Instrumented Usability Analysis for Mobile Devices

Author(s):  
Andrew Crossan ◽  
Roderick Murray-Smith ◽  
Stephen Brewster ◽  
Bojan Musizza

Instrumented usability analysis involves the use of sensors during a usability study which provide observations from which the evaluator can infer details of the context of use, specific activities, or disturbances. This is particularly useful for the evaluation of mobile and wearable devices which are currently difficult to test realistically without constraining users in unnatural ways. To illustrate the benefits of such an approach, a study of touch-screen selection of on-screen targets is presented whilst walking and sitting, using a PocketPC instrumented with an accelerometer. From the accelerometer data, the user’s gait behaviour is inferred, allowing linking performance to gait phase angle, showing there were phase regions with significantly lower error and variability. The chapter provides examples of how information acquired via sensors gives quantitatively measurable information about the detailed interactions taking place when mobile, allowing designers to test and revise design decisions, based on realistic user activity.

Author(s):  
Andrew Crossan ◽  
Roderick Murray-Smith ◽  
Stephen Brewster ◽  
Bojan Musizza

Instrumented usability analysis involves the use of sensors during a usability study which provide observations from which the evaluator can infer details of the context of use, specific activities or disturbances. This is particularly useful for the evaluation of mobile and wearable devices, which are currently difficult to test realistically without constraining users in unnatural ways. To illustrate the benefits of such an approach, we present a study of touch-screen selection of on-screen targets, whilst walking and sitting, using a PocketPC instrumented with an accelerometer. From the accelerometer data the user’s gait behaviour is inferred, allowing us to link performance to gait phase angle, showing there were phase regions with significantly lower error and variability. The article provides examples of how information acquired via sensors gives us quantitatively measurable information about the detailed interactions taking place when mobile, allowing designers to test and revise design decisions, based on realistic user activity.


2018 ◽  
Vol 77 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian E. McGarry ◽  
David C. Grabowski

Given the rising cost of long-term care (LTC) services, the selection of a private long-term care insurance (LTCi) policy with inflation protection has critical implications for the ability of this coverage to protect against potentially catastrophic LTC expenses. This study examines the effect of consumers’ numeric abilities on the decision to add inflation protection to private LTCi policies. Over 40% of current LTCi policies lack inflation protection. Higher scores on a three-question numeracy scale are associated with increases in the probability of choosing inflation protection at the time of policy purchase, with households answering all three questions correctly being 12 percentage points more likely to have this benefit type relative to those with a numeracy score of 0 ( p = .002). Market reforms that simplify the task of evaluating LTCi plans and assessing the value of indexed benefits may be needed to ensure that LTCi policy purchasers are selecting adequate protection against future LTC costs.


Author(s):  
Weixiang Xu ◽  
Xiangyu He ◽  
Tianli Zhao ◽  
Qinghao Hu ◽  
Peisong Wang ◽  
...  

Large neural networks are difficult to deploy on mobile devices because of intensive computation and storage. To alleviate it, we study ternarization, a balance between efficiency and accuracy that quantizes both weights and activations into ternary values. In previous ternarized neural networks, a hard threshold Δ is introduced to determine quantization intervals. Although the selection of Δ greatly affects the training results, previous works estimate Δ via an approximation or treat it as a hyper-parameter, which is suboptimal. In this paper, we present the Soft Threshold Ternary Networks (STTN), which enables the model to automatically determine quantization intervals instead of depending on a hard threshold. Concretely, we replace the original ternary kernel with the addition of two binary kernels at training time, where ternary values are determined by the combination of two corresponding binary values. At inference time, we add up the two binary kernels to obtain a single ternary kernel. Our method dramatically outperforms current state-of-the-arts, lowering the performance gap between full-precision networks and extreme low bit networks. Experiments on ImageNet with AlexNet (Top-1 55.6%), ResNet-18 (Top-1 66.2%) achieves new state-of-the-art.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 67-78
Author(s):  
O. V. Manzhula

