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How can a third party (person or social robot) mitigate the negative aspects of the asymmetrical dyadic relationships associated with caregiving of the elderly? We start by examining the social-psychological structure of the relationship between givers and recipients of eldercare. We then identify problems that frequently occur and review interventions that have been used or proposed for dealing with those problems. Finally, we synthesize the results of our review in terms of recommendations for how and when social robots might be used as interventions in this context.

Digital technology adoption and engagement is increasing amongst older adults, prompting concerns regarding their privacy-related behaviour while engaging with these technologies. The use of cognitive biases and heuristics may help explain why older adults, and some younger people as well, make decisions that compromise their privacy in digital contexts. A literature review was carried out to assess the use of cognitive biases and heuristics by older adults when deciding whether to adopt, and while using, digital technologies. Tools are needed that guide users away from mental shortcuts such as hyperbolic discounting, anchoring, and shortcut decisions based on trust and that promote privacy protection. In addition to reviewing current literature on the use of privacy-related biases and heuristics amongst older adults, we also present possible future research directions on this topic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified systemic gaps in patient safety, including social frailty for vulnerable populations such as older adults (Briguglio et al., 2020). Public health measures, such as prolonged and frequent lockdowns, restricted access to visitors and support networks and in extreme cases led to confinement within a single room, The negative impact of these restrictions has focused new attention on social frailty, which has hitherto been a somewhat neglected patient safety issue. Since social frailty is a multifaceted construct, it needs to be considered in a variety of settings and from a range of disciplinary perspectives. This practitioner-led panel consisting of an internist, a human factors engineer, an occupational therapist, and an implementation scientist, examines the impact of the pandemic on social interaction, and social frailty amongst older people in three different settings (hospital, long term care home, community). Through a set of case studies, the panelists provided applied experiences and perspectives on the impact of the pandemic on patient safety and on social frailty in particular. The panel covered theory, and real-world application of human factors principles. The question of how to design safety into the healthcare system were also explored. In this paper we review the problem of social frailty, list some brief case studies and discuss possible intervention strategies.

Cybersecurity is emerging as a major issue for many organizations and countries. Machine learning has been used to recognize threats, but it is difficult to predict future threats based on past events, since malicious attackers are constantly finding ways to circumvent defences and the algorithms that they rely on. Interactive Machine learning (iML) has been developed as a way to combine human and algorithmic expertise in a variety of domains and we are currently applying it to cybersecurity. In this application of iML, implicit knowledge about human behaviour, and about the changing nature of threats, can supplement the explicit knowledge encoded in algorithms to create more effective defences against cyber-attacks. In this paper we present the example problem of data exfiltration where insiders, or outsiders masquerading as insiders, who copy and transfer data maliciously, against the interests of an organization. We will review human factors issues associated with the development of iML solutions for data exfiltration. We also present a case study involving development of an iML solution for a large financial services company. In this case study we review work carried out on developing visualization dashboards and discussing prospects for further iML integration. Our goal in writing this paper is to motivate future researchers to consider the role of the human more fully in ML, not only in the data exfiltration and cybersecurity domain but also in a range of other applications where human expertise is important and needs to combine with ML prediction to solve challenging problems.

Human Factors Engineering (HFE) is an applied discipline that uses a wide range of methodologies to better the design of systems and devices for human use. Underpinning all human factors design is the maxim to fit the human to the task/machine/system rather than vice versa. While some HFE methods such as task analysis and anthropometrics remain relatively fixed over time, areas such as human-technology interaction are strongly influenced by the fast-evolving technological trend. In times of big data, human factors engineers need to have a good understanding of topics like machine learning, advanced data analytics, and data visualization so that they can design data-driven products that involve big data sets. There is a natural lag between industrial trends and HFE curricula, leading to gaps between what people are taught and what they will need to know. In this paper, we present the results of a survey involving HFE practitioners (N=101) and we demonstrate the need for including data science and machine learning components in HFE curricula.

In Canada, over 15,000 residents of long-term care have died from COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic representing 59 percent of all COVID-19 deaths (National Institute of Ageing, 2021). Urgent research and subsequent applied action are needed to save life and quality of life including the presence of family (CFHI, 2020). Social and physical frailty are major systemic patient safety gaps and are challenges for most healthcare organizations. This practitioner-led panel of experienced human factors, implementation science and healthcare experts used a case study of a project at North York General Hospital’s Seniors’ Health Centre in Toronto to discuss how these challenges can be addressed with serious games. The project discussed used games that aim to reduce social and physical frailty through exercise while interacting with remote families. Lessons learned to-date and challenges observed, in rapidly implementing safety and human factors programs intended to create resilient residents in a real healthcare context were discussed.

