Bojan Blažica
Abstract
Today, User Experience (UX) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) tools can provide a competitive advantage that might be key of a company’s business success or failure. In this paper, the awareness and use of these tools among start-ups is examined with a survey. The results hint that there is lots of room for improvement in terms of raising awareness and adoption of tools that help companies deliver better experiences through their products.
[Paper] [Presentation]
Mario Konecki, Vladimir Mrkela
Abstract
Programming courses are very important and challenging part of computer experts’ education process. However, abstract nature of these courses makes them rather difficult for most students. In order to increase students’ motivation and level of comprehension regarding programming an approach that includes less abstract presentation of programming concepts using visualization techniques is proposed and implemented through the tool SortExpert that is designed to help the students to cope in a more suitable and easier way with various sorting algorithms. Discussion about the effectiveness of existing visualization tools and research about the evaluation and acceptance of SortExpert are also presented.
[Paper] [Presentation]
Sašo Pečnik, Danijel Žlaus, Domen Mongus, Borut Žalik
Abstract
This paper proposes an improved approach for LiDAR data visualization in terms of rendering quality. The method uses adaptive point-scaling for dealing with variations in data densities, while the contrasts of rendered objects are improved with weighted color mapping. In the former case, points’ distances from the observer are used to estimate their optimal rendering sizes. In the latter case, points are colored based on height attributes and increasing visual fidelity a point’s color is weighted using that point’s intensity information. Common image quality matrices, as well as conducted user study, confirm the improvements of the visualization.
[Link]
Andrej Černivec, Ciril Bohak
Abstract
In this paper we present a system for touchless interface using Kinect sensor. The system can be used for general purpose interaction with existing applications. We show a case study implementation for use with web-browser where user can interact with the content using gestures. We also present implementation of the game that uses presented system for handling interaction with the user. We also present advantages and disadvantages of such framework and give possible solutions for some of the problems.
[Paper] [Presentation]
Jože Guna, Emilija Stojmenova, Matevž Pogačnik
Abstract
We present the importance and key aspects of the User Experience, Usability and User/Human Centered Design paradigms and approaches. Furthermore, real-life examples are given to illustrate the practical use of these approaches.
There are many definitions of the “user experience”, however the common ground to all is the idea, that the focus should be on the user and his/her needs, wishes and expectations, rather than exclusively on the product or service itself. The main goal is that the product or service in question should not only be functional or usable but also easy, intuitive and fun to use and explore. This is closely connected with the term of “cognitive flow”.
The definition from The User Experience Professionals Association states the user experience as follows: “User experience (UX) is an approach to product development that incorporates direct user feedback throughout the development cycle (human-centered design) in order to reduce costs and create products and tools that meet user needs and have a high level of usability (are easy to use).” This definition emphasizes the users’ role in the process through the User/Human Centered design philosophy. It defines the whole product or service design and development process as a continuous circular process, where user product testing at each phase is very important. In this way problems can be found early on and solved, which allows for a more cost effective approach with a better final product.
Of course, to design something for the “user” one has to know who your users are. To achieve this goal first end target user groups should be defined, and then specific, but single virtual users in a form of personas should be created. Not all users have the same abilities; therefore a special attention should be given to the accessibility issues.
Finally, some general, but golden rules of good design approach exist: the user should always be in control as much as possible, the interface should adapt to the user and reduce the cognitive load as much as possible, the interface should be consistent, and finally, the product or service should be personal and adapt to the users’ needs, and be not only functional, but also easy and intuitive to use.
To illustrate these paradigms, five distinct real-life examples are given, how the UX design approach was used to create a more “human” product, service or content. These examples include lessons learnt from a TVWEB project; a national RTV mobile multimedia application; a project for the national Telecom operator with a goal of designing an interface for the e-health portal; UCD approach used for designing the new university multimedia programme; and finally, the World Usability Day conference event in Slovenia.
In the context of Bachelor Thesis at the Faculty of Computer and Information Science, a student Miloš Vukov has developed a Chrome extension for Leap Motion. In this diploma thesis, a Chrome browser extension for touch-less navigation in a web browser was developed. The ready-made extension uses the Leap Motion sensor and enables internet browsing by navigating through the links and moving along the tabs with the help of gestures.
The results of thesis are available on-line:
For more information one can contact the author.
This post is a sequel to my ITS 2013 report. Both ITS 2013 and UIST 2013 were held one after another, the transition was very smooth. As many of the participants used this opportunity to attend both conferences, one could almost fail to notice the change if it were not for the slight shift of scope from surface technologies to general user interface research.
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Just a few notes from Helwig Hauser‘s keynote at SouthCHI2013 titled: »Integrating interactive and computational analysis in visualization.«
Firs, he defined visualization as computer assisted means to enable insight into data. In research, visual analytics have been a hot topic since 2004. Based on the level of integration of visualization and interaction, visual analytics tools can be divided in the following 3 (or is it 4?) categories:
The last level is the one with most potential for research. He continued by presenting the IVA methodology and the IVA loop. Some remarks about the IVA methodology (and tools for interactive visual analytics): it is needed when the user is faced with too much or too complex data; it should support data exploration, data analysis, hypotheses generation and sense making; it should take into account user interests and task at hand; it should support ‘information drill-down’ (i.e. going from overview to details); and it should offer an interactive and iterative visual dialog. The basic IVA loop consists of two steps: visualization (the computer shows the data to the user) and interaction (the user tells the computer what he/she is interested in). It sounds simple, but the execution of these two steps can quickly get complicated and complex – keep in mind that the process must run in real-time to be interactive.
For more on the topic, see Helvig Hauser’s bibliography.