Continuance intention of blog users: the impact of perceived enjoyment,habit, user involvement and blogging time

The purpose of this study is to understand factors that affect continuance intention of a popular hedonic information system, blogs. The expectation-confirmation theory (ECT) is adapted with perceived enjoyment, habit and user involvement. Data was collected via an online survey. A total of 430 valid responses were collected. The research model was assessed by structural equation modelling (SEM). The results show that continuance intention of blog use was predicted collectively by user involvement, satisfaction and perceived enjoyment. Habit, however, exhibited no strong relationship with satisfaction and use intention. Users' satisfaction with blog use was predicted primarily by perceived enjoyment, followed by users' confirmation of expectation and user involvement. Perceived enjoyment was predicted by users' involvement and users' confirmation of expectation. Blogging time significantly moderates the effect of habit on perceived enjoyment, but not on satisfaction and continuance intention. The integrated model explains 65% of the satisfaction and 57% of continuance intention. The results suggest that integrating perceived enjoyment and user involvement into the ECT provides better insights into continuous use in the blog context.     

结合用户兴趣度聚类的协同过滤推荐算法

针对传统的协同过滤算法忽略了用户兴趣源于关键词以及数据稀疏的问题,提出了结合用户兴趣度聚类的协同过滤推荐算法。利用用户对项目的评分,并从项目属性中提取关键词,提出了一种新的RF-IIF （rating frequency-inverse item frequency）算法,根据目标用户对某关键词的评分频率和该关键词被所有用户的评分频率,得到用户对关键词的偏好,形成用户—关键词偏好矩阵,并在该矩阵基础上进行聚类。然后利用logistic函数得到用户对项目的兴趣度,明确用户爱好,在类簇中寻找目标用户的相似用户,提取邻居爱好的前◢N◣个物品对用户进行推荐。实验结果表明,算法准确率始终优于传统算法,对用户爱好判断较为准确,缓解了数据稀疏问题,有效提高了推荐的准确率和效率。     

Cynicism as user resistance in IT implementation

In this paper, we examine the process by which user cynicism emerges and is constituted as part of resistance in information technology (IT) implementation. We ground our process perspective in the received user resistance literature by linking cynicism to users' projections of the system's future use. Rather than attributing cynicism to perceived threats, however, we see user cynicism as cognitively distanced resistance that manifests as a perception of seeing through the espoused goals of the implementers. Based on a process analysis of a customer relationship management implementation at a customer service centre, the paper extends the user resistance model proposed by Lapointe and Rivard by identifying three dimensions of user cynicism in IT implementation. It also shows how cynicism, as a form of passive resistance, easily escalates and feeds new forms of resistance. Lastly, we introduce the cynicism literature as a new reference theory for the Information Systems (IS) audience.     

Experiments on user experiences with recommender interfaces

Recommender systems have been increasingly adopted as personalisation services in e-commerce. They facilitate users to locate items which they would be interested in viewing or purchasing. However, most studies have emphasised on the algorithm's performance, rather than on in-depth analysis of user experiences with the recommender interface. In this article, we report the results of two studies that compared two recommender interfaces: the organisation-based interface (where recommendations are presented in a category structure via the preference-based organisation method) and the standard ranked list (where recommendations are listed one after the other as ordered by their prediction scores).The first study focuses on evaluating users' eye-movement behaviour in these interfaces. With the help of an eye tracker, we found that the organisation interface (ORG) can significantly attract users' attentions to more recommended items. As a result, more users made product choices in that interface. The second, larger-scale, cross-cultural user survey further shows that the ORG performed significantly better in terms of enhancing users' perceived recommendation quality, perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness of the system. Hence, these empirical findings suggest that the change of recommender interface design can not only alter users' attention distribution, but also influence their subjective attitudes towards the system.     

The effects of user involvement: some personality determinants

A number of studies have been conducted with the purpose of confirming or disconfirming the general argument that user involvement in information system development is beneficial. Few studies have been undertaken, however, to support the view that the benefits of user involvement are affected by conditions surrounding systems development. This paper presents the results of a field study investigating the moderating influence of four user personality characteristics on the effects of user involvement on user information satisfaction. The relationship between user involvement and user information satisfaction was the most positive for users who were tolerant of ambiguity, and for users with a high need for achievement. An unexpected finding was that the relationship between user involvement and user information satisfaction was more positive for users with external-control beliefs than for users with internal-control beliefs. Degree of users' dogmatism had no impact on the outcome of user involvement.     