In today’s digital economy, the Internet of Things (IoT) has connected devices, humans, and everyday objects to each other in ways that were unimaginable before. Vast amounts of data are collected everywhere and disrupting how we design systems and products. Data science and emerging technologies offer challenges and opportunities for early-career human factors professionals who are looking to grow their careers and their human factors practice. In this paper, we report on a survey to assess the perspectives of students currently studying human factors. The survey items examined shortfalls in current human factors education with re-spect to relevance to industry trends. The survey results show that students see a need to include more relevant subjects in data science, as well as opportunities to learn trending industry problems, hands-on experience with real-life projects, prior to graduation.

Loss of cognitive potential is one of the greatest impediments to human wellbeing and productivity. Our healthcare system does a poor job of managing cognitive development and cognitive decline because it measures cognitive status relatively infrequently and in the limited times when cognitive measures are taken, the instruments used tend to be blunt. In the panel that we presented at HCS 2021 we examined the potential for cognitive assessment games to provide more frequent cognitive assessment. We reported on the use of a cognitive assessment game to screen for delirium risk in emergency patients, and the development of a suite of assessment games that can assess executive functions and other cognitive abilities in both young and old. We conclude with a discussion of knowledge translation and implementation science strategies for incorporating game-based cognitive assessment into healthcare practice.

Older adults living in long-term care facilities typically receive insufficient exercise and have long periods of the day when they are not doing anything other than sitting or lying down, watching television, or ruminating (Wilkinson et al., 2017). We developed an intervention called the Experiential Centivizer, which provides residents with opportunities to use a driving simulator, watch world travel videos, and engage in exercise. We assessed the impact of the intervention on residents of a long-term care home in Fredericton, NB, Canada. In this paper, we report on the results observed and highlight the lessons learned from implementing a technological intervention within a long-term care setting. Practical and research recommendations are also discussed to facilitate future intervention implementation in long-term care.

There has been considerable research on design of menu hierarchies in general spanning several decades. However there is much less research on menus relating to specific types of product in online retail settings. Thus there is little guidance in the research literature on specific issues such as how to place luxury items within a beauty product hierarchy, which is the focus of this paper. We report on a study that addressed this problem for an ecommerce site associated with a large Canadian retailer. In a within subjects design, participants searched for four beauty-related products (two of which were classed as “luxury” items) either in a hierarchy where luxury items were intermingled with other products addressing the same need (the “Combined” condition), or in a hierarchy where there was a split between luxury and non-luxury products at the top level (the “Split” condition). Segregating luxury products in the product hierarchy was found to lead to significantly slower, and more lengthy (in terms of links traversed), searches. Searches were found to be more efficient in the “Combined” condition than the “Split” Condition both when searching for luxury items, and when searching for non-luxury items. This work has implications for existing brick-and-mortar retailers moving into or expanding e-commerce portals. Our results suggest that the separation of luxury from non-luxury items in bricks-and-mortar stores does not transfer well to online product hierarchies, where similar segregation leads to poorer digital navigation performance.

With the rapidly aging population and the rising number of people living with dementia (PLWD), there is an urgent need for programming and activities that can promote the health and wellbeing of PLWD. Due to staffing and budgetary constraints, there is considerable interest in using technology to support this effort. Serious games for dementia have become a very active research area. However, much of the work is being done without a strong theoretical basis. We incorporate a Montessori approach with highly tactile interactions. We have developed a person-centered design framework for serious games for dementia with initial design recommendations. This framework has the potential to facilitate future strategic design and development in the field of serious games for dementia.

In our aging societies, slowing and managing cognitive decline has become a significant challenge for older people, caregivers, andhealthcare providers. In the past decade, there has been an explosion in productsaimed at providing cognitive interventions for the elderly in response to the growing market need. In thispaper, we present a framework for thinking about cognitive interventions, and a product typology based onthe level of technology used and the amount of tangibility/physical interactivity that products have. Weshow how current products fit within the proposed product typology framework. We also note shortfallsthat exist in validating products in terms of their claimed cognitive interventions, and in regions of theproduct technology space that deal withproducts that have low technology and low physical interactivity.

