abstract: Providing the user with good user experience is complex and involves multiple factors. One of the factors that can impact the user experience is animation. Animation can be tricky to get right and needs to be understood by designers. Animations that are too fast might not accomplish anything and having them too slow could slow the user down causing them to get frustrated. This study explores the subject of animation and its speed by trying to answer the following questions – 1) Do people notice whether an animation is present 2) Does animation affect the enjoyment of a transition? and 3) If animation does affect enjoyment, what is the effect of different animation speeds? The study was conducted using 3 prototypes of an application to order bottled water in which the transitions between different brands of bottled water were animated at 0ms, 300ms and 650ms. A survey was conducted to see if the participants were able to spot any difference between the prototypes and if they did, which one they preferred. It was found that most people did not recognize any difference between the prototypes. Even people who recognized a difference between the prototypes did not have any preference of speed. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Human Systems Engineering 2019

We have created a question type that allows teachers to easily create questions, helps provide an intuitive user experience for students to take questions, and reduces the time it currently takes teachers to grade and provide feedback to students. This question type, or an "annotated" question, will allow teachers to test students' knowledge in a particular subject area by having students "annotate" or mark text and video sources to answer questions. Through user testing we determined that overall the interface and the implemented system decrease the time it would take a teacher to grade annotated quiz questions. However, there are some limitations based on the way students answered text annotated questions that would require a rewrite of the user interface and system design to decrease the grading time even more for teachers.

Game reviews play an important role in both the culture and business of games the words of a reviewer can have an influential effect on the commercial success of a video game. While reviews are currently used by game developers to aid in important decisions such as project financing and employee bonuses, the effect of game reviews on players is not known. Additionally, the use of game reviews to improve evaluation techniques has received little attention. In this thesis we investigate the effect of game reviews on player experience and perceptions of quality. We show that negative reviews cause a significant effect on how players perceive their in-game experience, and that this effect is a post-play cognitive rationalization of the play experience with the previously-read review text. To address this effect we designed and deployed a new heuristic evaluation technique that specifically uses game reviews to create a fine-grained prioritized list of usability problems based on the frequency, impact, and persistence of each problem. By using our technique we are able to address the most common usability problems identified by game reviews, thus reducing the overall level of negativity found within the review text. Our approach helps to control and eliminate the snowballing effect that can be produced by players reading reviews and subsequently posting their own reviews, and thus improve the commercial success of a game.

This thesis investigates how web agencys in Stockholm use, value and incoroprate the terms usability, user experience and interaction design in their work process. The purpose of this study is to investigate how creative professionals works with the notions of usability, user experience and interaction design with focus on the end user. Our definition of creative professionals is every employee at a web agency involved in the work process of developing digital artefacts in any capacity. We wanted to investigate how these notions are considered, consciously or unconsciously, during the workprocess. Semi-structured interviews were conducted at three different web agencys with eight different employees. The result of the study has shown that all web agencys have a constant focus on the end-user during the entire development of digital artefacts towards their customers.This focus is kept during the whole process, from the development of a concept based on knowledge on both the customer and the end-users, until the release of the end-product. The work and design methods differs between the different web agencys in which way they incorporate end-users in the process.

Game reviews play an important role in both the culture and business of games the words of a reviewer can have an influential effect on the commercial success of a video game. While reviews are currently used by game developers to aid in important decisions such as project financing and employee bonuses, the effect of game reviews on players is not known. Additionally, the use of game reviews to improve evaluation techniques has received little attention. In this thesis we investigate the effect of game reviews on player experience and perceptions of quality. We show that negative reviews cause a significant effect on how players perceive their in-game experience, and that this effect is a post-play cognitive rationalization of the play experience with the previously-read review text. To address this effect we designed and deployed a new heuristic evaluation technique that specifically uses game reviews to create a fine-grained prioritized list of usability problems based on the frequency, impact, and persistence of each problem. By using our technique we are able to address the most common usability problems identified by game reviews, thus reducing the overall level of negativity found within the review text. Our approach helps to control and eliminate the snowballing effect that can be produced by players reading reviews and subsequently posting their own reviews, and thus improve the commercial success of a game.

Context. Augmented Reality (AR) is a technique that provides additional and varied information to a real environment. The compatibility to smartphones makes AR applications suitable for location based, social, advertisement as well as education oriented applications. Objectives. This study explores if AR is a suitable method of information visualization that can enhance User Experience(UX) comparedto more traditional methods. The information this project focuses on is 3D model and animation information. Methods. This work utilizes a comparative experiment where subjects get to test and evaluate two prototypes, one consisting of static, rendered images and a video and the other being an interactive mobileAR application. Results. Results were gathered with the Attrakdiff™ User Experience questionnaire and an interview. Conclusions. The experiment showed that there is a possibility to enhance user experience when visualizing 3D model and animation information with the help of mobile AR applications.

