46723192
On the role of metaphor and language in design of third party payments in eBanking: Usability and quality
This paper describes results of a usability study of contrasting user-interface designs for Internet Banking (eBanking). Two specific interface metaphors were compared in the first experiment, linear form filling and array editing interaction modes. Terminology in the interaction dialogue was compared in the second experiment, using typical banking language and a generic, plain language interface. This research aimed to perform usability evaluation and comparison of the alternative interface designs to illuminate the development of new eBanking services. This research involved sixty-one participants (Internet users and customers of the involved Bank) exploring the designs in controlled experiments involving hands-on experience. Banks are interested in ensuring their eBanking services are highly customer-centric and that the interface matches customer expectations in order to drive customers towards this lower cost channel. The results of the first experiment (N=32, where N indicates the number of participants in the cohort) concluded that the simple form-filling metaphor, taken from the traditional paper-based procedure, was generally more usable than a Spreadsheet metaphor. In the second experiment (N=29), it was found that although banking terminology was not completely understood across the cohort, the instructional language changes did not impact significantly on usability.
45489934
Usability Assessment of Collaborative Shared-Space Telepresence Shopping Services
This paper describes the methodology and procedure of usability trials undertaken as part of the ACTS Teleshoppe project; it also details and analyses the results of the trials. The aim of the trials was to assess user attitudes to a collaborative shared-space shopping service. Usability data were obtained using a series of Likert-style questionnaires and through a 'focus group' discussion performed with a representative subset of the trial participants. The paper presents this data and draws conclusions relevant to the future direction of research and implementation for such shopping services. In particular, the results of the trials indicate a generally positive attitude towards the collaborative shopping service used. Furthermore, those aspects of the service viewed negatively by the users are for the most part aspects which can be easily rectified and not due to technological limitations.
14337981
The nature of indexing: how humans and machines analyze messages and texts for retrieval - Part II: Machine indexing, and the allocation of human versus machine effort
Abstract Does human intellectual indexing have a continuing role to play in the face of increasingly sophisticated automatic indexing techniques? In this two-part essay, a computer scientist and long-time TREC participant (Perez-Carballo) and a practitioner and teacher of human cataloging and indexing (Anderson) pursue this question by reviewing the opinions and research of leading experts on both sides of this divide. We conclude that human analysis should be used on a much more selective basis, and we offer suggestions on how these two types indexing might be allocated to best advantage. Part I of the essay critiques the comparative research, then explores the nature of human analysis of messages or texts and efforts to formulate rules to make human practice more rigorous and predictable. We find that research comparing human versus automatic approaches has done little to change strongly held beliefs, in large part because many associated variables have not been isolated or controlled. Part II focuses on current methods in automatic indexing, its gradual adoption by major indexing and abstracting services, and ways for allocating human and machine approaches. Overall, we conclude that both approaches to indexing have been found to be effective by researchers and searchers, each with particular advantages and disadvantages. However, automatic indexing has the over-arching advantage of decreasing cost, as human indexing becomes ever more expensive.
8794180
The generality/specificity of expertise in scientific reasoning
Previous research on scientific reasoning has shown that it involves a diverse set of skills. Yet, little is known about generality or domain specificity of those skills, an important issue in theories of expertise and in attempts to automate scientific reasoning skills. We present a study designed to test what kinds of skills psychologists actually use in designing and interpreting experiments and contrast expertise within a particular research area with general expertise at designing and interpreting experiments. The results suggest that psychologists use many domain-general skills in their experimentation and that bright and motivated Carnegie Mellon undergraduates are missing many of these skills. We believe that these results have important implications for psychological and artificial intelligence models of expertise, as well as educational implications in the domain of science instruction.
5342280
Intelligent gaze-added interfaces
We discuss a novel type of interface, the intelligent gaze-added interface, and describe the design and evaluation of a sample gaze-added operating-system interface. Gaze-added interfaces, like current gaze-based systems, allow users to execute commands using their eyes. However, while most gaze-based systems replace the functionality of other inputs with that of gaze, gaze-added interfaces simply add gaze functionality that the user can employ if and when desired. Intelligent gaze-added interfaces utilize a probabilistic algorithm and user model to interpret gaze focus and alleviate typical problems with eye-taking data. We extended a standard WIMP operating-system interface into a new interface, IGO, that incorporates intelligent gaze-added input. In a user study, we found that users quickly adapted to the new interface and utilized gaze effectively both alone and with other inputs.
13037682
Gigabit routing on a software-exposed tiled-microprocessor
This paper investigates the suitability of emerging tiled-architectures, equipped with low-latency on-chip networks, for high-performance network routing. In this paper, we present the design, implementation and evaluation of a continuum of software-based routers on the MIT RAW microprocessor. The routers presented in this paper explore 1) several design choices for mapping the routing functions to the RAW tiles, 2) the role and behavior of RAW on-chip interconnects for transporting and switching packets, and 3) the placement of packet buffers and their interaction with the RAW on-chip networks. Our experiments evaluate the performance benefit of streaming on-chip networks for transporting packet payloads, effect of buffering on the linecards, and the cost of scal ing our design. Our software-based routers on RAW can achieve a throughput of 15Gb/sec - an order of magnitude improvement over previous software routers on traditional general-purpose architectures and at least four times faster than Intel's XP1200 Network Processor.
6447408
Tuning of Search of the Problem Space for Geometry Proofs
In planning a proof, a student searches through a space of inferences leading forward from the givens of the problem and backward from the to-be-proven statement. One dimension of growth of expertise is that students become more tuned in the search of this problem space. This can be shown to result from the application of various learning operators to production embodiments of the inference rules. Rules are evaluated after the solution of a problem according to whether they led to or led away from the solution. Rules that contributed to a solution are strengthened and an attempt is made to formulate general versions of these rules that will apply in other situations. Rules that led away from the solution are weakened and a discrimination process is evoked to try to add features to the rules that will try to restrict them to the correct circumstances of application. Composition is a learning process that collapses successful sequences of rule operations into single macro-rule productions. There is also a process that converts the backward reasoning rules formed by composition into forward reasoning rules. The effect of these learning processes is to put into production conditions tests for problem features that are heunstically predictive of the rule's success.