无服务器环境下基于DQN和用户意图的函数放置研究

随着无服务器计算技术的快速发展,无服务器计算以其按需付费、自动扩展等特性吸引了越来越多的用户的关注,研究人员正在探索将无服务器架构应用于日渐完善的边缘计算系统。然而,在分布式的无服务器系统中如何有效地进行无服务器函数放置并为用户提供优质的服务仍是该领域一个亟需解决的问题。采用基于用户意图的DQN（deep Q-network）无服务器函数放置算法来解决分布式无服务器系统中的函数放置问题。该算法将用户意图作为学习目标,利用DQN算法进行函数放置的优化。通过仿真实验,基于用户意图的DQN无服务器函数放置算法在计算时延和放置开销方面显著降低。相较于传统方法,该算法能够有效满足用户的不同需求,并取得了较好的函数放置效果,这表明该算法在分布式无服务器系统中具有较高的适应性和性能优势。     

Exploiting behavioral user models for point of interest recommendation in smart museums

ABSTRACT

The Internet of Things (IoT) holds the promise to blend real-world and online behaviors in principled ways, yet we are only beginning to understand how to effectively exploit insights from the online realm into effective applications in smart environments. Such smart environments aim to provide an improved, personalized experience based on the trail of user interactions with smart devices, but how does recommendation in smart environments differ from the usual online recommender systems? And can we exploit similarities to truly blend behavior in both realms to address the fundamental cold-start problem? In this article, we experiment with behavioral user models based on interactions with smart devices in a museum, and investigate the personalized recommendation of what to see after visiting an initial set of Point of Interests (POIs), a key problem in personalizing museum visits or tour guides, and focus on a critical one-shot POI recommendation task—where to go next? We have logged users' onsite physical information interactions during visits in an IoT-augmented museum exhibition at scale. Furthermore, we have collected an even larger set of search logs of the online museum collection. Users in both sets are unconnected, for privacy reasons we do not have shared IDs. We study the similarities between users' online digital and onsite physical information interaction behaviors, and build new behavioral user models based on the information interaction behaviors in (i) the physical exhibition space, (ii) the online collection, or (iii) both. Specifically, we propose a deep neural multilayer perceptron (MLP) based on explicitly given users' contextual information, and set-based extracted features using users' physical information interaction behaviors and similar users' digital information interaction behaviors. Our experimental results indicate that the proposed behavioral user modeling approach, using both physical and online user information interaction behaviors, improves the onsite POI recommendation baselines' performances on all evaluation metrics. Our proposed MLP approach achieves 83% precision at rank 1 on the critical one-shot POI recommendation problem, realizing the high accuracy needed for fruitful deployment in practical situations. Furthermore, the MLP model is less sensitive to amount of real-world interactions in terms of the seen POIs set-size, by backing of to the online data, hence helps address the cold start problem in recommendation. Our general conclusion is that it is possible to fruitfully combine information interactions in the online and physical world for effective recommendation in smart environments.     

基于移动终端日志数据的人群特征可视化

随着我国移动互联网的迅猛发展,如何从海量移动终端日志数据中提取出有效信息,并进行合理、清晰的可视化分析,为工业界等提供有价值的统计分析功能显得尤为重要.目前,对于移动终端日志数据的研究和分析多是基于对单一属性的统计结果分析,如应用下载排行、用户留存率等.为了进一步挖掘移动终端日志数据背后深层次的隐含信息,更加准确地概括出移动终端用户的特征,提出了一种基于移动应用程序日志数据的人群特征分析与画像计算方法,构造了基于移动应用程序数据的主题模型,并将移动设备用户按照与不同应用主题的相关度进行聚类,得到了具有不同特征的人群,从而提出了基于层次气泡图和Voronoi Treemap的可视化展现与分析方案.进一步将人群特征与时间信息、地理位置信息相结合,从多角度可视化展现人群特征.最后,根据该研究内容,实现了B/S架构的日志数据可视化分析原型系统,并通过案例分析验证了该方法的有效性.     

