hci

Facebook and Privacy: A Guest Post by Kelly Caine

May 8, 2010
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Many of my friends have threatened to leave Facebook because of their concerns over privacy, but for the first time, this week one of them actually made good on the threat. In his “Dear John” letter, my friend Yohann summarized the issue: I don’t feel that I am in control of the information I share on Facebook, and of the [...]

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Evil Interfaces

May 3, 2010

Excellent post at the EFF describing “evil interfaces“, or interfaces that may be deliberately designed to make you do things you did not intend to do: As Conti describes it, a good interface is meant to help users achieve their goals as easily as possible. But an “evil” interface is meant to trick users into doing things they don’t want [...]

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Facetted Navigation Primer

April 22, 2010

A List Apart recently posted an excerpt from Chapter 4 of Search Patterns by Peter Morville and Jeffery Callender that presents a great description of facetted navigation (FN), a type of search interface. FN is contrasted with just text searching (e.g., Google), taxonomies (e.g., Windows Explorer or Mac Finder), and tag-based interfaces (e.g., Flickr).  See illustrative figure below if you [...]

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Online Banking Should Be Easier for Seniors

April 1, 2010

A new study has identified how poorly designed online and electronic banking is for older users and will seek to find remedies. From the news article in www.theengineer.co.uk: The new assistive technology developed by Newcastle and York researchers will be tried out by a variety of focus groups over 18 months. Some ideas include a wallet shaped foldable display. One [...]

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Soft Keyboard: Smart Idea or Incredibly Frustrating?

March 22, 2010

ThickButtons is a replacement soft-keyboard for Android phones that works in a very unique way. It uses the predictive word functionality available in many soft keyboards (where it can predict what word you are likely to be typing based on what you’ve typed) but takes that one step further by enlarging the next letter on the keyboard. Take a look: [...]

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HF Potpourri

March 8, 2010
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Touch Usability’s Kevin Arthur is soliciting input for a presentation he’s doing at UPA Designing for Human’s Rob Tannen posts an online video of a presentation (ergonomics for interaction designers) he gave at the School of Visual Arts in New York Edward Tufte will help us understand and track where stimulus funds are going (via Slashdot) The Internet does not [...]

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3D is better than 2D, right?

January 22, 2010
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It seems that every few years, 3D technology is in the zeitgeist (with 3d movies).  User interfaces are not immune to the frenzy of 3D.  However, there is quite a bit of past research in 3D interfaces (I won’t even scratch the surface but see this simple Google Scholar search to start). Much, but not all, relate to navigation in [...]

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Web-based tool to measure task workload

December 3, 2009
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I frequently use the NASA TLX workload assessment tool to measure a user’s perceived workload after they complete a task (e.g., complete an information search task). When the test is administered with paper it can be quite laborious to administer and score. A stand-alone computer-based version has been available but has some usability issues itself. For one thing, the TLX [...]

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Healthcare IT does not save money, increase efficiency

December 1, 2009
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The reasons for widescale introduction of information technology into health care is that: it will reduce costs, and reduce errors. We know that in some cases it may not necessarily reduce errors.  Now we know that it doesn’t necessarily reduce costs.  Harvard researchers examined 4000 “wired” hospitals to determine the effect of widespread adoption of IT in hospitals. They found [...]

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HFES Conference in San Antonio, Part 2 – Eliciting Knowledge Structures

October 27, 2009

I‘d like to highlight some of the talks I enjoyed last week and point our readers to their research. First up, we have: The Influence of Rating Method on Knowledge Structures. Chad C. Tossell, Rice U.; Brent A. Smith, U.S. Air Force Academy; Roger W. Schvaneveldt, Arizona State U., Polytechnic This talk was a great introduction to understanding how we [...]

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Usability issues in navigating your life

September 8, 2009

Gordon Bell, a Microsoft Researcher, is recording his life in excruciating detail in a project dubbed MyLifeBits: Web sites he’s visited (221,173), photos taken (56,282), emails sent and received (156,041), docs written and read (18,883), phone conversations had (2,000), photos snapped by the SenseCam hanging around his neck (66,000), songs listened to (7,139), and videos taken by him (2,164). Why [...]

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A Blind Person’s Interactions With Technology

July 30, 2009

The latest issue of Communications of the ACM has an interesting story on the unique issues in interface design and usability when the user is blind.  The author/researchers Kristen Shinohara and Josh Tenenberg conducted interviews to examine limitations in current accessibility technologies for the blind. Showing off her BrailleNote, she said she prefers reading Braille, as opposed to listening to [...]

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When Users Complain: Blackboard

July 17, 2009
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There is a great article over at Inside Higher Ed. describing what happens when a company without evidence of a usability process finally asks its users for feedback. At an open “listening session” with top executives of Blackboard here Wednesday at the company’s annual conference, college officials expressed frustration with many of the system’s fundamental characteristics. At times, the meeting [...]

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Augmented Reality for Everyone

July 16, 2009

There have been many recent examples of consumer friendly augmented reality applications for smart phone users.  I remember reading about augmented reality research over a decade ago (in an HCI class) and remembering how bulky, expensive, experimental, and out-of-reach it seemed back then.  The systems back then required head-mounted displays and were physically attached to cameras and large computers.  Now [...]

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Time.com article on Anne’s research with Games & Aging

July 13, 2009
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Our own Anne McLaughlin was featured in a recent article in Time.com.  Anne and her colleagues Jason Allaire (NCSU) and Maribeth Gandy (Georgia Tech) were recently awarded a $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to study using games to moderate cognitive decline in older adults. Their plan is to study what parts of games might help cognitive performance [...]

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New Interface for Online Banking

July 2, 2009

There are many iPhone applications that integrate the phone camera with software in novel ways.  I came across this video demonstrating how it can be used to deposit checks electronically. The interface demonstration starts at the 1 minute mark if you would like to skip the advertisement.* *I’m not sure if it counts as an advertisement when most people aren’t [...]

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