Objective We examine the relationships between contemporary progress in on‐road vehicle automation and its coherence with an envisioned “autopia” (automobile utopia) whereby the vehicle operation task is removed from all direct human control. Background The progressive automation of on‐road vehicles toward a completely driverless state is determined by the integration of technological advances into the private automobile market; improvements in transportation infrastructure and systems efficiencies; and the vision of future driving as a crash‐free enterprise. While there are many challenges to address with respect to automated vehicles concerning the remaining driver role, a considerable amount of technology is already present in vehicles and is advancing rapidly. Methods A multidisciplinary team of experts met to discuss the most critical challenges in the changing role of the driver, and associated safety issues, during the transitional phase of vehicle automation where human drivers continue to have an important but truncated role in monitoring and supervising vehicle operations. Results The group endorsed that vehicle automation is an important application of information technology, not only because of its impact on transportation efficiency, but also because road transport is a life critical system in which failures result in deaths and injuries. Five critical challenges were identified: driver independence and mobility, driver acceptance and trust, failure management, third-party testing, and political support. Conclusion Vehicle automation is not technical innovation alone, but is a social as much as a technological revolution consisting of both attendant costs and concomitant benefits.

In this paper we explore how memories of experience with streaming video affect Quality of Experience (QoE) indicators that are of interest to service providers and marketers. Since observations of experience are time consuming, and the effects of technical quality (TQ) are difficult to entangle from content quality (CQ), we examined the impact of a visualization methodology for assessing experiences. A study was carried out to examine how well overall technical quality (TQ) judgments for a sequence of visualized video experience (a picture of a red video playbar with yellow portions indicating disrupted video in place of actually viewed video) would correspond to overall TQ judgments made after watching a sequence of actual videos. Sequencing effects found in overall TQ ratings, made after viewing visualizations (with their overlaid disruptions) were similar to sequencing effects found after viewing actual videos. However, the sequencing effects after viewing the visualizations were less pronounced than the corresponding sequencing effects that were found after viewing actual videos. Sequences of both visualized and actually viewed videos showed significant negative end effect and trend effects (both positive and negative). There was also evidence that sequencing effects respond to relative change in TQ rather than absolute TQ.

Models that predict satisfaction with a service over time need to consider the impact of emotions and remembered quality of experience in predicting overall attitudes towards a service. However, prior research on subjective quality of experience has typically focused on experiments conducted in a single session or over a short period of time. Thus, there is a gap between our understanding of instantaneous quality of experience and long-term judgments, such as overall satisfaction, and likelihood to recommend and likelihood to churn. The goal of the study reported here was to carry out a longitudinal study that would provide initial insights into how experiences of service quality over time are accumulated into memories that then drive longer term attitudes about the service. Our longitudinal study was carried out over a period of roughly 4 weeks with around 3 sessions per week. To facilitate the study, an online service was constructed that would let participants search through YouTube videos, and that added impairments (specified according to an overall experimental design) to the videos before they were played. Participants were asked to rate several measures, including Technical Quality, after each video was viewed. They were also asked to give overall impressions after each session of five videos had been viewed. The results were analyzed in terms of both sequencing effects within sessions. and memory effects that carried over between sessions.

Curved displays promote three-dimensionality and may facilitate non-wearable virtual reality. Yet there is little design guidance on the optimal type of curvature that should be used. In this paper we have examined the perceived properties of convex and concave displays, at two different sizes. We conducted an experiment with 21 participants. Each participant was asked to make a series of binary choices after the participant viewed a display where one side was seen as convex and the opposite side was seen as concave. For each of 15 perceptual and aesthetic features, participants had to choose whether the convex or concave view/side of the display was stronger/more appropriate. Each participant made two binary choices (one for a small display viewed from its convex and concave sides, the other for a large display viewed from its convex and concave sides) for each perceptual and aesthetic feature, leading to a total of 30 judgments. Participants preferred the convex version of the small sized display and the concave version of the larger display. Individual differences were observed. Some participants generally preferred the convex displays, while others preferred the concave displays. The results are interpreted in terms of their implications for the future use of convex and concave displays in VR applications that do not use goggles.

Mobile computing provides new ways to interact with technology; applications such as navigation, social facilitation, and augmented reality are used while walking. We introduce Gait-Guided Adaptive Interfaces (GGAIs) as a way to manage cognitive load in dual-task conditions (walking while using a device). Gait markers that can be suitably assessed using smartphone sensors (decreased gait speed, increased variability) have been shown to be indicative of cognitive load in older adults. Motor-cognitive interference is a more significant issue as we age, gait becomes less automatic, and the risk of falls under distraction increases. Apps with GGAIs measure changes in gait to infer load and then adapt the way that the App interacts with the user accordingly. We validate this approach using a simple Go/No-Go task, and then show how gait responds to changes in task complexity. We conclude with a discussion of how GGAIs may be used by developers to improve the usability of apps for older users.

