Search

Abstract: Group awareness is critical to improving the collaboration efficiency of a group, especially when teammates are geographically separated while working on the web. Previous studies have focused mainly on enhancing the awareness of the current working status of teammates, such as web pages being viewed, or other web activities, and they seldom take into account past working/browsing information, such as web pages visited or past web activities. However, the awareness of this kind of historical information can be useful for group collaboration. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to sharing web page visitation information among teammates. We present the design and implementation of our prototype, named Shared Browsing History. We then describe two user studies in which three groups with eight participants each used the prototype. The results of these studies show that our approach was effective in enhancing participants’ group awareness and improved group collaborative efficiency in programming and software development tasks. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: When we develop an input device for users to communicate with computers, we have to take into account that end-users must consider the utilization of the device to be effective, efficient and satisfactory. Users whose expectations are unmet by the interface will tend to abandon it. In this paper we present a vision-based interface for motor-impaired users; a multidisciplinary group developed this interface. The user’s preferences are a critical issue when selecting an access device; therefore, user requirements should be included in the design. Usability evaluation should be integrated into relevant phases of software development. In order to evaluate the design, we present a process with multiple user studies at different development stages. We describe the combination of a development project and its implementation, with user experience considerations embedded in the process. Finally, we studied the performance of the interface through several tests, paying special attention to satisfaction and fatigue. From our results we observed that although several users found the interface tiring, their satisfaction level was encouraging, suggesting the interface is usable. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]