The article considers the issues of using new information and communication technologies (ICTs) when conducting the Russian Census related to the introduction of mobile devices and the Internet, which provide new opportunities for improving the quality and timeliness of the collecting and primary processing of statistical information about the population.In 2010, the Russian Census was conducted in the Russian Federation, which had many differences from previous censuses. All the technological stages of Russian Census – 2010 were automated starting from the development of machine-readable forms of census questionnaires and up to the preparation of publications of its outcomes.In the course of the trial population census held in 2018, ROSSTAT first combined the use of the Internet and mobile devices for collecting the information about the population. So, from October 1 to October 10, 2018 an online census was conducted for the whole country. Then, from October 11 to October 14, 2018 the information collected during the online census was processed, from October 15 to October 31, 2018, a survey was conducted by census takers in the regions of the trial population census – 2018 with the use of tablets and machine-readable documents. However, as the experience of the trial population census – 2018 demonstrated, one method of collecting information about the population cannot be equally efficient in all regions of Russia, due to the different attitude of the population to the methods of collecting information, as well as the conditions for the availability of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to the population in each region.The experience gained indicates the need for each region to choose the method of collecting and primary processing of statistical information about the population for each region based on a combination of Internet, mobile and traditional technologies that is adaptive to the regional conditions of the population census (remoteness and inaccessibility of some regions, the unreadiness of individual segments of the population to use modern ICTs for collecting information, Internet accessibility in various regions, different attitude of the population to census methods). The solution of this problem is an important condition for increasing the coverage of the population, the accuracy and reliability of the results and reducing the cost of conducting a census in each subject of Russia.The use of new information and communication technologies related to introduction of mobile devices and the Internet opens up new opportunities for improving the quality and timeliness of the collection and primary processing of statistical information about the population. However, with the development of census technologies, the number of alternative options for organizing it is growing. All this makes it necessary to justify the selection of a rational method of collecting and primary processing of statistical information about the population based on the regional characteristics of the development and accessibility of ICT, the consent of the population to interact with public authorities through the Public Services Portal, availability of ICTs in households. The validity of this choice is associated with the use of methods and decision-making models that are adequate to the peculiarities of the task.Purpose. Development of models for the selection of the rational method of collecting and primary processing of information of the Russian Census for each region of Russia using mobile devices and Internet technologies that correspond to the existing technological environment and the specificities of organizing Russian Census processes.Materials and methods. In the process of performing the preset tasks, methods of system and statistical analysis, expert assessment and systems, the fuzzy-set theory and cluster analysis were used. Calculations were carried out using MS Excel application software packages and IBM SPSS STATISTICS statistical software package.Results. The scientific article describes the developed expert system and models for substantiating a rational method of collecting and processing primary information in each Russian region based on their clustering according to the features characterizing the level of ICT development and their accessibility to the population in each region, the population's consent to cooperate with governmental authorities through the Public Services Portal, accessibility of ICT use in households and identifying the compliance of possibilities provided by alternative methods of collecting and processing the information on the population to the characteristics of readiness of the population, census personnel and territorial state statistics agency for conducting a census using modern ICTs and the limitations on the cost of conducting Russian Census in each region.Conclusion. The paper discusses the methodology that allows for the implementation of basic concept of the Russian Census, which is to ensure maximum coverage of the population while making informed management decisions on the choice of methods for collecting and primary processing of Russian Census information in each region of Russia, taking into account regional characteristics of the development and accessibility of ICTs, the consent of the population to interaction with public authorities through the Public Services Portal, access to ICTs in households.


1982 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 607-610 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward A. Grellert

Previous studies of male homosexuals' childhood play behavior have reported a limited selection of play activities. To get a more complete picture, 25 homosexual men and 25 comparison men were interviewed extensively about their play activities during ages 3 to 13 yr. at home and ages 6 to 11 yr. at school. Differences were found on 11 specific activities. Compared to heterosexual men, fewer homosexuals played “masculine” activities and more homosexuals played “feminine” activities. More homosexual subjects also recalled poor skill in throwing or catching a ball.


2018 ◽  
pp. 1084-1094
Author(s):  
Stefan Schneegass ◽  
Thomas Olsson ◽  
Sven Mayer ◽  
Kristof van Laerhoven

Wearable computing has a huge potential to shape the way we interact with mobile devices in the future. Interaction with mobile devices is still mainly limited to visual output and tactile finger-based input. Despite the visions of next-generation mobile interaction, the hand-held form factor hinders new interaction techniques becoming commonplace. In contrast, wearable devices and sensors are intended for more continuous and close-to-body use. This makes it possible to design novel wearable-augmented mobile interaction methods – both explicit and implicit. For example, the EEG signal from a wearable breast strap could be used to identify user status and change the device state accordingly (implicit) and the optical tracking with a head-mounted camera could be used to recognize gestural input (explicit). In this paper, the authors outline the design space for how the existing and envisioned wearable devices and sensors could augment mobile interaction techniques. Based on designs and discussions in a recently organized workshop on the topic as well as other related work, the authors present an overview of this design space and highlight some use cases that underline the potential therein.


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