In this thesis a discursive examination of backpacker attitudes towards and use of a New Zealand tourism website, based on their own accounts of their experiences of using the web for travel, offers a contribution to existing knowledge about human computer interaction. The study enhances current understandings of the processes through which backpackers interact with travel websites by including the social and personal context of their experience. Analysing interview data on user attitudes and behaviour, it argues the importance of taking into account the use-context of human computer interactions. Placing participants’ interaction with the newzealand.com website within themes of imagination, emotional engagement, and authenticity in experience allows an exploration of such context. It demonstrates that backpackers’ engagement with websites is shaped not only by their material circumstances but by their attitudes to travel in general, their assumptions and feelings about New Zealand as a place, and as a site for their own experiences. The research applies usability techniques and methods to observe and inquire into tourists’ experiential interaction with a destination website. The emotional, affective, reflective and behavioural aspects of tourists’ decision making processes are studied in order to show how websites, as a medium of communication, evoke users’ travel imaginings. In this way the study contributes to research into tourists’ web-related motivation and behaviour. In addition, by applying discursive, performative, and experiential lenses drawn from travel research to human-computer interaction, it augments current research techniques for studying the social effects of virtual technology and web related human behaviour. The thesis explores themes of representation of place and self in relation to backpacker experiences and frames them in terms of authenticity and trust. It argues that in navigating places, backpackers seek authentic experiences and that this notion of authenticity is mediated by their encounters with other travellers, locals, tourism providers, as well as books, television and the Internet. Websites as travel information sources shape how backpackers think about their tourist experiences; to do this effectively, what the site presents must resonate with the backpacker’s views on how they think those experiences should be.

The thesis examines the factors that need to be considered in order to undertake successful design of user interfaces for older users. The literature on aging is surveyed for age related changes that are of relevance to interface design. The findings from the literature review are extended and placed in a human context using observational studies of older people and their supporters as these older people attempted to learn about and use computers. These findings are then applied in three case studies of interface design and product development for older users. These case studies are reported and examined in depth. For each case study results are presented on the acceptance of the final product by older people. These results show that, for each case study, the interfaces used led to products that the older people evaluating them rated as unusually suitable to their needs as older users. The relationship between the case studies and the overall research aims is then examined in a discussion of the research methodology. In the case studies there is an evolving approach used in developing the interface designs. This approach includes intensive contribution by older people to the shaping of the interface design. This approach is analyzed and is presented as an approach to designing user interfaces for older people. It was found that a number of non-standard techniques were useful in order to maximize the benefit from the involvement of the older contributors and to ensure their ethical treatment. These techniques and the rationale behind them are described. Finally the interface design approach that emerged has strong links to the approach used by the UTOPIA team based at the university of Dundee. The extent to which the thesis provides support for the UTOPIA approach is discussed.

The purpose of this study is to measure computer user satisfaction in several organizational settings and to find out if user, system or organizational variables affect the level of user satisfaction. Data was collected from two manufacturing companies and one Australian government department by using a survey based on the semantic differential technique for attitude measurement and open ended interviews. The data was analysed for each organization. The users completing the survey were then treated as a random sample of all organizational users of computer-based information systems and products. The data was analysed to see if differences occurred among groups. The results indicate that for each organization there are areas of high and low satisfaction. Some of these are common to the three organizations, and some areas where change is commonly requested by users are participation in design, training, response time on interactive systems and top management involvement. Differences among users are also indicated and it is shown that users who design their own systems have the highest level of satisfaction. Managerial users appear to be among the users who are least satisfied with their computer-based support.

Thesis (M. P. A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

<p>In this paper we have studied how user designed mock-ups, together with video recordings, </p><p>can contribute in the process of generating user requirements when designing the future e- </p><p>newspaper. The mock-ups originate from future workshop carried out within the DigiNews </p><p>project. By analyzing user designed mock-ups to retrieve user requirements and evaluating </p><p>the results against a focus group and newspaper designers we gained understanding on how </p><p>mock-ups can contribute as data input in a user involved design process. The study concludes </p><p>that mock-ups are an effective tool for making use of users’ visions and opinions in a </p><p>dynamic design process.</p>

No description available.

