypeople trust or distrust voice interactions and how they feel about the possibilities andlimitations of the technology at hand, how individual users use this currently and wheredo they see the technology in the future. After this I will develop an alternative voiceinteraction concept, and validate it through a set of workshops.

資訊科技的進步與智慧型手機的普及，使得人們通訊方式改變，生活也更加依賴智慧型手機。然而，電池技術卻未能支援智慧型手機長時間使用，因此手機使用者在電量管理上的行為就變得相對重要。欲研究探討手機使用者的電量管理行為模式，須建立一個包含軟、硬體及使用者的實驗平台，本研究採用經麻省理工學院驗證的Funf Framework開放性原始碼框架，作為蒐集使用者操作紀錄資料，以情境假設觀察這些資料，定義出各情境行為模式的特徵，並根據實驗數據進行所有資料驗證。根據實驗結果，大致歸納出電量管理行為模式，此結果可提供使用者使用手機在電量管理上參考，或發展智慧型電量管理應用程式，以最佳化電量管理。 / The innovation of information technology and the spread of smart phones are changing the way that people communicate and how their livings rely on smart-phones. However, the technology of battery nowadays is still insufficient to meet the need of heavy smart-phones users; therefore, it be-comes relatively important to observe and analyze the user behavior on power management. This research aims to study the patterns of user be-havior on power management by building an experimental platform with appropriate software, hardware and users. We use the Funf Open Sensing Framework, which is originally developed at the MIT Media Lab, to collect user logs on smart phones. We have observed collected data under contex-tual assumptions, identified characteristics within the context of each be-havior pattern, and validated with the experimental data. With the result of the experiment, several patterns of power management have been classified. The experimental result can be used as a reference for the users to manage battery life, or for developing applications on smart power management that best optimizes energy consumption.