While previous research has shown that the sequencing of good and bad experience is an important predictor of overall evaluations of a set of experiences, the impact of sequencing effects on the experience of viewing online video has yet to be established. The aim of this study was to determine whether different sequences of good (G), mediocre (M), and bad (B) quality videos in different blocks would influence overall ratings after viewing those blocks. Thirty-two participants each watched 10 blocks of 4 videos and provided ratings of technical quality (TQ), satisfaction, and frustration for each video in the block, as well as overall ratings for each block (as a whole). Sequences of G, M, and B videos were designed to test whether block characteristics (features), like the peak-end effect and effect of linear trend, influenced summary evaluations of the block service. The results of the experiment show that overall block TQ, satisfaction, and frustration ratings differed significantly by sequencing feature. Difference scores were used to determine whether the features had an effect on overall evaluations beyond what could be explained by the total number of bad videos in the block or the average ratings of the videos in the block. Results showed a significant end effect for negative ends of a block, and an effect of linear trend (both increasing and decreasing). There was no evidence of a peak effect or an end effect for positive ends. The presence of a negative end effect and effect of linear trend indicate that where possible service providers should avoid service sessions with poor service quality at the end, or sessions that have decreasing quality as the session progresses.

Treatment of dementia has, until recently, largely been based on medical models that address the immediate biological needs, but often fail to meet the individualized needs of the person, including social and psychological needs. Recently, Montessori approaches have been used to validate the whole person and to provide engaging alternatives to the responsive behaviors that arise from unmet needs. In this population, sedentary lifestyle is a particularly severe problem, and there is an urgent need for more physical exercise. Given not only the known benefits of exercise, but also the difficulty of providing traditional methods of physiotherapy in the volume required, automated methods for motivating, and rewarding physical exercise are needed. The research reported in this paper focuses on the development of technologies for aging well through increased cognitive and physical activity among people with dementia. Our goal is to develop solutions for some of the issues faced by long-term care environments by creating engaging and rewarding activities that are available to people with dementia on a 24x7 basis. We have developed units called Centivizers (for “in-centivizing” behavior) that show promise in improving or maintaining physical and cognitive status in dementia by providing people with rewarding, and always-on, opportunities for engaging experiences that motivate physical exercise and cognitive activity.

Many people living with dementia are under-stimulated and socially isolated. While there has been an increase in activities and programming based on recreational therapy and music therapy, such programs can cover only a fraction of the day for people with dementia and are resource demanding to execute. The result is that many people with dementia, who are institutionalized, are staying most of the day either in their rooms, sitting in communal areas, or wandering the hallways. A related problem is that people with dementia often have difficulty with social interactions and may become anxious or aggressive around people they do not recognize, or in situations they do not understand. Resulting responsive behaviours (e.g., hitting, screaming) may lead to overmedication and poor quality of life. Ambient Activity Technology (AAT) is a wall-mounted interactive tool designed for people with dementia. The AAT unit is available in the environment for easy access, and have been designed to augment existing programming and activities by providing self-accessed, engaging and personalized interactions at any time (24-hours per day, 7 days/week). AATs have been designed to reduce distress, in residents and caregivers, by substituting responsive behaviours and purposelessness with active and meaningful activities, distractions, and appropriate interventions. This paper describes the motivation behind the design and development of the AAT. The paper ends with a description of our summative evaluation research, which is currently in progress at several long-term care facilities in Ontario, Canada.

This thesis introduces a new method to measure subjective ratings of technical quality (TQ) in disrupted video (DV). Current measurement methods are subject to extraneous factors such as delays introduced by the streaming software/hardware and the impact of video content. The proposed method is designed to supplement current methods by avoiding the confounding effects of content on TQ ratings and by reducing the time and effort necessary to run experiments. The new method replaces actual video with images representative of videos that contain various disruptions. In the research reported in this thesis, I ran an experiment with 37 participants to explore the viability of assessing TQ using visualizations instead of actual videos. The experiment compared ratings made after actually watching videos that varied in TQ versus ratings made after viewing the TQ visualizations, without actually seeing corresponding videos with associated impairments or failures. The results of the experiment showed that, with appropriate training, ratings of TQ made, after viewing the visualizations only, were similar to TQ ratings made after actually watching videos with corresponding impairments or failures.%%%%M.A.S.

