Lessons Learned from Large-Scale User Studies

2012 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 28-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denzil Ferreira ◽  
Vassilis Kostakos ◽  
Anind K. Dey
Keyword(s):  
Side Effects ◽  
Mobile Phone ◽  
Mobile Devices ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
User Studies ◽  
Prior Work ◽  
Android Market

User studies with mobile devices have typically been cumbersome, since researchers have had to recruit participants, hand out or configure devices, and offer incentives and rewards. The increasing popularity of application stores has allowed researchers to use such mechanisms to recruit participants and conduct large-scale studies in authentic settings with relatively little effort. Most researchers who use application stores do not consider the side-effects or biases that such an approach may introduce. The authors summarize prior work that has reported experiences from using application stores as a recruiting, distribution and study mechanism, and also present a case study of a 4-week long study using the Android Market to deploy an application to over 4000 users that collected data on their mobile phone charging habits. The authors synthesize their own experiences with prior reported findings to discuss the challenges, advantages, limitations and considerations of using application stores as a recruitment and distribution approach for conducting large-scale studies.

Deployment of Mobile Learning Course Materials to Android Powered Mobile Devices

2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee Chao
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Devices ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Science Curriculum ◽  
Object Oriented ◽  
Object Oriented Programming ◽  
Traditional Course ◽  
Course Materials ◽  
Course Material ◽  
Android Market

The objective of this article is to facilitate mobile teaching and learning by providing an alternative course material deployment method. This article suggests a course material deployment platform for small universities or individual instructors. Different from traditional course material deployment methods, the method discussed deploys course materials by using services provided by Android Market. After comparing the traditional course material deployment and the alternative deployment, the author presents strategies to take advantage of Android Market in delivering course materials to mobile devices. Through a case study, this article illustrates the application of these strategies in deploying a class menu for an object-oriented programming course in the computer science curriculum.

Teen Pregnancy Prevention Evaluation Technical Assistance: A Case Study

2020 ◽  
pp. 0193841X2097527
Author(s):  
Jean Knab ◽  
Russell Cole
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Behavior ◽  
Teen Pregnancy ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Technical Assistance ◽  
Pregnancy Prevention ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Teen Pregnancy Prevention ◽  
Important Lesson ◽  
Behavior Outcomes

Purpose: This case study discusses Mathematica’s experience providing large-scale evaluation technical assistance (ETA) to 65 grantees across two cohorts of Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) Program grants. The grantees were required to conduct rigorous evaluations with specific evaluation benchmarks. This case study provides an overview of the TPP grant program, the evaluation requirements, the ETA provider, and other key stakeholders and the ETA provided to the grantees. Finally, it discusses the successes, challenges, and lessons learned from the effort. Conclusion: One important lesson learned is that there are two related evaluation features, strong counterfactuals and insufficient target sample sizes, that funders should attend to prior to selecting awardees because they are not easy to change through ETA. In addition, if focused on particular outcomes (for TPP, the goal was to improve sexual behavior outcomes), the funder should prioritize studies with an opportunity to observe differences in these outcomes across conditions; several TPP grantees served young populations, and sexual behavior outcomes were not observed or were rare, limiting the opportunity to observe impacts. Unless funders are attentive to weaning out evaluations with critical limitations during the funding process, requiring grantees to conduct impact evaluations supported by ETA might unintentionally foster internally valid, yet underpowered studies that show nonsignificant program impacts. The TPP funder was able to overcome some of the limitations of the grantee evaluations by funding additional evidence-building activities, including federally led evaluations and a large meta-analysis of the effort, as part of a broader learning agenda.

