Introduction of web technology have turned the current world into a global village and web design becomes a huge challenge to develop a website in a better way. To develop a user friendly interface and easy access environment of webpage is the key issue of usability in this field. Improved and user friendly interface of a web site is becoming more popular. There are so many mistakes being committed when a designer develops end users interface of a web site. The main purpose of usability in this field is to provide a user friendly, easy access environment. This paper reveals a guideline for usability of the website design.Most of the designer or developer thinks about their websites outlooks rather than thinking about users’ concern. If it becomes difficult to use their website, people won’t revisit their site. So if designers want to have a successful website, they have to ensure that their design fulfills the users’ requirement. The purpose of this paper is to indicate the existing common usability issues which are being overlooked by the designers and developers, and to provide some possible solutions to reduce these usability problems. It also suggests some simple but effective tips and techniques as well as some guidelines for website design that could be helpful for designer and developer if they keep these in mind during designing a website. The results of the paper specify that there should be the interest to designers and developers who are concerned about improvement of usability and more accessibility of their websites by users.In this thesis, I am committed to create the understanding on the aspects of usability principles suitable to make a user interface more acceptable to the users. This understanding will surely be a pilot project for upcoming future researches on the development of interface design. / Program: Magisterutbildning i informatik

Recently, the whole-genome expression analysis – which is analyzing most or all of the genes in biological systems, and is a rich and powerful way to discover gene pathway - has become increasingly affordable because of the increasing amount of microarray data available in public databases. Additionally, due to the enormously available information content in these repositories, researchers have to spend large amount of time to decide on the right information to proceed. There should be an application to assist biological researchers reducing the time in finding good data sets to analyze. In this project, a thorough study in HCI, Information Visualization, interaction design and development methodologies are carried out in order to build a web-based user interface that enables searching and browsing gene expression data and their correlation (web-based). Findings from literature review are applied to create a web-based user interface in large-gene expression analysis. Then, a survey is carried out to collect and analyze pilot users‟ feedback. The questionnaire shows that the users are very interested in using the system and they would like to spend more time interacting with it. They give positive feedbacks about interactive data visualization in the website help them to save time on viewing, navigating and interpreting complicated data. Besides, it is easy to navigate and learn how to use the system to achieve interesting findings in biology. The questionnaire shows that the author is successful in applying findings from literature review to build the website. Besides, from the results there are suggestions for improvement such as the flexibility in the website by automatically recognizing the alias gene names from different databases, filling-in gene symbols using first few characters, narrowing down a search to a particular species such as human or rat, etc. / Program: Masterutbildning i Informatik

Currently for travel planning, guests will research via hotel websites while still preferring to book through third-party sites, which leads to a disconnect between hotels and their guests. A chat widget artifact that is added onto the hotel’s website and linked through messaging applications was created by a start-up company, Bookboost, to bridge this gap. The current intuitiveness of the artifact and future improvements that may increase intuitiveness was investigated through a case study of user and expert analysis. 10 participants – 5 hotel staff users and 5 guest users – were sampled at hotel lobbies via systematic sampling and non-random sampling. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 65 years old, with 30% being millennials. Task analysis, an interview, and a questionnaire were used for user analysis. The researcher acted as an evaluator and examined the artifact for flaws and possible improvements using activity theory’s human-artifact model (HAM). Analyses suggest that current intuitiveness is fairly high, but there is room for improvement. There seems to be a difference between millennials and non-millennials, especially regarding the amount of time taken and preference for the artifact (versus more familiar methods for communicating with others). Interest and comfort in technology usage was a factor in intuitiveness. Generally, those more comfortable with technology had higher zone of proximal development (ZPD) scores. Improvements have been suggested that may increase artifact intuitiveness, although this was not tested due to the scope of the study. Future research can continue to examine if the suggested improvements have indeed increased intuitiveness in the artifact for users of all ages.

Uma interface com o usuário é composta por duas "vias" de comunicação, uma que vai do usuário até o sistema e outra que vai do sistema até o usuário. Cada uma destas "vias" possui um formalismo que define a comunicação associado. Neste trabalho, estes formalismos são descritos com uma gramática de atributos. Esta gramática foi expandida de forma a permitir a definição dos elementos que compõe a interface do usuário, e da estrutura que irá controlar a seqüência de execução das tarefas oferecidas pelos sistemas de aplicação. Ao longo do trabalho são discutidas algumas técnicas de descrição do formalismo de comunicação entre interface e sistema, são abordados os estilos de interação e apresentada as expansões aplicadas sobre gramáticas de atributos. Um exemplo auxilia a compreensão do uso da linguagem proposta, e um protótipo permite a validação das definições. / A user interface is composed by two "ways" of communication, one from the user to the system and the other linking the system to the user. Each of these "ways" has it's own mechanism. In this work, these mechanisms are described through an attribute grammar. This grammar has been expanded to allow the definition of the structure of the interface elements and the control of the execution of the tasks that the application system implements. Through this work, technics that describe the communication between the interface and the system, interaction styles and the extensions made on attribute grammar are discussed. An example is given to explain the use of the proposed mechanism and a prototype validates ideas discussed.

