Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) are transforming social activities and interactions which are naturally varied and dynamic. In this process, ‘gaps’ develop between the technologies and emerging social requirements. Given that the main challenge for Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) is to identify and ameliorate these socio-technical gaps, it is essential to understand how individuals work and collaborate in groups, societies, and communities. The main question addressed in this study regards the identification of these gaps in the social activities of Online Collaborative Consumption (OCC). The intention is to improve user experience and design requirements to support OCC at the socio-technical design level. OCC facilitates sharing, swapping, trading, or renting products, services, and resources, via the computer-mediated interactions. Etsy, an online marketplace and community for handmade and craft goods, is the focus of this study as a community in which OCC takes place. The evaluation of online communities by using an ethnographic approach is an equally important question which this study investigates. Due to a lack of standard methods, a new combined methodological approach is proposed in this research (Predictive ethnography) and it was used in evaluation of collaborative communities to investigate the socio-technical gaps. In this approach, online ethnography complemented predictive evaluation with the aid of heuristics including sociability, usability, and user experience (UX) items. These heuristics were drawn from previous literature as the success factors for the online communities. The textual interactions from discussions of the forum and teams on Etsy that were related to these heuristics were collected and coded. Over 1000 posts from 178 threads were collected. Their frequencies were measured to demonstrate their importance, and further ethnography helped the researcher in qualitative analysis and meaning making of the textual interactions. The subsidiary question this research aims to answer is how social capital is developed in the OCC communities. Social capital is utilised as a tool to enhance the understanding of the socio-technical requirements of OCC communities and to improve the process of social capital generation. The same above-mentioned methodological approach (Predictive ethnography) was applied with the heuristics replaced by social capital measures. Over 9500 posts collected from 97 threads from the textual discussions of different Etsy teams. This study investigates the social capital formation in different types of teams such as topic-based ones that are created based on the common interest topics, and location-based ones that are created based on the shared locations of the members. In the topic-based teams, a significant amount of knowledge sharing and intellectual capital was observed. In location-based teams, most interactions were within social interactions and relational capital. The new method proposed in this research has shown its effectiveness in gaining insight from the natural discussions of the members. In total, 33 socio-technical gaps were identified and presented with possible recommendations. The most significant gaps concerned: Trust creation features; relevant rules of behaviour; clear displayed policies; and social presence tools.

Os dispositivos médicos desempenham um papel crucial na gestão de doenças crônicas, e são utilizados por diferentes usuários, em configurações variadas de ambientes, para o tratamento de diferentes doenças com diferentes níveis de gravidade. Esta dissertação tem por objetivo contribuir na captação, mensuração e análise da percepção do usuário em relação ao uso do dispositivo médico. Como objetivos secundários, tem-se: (i) analisar na literatura abordagens e técnicas de avaliação da usabilidade de dispositivos médicos sob a perspectiva do usuário; (ii) desenvolver e ilustrar, através de um estudo de caso com pacientes de hemodiálise, uma metodologia para avaliação da usabilidade de dispositivos médicos; e (iii) apresentar um procedimento de análise para avaliar a usabilidade de dispositivos médicos na perspectiva do paciente de hemodiálise, identificando quais características do contexto de uso podem afetar esta avaliação. Para atingir os objetivos de pesquisa, a dissertação é composta por três artigos que contemplam cada um dos objetivos mencionados anteriormente. No primeiro artigo foram avaliados 42 estudos, na qual cinco abordagens foram mais comumente utilizadas: entrevista, testes de usabilidade, percurso cognitivo, observação e questionário. Para o segundo e terceiro artigos, um estudo de caso com pacientes de hemodiálise foi conduzido. Questionários estruturados foram aplicados para pacientes em ambientes reais de uso, contendo questões a cerca da percepção de uso (máquina, procedimento e ambiente). No segundo artigo uma metodologia para avaliação centrada no usuário de dispositivos médicos foi proposta. Um fluxo detalhado foi gerado, composto por três etapas: planejamento, estudo de campo e análise dos dados, desdobrados em nove subetapas. No terceiro artigo, duas técnicas estatísticas, a Análise de Variância Multivariada (MANOVA) e Análise Fatorial Exploratória (AFE), foram empregadas para investigar a existência de diferenças nos níveis de satisfação do usuário com os aspectos de uso, além da extração de um menor número de fatores para explicar a satisfação geral do usuário. / Medical devices play a crucial role in chronic disease management, and are used by different users in different environments settings for the treatment of different diseases with different levels of severity. This dissertation aims at contributing to the capture, user perception of measurement and analysis regarding the use of the medical device. As secondary objectives, we have: (i) review the literature approaches and techniques for assessing the usability of medical devices in the user's perspective; (Ii) develop and illustrate through a case study of hemodialysis patients, a methodology for evaluating the usability of medical devices; and (iii) present an analysis procedure to evaluate the usability of medical devices in the hemodialysis patient's perspective, identifying context of use characteristics may affect this assessment. To achieve the research objectives, the dissertation consists of three articles that address each of the objectives mentioned above. In the first article were evaluated 42 studies in which five approaches have been most commonly used: interview, usability testing, cognitive route, observation and questionnaire. For the second and third articles, a case study of hemodialysis patients was conducted. Structured questionnaires were administered to patients in actual use environments, with questions about the perception of use (machine, process and environment). In the second article a methodology to assess user-centric medical device has been proposed. A detailed flow was generated, consisting of three stages: planning, field of study and analysis of the data, broken down into nine sub-steps. In the third article, two technical statistics, Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) were employed to investigate the existence of differences in user satisfaction levels with aspects of use, and the extraction of a minor number of factors to explain the overall user satisfaction.

