User and Concept Studies as Tools in Developing Mobile Communication Services for the Elderly

The basis of this study was the ageing of the population all over the world. The study concentrated on finding out the key service needs of elderly people. The service needs from the end users’ as well as the experts’ perspective were gathered by means of various group methods such ideation sessions. Four mobile communication service concepts were created using these groups’ opinions. After diverse communication, these concepts were tested by the elderly. The research methods comprised a user study and a concept study.  Based on the results, the needs could be prioritised. Additionally, the main trend of the results confirmed the opinions presented in the literature. One important finding was the positive opinions about additional value of wireless devices and services. This knowledge can be used in mobile communication product development. Most of the elderly are ready to accept new forms of mobile communication service. Ease of use and actual need of the services are important criteria. The elderly are ready to begin using the services as long as they truly facilitate independent living.     

The Well Mannered Wearable Computer

In this paper we describe continuing work being carried out as part of the Bristol Wearable Computing Initiative. We are interested in the use of context sensors to improve the usefulness of wearable computers. A CyberJacket incorporating a Tourist Guide application has been built, and we have experimented with location and movement sensing devices to improve its performance. In particular, we have researched processing techniques for data from accelerometers which enable the wearable computer to determine the user’s activity. We have experimented with, and review, techniques already employed by others; and then propose new methods for analysing the data delivered by these devices. We try to minimise the number of devices needed, and use a single X-Y accelerometer device. Using our techniques we have adapted our CyberJacket and Tourist Guide to include a multimedia presentation which gives the user information using different media depending on the user’s activity as well as location.     

Specifications in Context: Stakeholders, Systems and Modelling of Conflict

This paper looks from an ethnographic viewpoint at the case of two information systems in a multinational engineering consultancy. It proposes using the rich findings from ethnographic analysis during requirements discovery. The paper shows how context – organisational and social – can be taken into account during an information system development process. Socio-technical approaches are holistic in nature and provide opportunities to produce information systems utilising social science insights, computer science technical competence and psychological approaches. These approaches provide fact-finding methods that are appropriate to system participants’ and organisational stakeholders’ needs.  The paper recommends a method of modelling that results in a computerised information system data model that reflects the conflicting and competing data and multiple perspectives of participants and stakeholders, and that improves interactivity and conflict management.     

Content-based navigation of music using melodic pitch contours

We describe a system which supports dynamic user interaction with multimedia information using content-based hypermedia navigation techniques, specialising in a technique for navigation of musical content. The model combines the principles of open hypermedia, whereby hypermedia link information is maintained by a link service, with content-based retrieval techniques in which a database is queried based on a feature of the multimedia content; our approach could be described as ‘content-based retrieval of hypermedia links’. The experimental system focuses on temporal media and consists of a set of component-based navigational hypermedia tools. We propose the use of melodic pitch contours in this context and we present techniques for storing and querying contours, together with experimental results. Techniques for integrating the contour database with open hypermedia systems are also discussed.     

WIRE3: Driving Around the Information Super-Highway

Interactive voice browsers offer an alternative paradigm that affords ubiquitous mobile access to the WWW using a wide range of consumer devices. This technology can facilitate a safe, “hands-free” browsing environment that is of importance both to car drivers and various mobile and technical professionals. This paper describes the challenges of architecting an interactive voice browser that combines digital audio with the features of a speech synthesizer to make structural elements of the document explicit to the listener. The aesthetics of the audio rendition can simultaneously help reduce the monotony factor and enhance comprehension. The evolution of the voice browser gave rise to a new conceptual model of the HTML document structure and its mapping to a 3D audio space. A number of novel features are discussed for improving both the user’s comprehension of the HTML document structure and their orientation within it. These factors, in turn, can improve the effectiveness of the browsing experience.     

