Search

Assistive technologies have allowed people with disabilities to perform daily tasks with greater independence and autonomy, especially for visually impaired people. Using smart home solutions allows these users to control their homes with less cognitive and physical demand. However, making such applications accessible to meet the needs of visually impaired users, especially in developing countries, remains a challenge. This paper investigates the perceptions of these users about home automation technologies through semi-structured interviews. A total of 20 visually impaired people participated in the interviews. A thematic analysis revealed results concerning the following themes: (1) how people go about their lives at home and around, how people interact with current appliances, objects and environments, (3) how people perceive their attitude to technologies, (4) the Brazilian context of smart homes, (5) what people think smart homes should do and (6) envisaging ways of interacting with smart home systems. The results obtained provide significant insight into the needs of visually-impaired people in Brazil, with analysis of issues that are common with previous studies in more developed countries and specific issues that have important particularities and implications in Brazil and other developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

': Digital native' has been a buzzword within the last decade particularly in educational research. Learners born after the 1980s are presumed somehow different just because they were born in a digital world. Although scholars have labelled these young generations as digital natives or millennials as a homogenous construct, the questions of how and for what purpose(s) these younger generations use these newer technologies remain unresolved. Acknowledging the abundance of literature documenting adults' viewing their younger ones different throughout history, this study investigates the relationship between socioeconomic level variables, paternal and maternal education level, household income, and their internet use frequency and purposes. Data were gathered from 327 undergraduate students, born between 1997 and 2000, enrolled at a Turkey state university. Findings indicate that maternal and paternal education levels significantly influence the internet use duration of the younger generation, yet observe no significant effect on household income. The results also reveal significant differences in participants' internet use for academic and a variety of non-academic purposes concerning socioeconomic status variables. Overall, simply being born into a technological world does not make the younger generation a monolithic group of tech-savvy individuals as their adults assume them to be. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This field experiment aimed to address the issue of problematic smartphone usage (PSU) by examining the effectiveness of two frequently advised techniques to deal with PSU: moving problematic applications to a different page of the phone and changing the phone into greyscale. For one week, 97 student participants used their smartphone under one of the following three conditions: move app, greyscale, or control condition. Compared to the week before the intervention, participants significantly reduced their objective smartphone usage, but their self-reported PSU increased. These effects also emerged in the control group, which might have been due to heightened awareness of the participants of their smartphone usage. A major implication of the study is the need of using multiple outcome measures to understand the complex relationship between perceptions and behaviour. This study could be used as a blueprint for future research examining the effectiveness of interventions in the field of PSU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media addiction became a serious concern that has received more attention from the public health sector due to its addictive features and its correlated psychological consequences. Thus, this study aimed to analyze the direct effect of SMA on academic performance, and the indirect effects on psychological reactions among university students in Jordan. A random survey in two universities was conducted in a sample of 510 university students; 31.4% were males and 68.6% were females. Their average age was 21.38 years (SD = 2.12). To test and validate the research model, advanced data analysis (Structural Equation Modelling-Partial Least Squares [SEM-PLS]) was applied in this research. Findings revealed that social media addiction had an indirect effect on academic performance, however; it has a direct impact on students' stress and anxiety levels. The stress could influence anxiety levels, which could directly affect students' academic performance. Further, students' stress levels had a direct effect on anxiety, which could result in depression. Given the importance of social media addiction and its potentially substantive effects on students' psychological reactions and impact of these reactions on academic performance, similar studies are recommended in other universities various fields to obtain a more conclusive result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With online-learning becoming the new mode of learning, providers need to understand the barriers that learners face. The objective of this study is to utilise a multi-method approach to examine the barriers that affect learner's intention to use e-Learning services. The multi-method approach consists of qualitative semi-structured interviews of 8 participants, topic-modelling on 3227 reviews from Coursera dataset and 463 responses from an online survey for quantitative analysis. The interviews revealed themes like 'rigid-course-structure', 'complexity', 'quality-of-facilitator', and 'value-addition'. The topic-modelling approach extracted themes like, 'technique-of-teaching', 'language-of-speaker', 'course-content', 'privacy', 'payment-issues', etc. The empirical study revealed that value [course-content ('course-content', 'value-addition') and facilitator-issues ('quality-of-facilitator', 'handling-of-queries')], tradition [trust ('privacy concerns', 'authenticity', 'reliability')] and risk [payment issues ('payment-failures', 'refund issues')] barriers have a notable negative impact on usage-intention. The originality of this works lies in the fact that it explores payment-failure, facilitator-quality, and course-value affecting the acceptance of e-Learning services from the innovation-resistance-theory stance utilising data from various sources (qualitative data from interviews and online reviews and quantitative survey-based data). This work has also discussed different limitations in this study and scope for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of mobile phone and factors influencing usage have least been explored in spite of its relevance in mHealth adoption. We conducted a descriptive exploratory study to evaluate the use of mobile phone alarm application, text messaging and voice call among HIV positive clients. We randomly selected 362 respondents who were 18–65 years and receive care from two health facilities in Accra, Ghana. Questionnaires were administered and data analysed to describe and predict mobile phone use. SPSS version 20 was used to process data for analysis. Findings revealed respondent (n = 338, 93%) did not share their mobile phones. Voice call was predominantly used (n = 227, 63%) while text messaging and mobile alarm functions were sparingly used. Majority (n = 285, 78.9%) did not use the mobile phone application to support adherence. Age and employment predicted the use of mobile phone alarm (OR ± 1.56, p < 0.05), test messaging (OR ± 1.48, p < 0.05) and voice calls (OR ± 1.25, p < 0.05). We observed that younger age and employment influence the use of mobile phones. Voice calls are more acceptable because it is simple and easy to use. Knowledge and persuasion are fundamental to mobile phone literacy skills development and should be integrated in mHealth interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many digital technologies, such as social media, community systems, and public displays, have been studied to explore how people engage with each other in their community. Yet little is known about how one form of technology, location-based games (LBGs), can support urban residents in community awareness, city exploration, and placemaking as they navigate spaces and places in their cities. To explore this topic, we investigated the challenges urban residents faced in finding information about their community along a transit network. We then designed, developed, and evaluated an LBG called City Explorer that supports city exploration using gamification and the viewing and sharing of community information. We found that residents valued the fun, competition, and rewards afforded through play in public spaces, creating opportunities for placemaking through location services and knowledge sharing. Players also wanted additional knowledge about their transit commutes, including data about the frequency and routines of their transit rides. Collectively, such ridership data offers potential for smart city initiatives and illustrates that careful design considerations are required to balance people's needs for play, personal data, privacy, and community information acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this study is to identify a set of psychosocial variables and design domains important for game designers to encourage active ageing, well-being and quality of life. Sixty adult learners at four universities of third age were randomly assigned to three groups: the experimental group (G1), who tested firstly a game-based learning platform (GBLP) and then a computer-assisted platform (CAP); the comparison group (G2), who tested firstly the CAP and then the GBLP and the control group (G3) that did not take part in the intervention. Participants were assessed on their health-related well-being and quality of life, using the SF36v2 and WHOQOL-BREF scales before and after each experiment. Findings suggest that there were differences between the group type and their perception on mental health (F(2,57) = 3.771, p = .029) and general healthrelated well-being (F(2,57) = 5.231, p = .008), in which the GBLP showed improvements relative to the CAP. The environment and mental health were some of the psychosocial domains that should be considered, whereas storytelling, context-aware challenges, game space, immediate feedback, role-playing and social engagement were relevant design domains for these games. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]