I had an opportunity to collaborate on a paper with Marcus. His project, briefly, is about assisting a change in behavioral patterns of youth in Africa. By the means of application development, participatory design, and incremental implementation-evaluation cycles, he aims to affect the ways people talk (or do not talk, currently) about HIV.
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As I mentioned earlier, we started working on gaze-aware interfaces during autumn 2006. One of the fruits of that research has now been published in the proceedings of the International Conference on Computers in Education, ICCE 2008 (paper is here).
We did a simple questionnaire-based analysis. The results of the analysis show some promises for implementing gaze-augmented problem-solving interfaces. Users of gaze-augmented interaction felt more immersed than the users of other two modes – dwell-time based and computer mouse. Immersion, engagement, and user-experience in general are important aspects in educational interfaces; learners engage in completing the tasks and, for example, when facing a difficult task they do not give up that easily. We also did analysis of the strategies, and we will report on those soon.
We could not attend the conference, but didn’t want to disappoint eventual audience. We thus decided to send a video instead of us. Have a look at it here. It feels that making the video was actually more time demanding than going to Taiwan and delivering the presentation. In addition, the lack of feedback is also worrying. Finally, we are not really media professionals, and you can hear and see it in the video (feedback of what could have been done better is welcome, use comments please!)
As I mentioned earlier, I am participating as a mentor in this year’s Season of Usability.
Selecting the students was very hard. There were approximately 8 applicants for each of the two projects, and unfortunately we had to reject applications of excellent guys and gals.
I am mentoring in two projects, namely in Improving HDR imaging with Qtpfsgui and in Improving Jeliot user interface and workflows. In the Qtpfsgui project, Vladimir started redesigning the user interface to improve the preview by letting the users modify the settings of operators and see instantly the outcome. In the Jeliot project, Sharad started big by studying the pedagogical principles of program animation and their effects on the design of user interfaces.
From the research point of view, the Season of Usability is an interesting way how to raise awareness of the usability issues in the OSS community. So far, they have been greatly overlooked. Being part of this is a great experience in itself.
According to news, Lapland’s entrepreneurs tremble for safety should phone-lines be dumped . The transfer of by-wire services to wireless is a process going on for a while in Finland. Especially in scarcely populated areas, the cost of keeping 50 000 lines up are high, while the transfer to gsm and wireless services is not.
It is a logical step from the operators. However, conventional phone is often the only connection a grandma living alone in Kainuu area has with the rest of world. Previously during this year we have been doing some usability research with computer users of age 70+, living in Kainuu area. Seniors use the traditional phone, all of them have serious troubles using a mobile phone (not mentioning using a computer). Answering a mobile phone-call is maybe ok, but anything behind that is a pain. Now, the lines will one day become deaf, and the only alternative is a mobile phone?
Consider this anecdotal situation we witnessed: a grandma loses her mobile phone at home. She uses her normal phone to phone her son to phone her back on her mobile phone so she can find it when it’s ringing. This illustrates the attitude well, a super small, hated, mobile phone, left somewhere. Soon, it will be the only connection to the rest of world.
PS: I hope there is a thick line to Justus’ office.
When you want to find an equivalent of engagement in Finnish, you better don’t consult a dictionary. It becomes a truly linguistic journey.
First of all, I am not looking for meaning of engagement as a promise to marriage. I am after the meaning of the word in the domain of HCI, computing and gaming. As in ‘I was so engaged playing 8-puzzle that I forgot I am controlling it using my eyes only’. Or as in ‘We build a interactive system that is more engaging than just viewing the animation passively.’
It turns out that Finnish does not have a good translation –single word– describing the multidimensional meaning of ‘engagement’. Here are terms that we found corresponding only partly with the umbrella term of engagement:
aktiivisuus, aloitteellisuus, innostuneisuus, sitoutuneisuus, osallistuminen
None single of them is engagement. It would be interesting to do a study that would measure how much each of these terms describe/contributes to the original engagement. Something like ‘Rate the game in the following dimensions’. Any proposals?
I will be participating as a mentor in this year’s Season of Usability. SoU is a series of sponsored (up to $1000) projects where students interested in usability apply to work for three months with some open-source software to improve its usability. There are nine very interesting projects, have a look at the openings, and apply!