‘Working Well, Together’: Arts-Based Research and the Cultural Future of Small Cities

This article offers a research update on a 3-year programme initiated by the Kamloops Art Gallery and the University College of the Cariboo in Kamloops, British Columbia. The programme is supported by a ‘Community–University Research Alliance’ grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the collaboration focuses on the cultural future of small cities – on how cultural and arts organisations work together (or fail to work together) in a small city setting. If not by definition, then certainly by default, ‘culture’ is associated with big city life: big cities are equated commonly with ‘big culture’; small cities with something less. The Cultural Future of Small Cities research group seeks to provide a more nuanced view of what constitutes culture in a small Canadian city. In particular, the researchers are exploring notions of social capital and community asset building: in this context, ‘visual and verbal representation’, ‘home’, ‘community’ and the need to define a local ‘sense of place’ have emerged as important themes. As the Small Cities programme begins its second year, a unique but key aspect has become the artist-as-researcher. Correspondence and offprint requests to: L. Dubinsky, Kamloops Art Gallery, 101–465 Victoria Street, Kamloops, BC V2C 2A9 Canada. Tel.: 250-828-3543; Email: ldubinsky@museums.ca     

MABA-MABA or Abracadabra? Progress on Human–Automation Co-ordination

In this paper we argue that substitution-based function allocation methods (such as MABA-MABA, or Men-Are-Better-At/Machines-Are-Better-At lists) cannot provide progress on human–automation co-ordination. Quantitative ‘who does what’ allocation does not work because the real effects of automation are qualitative: it transforms human practice and forces people to adapt their skills and routines. Rather than re-inventing or refining substitution-based methods, we propose that the more pressing question on human–automation co-ordination is ‘How do we make them get along together?’ Correspondence and offprint requests to: S. W. A. Dekker, Department of Mechanical Engineering, IKP, Link?ping Institute of Technology, SE - 581 83 Link?ping, Sweden. Tel.: +46 13 281646; fax +4613282579; email: sidde@ikp.liu.se     

Cognitive Analysis of Intraoperative Critical Events: A Problem-Driven Approach to Aiding Clinicians’ Performance*

Human error is responsible for a large proportion of the anaesthesia mishaps that occur annually in the United States. Ventilation-related events (VRE) constitute a significant number of anaesthesia critical incidents. Monitoring equipment and their displays extend anaesthesiologists’ resources during VRE but at the expense of additional cognitive demands. This project is a cognitive analysis of intraoperative (inside the operating room) VRE. Goal–means networks were utilised to build a problem-solving model of clinicians’ management of patients’ ventilation during anaesthesia and to map the demands of VRE. The model was also used to identify challenging VRE that were then simulated using a comprehensive anaesthesia simulator. The response of eight experienced clinicians was captured on videotape and analysed to investigate the effectiveness of medical equipment in supporting clinical decision making during VRE.     

Password hardening based on keystroke dynamics

We present a novel approach to improving the security of passwords. In our approach, the legitimate user’s typing patterns (e.g., durations of keystrokes and latencies between keystrokes) are combined with the user’s password to generate a hardened password that is convincingly more secure than conventional passwords alone. In addition, our scheme automatically adapts to gradual changes in a user’s typing patterns while maintaining the same hardened password across multiple logins, for use in file encryption or other applications requiring a long-term secret key. Using empirical data and a prototype implementation of our scheme, we give evidence that our approach is viable in practice, in terms of ease of use, improved security, and performance. Published online: 26 October 2001     

Problem-Driven Approach to the Design of Information Technology Systems Supporting Complex Cognitive Tasks

The present paper proposes a methodological framework for the design and evaluation of information technology systems supporting complex cognitive tasks. The aim of the methodological framework is to permit the design of systems which: (1) address the cognitive difficulties met by potential users in performing complex problem-solving tasks; (2) improve their potential users’ problem-solving performance; and (3) achieve compatibility with potential users’ competences and working environment. After a short review of the weaknesses of existing systems supposed to support complex cognitive tasks, the theoretical foundations of the proposed methodology are presented. These are the ergonomic work analysis of French ergonomists, cognitive engineering, cognitive anthropology–ethnomethodology and activity theory. The third section of the paper describes the generic ergonomic model, which constitutes a frame of reference useful for the analyst of the work situation to which the information technology system is addressed. In the fourth section, the proposed methodology is outlined, and in the fifth a case study demonstrating an application of the methodology is summarised. In the epilogue, the differences between the proposed methodological framework and other more conventional approaches are discussed. Finally, directions for future developments of the problem-driven approach are proposed.     