SMALL SCALE PILOT PROJECT AS A TOOL FOR PLANNING LARGE SCALE RESTORATION

2008 ◽  
Vol 2008 (1) ◽  
pp. 1163-1169
Author(s):  
Leslie J. Craig ◽  
Tom Pride
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Oyster Reef ◽  
Pilot Project ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Pilot Studies ◽  
Restoration Project ◽  
Survival And Growth ◽  
Oyster Restoration

ABSTRACT The use of pilot studies can be a useful tool in determining the most appropriate location, method and design for a large scale restoration project. This paper provides a case study where Trustees implemented a small pilot project and feasibility study to determine the best approach for a large scale oyster reef creation project. While the specific case study is the result of a CERCLA settlement (Alafia River Acid Spill of 1997), this model is transferable to other instances where Trustees are scoping for the most appropriate sites and methods to conduct settlement funded restoration. The Restoration Plan and Environmental Assessment on which the case settlement was based called for creation of approximately 4 acres of oyster reef in addition to 4 acres of estuarine marsh restoration. Through an initial scoping process, the Trustees determined that more information was needed to select the most appropriate locations and techniques to implement the large scale oyster restoration project. The Trustees identified 3 general locations with potential for larger scale oyster reef creation. A portion of settlement funding was used to contract for construction and monitoring of an oyster reef pilot project to examine the efficacy of oyster reef construction at the three locations using 4 different cultch materials. At each of the locations, 4 small reefs (approximately 75’ × 20’) were constructed and monitored for spat set, oyster survival and growth as well as subsidence. A baseline construction report and final monitoring report detailed the results. In addition, a separate report was completed that outlined the feasibility of constructing a 4 acre oyster reef in Hillsborough Bay, FL. This report included several construction considerations such as local sources and costs of cultch materials, shipping/transport, staging areas, construction equipment as well as potential local contractors. This paper reports the results of the oyster pilot project and feasibility report as well as lessons learned from each approach.

Understanding tourist behavior using large-scale mobile sensing approach: A case study of mobile phone users in Japan

2015 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 18-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Santi Phithakkitnukoon ◽  
Teerayut Horanont ◽  
Apichon Witayangkurn ◽  
Raktida Siri ◽  
Yoshihide Sekimoto ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Phone ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Mobile Sensing ◽  
Tourist Behavior

scholarly journals BANKSAFE: Visual analytics for big data in large-scale computer networks

2013 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabian Fischer ◽  
Johannes Fuchs ◽  
Florian Mansmann ◽  
Daniel A Keim
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
Computer Networks ◽  
Visual Analytics ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Unstructured Data ◽  
Monitoring Data ◽  
Making Sense

The enormous growth of data in the last decades led to a wide variety of different database technologies. Nowadays, we are capable of storing vast amounts of structured and unstructured data. To address the challenge of exploring and making sense out of big data using visual analytics, the tight integration of such backend services is needed. In this article, we introduce BANKSAFE, which was built for the VAST Challenge 2012 and won the outstanding comprehensive submission award. BANKSAFE is based on modern database technologies and is capable of visually analyzing vast amounts of monitoring data and security-related datasets of large-scale computer networks. To better describe and demonstrate the visualizations, we utilize the Visual Analytics Science and Technology (VAST) Challenge 2012 as case study. Additionally, we discuss lessons learned during the design and development of BANKSAFE, which are also applicable to other visual analytics applications for big data.

scholarly journals Oral Care that Supports Healthy Lives as a Case Study of the Kumamoto Earthquake

2021 ◽  
pp. 211-217
Author(s):  
Michikazu Hiramatsu ◽  
Hideto Ohta
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Oral Care ◽  
Medical Personnel ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Dental Hygienist ◽  
Medical Activity ◽  
Kumamoto Earthquake ◽  
Effective Health Care

AbstractImmediately after the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in 1995 and the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, pneumonia outbreak among the elderly increased the rate of fatalities. What caused this? To use lessons learned during the large-scale disaster, specialists concerned with the field of dentistry began to take action using new perspectives. Consequently, they noticed the importance of giving care to the entire oral cavity as well as the teeth. Based on reports from a dentist and a dental hygienist who tackled the oral care of the Kumamoto Earthquake victims in 2016, their methods of effective health care following a disaster is presented in this paper. We also propose a preventative medical activity that can be conducted sustainably for anyone, not just medical personnel.