Evaluation of the user emotional experience on bicycle saddle designs via a multi-sensory approach

Emotions always play an important role in users' experience and performance. However, not many studies have attempted to investigate the user emotional experience through fully considering the related sensory interactions. To address this gap, this study aims to provide a multi-sensory user experiment approach to evaluate user emotional experience on bicycle saddles. For this purpose, two semantic spaces, viz., sport emotion and product personality were utilized. Forty regular road cyclists were invited to evaluate two bicycle saddles by looking at, touching and riding it on a seven-point scale. The results showed that the perceived emotional intensity of Kansei words was affected by the types of user-product interaction and the riding postures. Moreover, the opposite effect of visual appearance and cycling performance was found in correlation with the cyclists’ level of involvement in the activity. Finally, more impressions of pleasure, comfortable, cute, warm, friendly and less traditional were recommended for further bicycle saddle design, particularly for female road cyclists.     

Collaborative user modeling for enhanced content filtering in recommender systems

Recommender systems, which have emerged in response to the problem of information overload, provide users with recommendations of content suited to their needs. To provide proper recommendations to users, personalized recommender systems require accurate user models of characteristics, preferences and needs. In this study, we propose a collaborative approach to user modeling for enhancing personalized recommendations to users. Our approach first discovers useful and meaningful user patterns, and then enriches the personal model with collaboration from other similar users. In order to evaluate the performance of our approach, we compare experimental results with those of a probabilistic learning model, a user model based on collaborative filtering approaches, and a vector space model. We present experimental results that show how our model performs better than existing alternatives.     

Understanding user motivation for evaluating online content: a self-determination theory perspective

In a digital society, people have access to all kinds of electronic information as online users. They have also contributed various content for exchanging ideas in the online community, which has not only extended the traditional knowledge sharing channels, but has also led to concerns about content quality and reliability. The literature suggests that user involvement in collaboratively evaluating the quality of online content for an online community is likely to be an effective means to ease these concerns. However, the understanding of users' intentions to be willing to take part in evaluating online content is still limited. Based on self-determination theory, this study proposes a research model to understand the extrinsic motivation of the user intention. The research model was tested using data collected from 303 participants who were recruited from online communities. The results show that three types of extrinsic motivation, namely identified motivation, introjected motivation, and external motivation, play an important role in user intention of collaboratively evaluating online content. In addition, the research findings suggest that user satisfaction of the three basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness influences different types of extrinsic motivation.     

The user–developer communication process: a critical case study

Abstract. Although user participation in systems development is widely believed to have positive impacts on user acceptance, it does not guarantee success and there is still much that we do not know about how and why user participation sometimes delivers positive benefits, but not always. Much of the prior research on user participation assumes that user–developer communication will ensure that the resulting system will be designed to meet users' needs and will be accepted by them. The nature and quality of the communication between users and developers, however, remains an understudied aspect of user participation. In this paper, we focus on the user–developer communication process. We propose a process model that delineates four stages of communication between users and software developers, and we argue that these stages must occur for user participation to lead to effective outcomes. To illustrate our model, we apply it to analyse a 'critical case study' of a software project that failed despite high levels of user involvement. We show that when 'communication lapses' occurred in several of the user–developer communication stages, developers failed to be informed regarding the underlying reasons that users avoided the system. Based on the insights from this case study, we advise researchers and practitioners how to leverage the potential benefits of user participation, rather than take them for granted.     

Object-oriented specification of user interfaces

This paper presents an object-oriented approach for the specification of graphical user interfaces. Specification starts with the analysis of the end user's operations. The user interface is then designed on the basis of this analysis. Operation analysis is followed by structure and component specification which presents the dialogue structure of the application and the contents of each dialogue. Visualization produces the final screen layouts, and task specification documents the usage of the user interface for the purpose of creating user's guides. The method presented in this paper makes it easier for a designer to take the end user's needs into account. Still, it does not automatically guarantee good quality user interfaces. The top-down nature of the method allows the designer to concentrate on the most important aspects of the user interface and split the design procedure into manageable pieces. Also, the visibility of the process allows the designer to communicate with other people while specifying the user interface. This paper connects the method with the object-oriented specification of entire applications. It briefly explains the connections with object-oriented analysis and design, and demonstrates how to implement the specified user interface in an object oriented fashion. The approach presented in this paper is being applied in the development of a large network management system with about two million lines of C++ code running in the XII environment. Still, the method does not require the specification being implemented with any specific windowing system. The only requirement is that the user interface is based on graphical elements, such as dialogues, push-buttons and text fields.     