Effects of Airborne Data Link Communication on Demands, Workload and Situation Awareness

An airborne air-to-ground data link communication interface was evaluated in a multi-sector-planning scenario using an Airbus A 340 full flight simulator. In a close-to-reality experimental setting, eight professional crews performed a flight mission in a mixed voice/data link environment. Experimental factors were the medium (voice vs. data link), workload (low vs. high) and the role in the cockpit (pilot flying vs. pilot non-flying). Data link communication and the usability of the newly developed communication interface were rated positively by the pilots, but there is a clear preference for using a data link only in the phase of cruise. Cognitive demands were determined for selected sections of en-route flight. Demands are affected mainly by increased communication needs. In the pilots’ view, although a data link has no effect on safety or the possibilities of intervention, it causes more problems. The subjective workload, as measured with the NASA Task Load Index, increased moderately under data link conditions. A data link has no general effect on pilots’ situation awareness although flight plan negotiations with a data link cause a distraction of attention from monitoring tasks. The use of a data link has an impact on air-to-ground as well as intra-crew communication. Under data link conditions the pilot non-flying plays a more active role in the cockpit. Before introducing data link communication, several aspects of crew resource management have to be reconsidered. Correspondence and offprint requests to: T. Müller, Technical University of Berlin, Institute of Psychology and Ergonomics, Department of Human–Machine Systems, Jebensstrasse 1, 10623 Berlin, Germany.     

New Active Tools for Supporting Narrative Structures

Constructing stories is a type of playing that involves mobilizing the storyteller’s imagination and finding original ways to convey narrative intentions. When a child invents a story, there is a natural interaction with the local environment and the use of various means of expression. We adopted a user-centered approach to design POGO, a playful environment which utilizes the child’s physical environment and sensory modalities. Pogo is a system of active tools that enable children to create stories by connecting physical and virtual environments. By providing children with the possibility of capturing and manipulating images and various media, and combining them in sequential form, Pogo triggered new strategies in the construction of narrative logic, time and space, in the construction of the episodes and in the visual narration. Correspondence to: Fran?oise Decortis, Psychology and Education Sciences Department, University of Liege, 4000 Liege, Belgium. Email:francoise.decortis@ulg.ac.be     

Keyboards and keying An annotated bibliography of the literature from 1878 to 1999

This bibliography covers the period from 1878 through 1999. It contains, in chronological order, a thorough sampling of the literature concerning the design and use of keyboards. The sources are selected and annotated to reflect the status of engineering and technology know-how, and knowledge about ergonomic aspects of the use of the keyboards with, first, mechanical typewriters, then electric typewriters and finally, from the 1960s on, computers. The bibliography illustrates the origin of Sholes’ 1878 QWERTY keyboard and its continued use in spite of its many shortcomings, which may be – at least partially – the reason for cumulative trauma disorders in yesteryear’s typists and today’s keyboarders. Published online: 6 September 2001     

The Mobile Phone: An Identity on the Move

This paper analyses the shifting identity of the mobile phone in the light of research carried out in 1996 on a representative population sample from five major European countries: Italy, UK, France, Germany and Spain. A total of 6609 people were interviewed by means of a telephone survey. The mobile phone emerged as a charismatic technology compared to other mobile technologies (laptop and car phone) and as a leading technology that, in just a few years, has appropriated 11% of total telephone traffic. It has “dragged” its widespread presence and amount of use from the workplace to the domestic sphere, although in Italy, where it has had greatest success, its widespread use has been detached from its use in the workplace. Another emerging result is that the use of the mobile phone is not correlated to strong residential mobility in individuals.     