The rise in aging populations worldwide places a focus on shifting healthcare needs to match changing demographics. Older adults have a higher risk of becoming frail and losing functional abilities (e.g., walking and bathing) as well as the ability to perform daily activities such as shopping and cooking. Providing care and appropriate interventions to assist older adults with frailty is contingent upon identifying these individuals through effective screening. Frailty is often characterized by self-reports of exhaustion, weakness, slowing, and low physical activity. Older adults at risk of becoming frail often enter the healthcare system through emergency services (e.g., calling 911 or presenting at an emergency department), and screening should target these entry points. This paper discusses the design process, and usability findings associated with a tablet-based battery of frailty measures for assessing functional and cognitive states in elderly adults while being admitted to emergency care. This research is focusing on the use of digital technologies as a medium for physical and mental frailty assessment in emergency care. A diverse group of healthcare users is envisaged including paramedics, physicians, and research personnel, as well as end-users such as elderly patients and their caregivers. We describe the development and usability of the tablet-based frailty assessment system and we report on the concurrent validity of frailty measures.

Current cognitive testing methods in the elderly rely on clinical assessments, which are time consuming, costly, and require highly trained staff (Kueider, Parisi, Gross, & Rebok, 2012). We are developing a serious game with the goal of improving the ergonomics of cognition assessment. Instead of pencil and paper, or a computer, we are using touch-based tablets in order to provide a highly mobile and usable form of cognitive assessment. We are currently conducting usability studies on elderly adults in different healthcare environments to evaluate the technology. This paper presents work on customizing the game for use by elderly adults in a hospital emergency department (ED) and it will discuss some of the results obtained thus far, focusing on the usability of the game for this clinical population. In addition to usability results we will also report on the validity of the game in terms of how well it agrees with existing methods of cognitive assessment that are used in the ED.

Response time and accuracy are two of the most frequently collected dependent measures. Tradeoffs between speed and accuracy are often observed, both between people, and between experimental conditions. In this paper we consider how speed, and accuracy, can be combined into a single, overall measure of performance. We consider two different approaches that adjust accuracy scores based on observed speed of responding and we examine how well those measures work with different data sets. We then present a third approach that combines standardized speed and accuracy scores. We show how this latter approach can represent the data fairly well regardless of which (if any) speed-accuracy tradeoff occurs in the data. We also show how this measure can be further generalized by applying differential weightings to the standardized scores of speed, and accuracy, respectively. We conclude by discussing the value of the measure for use in analyzing human performance data where continuous indicators of accuracy or error can be collected or constructed relatively easily. Our goal in developing the global measure of performance is not to accurately model the speed-accuracy relationship, but rather to create a measure that is more sensitive to experimental differences and causal relationships than either speed or accuracy alone.

We conducted an experiment with 16 participants to investigate the effect of cognitive distraction on performance of a 1-D tracking task that simulated gap control in driving. Participants operated the tracking task with a foot pedal while performing a secondary task (an auditorily presented N-back task) under eight conditions involving all possible (2x2x2) combinations of degree of secondary task difficulty (1-back vs. 2-back), pedal tracking difficulty (hard vs. easy amounts of lag) and presence vs. absence of visual occlusion. In conditions involving occlusion participants could press a button to get rid of the occlusion for a short period of time, i.e., they used Voluntary Interruption of Occlusion (VIO). Our results showed that use of VIO is associated with updating ability and that it trades off against pedal tracking performance. We also found evidence that cognitive distraction due to the impact of updating requirements in the secondary N-Back task affects performance on the primary, pedal tracking, task.

We conducted an experiment with 22 participants to investigate the effect of presentation style of a secondary task on a 1-D tracking task that simulated gap control in driving. Participants operated the tracking task with a foot pedal while performing a secondary task (counting vowels in a list of multiple letters) under conditions involving different modalities (audio/ visual), presentation styles (simultaneous/ sequential), task complexity (the number of distractors), and time dependency (list length). Our results showed that audio conditions with a longer and/or more complex secondary task did not improve primary (tracking) task performance, even though eye gaze dwelling time on the primary monitor in these cases tended to be substantially longer than the corresponding times in visual conditions. For a more complex version of the secondary task (longer list lengths) visual presentation of the task all at once (simultaneously) led to better performance then sequential presentation (whether visual or auditory). When given a choice people also tended to prefer simultaneous visual presentation of the secondary task. We discuss the effect of presentation modality of the secondary task in terms of its implications for user interface design in vehicles.