Orientador: Luis Carlos Paschoarelli / Banca: José Carlos Plácido da Silva / Banca: Paulo Kawauchi / Resumo: A obesidade é uma doença de caráter crônico que se caracteriza pelo acúmulo excessivo de gordura no organismo e acarreta graves problemas de saúde, além de transtornos psicológicos e dificuldade de acesso a muitos produtos e equipamentos. Com um crescimento em proporções epidêmicas, vem sendo considerada um dos maiores problemas de saúde na maioria dos países desenvolvidos, com destaque para a obesidade mórbida. Em 1995, o impacto da obesidade para os custos com saúde nos EUA foi de U$ 99,2 bilhões, com cerca de um terço da população apresentando-se acima do peso. No Brasil, em 1994, a obesidade atingia 11% da população e 40,6% das pessoas estavam com sobrepeso. Além do preconceito e discriminação decorrentes de seu aspecto físico, os obesos enfrentam dificuldades na utilização de produtos e equipamentos, pois são projetados para a faixa média da população. Referente a isto, muitas empresas têm investido no aperfeiçoamento de novas tecnologias, entretanto não há normas sobre as características que os produtos devem ter para se adequarem às necessidades físicas e psicológicas dos usuários obesos. Leis e decretos foram criados em algumas cidades referentes a essa problemática, ma ainda são pouco eficazes, pois, não há meios de projetar interfaces confiáveis, adequadas a esse público considerando a ausência de normas técnicas específicas no país... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: Obesity is a chronic disease which is characterized by the extreme accumulation of fat in the organism and causes serious health problems, besides psychological disturbances and restrained access to many products and equipments. Whith a growth in epidemic ratios, it has being considered one of the biggest health problems in the majority of the developed countries, with distinction to morbid obesity. In 1995, the impact of the obesity in the health expenses of the U.S.A. was of U$ 99.2 billion, with about one third of the population overweighted. Recently it has been growing quickly also in developing countries due to, among others factors, the dissemination of occidental habits, as sedentarines and ingestion of foods rich in fat and sugar. In Brazil, in 1994, the obesity reached 11% of the population and 40.6% of the people were overweighted. Besides the prejudice and discrimination deriving from its physical aspect, the obese individuals are facing difficulties in using products and equipment, since they are designed for the population average range. Regarding to this, many companies have invested in the improvement of new tecnologies; however there are not norms about the characteristics the products must have to be adjusted to the physical and psychological necessities of the obese users. Laws aqnd decrees had been created in some cities referring to this problem, but still they are little efficient, because there are not ways to design trustworthy and adequate interfaces to this public since there are not specific technical norms in the country...(Complete abstract, click electronic address below) / Mestre

The purpose of this bachelor’s thesis is to examine how students at Högskolan i Borås experience the web-scale discovery service Summon, based on the theoretical model of “The Five Dimensions of Usability”, defined by Whitney Quesenbery. The study aims to answer the following research questions: How do the students execute search assignments in the Summon interface? How intuitive and easy to navigate is the system from a user perspective? What are the students’ opinions about Summon, regarding usability?Five students with varying information seeking skills are asked to perform search assignments during controlled observation, followed by semi-structured interviews. Our findings are presented in the context of previous research and show correspondence with the results of related studies. Our results show that users are comfortable in navigating the Summon interface, but that more user education is desirable for them to be able to fully take advantage of the service provided. / Program: Bibliotekarie

Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs) potentially represent a way to deliver services to the public that would previously have require human staff. Making an ECA available online allows out-of-hours access to information and services, as well as allowing users to access the information anywhere there is an internet connection. As handheld devices grow in popularity and become the primary source of internet connection for many users, it is necessary to examine whether an ECA is appropriate for use on a handheld device, and what factors affect its usability. Over the course of four experiments this research examines how using a handheld device is different from using a PC, how an ECA should be presented on a handheld device, how using an ECA service in a public space affects the experience, and how an ECA should interact with users. It was determined that the usability of an ECA service is not affected by the device on which it is experienced, that on smaller screens or in demanding environments the ECA should be emphasised, and that text should be included in an ECA service as long as the ECA remains intermittently visible. It was also found that usability results from the laboratory can be generalised to the real world, that ECA services are appropriate for all ages and genders, that incorporating disclosure elements into an ECA service is a beneficial feature, and that while financial topics are appropriate to be discussed with an ECA, they are best kept to general rather than personal information. The following chapters present the necessary literary background to the field, before covering each experiment individually, and finally presenting detailed conclusions about the usability of ECAs on handheld devices.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-04-22T22:11:13Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERTACAO ALFREDO ALLE.pdf: 2005658 bytes, checksum: 3a4fa51f62d6ce48c4a56527d9f67f51 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-12-03 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The man-machine interfaces are an important element of control processing units of oil. It is through them that the operating personnel keeps the process variables within the limits of safety and quality. Usability measures the ease with which an interface can be manipulated and the satisfaction in their use among other attributes. This study aims to evaluate the operating screens s usability attributes for a distillation unit of an oil refinery by measuring interface user s performance and subjective satisfaction in it s use. The evaluation of current system s usability level was accomplished through the application of standardized forms in operating personnel, engineering and maintenance involved in developing and operating the system in addition to measuring performance in the tasks execution. The survey identified the groups most affected by the current configuration of the interface and showed that the attributes of memorization and use efficiency were those with greater potential for improvement. Also as a result of this work, was identified some points that can be improved to increase performance in use and can increase the satisfaction of its users. Keywords: Usability, Security, Performance. / As interfaces homem-máquina são um elemento importante do sistema de controle de unidades de processamento de petróleo. Por meio delas o pessoal de operação mantém as variáveis de processo dentro dos limites de segurança e qualidade. A usabilidade mede a facilidade com que uma interface pode ser manipulada e satisfação do usuário ao usá-la, dentre outros atributos. Este trabalho relata uma pesquisa feita cujo objetivo foi avaliar atributos de usabilidade das telas de operação de uma unidade de destilação de uma refinaria de petróleo através da medição de satisfação subjetiva e desempenho dos usuários na sua utilização. A avaliação do nível atual de usabilidade do sistema foi realizada através da aplicação de formulários padronizados para o pessoal de operação, engenharia e manutenção envolvidos no desenvolvimento e operação do sistema além de medição do desempenho na execução de tarefas. A pesquisa identificou os grupos mais afetados pela atual configuração da interface, bem como mostrou que os atributos de memorização e eficiência no uso foram aqueles com maiores possibilidades para melhorias. Também como resultado deste trabalho foram identificados alguns pontos que podem ser melhorados para aumentar o desempenho em uso e que podem aumentar a satisfação dos seus usuários. Como conclusão, a pesquisa mostrou que, para o contexto estudado, a freqüência de uso influencia mais o desempenho do usuário que a experiência no uso ou o conhecimento da unidade que a interface controla. Concluiu também que mudanças em pop-up de controladores, posições dos botões de navegação e telas de visualização de alarmes podem melhorar o desempenho e a satisfação dos usuários.