Towards automatic evaluation of multimodal user interfaces

The evaluation of the usability and the learnability of a computer system may be performed with predictive models during the design phase. It may be done on the executable code as well as by observing the user in action. In the latter case, data collected in vivo must be processed. The goal is to provide software supports for performing this difficult and time consuming task.

The paper presents an early analysis of, and experience relating to, the automatic evaluation of multimodal user interfaces. With this end in view, a generic Wizard of Oz platform has been designed to allow the observation and automatic recording of subjects' behavior while they interact with a multimodal interface. It is then shown how recorded data can be analyzed to detect behavioral patterns, and how deviations of such patterns from a data-flow-oriented task model can be exploited by a software usability critic.     

基于社会关系感知的边缘网络缓存策略

针对当前的边缘缓存策略存在的传输时延高、对较小区域中用户社会关系感知不足的问题,结合热点内容平均流行度和用户兴趣度,提出基于社会关系感知的边缘缓存策略.首先,根据热点内容平均流行度和用户兴趣度,估算用户需求,用户需求相似度反映了用户的社交关系强度;然后,依据用户的关系强度选择用户作为辅助缓存位置;最后,综合考虑缓存位置的选取和用户需求的选择,设计了基站协作缓存、用户辅助缓存的联合缓存策略.仿真实验表明,所提缓存策略相比较于传统的缓存策略在缓存命中率和系统缓存时延上均有一定的提升.     

基于UIML的多设备用户界面生成方法

多设备用户界面开发中不同类型的设备通常需要为同一应用定制不同的界面,或者通过WEB浏览器访问。这两种方法均导致大量额外的开发努力和代价。提出一种基于UIML的多设备用户界面生成方法,其特征是通过建模与设备无关的抽象界面,该方法按照不同的设备特征将其映射为具体的界面;该方法的实现利用了一个运行时机制在具体的设备上绘制出真实界面。实验表明,该方法可减轻多设备界面的开发难度,提高效率。     

Who are the users? Who are the developers? Webs of users and developers in the development process of a technical standard

The paper presents an empirical study of user involvement in developing a technical standard for a scientific community's information system project. The case illustrates how multiple perspectives are involved when considering the user role in practice. The case presents a situation where both developers and users were pre‐defined in the design and development phases of the standard as homogeneous groups of actors. Groups of actors changed to become more heterogeneous and ‘fluid’ in the deployment and implementation phases, thus forming ‘webs of developers’ and ‘webs of users’. Detailed analysis of the process in its entirety shows the blurredness of boundaries between ‘developer’ and ‘user’ categories and roles, and reveals challenges at social and organizational levels. Three models pertaining to the system development process are presented in order to illuminate differing perspectives on the user and on the development process itself. The paper draws theoretically from information systems, social informatics, and science and technology studies. The research contributes to a deeper, interdisciplinary understanding of ‘the’ user, of multiple roles in systems development, and of dynamic sets of user–developer relations.     

Local Area Networks: Compatibility Versus Connectivity

Because extensive user involvement in systems development projects is essential to successful systems implementation, MIS managers should be aware of the various factors that can cause users to avoid participation in systems development. This column discusses three factors -senior management behavior, corporate culture, and user personalities - and provides examples of how these factors can adversely affect users' attitudes toward systems development.     

Modeling use of enterprise resource planning systems: a path analytic study

In this research, we evaluated user participation and involvement in the context of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Since ERP systems are enterprise-wide in scope, these systems have a high level of complexity, and require a different implementation methodology. While most studies analyze implementation at an organization or industry level, there is a dearth in research in ERP system adoption at the individual or user level. In our study, we examine ERP system acceptance at the individual level. In this research, we expected to find differences in the nature of user participation and involvement in ERP compared to other information systems. Using Barki and Hartwick's extension of the theory of reasoned action, a revised model was developed and tested empirically. While Barki and Hartwick's model explains user behavior vis-à-vis user participation and involvement, a more parsimonious model demonstrates that usage dynamics in ERP implementation are different. We complemented our statistical analysis by three case studies. Based on our results we believe that, given the nature of ERP and its implementation, traditionally formalized links between influencers of users' attitude and involvement may need to be revised. We have discussed why we need to seek alternate forms of influencers. In doing so, we suggest that investments be made in preparatory work practices and employee development prior to ERP decisions. Such investments are complementary to information technology and are widespread throughout the firm. We believe that such investments will play a significant role in influencing the attitude of users toward any system and also their involvement.