Join us @ HCI-IS 2014

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Pursuing our goal to bring together Slovenian HCI researchers and practitioners, we announce our 3rd event: the Human-Computer Interaction in Information Society 2014 conference. HCI-IS will take place in Ljubljana in October as part of the Information Society 2014 multiconference.

The conference is open to all HCI researchers, practitioners and enthusiasts. Don’t miss out the following dates:

  • Paper Submission: May, 12, 2014
  • Notification of Acceptance: June, 9, 2014
  • Camera Ready Submission: July, 1, 2014
  • Conference: 6 – 10 October 2014 (HCI-IS will take place on Wednesday  the 8th)

Find out more about the conference here or check guidelines for authors here.

Context-awareness: one of 2013’s top trends

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In a recent UX magazine article context-awareness was listed as one of the top UX trends in 2013. Yes, the same context-awareness known from HCI literature since the early 90s (the term was first used by Schilit et al. in 1994 to be precise). So it took nearly 20 years for context-awareness to find its way from labs to real life – another confirmation of what Bill Buxton calls the long nose of innovation. Other examples are the mouse and multitouch displays, which took approximately 30 and 20 years to reach mainstream respectively.

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Toward improved emergency call service: a usability test case study

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Miha Ristič & Franc Novak

Abstract

This paper describes the initial steps for the improvement of emergency call service. For instance, persons reporting an accident or similar event and the officer receiving the call are often under stress, which distracts the communication process and becomes a barrier to information transfer. We try to identify the main deficiencies when processing a received call and explore alternative ways of recording the main information content. In this regard we performed a usability test case study for assessing the efficiency of recording information either on a blank paper or in a prepared paper form. Implementation details of the usability test are described.

[Link]

How to provide health-related information by mobile computing?

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Barbara Koroušić Seljak

Abstract

The paper describes an approach taken by a mobile application eDietetik for the presentation of health- related information that is not allowed to be provided as a health claim. In this case, a mobile device running the application interacts with consumers, translating health-related information in an understandable and unambiguous way. Moreover, it may present an interface between different human stakeholders (i.e. consumers and manufacturers, consumers and healthcare providers, manufacturers and policy-makers).

[Link]

Wireless medical device audio alarm

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Marko Pavlin

Abstract

Audio alarming system for medical devices requires attention at some very specific segments. The clinical environment is full of disturbances and every alarm sound is not an exception. This paper presents some aspects of (audio) alarming within clinical environment and associated problems. Low power operation and limited resources for implementation are just on top of the problems related to the user experience. The presented solution is following the specific standards and is flexible enough to provide audio signals, which can be generated with small microcontroller. The described alarm generator was evaluated in laboratory and during clinical evaluation in real clinical environment with patients. The results are presented at the end of the paper.

[Link]

A website usability testing tool

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Franc Novak, Denis Špelič & Borut Žalik

Abstract

This paper presents a low-cost website usability testing tool that records user’s mouse movement when performing search query on a web page. After a given time-out the web page is blurred and only some region around the mouse cursor remains transparent. The tool can be regarded as an automated version of the conventional squint test and can be used for the validation of the website design from the perspective of user cognitive load.

[Link]