O surgimento de diferentes dispositivos computacionais fez crescer a demanda pela possibilidade de utilização de um aplicativo em múltiplas plataformas, exigindo o desenvolvimento de novas técnicas que possibilitem o atendimento desse requisito de forma mais simples. Uma das abordagens propostas para solucionar esse problema é caracterizada pelo uso de interfaces plásticas, que se adaptam ao contexto de uso, e permitem a utilização de uma mesma descrição de interface para diferentes contextos. A adoção de técnicas de desenvolvimento baseado em modelos e de linguagens de descrição de interfaces (como a UsiXML, USer Interface eXtensible Markup Language) permitem a descrição de interfaces de usuário em diferentes níveis de abstração, mas para o desenvolvimento de interfaces plásticas multiplataforma utilizando UsiXML, são necessárias ferramentas que permitam o mapeamento entre cada um desses níveis. Nesse trabalho é apresentado o RenderXML, um renderizador de interfaces de usuário que atua no último nível de abstração da linguagem UsiXML, mapeando descrições de interfaces concretas para interfaces de usuário finais sendo executadas em um dispositivo específico. Além disso, o RenderXML fornece um segundo grau de liberdade ao desenvolvedor, permitindo a conexão da interface de usuário renderizada com lógicas de aplicação desenvolvidas em múltiplas linguagens de programação. Para ilustrar sua aplicação, RenderXML foi usado e testado no desenvolvimento de software multiplataforma, em particular para a criação de livros eletrônicos falados, tema do projeto LIFAPOR, no qual este trabalho está inserido. / The existent of different computing devices has created the necessity of software development for multiple platforms, requiring new techniques that permit the fulfillment of this requirement in a simple way. One of the proposed approaches to solve this problem is characterized by the use of plastic user interfaces, which adapt themselves to an use context, and allow the utilization of the same user interface description in multiple contexts. The adoption of model-based development techniques and user interface description languages (as UsiXML, USer Interface eXtensible Markup Language) enables the specification of user interfaces at different levels of abstraction, but requires tools which perform the mapping between each one of these levels. This work presents RenderXML, a user interface rendering application which acts on the last abstraction level of UsiXML, mapping concrete user interfaces descriptions to final user interfaces running on a specific device. Moreover, RenderXML provides a second degree of freedom to the developer, allowing the connection of the rendered user interface to functional cores developed in multiple programming languages. To illustrate its application, RenderXML was used and tested in the development of multiplatform software, in particular in the creation of digital talking books, theme of the LIFAPOR project, in which this work is inserted.

Speech technologies, or technologies that recognize and respond to human speech, have recently emerged as a ubiquitous and cost-effective form of customer self-service (e-service). Although customer satisfaction is regarded as an important outcome of e-service interactions, little is known about users affective responses to conversational interactions with technology. Using a theoretical foundation derived from research in social cognition, interpersonal communication, psycholinguistics, human factors, and services marketing, two studies develop items for a speech interface usability scale, which is then used to examine interrelationships among individual differences (e.g., self-monitoring, need for interaction with a service provider, inherent novelty seeking), usability, comfort, and customer satisfaction. In the first study, speech and language experts' ratings of sixteen speech interfaces are used to identify six stimuli for the second study that represent high, average, and low quality. In the second study, participants listen to the six interfaces and provide ratings for the primary variables of interest. Results indicated that speech interface usability consists of four factors (User Goal Orientation, Customer Service Behavior, Verbosity, and Speech Characteristics). Usability items and individual differences predict affective responses to speech-based e-service. Implications of these findings for psychological and communication research and applied speech technology are described.

According to NHTSA Traffic Safety Facts [9], bicyclist deaths and injuries in 2013 are recorded as 732 and 48,000, respectively. In the State of Florida the safety of bicyclists is of particular concern as the bicycle fatality rates are nearly triple the national average. Further Florida ranks #1 on bicycle fatality rate in the nation for several years. To determine the cause of near-misses and crashes, a detailed study of bicyclist behavior and environmental conditions is needed. In a Florida Department of Transport (FDOT) funded project, USF CUTR has proposed naturalistic bicycle study based on ride data collected from 100 bicyclists for 3000 hrs. To this end, Bicycle Data Acquisition System (BDAS) is being researched and developed. The main objective of this thesis work is to design and implement low power video and audio subsystems of BDAS as specified by domain experts (USF CUTR researchers). This work also involves design of graphical user interface (Windows application) to visualize the data in a synchronized manner. Selection of appropriate hardware to capture and store data is critical as it should meet several criteria like low power consumption, low cost, and small form factor. Several Camera controllers were evaluated in terms of their performance and cost. The major challenges in this design are synchronization between collected data, storage of the video and sensor data, and design of low power embedded subsystems.