<p>Today, the most frequently used signaling system for telecommunication is called Signaling</p><p>System No. 7 (SS7). The growing usage of mobile telephones and mobile data communication,</p><p>and the development of new services mean that the risk of intrusion and exploitation of</p><p>the SS7 signaling networks increases. The increasing problem with unauthorized access to</p><p>sensitive information and the operators’ growing demand for security is the origin of our</p><p>work. This thesis presents a prototype design and implementation of a Security Gateway</p><p>(SEG), which is a fundamental part of the TCAP user security (TCAPsec) concept. TCAPsec</p><p>is a security concept for introducing security mechanisms to the signaling system. The prototype</p><p>includes three different protection modes that provide security services, ranging from</p><p>almost no protection to full protection with the use of encryption algorithms. The thesis also</p><p>contains an evaluation study of the delay penalties caused by the use of these security services.</p><p>With regards to the restrictions on the prototype, the conclusion drawn from the evaluation</p><p>results was that the protection mechanisms in the different protection modes did not inflict</p><p>any significant time penalties. Instead, the results of the study indicate that the routing process</p><p>of messages in the network is a more significant delaying part in the communication between</p><p>different nodes. This result implies that the routing process takes longer time than the security</p><p>services. The thesis also presents a number of discovered features that will require further</p><p>investigation and development before the TCAPsec concept can be realized.</p>

Spreadsheets are arguably the most widely used programming language in use today, yet spreadsheets commonly contain errors. Research shows that regardless of the experience of the end user, an alarming number of spreadsheets contain errors (91% in recent field audits). Most spreadsheets are created by end users with little or no programming experience. Unfortunately, software engineering research has largely ignored these users. In an attempt to reduce this high error rate, our research is aimed at bringing the benefits of software engineering to end users without requiring that they first learn software engineering principles. One mechanism for creating error-free programs is assertions. An assertion is a program property that always holds. It provides a way to attach more of the specification to the program. We have developed an assertion tool for spreadsheet languages that extends Microsoft Excel's validation scheme and includes capabilities such as assertion propagation. This work describes an empirical study done to assess how well end users understand and use the information provided by the assertion tool as they perform maintenance tasks. The study also provides information about end users' testing behavior. / Graduation date: 2002

Streaming media and interactive television viewing experiences are becoming more commonplace with the introduction of services such as Netflix Streaming, the Apple TV, and Google TV aided by the increase adoption of broadband internet. As these services make their way into the living room, and developers struggle to accommodate more complex interaction requirements, new input methods and interfaces need to be developed. Current interfaces for controlling interactive TV and media management have typically been designed for the desktop and laptop experience, using conventional input devices like a trackpad, mouse and keyboard. These techniques are difficult to reconcile with the typical TV viewing experience. We designed an experiment to test a representative interactive TV interface with a number of emerging input technologies like the Nintendo Wiimote, Microsoft Kinect and tablet applications. We measured user performance with these devices while encumbered by a beverage and plate of food in order to simulate a living room experience. We found that while most of these technologies are suitable for navigating an Interactive TV experience, their use challenges us to rethink the user experience, and places limitations on things like button size and placement, as well as the types of UI widgets we can use. We hope these guidelines and heuristics will help in the design of future interactive TV experiences, as well as the development of novel interaction techniques for the TV viewing experience. / Graduation date: 2012 / Access restricted to the OSU Community at author's request from June 19, 2012 - June 19, 2013

Traditionally, research into end-user programming has focused on how to make programming more accessible to end users. However, few researchers have considered providing end users with devices to help improve the reliability of the programs they create. To help improve the reliability of spreadsheets created by end users, we are working to allow users to communicate the purpose and other underlying information about their spreadsheets using a form of requirement specifications we call "guards." Guards were initially designed for individual cells but, for large spreadsheets, with replicated/shared formulas across groups of rows or columns, guards can only be practical if users can enter them across these groups of rows or columns. The problem is, this introduces many-to-many relationships, at the intersection of rows and columns with guards. It is not clear how the system should reason and communicate about many-to-many relationships in a way that will make sense to end users. In this thesis, we present the human-centric design rationale for our approach to how the system should reason about such many-to-many relationships. The design decisions are presented with their reasons gleaned from two design-time models--Cognitive Dimensions and Attention Investment--and from the users themselves in a small think-aloud study. / Graduation date: 2003