Emotion is critical to how health-related information is perceived and acted upon. This paper shares empirical and methodological insights from an eHealth multimedia usability study involving participants with type 2 diabetes, using a typical sample size for usability studies: n=10. Skin conductance sensors and a slider were used to assess emotional responses toward videos on disease complications. The videos featuring peers elicited trends of stronger emotional responses compared to the other video formats, for both emotion measures. Clustering was used to investigate patterns in slider usage; participants clustered into types characterized as: ‘responsive’, ‘judging’, and ‘unresponsive’. We examined slider and arousal data to estimate immersion and found that half of participants who moved the slider minimally experienced skin conductance spikes, indicating high immersion. We discuss implications for understanding high-impact eHealth multimedia and for measuring immersion and emotions using small samples common in usability studies.

This chapter reviews relevant research on emotion, focusing on aspects of emotion that are most relevant to human factors design. The review begins with a discussion of basic emotion concepts, such as low-level positive and negative affect; emotion dimensions of arousal and valence; and prototypical emotions, such as anger, happiness, and fear. The interaction between emotion processing and cognitive processes, such as attention, perception, and decision making, is also discussed. After a review of the nature of emotion, the problem of measuring emotions is considered. Available techniques for emotion measurement are surveyed, and recommendations are made concerning which techniques should be used in different contexts and interactive settings. Novel measures are also introduced for assessing variability in emotional experience and for measuring emotional expressiveness. After laying the intellectual groundwork for understanding the nature of emotional interaction and its measurement, the chapter then shifts to exploring the implications of emotional processing for the design of interactive systems. Affective designs are reviewed in the following domains: consumer products, health care, and robots. The chapter concludes with presentation of an initial set of guidelines relating to the design of interactive systems that take into account emotional processing. The material presented in this chapter is highly relevant to human factors engineering because knowledge of emotional processing and how it affects the state of operators or users and their performance can lead to more usable, effective, efficient, and satisfying interaction.

Emotional reactions are increasingly recognized as an important part of experiences with technology, and there is a need for rigorous investigation into the collection of self-reported emotional data. We examine the capture of continuous, quantitative, affective self-reports as a complement to existing methods of evaluating human-system or product interaction. This experiment investigated 12 participants' use of a single slider (for valence, from very negative to very positive) and two sliders (for valence and arousal) in response to approximately 45 minutes of a nature video. Individual differences and physiological data (heart rate variability and skin conductance) were recorded. Emotion ratings were significantly related to skin conductance, which both differed significantly across chapters with different video content. We observed a learning effect, where participants' response times to probe questions decreased across blocks. Cognitive load appeared higher in the two-slider condition, with a possibly larger learning effect, and significantly longer dwell times, when compared to one slider. Arousal self-ratings were contradicted by skin conductance measures. We conclude with recommendations concerning the use of sliders for assessment of emotional user experience.

The impact of notifications on driving performance is a critical safety concern (Lee & Strayer, 2004). This study examined how interruptions (including phone calls) impair simulated driving performance, and how individual differences mediate the effect of those interruptions. Consistent with our hypothesis, field dependent participants answered phone calls more quickly and with less consideration of the difficulty of the current driving situation than more field independent participants. Further, a post-hoc analysis showed that, on average, field dependents with small operating spans crashed twice as often as the other drivers. Thus the detrimental effect of a field dependent style on managing interruptions while driving is likely worsened for people with low working memory capacity. It is suggested that future research should investigate the safety implications of individual differences in interruption handling ability. Such research is needed to support ongoing efforts to develop guidelines and legislation concerning the use of distracting information technologies (such as cell phones) in automobiles.

This study investigated the effectiveness of spatial auditory cues for tasks using different reference frames, and examined how congruency between auditory and visual displays affected performance. Performance with three types of auditory cues (egocentric, exocentric and non-spatial) was compared on three spatial tasks: target search, target localization and target recall. There was a clear effect of reference frame congruency between auditory and visual displays on target search and target localization tasks. Interestingly, even incongruent auditory cues improved performance relative to non-spatial control conditions. In addition, egocentric auditory cues facilitated performance more than exocentric cues on incongruent trials. The findings have important implications for display design in work environments that involve diverse spatial tasks and displays that use different reference frames.

