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It is important, for our credibility as user interface designers and educators, that we practice what we preach. Many system designers and programmers remain sceptical about the need for user-centred design. To win them over, we need to be absolutely clear about what they need to do. We, as a community, propose many different methods to support naïve designers so that they will design and implement user-centred systems. One of the most popular methods is HCI design patterns – captured and formulated by experts for the sole purpose of transferring knowledge to novices. In this paper we investigate the usability of these patterns, using both theoretical and experimental analysis, and conclude that they are not usable. Hence, unfortunately, we have to conclude that we don΄t practice what we preach. We conclude the paper by making some suggestions about how we can address this situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on loyalty, trust, satisfaction and the way in which they interact in marketplace and electronic seller in consumer to consumer electronic commerce. It was found that buyers increase loyalty to electronic marketplace (EM) when they perceived satisfaction to EM and increase loyalty to seller when they perceived trust in seller, marketplace's satisfaction is influenced by trust in marketplace and trust in seller is influenced by satisfaction to seller, while trust in marketplace do not significantly positive influence buyer's loyalty to marketplace directly, satisfaction to seller do not significantly positive influence loyalty to seller directly. We also find that buyer's trust in marketplace also builds buyer's trust in sellers in marketplace. In addition, buyer's trust in sellers increases buyer's satisfaction to marketplace, buyer's loyalty to seller increases buyer's loyalty to marketplace. Seven of the nine hypotheses are supported in the research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The quality of physical distribution could be a source of differentiation and, consequently, provide a competitive advantage for the retailer. There is no consensus in the literature, however, on the components of logistics service quality, nor on the role of the retailer's investment in technology. In this context, the present paper aims at evaluating the major components of logistics service quality and technological investment, as well as analysing their impact on the results achieved by the store in terms of satisfaction and customer loyalty in different retailing sectors. As a result, we conclude that there is a need for the retailer to plan investment in technology applied to logistics in order to achieve high levels of logistics service quality through reliability and empathy, as well as customer satisfaction and loyalty. There are, however, significant differences in the importance of these variables across retail sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to apply communication theory to the study of franchisorfranchisee relationships from the franchisees΄ perspective. In this empirical and cross-sectional study, a sample is drawn from Taiwan΄s convenience stores, the density of which is the highest in the world. In total, 487 usable responses were used to examine collaborative communication, and loyalty behaviours between franchisors and franchisees. Communication direction, modality and content were found to have a positive and significant effect upon economic and social satisfaction, except for the relationship between communication content and economic relationship. In addition, franchisee economic satisfaction and social satisfaction both influence the intention of a franchisee to renew contracts and advocate on behalf of the franchise system. Insights from the analyses suggest that suitable collaborative communication can help to improve a franchisee΄s economic and social satisfaction, further enhance its willingness to remain within the franchise system, and increase its willingness to recommend the system to others. All those in the franchise system should notice the importance of collaborative communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Usability testing methods and results have evolved over the last 35 years. With new advancements being introduced every year, it is important to understand the present state of the field and opportunities for further improvement. This paper will detail the research-based methods and metrics which are being used to ensure that usability recommendations are data-driven and performance-based. By focusing on the types of usability metrics being captured during usability tests, we will attempt to illustrate how usability researchers can quantifiably measure the performance of a system, use these measurements to make meaningful changes, and subsequently illustrate the improvements in user effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper results are reported of a random sample survey of 698 residents of Prince George, British Columbia taken in May 2001. The main aim of the survey was to measure respondents' assessments of local police services in Prince George, and their relative impact on the quality of respondents' lives. Generally speaking, the evaluations were quite favourable. For example, in response to the question 'what kind of a job do you think the RCMP are doing', 30% said a 'very good job' and 38% said a 'fairly good job', compared to 2% who said they were doing a 'very poor job' and 4% more a 'fairly poor job'. Compared to a 1997 survey, fewer people thought that crime had increased in the past few years, which is actually consistent with official crime statistics. The biggest perceived problem was with speeding and careless driving, although respondents rated traffic and highway enforcement as the least important of a dozen kinds of police activities. People most appreciated police work aimed at preventing crimes. Of the things people did to protect themselves from becoming a victim, keeping items in their cars out of sight headed the list. As in previous surveys in this community, highest levels of satisfaction were expressed for living partners and family relations generally. Estimating the relative impact