Possuir uma interface que oferece uma boa experiência do usuário tornou-se um fator crítico para o sucesso em sistemas de informação. As diferenças culturais, no entanto, podem ter um impacto significativo em sua experiência, mas raramente são levadas em consideração durante o projeto interface e avaliação, particularmente no Brasil, um país multicultural de dimensões continentais. O objetivo deste trabalho foi investigar se as diferenças culturais entre as cinco macrorregiões socioeconômica do Brasil são profundas o suficiente para afetar a experiência do usuário em interfaces baseadas na Web e, em caso afirmativo, como. Foi realizado um experimento com 110 participantes, 22 por região, em cinco capitais brasileiras: Belém, Salvador, Goiânia, São Paulo e Porto Alegre. Comparou-se as diferenças culturais identificadas pelo VSM, instrumento de mapeamento de dimensões culturais criado por Hofstede, com o desempenho em tarefas e a avaliação, utilizando o questionário de experiência de uso QUIS, de um sistema bancário fictício Internet. As diferenças culturais foram identificadas e correlacionadas com as diferenças na experiência do usuário, particularmente no que diz respeito à quantidade de informação e cores exibidas na interface. / Having an interface that provides a good user experience has become a critical factor for success in information systems. Cultural differences, however, may have a significant impact in this experience, but are seldom taken into account during interface design and evaluation, particularly in Brazil, a multicultural country with continental dimensions. Our goal was to investigate whether the cultural differences between the five socio-economical macro-regions of Brazil are profound enough to impact user experience in web-based interfaces and, if so, how. An experiment with 110 participants, 22 per region, was conducted in five Brazilian state capitals: Belém, Salvador, Goiânia, São Paulo and Porto Alegre. We compared the cultural differences identified by VSM, a cultural dimensions mapping tool created by Hofstede, with performance on tasks and user experience evaluations, using the QUIS questionnaire, of a fictitious Internet Banking System. Cultural differences were identified and correlated with differences in user experience, particularly in regards to the amount of information and colors shown in the interface.

This thesis presents the concept of hybrid semantic-document models to aid information management when using standards for complex technical domains such as military data communication. These standards are traditionally text based documents for human interpretation, but prose sections can often be ambiguous and can lead to discrepancies and subsequent implementation problems. Many organisations produce semantic representations of the material to ensure common understanding and to exploit computer aided development. In developing these semantic representations, no relationship is maintained to the original prose. Maintaining relationships between the original prose and the semantic model has key benefits, including assessing conformance at a semantic level, and enabling original content authors to explicitly define their intentions, thus reducing ambiguity and facilitating computer aided functionality. Through the use of a case study method based on the military standard MIL-STD-6016C, a framework of relationships is proposed. These relationships can integrate with common document modelling techniques and provide the necessary functionality to allow semantic content to be mapped into document views. These relationships are then generalised for applicability to a wider context. Additionally, this framework is coupled with a templating approach which, for repeating sections, can improve consistency and further enhance quality. A reflective approach to model driven web rendering is presented and evaluated. This reflective approach uses self-inspection at runtime to read directly from the model, thus eliminating the need for any generative processes which result in data duplication across source used for different purpose.

The current state of email security is lacking, and the need for end-to-end encryption of email is clear. Recent research has begun to make progress towards usable, secure email for the masses (i.e., novice users without IT support). In this paper, we evaluate the usability implications of three different key management approaches: PGP, IBE, and passwords. Our work is the first formal A/B evaluation of the usability of different key management schemes, and the largest formal evaluation of secure email ever performed. Our results reveal interesting inherent usability trade-offs for each approach to secure email. Furthermore, our research results in the first fully-implemented PGP-based secure email system that has been shown to be usable for novice users. We share qualitative feedback from participants that provides valuable insights into user attitudes regarding each key management approach and secure email generally. Finally, our work provides an important validation of methodology and design principles described in prior work.

People interact through language and conversation everyday, children learn from an early age to express a variety of intents and responses in an understandable way. But the interaction form most commonly used in systems today is nothing like this. Instead, it is dominated by interactions such as button presses, scrolling, drag and drop, swipe gestures etc. What benefits and drawbacks can be observed when transforming such an application to one where users can use their natural inclination towards conversation to converse directly with the system. This exploratory study compares the usability of a conversational interaction form against the 'de facto'-standard that has a point and click interface. To assess usability differences, a chatbot prototype was designed and implemented. The prototype was developed in partnership with the consulting company Knowit and one of the leading Swedish clothing retailers. This prototype was subsequently tested against the clothing retailer's current application. The two interaction strategies were compared for usability for first and second time use. The results show some self reported usability differences in second time use favouring the chatbot prototype.