Linguistic Problems with Requirements and Knowledge Elicitation

Human and conversational aspects of requirements and knowledge identification are employed to show that requirements ‘engineering’ is not the same as civil engineering or scientific problem solving. Not only can requirements not be made fully explicit at the start of a project, they cannot be made fully explicit at all. A need is identified to enhance computer-based information systems (CBIS) development methods to accommodate: plurality of incommensurable perspectives, languages and agendas; dynamic representations of system features that can be experienced rather than abstracted and forced into an abstract paper-based representation; recognition that CBIS development is in general a continuous process where users changing their minds is a natural and necessary indication or organisational vitality.  It is suggested that prototyping and rapid application development go some way to addressing these requirements but that they require further development in the light of the theoretical light thrown on the nature of the problem.     

Theorem proving in technology transfer: the user’s point of view

The aim of this paper is to discuss the potentials, problems and critical factors for the industrial usage of mechanized theorem proving. The approach followed in this paper is somehow unusual. The starting point is the results of an industrial project whose goal was the assessment of the state of the art of provers (and of tools supporting formal methods in general). We describe the project results in terms of evaluation criteria, classification of technologies and tools and critical factors for industrial take-up. We present the results of the assessment in the same spirit, the same kind of analysis and even the same terminology which were used in the presentations and in the deliverables of the project. This should result in a presentation of a “different view” of the problem of technology transfer in theorem proving, that we call the “user’s point of view”. In this way, we hope to give a new perspective in the discussion of the industrial take-up of the theorem proving technology.     

Requirements Management: A Cinderella Story

Why do the business requirements and the final software product often have little in common? Why are stakeholders, developers and managers reluctant to embrace a full requirements process? Why does everybody say, ‘We don’t have time for requirements’? Why is the potentially most beneficial part of the development process ignored or short-changed?  Following are some observations about why the real requirements for the product often go undiscovered. We will address this by focusing on the different concerns of the people involved in requirements.     

People, Information Systems and Change

Information systems are the glue between people and computers. Both the social and business environments are in a continual, some might say chaotic, state of change while computer hardware continues to double its performance about every 18 months. This presents a major challenge for information system developers.  The term user-friendly is an old one, but one which has come to take on a multitude of meanings. However, in today’s context we might well take a user-friendly system to be one where the technology fits the user’s cognitive models of the activity in hand. This article looks at the relationship between information systems and the changing demands of their users as the underlying theme for the current issue of Cognition, Technology and Work.  People, both as individuals and organisations, change. The functionalist viewpoint, which attempts to freeze and inhibit such change, has failed systems developers on numerous occasions. Responding to, and building on, change in the social environment is still a significant research issue for information systems specialists who need to be able to create living information systems.     

Information and Communication Technologies,Organisations and Skills: Convergence and Persistence

This article, first of all, supports the idea that the undeniable process of ICT-based technological convergence implies the social, cultural and business unification of the world of media and culture. The poor performance of the megamerger is a clear indicator of the unstable ground of the convergence hypothesis. Secondly, it argues in favour of cooperation between different expertise, skills and cultures to make multimedia products or to supply multimedia services, instead of creating from scratch a brand new class of hybrid skills and professions. Thirdly, a variety of new possible and realistically achievable professional profiles in cultural industries and institutions are illustrated. Eventually a set of public policies, in the light of a new role for cities and regions, is developed. Correspondence and offprint requests to: Francesco Garibaldo, Fondazione ‘Istituto Per il Lavoro (IPL)’, via Marconi 8, 40122 Bologna, Italy. Email: f.garibaldo@ipielle.emr.it