Eliciting positive user experiences with self-service kiosks: pursuing possibilities

Although the prominent concept of the last decade – user experience – maintains its significance in diverse disciplines, especially design, its focus has changed to eliciting positive user experiences by pursuing new possibilities for consumer products rather than by solely seeking solutions to existing problems. Designers continue to aim for rich user experiences with a variety of products, but have neglected self-service (interactive) kiosks. Hence, this paper, after giving a brief overview of the positive psychology literature, demonstrates the dimensions of positive user experiences with self-service kiosks through an empirical study conducted on coffee vending machines and automated tellers.     

Online recognition of sketched arrow-connected diagrams

We introduce a new, online, stroke-based recognition system for hand-drawn diagrams which belong to a group of documents with an explicit structure obvious to humans but only loosely defined from the machine point of view. We propose a model for recognition by selection of symbol candidates, based on evaluation of relations between candidates using a set of predicates. It is suitable for simpler structures where the relations are explicitly given by symbols, arrows in the case of diagrams. Knowledge of a specific diagram domain is used—the two domains are flowcharts and finite automata. Although the individual pipeline steps are tailored for these, the system can readily be adapted for other domains. Our entire diagram recognition pipeline is outlined. Its core parts are text/non-text separation, symbol segmentation, their classification and structural analysis. Individual parts have been published by the authors previously and so are described briefly and referenced. Thorough evaluation on benchmark databases shows the accuracy of the system reaches the state of the art and is ready for practical use. The paper brings several contributions: (a) the entire system and its state-of-the-art performance; (b) the methodology exploring document structure when it is loosely defined; (c) the thorough experimental evaluation; (d) the new annotated database for online sketched flowcharts and finite automata diagrams.     

Business Intelligence Acceptance: The Prominence of Organizational Factors

The specifics of business intelligence systems compared to operational IS motivate the necessity to research the business intelligence systems acceptance determinants separately. The authors followed an exploratory approach in order to conceptualize a business intelligence acceptance model. Their findings show that in the Business Intelligence Systems context, there is a significant emphasis on organizational factors, such as result demonstrability, social influence, and facilitating conditions with sufficient resources that help build an adequate information culture all substantially influencing the effective acceptance of business intelligence systems.     

Limitations of a Mapping Algorithm with Fragmentation Mimics (MAFM) when modeling statistical data sources based on measured packet network traffic

Knowing the estimation of a statistical process’s parameters for measured network traffic is very important as it can then be further used for the statistical analyses and modeling of network traffic in simulation tools. It is for this reason that different estimation methods are proposed that allow estimations of the statistical processes of network traffic. One of them is our own histograms comparison (EMHC) based method that can be used to estimate statistical data-length process parameters from measured packet traffic. The main part of EMHC method is Mapping Algorithm with Fragmentation Mimics (MAFM).     

Disquiet in the plasma

The metaphor of plasma is taken up to present and discuss movement and engagement by participants in mixed reality installation arts. Two works involving full body video portraits exhibited through large plasma screens in a variety of public settings are covered. Machinic mediations of video realism are considered in terms of embodied interaction in which viewer-participants contribute to the ‘disquiet’ of gendered figuring. Processural, proximal and personal aspects of responsive engagement are discussed. This is extended to performativity that may lead us to critical reflection of our own actions and responses in mixed reality arts.     

An integral system‐ergonomic approach for IT‐based process management in complex work environments by example of manufacturing and health care

Recent trends in manufacturing and health care move these two work systems closer together from a system ergonomics point of view. Individual treatment of products, especially patients, by specialists in a distributed environment demand information technology (IT)‐based support suitable for complex systems. IT‐based support of processes in complex systems is difficult due to the lack of standard processes. IT support also means to rethink processes to use efficiency potentials. Close cooperation of users and software developers is needed to increase the ergonomic quality of the system. Therefore, suitable tools are needed: UML is available as the standard industry modeling language, Zope/Plone as the quasi‐standard for content management systems, SimPy as an object‐oriented simulation tool for event‐triggered processes, and ACT‐R as a powerful cognitive architecture for simulation of human information processes. The integration of these tools enables system‐ergonomic support of processes in the complex work system as well as of the development and deployment process. It is the base of an integral system‐ergonomic approach for IT‐based process management. Knowledge gained during process analysis either enters models or leads to the extension and adaptation of the tool chain. The models serve as basis for discussion among system ergonomists, programmers, and specialists from the work system. Further, they are understood by simulation and process support tools. Transcoding efforts between humans with different professional backgrounds and machines are reduced, and the flexibility demanded by complex systems is met. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Absolute calibration of photostimulable image plate detectors used as (0.5-20 MeV) high-energy proton detectors

In this paper, the absolute calibration of photostimulable image plates (IPs) used as proton detectors is presented. The calibration is performed in a wide range of proton energies (0.5-20 MeV) by exposing simultaneously the IP and calibrated detectors (radiochromic films and solid state detector CR39) to a source of broadband laser-accelerated protons, which are spectrally resolved. The final result is a calibration curve that enables retrieving the proton number from the IP signal.     

Color effects of uniform colloidal particles of different morphologies packed into films

The experimentally determined chromaticities and reflectance spectra of films consisting of uniform ellipsoidal or spherical colloidal hematite particles are compared with calculated values and are found to be in good agreement. The theoretical treatment of the light-scattering problem involves the Mie theory for the spheres and the T-matrix method for the ellipsoids. The reflectance spectra for the pigment films are calculated through the use of the Kubelka-Munk analysis.