The aim of Human Computer Interaction or HCI is to both understand and improve the quality of the users' experience with the systems and technology they interact with. Recent HCI research requirements have stated a need for a unified predictive approach to system design that consolidates system engineering, cognitive modelling, and design principles into a single 'total system approach.' At present, few methods seek to integrate all three of these aspects into a single method and of those that do many are extensions to existing engineering techniques. This thesis, however proposes a new behaviour based approach designed to identify usability problems early in the design process before testing the system with actual users. In order to address the research requirements, this model uses a new design notation called Genetic Software Engineering (GSE) in conjunction with aspects of a cognitive modelling technique called NGOMSL (Natural GOMS Language) as the basis for this approach. GSE's behaviour tree notation, and NGOMSL's goal orientated format are integrated using a set of simple conversion rules defined in this study. Several well established design principles, believed to contribute to the eventual usability of a product, are then modelled in GSE. This thesis addresses the design of simple interfaces and the design of complex ubiquitous technology. The new GSE approach is used to model and predict usability problems in an extensive range of tasks from programming a VCR to making a video recording on a modern mobile phone. The validity of these findings is tested against actual user tests on the same tasks and devices to demonstrate the effectiveness of the GSE approach. Ultimately, the aim of the study is to demonstrate the effectiveness of the new cognitive and engineering based approach at predicting usability problems based on tangible representations of established design principles. This both fulfils the MCI research requirements for a 'total system approach' and establishes a new and novel approach to user interface and system design.

With increasing pressure to better manage the environment many government and private organisations are studying the relationships between social, economic and environmental factors to determine how they can best be optimised for increased sustainability. The analysis of such relationships are undertaken using computer-based Integrated Catchment Models (ICM). These models are capable of generating multiple scenarios depicting alternative land use alternatives at a variety of temporal and spatial scales, which present (potentially) better Triple-Bottom Line (TBL) outcomes than the prevailing situation. Dissemination of this data is (for the most part) reliant on traditional, static map products however, the ability of such products to display the complexity and temporal aspects is limited and ultimately undervalues both the knowledge incorporated in the models and the capacity of stakeholders to disseminate the complexities through other means. Geovisualization provides tools and methods for disseminating large volumes of spatial (and associated non-spatial) data. Virtual Environments (VE) have been utilised for various aspects of landscape planning for more than a decade. While such systems are capable of visualizing large volumes of data at ever-increasing levels of realism, they restrict the users ability to accurately perceive the (virtual) space. Augmented Reality (AR) is a visualization technique which allows users freedom to explore a physical space and have that space augmented with additional, spatially referenced information. A review of existing mobile AR systems forms the basis of this research. A theoretical mobile outdoor AR system using Common-Of-The-Shelf (COTS) hardware and open-source software is developed. The specific requirements for visualizing land use scenarios in a mobile AR system were derived using a usability engineering approach known as Scenario-Based Design (SBD). This determined the elements required in the user interfaces resulting in the development of a low-fidelity, computer-based prototype. The prototype user interfaces were evaluated using participants from two targeted stakeholder groups undertaking hypothetical use scenarios. Feedback from participants was collected using the cognitive walk-through technique and supplemented by evaluator observations of participants physical actions. Results from this research suggest that the prototype user interfaces did provide the necessary functionality for interacting with land use scenarios. While there were some concerns about the potential implementation of

<p>Version control is an important tool for safekeeping of data and collaboration between colleagues. These days, new distributed version control systems are growing increasingly popular as successors to centralized systems like CVS and Subversion. Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) make it easier to interact with version control systems, but GUIs for distributed systems are still few and less mature than those available for centralized systems. The purpose of this thesis was to propose specific GUI ideas to make distributed systems more accessible. To accomplish this, existing version control systems and GUIs were examined. A usage survey was conducted with 20 participants consisting of software engineers. Participants were asked to score various aspects of version control systems according to usage frequency and usage difficulty. These scores were combined into an index of each aspect's "unusability" and thus its need of improvement. The primary problems identified were committing, inspecting the working set, inspecting history and synchronizing. In response, a commit helper, a repository visualizer and a favorite repositories list were proposed, along with several smaller suggestions. These proposals should constitute a good starting point for developing GUIs for distributed version control systems.</p>