This paper describes Empathic Tutoring System (ETS) which uses character agents for online learning. Eye movement tracking and other physiological measures are used to personalize character agent behaviors (affective and instruction) in an e-learning environment. A prototype system reacts to learner's eye information in real-time, recording eye gaze and pupil dilation data (plus heart rate and skin conductance) during learning. Based on these measures, character agents inferred the attentional and motivational status of the learner and responded accordingly with affective and instructional behaviors. Character agents engage and direct the learner's attention while providing both generalized system help and personalized advice about the learning content. Feedbacks from preliminary usability studies may suggest that e-learning character agents reacting to eye gaze and physiological measures may heighten l earner concentration and lead to more effective learning.

The Evidence at the Point of Care (EPoCare) project (Takeshita, Davis, Straus, 2002) is examining how to put clinical evidence on mobile devices to meet physicians' information needs at the point of care. Forty-seven physicians, including family physicians, general internists and medical residents, participated in usability testing with prototypes implemented on two different form factors (a tablet-style PC and a PDA-style handheld). During the testing physicians were asked to describe their impression of the prototype and to indicate their agreement with 20 statements concerning the prototype implementations. The three user groups differed in how they valued device portability and screen size. Family physicians wanted larger screen size and were less concerned with portability, while internists wanted portability and were less concerned with screen size. Residents wanted both portability and large screen size. Cluster analysis was used to identify four clusters of physicians, varying by age, amount of time in clinical practice, and frequency of use of search engines and medical databases. Differences in preferences about format of information were present amongst these clusters. This study demonstrates how large sample usability testing can be used to develop customization strategies for mobile applications, for designing both form factor and content.

Privacy has been identified as a key issue in a variety of domains, including electronic commerce and public policy. While there are many discussions of privacy issues from a legal and policy perspective, there is little information on the structure of privacy as a psychometric construct. Our goal is to develop a method for measuring attitudes towards privacy that can guide the design and personalization of services. This paper reports on the development of an initial version of the PAQ. Four privacy attitudes are identified based on the factor structure of the PAQ. Cluster analysis is used to identify potential stereotypes with respect to attitudes towards privacy amongst different groups of people. Version 1.0 of the PAQ is presented in an Appendix as a 36 item questionnaire that measures the four privacy attitudes of personal information, monitoring, exposure and protection.

A study is reported where the rankings assigned by a search engine (Google) to the top 100 hits for seven queries are compared with the ratings of human judges (six per query). As assessed by correlations, agreement between judges was relatively good across all the queries, with a mean (Pearson) correlation of .475. In contrast, the correlations between Google rankings and human judges in this study were significantly lower, with a mean of .153. This study suggests that a high priority should be placed on finding improved methods for ranking the initial set of search engine results, so that they are more in line with human judgments of relevance.

In spite of the powerful functionality and message integration offered, unified communication (UC) has yet to be widely adopted as a solution that meets the demands and complexities of modern communicators. By understanding individual differences, requirements, and preferences, it should be possible to design better communication interfaces and services. This study examined the characteristics of communication-related preferences among users of a three-month UC trial. Survey data from 123 respondents were analyzed. A series of factor analyses identified 19 communication traits, 7 of which were particularly interesting. A cluster analysis suggested three types of communication styles: Low-tech, Power, and Strategic. Future research will attempt to relate the current findings to actual communication behaviour. The creation of a communication preference inventory (CPI) is also discussed.

This paper reports on an experimental comparison of static and dynamic hypertext. The static hypertext consisted of an online Bible with links defined by Thompson's Bible Chain References. The dynamic hypertext used the same content, but links were created dynamically by a search algorithm. In terms of task time and accuracy, overall performance was better in the dynamic hypertext condition. In addition, novices seemed to benefit more from the dynamic hypertext than did Bible experts. These results demonstrate that dynamic hypertext, using a querying approach, may sometimes be superior to static hypertext for some tasks. Thus dynamic hypertext, which requires no authoring effort, is an attractive alternative to the labor-intensive static hypertext that has been prevalent in the past.

Three dimensional hierarchies may be used to visualize and manipulate a variety of types of information, including tables of contents, taxonomies, fault trees, and code libraries in languages such as C++. Based on a review of the literature, it is suggested that visual scanning and perceived organization are two main processes involved in the understanding and use of 3D hierarchies. A general system (Info-TV) is described which can be used to explore a 3D design space. Info-TV is an information tree visualization system that takes hierarchical information and displays it in a three dimensional format. It has been designed to include the major parameters of the tree visualization design space and can be used to explore this space. Two experiments are reported that assess the effect of different tree shapes on different tasks. The results of these experiments are then discussed in terms of their implications for the design space of three-dimensional hierarchies.