scholarly journals Using mobile phone data to estimate dynamic population changes and improve the understanding of a pandemic: A case study in Andorra

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex A Berke ◽  
Ronan Doorley ◽  
Luis Alonso ◽  
Marc Pons ◽  
Vanesa Arroyo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Phone ◽  
Mobile Devices ◽  
Compartmental Models ◽  
Mobile Phone Data ◽  
Population Changes ◽  
Study Region ◽  
Testing Program ◽  
Dynamic Population ◽  
Serology Testing

Compartmental models are often used to understand and predict the progression of an infectious disease such as COVID-19. The most basic of these models consider the total population of a region to be closed. Many incorporate human mobility into their transmission dynamics, usually based on static and aggregated data. However, mobility can change dramatically during a global pandemic as seen with COVID-19, making static data unsuitable. Recently, large mobility datasets derived from mobile devices have been used, along with COVID-19 infections data, to better understand the relationship between mobility and COVID-19. However, studies to date have relied on data that represent only a fraction of their target populations, and the data from mobile devices have been used for measuring mobility within the study region, without considering changes to the population as people enter and leave the region. This work presents a unique case study in Andorra, with comprehensive datasets that include telecoms data covering 100% of mobile subscribers in the country, and results from a serology testing program that more than 90% of the population voluntarily participated in. We use the telecoms data to both measure mobility within the country and to provide a real-time census of people entering, leaving and remaining in the country. We develop multiple SEIR (compartmental) models parameterized on these metrics and show how dynamic population metrics can improve the models. We find that total daily trips did not have predictive value in the SEIR models while country entrances did. As a secondary contribution of this work, we show how Andorra's serology testing program was likely impacted by people leaving the country. Overall, this case study suggests how using mobile phone data to measure dynamic population changes could improve studies that rely on more commonly used mobility metrics and the overall understanding of a pandemic.

scholarly journals Solar Water Heating Systems Applied to High-Rise Buildings—Lessons from Experiences in China

Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (16) ◽  
pp. 3078 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huang ◽  
Fan ◽  
Furbo ◽  
Li
Keyword(s):  
Economic Performance ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Practical Experience ◽  
Field Investigation ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Water Heating ◽  
Solar Water Heating ◽  
Solar Water ◽  
High Rise

High-rise buildings have a significant impact on the surrounding environment. Building-integrated solar water heating (SWH) systems are effective ways to use renewable energy in buildings. Impediments, such as security concerns, aesthetics and functionality, make it difficult to apply SWH systems in high-rise buildings. At present, only China uses SWH systems on a large scale in such buildings. What are China’s experiences and lessons learned in applying SWH systems in high-rises? Are these experiences scalable to other countries? This study used a combination of field investigation, literature review and case study to summarize 36 systems that had been in operation for 1–14 years. System types, collector types, installation methods, types of auxiliary heat sources, economic performance and various basic principles were summarized. The economic performance of SWH systems in high-rise buildings was analyzed and verified by a case study in Shanghai. The results show that the installation of SWH systems in high-rise buildings is feasible and reliable as long as appropriate design, construction, operation, and maintenance measures are employed. China's unique practical experience gives a reference for other countries in their efforts to make high-rise buildings more sustainable.

Large-Scale Research via App Stores

2015 ◽  
pp. 269-292
Author(s):  
Matthias Kranz ◽  
Andreas Möller ◽  
Florian Michahelles
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Human Computer Interaction ◽  
Real World ◽  
Mobile Applications ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Mobile App ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Conducting Research ◽  
Collection Methods

Large-scale research has gained momentum in the context of Mobile Human-Computer Interaction (Mobile HCI), as many aspects of mobile app usage can only be evaluated in the real world. In this chapter, we present findings on the challenges of research in the large via app stores, in conjunction with selected data collection methods (logging, self-reporting) we identified and have proven as useful in our research. As a case study, we investigated the adoption of NFC technology, based on a gamification approach. We therefore describe the development of the game NFC Heroes involving two release cycles. We conclude with lessons learned and provide recommendations for conducting research in the large for mobile applications.

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