As smartphones become more ubiquitous, increasing amounts of information about smartphone users are created, collected, and shared. This information may pose privacy and security risks to the smartphone user. The risks may vary from government surveillance to theft of financial information. Previous work in the area of smartphone privacy and security has both identified specific security flaws and examined users’ expectations and behaviors. However, there has not been a broad examination of the smartphone ecosystem to determine the risks to users from smartphone data sharing and the possible mitigations. Two of the five studies in this work examine the smartphone data sharing ecosystem to identify risks and mitigations. The first study uses multi-stakeholder expert interviews to identify risks to users and the mitigations. A second study examines app developers in order to quantify the risky behaviors and identify opportunities to improve security and privacy. In the remaining three of five studies discussed in this work, we examine one specific risk mitigation that has been popular with policy-makers: privacy notices for consumers. If done well, privacy notices should inform smartphone users about the risks and allow them to make informed decisions about data collection. Unfortunately, previous research has found that existing privacy notices do not help smartphone users, as they are neither noticed nor understood. Through user studies, we evaluate options to improve notices. We identify opportunities to capture the attention of users and improve understanding by examining the timing and content of notices. Overall, this work attempts to inform public policy around smartphone privacy and security. We find novel opportunities to mitigate risks by understanding app developers’ work and behaviors. Also, recognizing the current focus on privacy notices, we attempt to frame the debate by examining how users’ attention to and comprehension of notices can be improved through content and timing.

abstract: The International Standards Organization (ISO) documentation utilizes Fitts’ law to determine the usability of traditional input devices like mouse and touchscreens for one- or two-dimensional operations. To test the hypothesis that Fitts’ Law can be applied to hand/air gesture based computing inputs, Fitts’ multi-directional target acquisition task is applied to three gesture based input devices that utilize different technologies and two baseline devices, mouse and touchscreen. Three target distances and three target sizes were tested six times in a randomized order with a randomized order of the five input technologies. A total of 81 participants’ data were collected for the within subjects design study. Participants were instructed to perform the task as quickly and accurately as possible according to traditional Fitts’ testing procedures. Movement time, error rate, and throughput for each input technology were calculated. Additionally, no standards exist for equating user experience with Fitts’ measures such as movement time, throughput, and error count. To test the hypothesis that a user’s experience can be predicted using Fitts’ measures of movement time, throughput and error count, an ease of use rating using a 5-point scale for each input type was collected from each participant. The calculated Mean Opinion Scores (MOS) were regressed on Fitts’ measures of movement time, throughput, and error count to understand the extent to which they can predict a user’s subjective rating. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Applied Psychology 2015

This thesis sets out to examine the scope for integrated knowledge based planning systems. Five planning departments in the South East Midlands of the UK have been investigated through environmental appraisal, conceptual modelling and empirical evidence gathering. The results of analyses suggest a number of configurations, which could provide reformation instruments in the context of technological innovation, social coordination and knowledge management for sustainable development. This research study provided the insights and learning into how to successfully develop and implement an integrated knowledge based planning system. The primary aspiration of this research was to develop a robust pragmatic framework to support an efficient and effective delivery of the planning system in the UK local government towards sustainable development. A mixed research methodology was employed for the research fieldwork. Firstly, an extensive review of literature took place to summarise and synthesise the arguments of the key research propositions contributing to the development of an integrated knowledge based planning system. Secondly, exploratory fieldwork took place as an appropriate methodology in this study, applying the semi-structured interview and questionnaire techniques to gather data from senior level planning officials who were directly involved in the planning system transformation. This study was initiated by examining the previous planning environment in the UK local government and its transformation from its conventional state to a contemporary emergent state. The fieldwork was carried out to identify the key supportive and preventive knowledge factors for both explicit and tacit knowledge domains. As a result, the nature of successful technology based initiatives was determined and solutions to the possible emerging challenges were appraised.

The use of visual aesthetics has been found to contribute to feelings of a positive Web experience. Accordingly, studies report strong correlations between aesthetics and facets of user experience like usability and credibility, but does this hold for accessibility also? Some believe that Web aesthetics impedes accessibility, while most Web designers perceive that the accessibility initiative is restrictive design-wise. These misconceptions have slowed down the advancement of an inclusive Web. Firstly, it is clear that the relationship between Web aesthetics and accessibility is still poorly understood. Secondly, tools capable of analysing the aesthetic quality of Web pages and relaying associated accessibility status information are lacking. This thesis addresses these two problems. In order to investigate this relationship, the aesthetic judgements of 180 users were elicited to help classify Web pages based on their visual quality using Lavie and Tractinsky's framework. The classified Web pages were then technically and manually audited for accessibility compliance using 4 automated tools, and 11 experts who used a heuristic evaluation technique known as the Barrier Walkthrough (BW) method to check for barriers which could affect people with visual impairments. Our results consistently showed that Web pages judged on Lavie and Tractinsky's classical aesthetic dimension as being `clean' had significant correlations with accessibility, suggesting `cleanness' to be a suitable proxy measure for accessibility. Expressive dimensions showed no such correlations. This insight was used to develop the EIVAA tool aimed at predicting the aesthetic quality of Web pages and using the information to provide accessibility ratings for the pages. Quantitative evaluations show that the tool is able to predict aesthetic quality in a way that mimics gold standards, especially along the design dimension `clean' where we observed tool-human correlations as strong as 0.703, thus making the associated accessibility predictions also acceptable. We envision that our findings will give the Web community a more holistic understanding of the interactions between the use of aesthetics and accessibility, and that our tool would inform Web developers of the implications of their designs.