Most discussions of hypertext usability are not founded in empirical measurement but more on conjectures based on personal experience. In this paper we report on two empirical analyses of hypertext usability, focusing on the quality of links produced by different means. We conducted two experiments to test the predicted relevance and the evaluated relevance of links, that is, where links are evaluated either before or after they are traversed. In order to evaluate these two kinds of relevance, we conducted two experiments where a hypertext document was created from a printed text. In each experiment we compared the relevances of three different sets of links. One set was created by a human author, whereas the second set was created automatically using the HEFTI (Hypertext Extraction From Text Incrementally) model for converting text into hypertext. We also generated a third set of links by assigning links randomly between nodes. The main goal of this research was to develop empirical tests that evaluate the usability of hypertext links. A second goal was to test the validity of automatically generated links using the HEFTI model. In this paper we detail the two experiments, and discuss their implication for methods of hypertext usability assessment and design.

Applications of artificial intelligence (AI) in the cockpit require a deeper understanding of the cognitive processes of the pilot. This paper describes ongoing research concerned with developing cognitive models of pilot behavior that can support the development of expert systems and machine reasoning within the cockpit. An experiment is reported where the behavior of pilots within a flight simulator is observed. Verbal instructions given by the controlling pilot in a “division of labor” task are used to identify salient features of pilot cognitive models of the task. The results of this experiment are interpreted in terms of their implications for the development of future expert systems within the cockpit. Continued research on the cognitive models used by pilots should permit the development of a knowledge base that will assist display design, training programs, and research on mental workload within the cockpit.

The present experiments were designed to test predictions from a model of mental workload. The model predicts non-linear increases in mental workload as perceived distance from a task goal grows and effective time for action is reduced. Diminution of mental workload is achieved by application of effort which brings the task goal into the region of acceptable time/distance constraints for successful resolution. Two experiments are reported which tested these assertions using the timepools performance task. Timepools is unique as a performance task in that it generates a spatial representation of a shrinking temporal target. The independent effects of path length, i.e., the number of sequential targets to be acquired, and shrink rate, i.e., the collapse time during which the circle is halved in area, may be assessed using performance variables such as reaction time (RT), movement time (MT), error rate (E), and the subjective perception of workload. Data from Experiment 1, indicate systematic effects for task related factors across performance and workload measures, although such a pattern was not isomorphically mapped to the a priori assumed difficulty of the task. In Experiment 2, shrink rate and path length had independent effect on RT and MT respectively, which were reflected in components of the individual workload scales. The ramifications with respect to the model are elaborated.

EP-X (Environmental Pollution expert) is a prototype expert system that acts as an expert search intermediary for a bibliographic information retrieval system. It searches for documents in the Chemical Abstracts database in the domain of environmental pollution, providing an intelligent human-computer interface that accommodates a wide variety of user backgrounds and interests. This paper discusses 1) the general problem of bibliographic information retrival, 2) the value of combining Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Human Factors Engineering (HFE) techniques in the design of an intelligent human-computer interface. 3) the general architecture and functioning of EP-X, and 4) examples of specific issues that arise when attempting to apply both AI and HFE techniques to the design of an interactive computer system.

Expert systems should find widespread application in human factors, provided the problem of building expert systems (knowledge engineering) is dealt with satisfactorily. The task of knowledge engineering is outlined and five key strategic issues are identified. These strategic issues are discussed from a human factors perspective, and it is shown how current knowledge engineering methods can be extended to include the concerns of human factors. The potential contribution of human factors to knowledge engineering methodology is illustrated with two examples. The first shows how ranking techniques can be adapted to meet the requirements of knowledge elicitation; the second shows how protocol analysis can be used to validate expertise.

Comparative evaluation of a variety of clustering methods on real and simulated data indicates that the appropriate method for a given set of data must be determined empirically. Selection of an appropriate method generally requires several preliminary analyses. With larger data sets, preliminary analyses on the whole may not be possible. As an alternative one may adopt an interactive strategy and break a large set into manageable subsets.

Current approaches to human-machine interface design are reflective of the traditional dualistic perspective that separates the physical from cognitive characteristics of human functioning. With the development of flexible computing machines and new display technologies, this dualistic perspective can be replaced with one where cognitive and physical aspects of the interface are integrated through the unification of isomorphic structures. This paper reviews the nature of physical and cognitive interfaces and shows how they may be integrated in the design of human-machine systems in order to improve the compatibility between operator and machine.