of three police/crime related variables (satisfaction with feelings of personal safety around one's home and in one's community, and with local policing services) on the quality of life measured in five different ways in the context of 12 other variables, it was found that only the last variable (satisfaction with policing services) had a statistically significant association to the quality of life measured in three of the five ways. Forty percent of the variation in happiness scores and 63% of the variation in life satisfaction scores could be explained by five and six predictors, respectively, without any significant association with satisfaction with policing services. Sixty-two percent of the variation in satisfaction with respondents' overall quality of life scores could be explained by eight predictors, with satisfaction with policing services as the third most influential predictor behind satisfaction with respondents' self-esteem and friendships. Sixty-one percent of the variation in satisfaction with respondents' standard of living scores was explained by seven predictors, with satisfaction with policing services being least influential. Finally, 76% of the variation in an index of subjective well-being (summing the scores of the other four global indicators) was explained by nine predictors, with satisfaction with policing services being second least influential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this essay is to build a bridge between two intersecting areas of research, social indicators research on the one hand and health-related quality of life research on the other. The first substantive section of the paper introduces key concepts and definitions in the social indicators research tradition. e.g., social indicators, positive, negative, input and output indicators, social report and quality of life. After that, there is a section reviewing some historical origins and motives of social indicators researchers, beginning roughly with Jeremy Bentham's 'felicific calculus' and ending with the search for a comprehensive accounting scheme capable of measuring the quality of human existence with social. economic and environmental indicators. Results of eleven surveys are reviewed which were undertaken to explain happiness on the basis of levels of satisfaction that respondents got from a dozen specific domains of their lives, e.g., satisfaction with their jobs, family relations and health. On average, for the eleven samples, we were able lo explain 38% of the variance in reported happiness from some subset of the predictor variables. Satisfaction with one's own health was never the strongest predictor of happiness in any sample. In five of the eleven samples, satisfaction with one's own health failed to enter the final explanatory regression equation for lack of statistical significance. The results in this section of the essay show that different groups of people with different life circumstances, resources and constraints use different mixtures of ingredients to determine their happiness. After examining some research revealing the relative importance of people's satisfaction with their health to their overall happiness, I consider some studies revealing the importance of people's self-reported health to their overall happiness. Self-reported health is measured primarily by the eight dimensions of SF-36. When a variety of additional potential predictors are entered into our regression equation, 44% of the variance in happiness scores is explained, but only one of the eight dimensions of SF-36 remains, namely. Mental Health. The latter accounts for a mere four percentage points out of the total 44. Thus, self-reported health has relatively little to contribute toward respondents' reported happiness, and its measured contribution is significantly affected by the number and kinds of potential predictors employed. Two approaches to explaining people's satisfaction with their own health are considered. First, using the same set of health-related potential predictors of overall happiness, we are able to explain 56% of the variance in respondents' satisfaction with their own health. Then, using Multiple Discrepancies Theory, we are able to explain about 51% of the variation in satisfaction with one's own health scores for 8.076 undergraduates, with highs of 76% for a sample of Finnish females and 72% for Korean males. Accordingly, it is reasonable to conclude that if one's aim is to explain people's satisfaction with their own health, the potential predictors assembled in MDT can provide quite a bit and sometimes even more explanatory power than a reasonably broad set of measures of self-reported health. In the penultimate section of the essay it is argued that there are good reasons for carefully distinguishing ideas of health and quality of life, and for not interpreting SF-36 and SIP scores as measures of the quality of life. It is suggested that we might all be better off if the term 'health-related quality of life' is simply abandoned. However, since this is unlikely to happen, it is strongly recommended that researchers be much more careful with their usage of the phrase and their interpretation of purported measures of whatever the phrase is supposed to designate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature generally suggests that negative experiences should lead to dissatisfaction. However, attribution theory has been proposed to explain why this is not always the case. Using a sample of online hotel reviews, this paper tests how attribution and reference to eWOM mediate the influence of negative experiences on satisfaction. The results support only one of the hypotheses and generally only a small portion of the variance of satisfaction can be explained with the proposed model. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Customer satisfaction and loyalty have been cited as the e-commerce critical success factors and various studies have been conducted to find the antecedent determinants of these concepts in the online transactions. One of the variables suggested by some studies is perceived security. However, these studies have referred to security from a broad general perspective and no attempts have been made to study the specific security related variables. This paper intends to study the influence on security statement and technical protection on satisfaction, loyalty and privacy. The data was collected from 337 respondents and after the reliability and validity tests, path analysis was applied to examine the hypotheses. The results suggest that loyalty is influenced by satisfaction and security statement and no empirical support was found for the influence on technical protection and privacy on loyalty. Moreover, it was found that security statement and technical protection have a positive significant influence on satisfaction while no significant effect was found for privacy. Furthermore, the analysis indicated that security statement have a positive significant influence on technical protection while technical protection was found to have a significant negative impact on perceived privacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an empirical examination on the role of framing as a persuasion technique in agent-to-human negotiations. The primary hypothesis was that when a software agent frames the same offer in different ways it will have different consequences for a human counterpart΄s perceptions of the negotiation process and outcomes. A secondary hypothesis was that the subjective effectiveness of different frames will be influenced by the personality of the human counterpart. An experiment to test these hypotheses was conducted using a simulated software seller agent and a human buyer counterpart in a 4-issue negotiation task. The results demonstrated the influence of framing on human counterparts΄ judgments of subjective effectiveness–an influence that was moderated by the personality variable Need for Cognition. The findings illustrate the strategic impact of framing and personality on satisfaction in negotiation, suggesting that these variables should be taken into account in designing negotiating agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A fairly thorough account of multiple discrepancies theory (MDT) is presented, with a review of its historical antecedents and an examination of its strength in accounting for the happiness (H) and satisfaction (S) of nearly 700 university undergraduates. Basically. MDT asserts that H and S are functions of perceived gaps between what one has and wants, relevant others have, the best one has had in the past. expected to have 3 years ago. expects to have after 5 years, deserves and needs. MDT explained 49%' of the variance in H, 53% in global S and 50% or more in 7 out of 12 domain S scores. The domains studied were health, finances, family, job friendships, housing, area, recreation, religion, self-esteem, transportation and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this investigation was to explain the impact of crime-related issues on satisfaction with the quality of life, satisfaction with life as a whole and happiness in the city of Prince George, British Columbia. As explanatory variables, we had measures of respondent fears of and actual cases of victimization. Indexes of Neighbourhood Problems, Police Performance, Neighbourhood Worries, Defensive Behaviour, beliefs about increases in local crime, satisfaction with personal and family safety, and satisfaction with a variety of domains of life (e.g., friendships, financial security, health). Collectively such variables could explain only 5% of the variation in happiness scores, 7% of the variation in life satisfaction scores and 9% of the variation in satisfaction with the quality of life scores. However, they could explain 38% of the variation in overall neighbourhood satisfaction scores. When measures of satisfaction with family life, health, self-esteem, etc. were added, we found that crime related issues were simply displaced by the other measures and that we could explain 31 % of the variation in overall happiness scores, 58% of the variation in life satisfaction scores and 59% of the variation in satisfaction with the overall quality of life scores. We conclude, therefore, that crime-related issues have relatively little impact on people's satisfaction with the quality of their lives, with life satisfaction or happiness here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this investigation was to explain the impact of people's self-reported health on their levels of satisfaction with their health, and the impact of these things plus satisfaction with other specific domains of their lives on the perceived quality of their lives. The latter was operationalized as general happiness, satisfaction with life as a whole and overall satisfaction with the quality of life. Seven hundred and twenty-three (723) usable questionnaires returned from a mailout random sample of 2500 households of Prince George, British Columbia in November 1998 formed the working data-set for our analyses. Among other things, mean respondent scores on the SF-36 health profile were found to be lower than published norms from the UK, USA, Netherlands and Sweden, but higher than scores from Aberdeen, Scotland. Mean scores on the CES-D depression scale also indicated that our respondents tended to have more depressive symptoms than comparison groups in Winnipeg and the USA. A review of trends in mean scores on 17 quality of life items (e.g., satisfaction with family life, financial security, recreation, etc.) from 1994, 1997 and 1998 revealed that there were only 7 statistically significant changes across the four year period and they were all negative. Multivariate regression analysis showed that health status measured with a variety of indicators could explain 56% of the variation in respondents' reported satisfaction with their health. A combination of health status plus domain satisfaction indicators could explain 53% of the variation in respondents' reported happiness, 68% of reported life satisfaction and 63% of reported satisfaction with the overall quality of life. Sixty percent of the explained variation in happiness scores was attributable to self-reported health scores, while only 18% of the explained variation in satisfaction with life and with the overall quality of life scores was attributable self-reported health scores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]