The present paper reviews the general usability framework that has dominated discussion in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI) and finds it wanting. An alternative view of the important determinants of user experience of interactive devices is presented with examples.

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Microtask marketplaces provide shortcuts for automating tasks that are otherwise intractable for computers. Creative tasks fall squarely within this definition, and microtask marketplaces have been heavily leveraged to this end. Brainstorming is often an implicit component of these solutions. This thesis provides the first foundational study of brainstorming in microtask marketplaces, aimed at solving the open problems in brainstorming task design to make this process more accessible and effective. This is achieved by establishing techniques for coding brainstorming data at scale, models for quantifying desirable outcomes of brainstorming, and a qualitative deconstruction of brainstorming strategies employed in this environment. Idea forests are introduced as a data structure to enable the disambiguation of ideas in large corpuses, providing natural measures of two metrics of primary interest in brainstorming research: quantity and novelty. They are constructed via a tree-traversal algorithm, restricting the subset of the corpus which the coder must be aware of when making decisions. A simulation approach is introduced to assess the validity of hypothesis outcomes derived from idea forest metrics. The introduction of idea forests enables the core contribution of this thesis, a set of quantitative models for brainstorming outcomes. This thesis extracts several actionable conclusions from the parameters of these models: the rate of unique idea generation is subject to decay over time; individuals have a significant effect on the rate of idea generation, with productive workers generating dozens more unique ideas; and individuals generate their most novel ideas late in a brainstorming session, after the first 18 responses. Furthermore, a replication of findings by Nijstad and Stroebe is conducted, finding that workers take more time to generate ideas when changing semantic categories and are more likely to remain within a category than expected by chance. Finally, a taxonomy of strategies employed by brainstormers is presented. In particular, this thesis discusses the phenomena of scoping brainstorming problems, providing partial solutions, and riffing on previous solutions.

No description available.

Thesis (M.S.E.)--University of Washington, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [64]-70). Issued also electronically via World Wide Web in PDF and PostScript formats.

Thesis (M.S.)--Oregon State University, 2009. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 127-130). Also available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.S. in computer science)--Washington State University, December 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 98-103).

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.

The thesis work is centered on five objectives. These objectives are among the main factors in the field of electronic information display technologies. They are namely display optical efficiency, crosstalk, resolution, power consumption and switchable 2D/3D capability. The thesis findings and the different levels of success are covered in detail in chapters 4 through chapter 8. They are then summarized in discussion and conclusion chapter using measurable quantities in tabular format. Specifically, with respect to optical efficiency three different solutions were applied. The first raised optical efficiency by 60%. The second solution raised optical efficiency to 90%. The third solution eliminated the need for backlighting altogether as well as remove pixel circuitry from optical light path. With respect to image crosstalk, two solutions were applied. One method reduced crosstalk by 51% while the other method eliminated crosstalk to zero percent in the viewing zones. With respect to resolution two methods were applied. One method increased 3D display resolution by limiting the reduction of the native display resolution by only half regardless of the number of concurrent 3D viewers. The other method increased display resolution 900%. With respect to power consumption two methods were applied. The first method eliminated the need for backlighting and also reduced the number of thin film transistors [TFTs] needed by 60% for the same display resolution. The second method increased display brightness by 60% without increasing power consumption. Finally with respect to 2D/3D switchable display an optical module was designed that successfully enable a conventional 2D display to become a switchable 2D/3D display.

No description available.