Continuous 24-h Photoplethysmogram Monitoring Enables Detection of Atrial Fibrillation

Aim: Atrial fibrillation (AF) detection is challenging because it is often asymptomatic and paroxysmal. We evaluated continuous photoplethysmogram (PPG) for signal quality and detection of AF.Methods: PPGs were recorded using a wrist-band device in 173 patients (76 AF, 97 sinus rhythm, SR) for 24 h. Simultaneously recorded 3-lead ambulatory ECG served as control. The recordings were split into 10-, 20-, 30-, and 60-min time-frames. The sensitivity, specificity, and F1-score of AF detection were evaluated for each time-frame. AF alarms were generated to simulate continuous AF monitoring. Sensitivities, specificities, and positive predictive values (PPVs) of the alarms were evaluated. User experiences of PPG and ECG recordings were assessed. The study was registered in the Clinical Trials database (NCT03507335).Results: The quality of PPG signal was better during night-time than in daytime (67.3 ± 22.4% vs. 30.5 ± 19.4%, p < 0.001). The 30-min time-frame yielded the highest F1-score (0.9536), identifying AF correctly in 72/76 AF patients (sensitivity 94.7%), only 3/97 SR patients receiving a false AF diagnosis (specificity 96.9%). The sensitivity and PPV of the simulated AF alarms were 78.2 and 97.2% at night, and 49.3 and 97.0% during the daytime. 82% of patients were willing to use the device at home.Conclusion: PPG wrist-band provided reliable AF identification both during daytime and night-time. The PPG data’s quality was better at night. The positive user experience suggests that wearable PPG devices could be feasible for continuous rhythm monitoring.

User Involvement: Effective Performance in Sustainable Social Housing

In the development of sustainable social housing, the residents, operating staff, and administrative staff - as users - face challenges in relation to a lack of involvement. The aim of this research is to contribute with results regarding these challenges. These contributions to the discussion are based on the results of a qualitative evaluation of sustainable social housing. The results suggest that it can be an advantage to utilise user experiences in the development of future sustainable social housing with a view to strengthening the user involvement process. The argument is that a greater degree of user involvement respects people’s experiences as being a contribution to the development of new projects. In addition, the research suggests that the early involvement of residents, operating staff, and administrative staff can strengthen the sense of project ownership and community, as well as the project’s social sustainability. It is claimed that user involvement can promote social sustainability, which is a significant factor, since the intention behind a project’s sustainability is that the residents will later have ownership and an interest in ensuring that it works in accordance with its intentions.

Tertiary Students' Experience with Digital Language Games for Enhancing the English Language

Recently, digital games are used as a form of new media with massive potential for learning the English Language. To understand the typology of user experiences with digital games, the Presence-Involvement-Flow Framework (PIFF) was utilized. A series of semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten tertiary students in Northern Malaysia. Participants were asked to download and familiarize five digital language games (Duolingo, Memrise, Word Connect, Word Domination and Word Tower Puzzles) before the interviews. Thematic analysis technique was used to analyze the responses. The study’s thematic network comprises four global themes (Game Structure, Feelings, Skills Gained and Prerequisites) and seven organizing themes (Instruction, Game Design, Positive Emotional Outcome, Negative Emotional Outcome, Soft Skills, Technical Skills and Skills Required). The result is expected to be a good guideline or research framework for practitioners and researchers in exploring further the concept of user experience with English language digital games.

How Academics and the Public Experienced Immersive Virtual Reality for Geo-Education

Immersive virtual reality can potentially open up interesting geological sites to students, academics and others who may not have had the opportunity to visit such sites previously. We study how users perceive the usefulness of an immersive virtual reality approach applied to Earth Sciences teaching and communication. During nine immersive virtual reality-based events held in 2018 and 2019 in various locations (Vienna in Austria, Milan and Catania in Italy, Santorini in Greece), a large number of visitors had the opportunity to navigate, in immersive mode, across geological landscapes reconstructed by cutting-edge, unmanned aerial system-based photogrammetry techniques. The reconstructed virtual geological environments are specifically chosen virtual geosites, from Santorini (Greece), the North Volcanic Zone (Iceland), and Mt. Etna (Italy). Following the user experiences, we collected 459 questionnaires, with a large spread in participant age and cultural background. We find that the majority of respondents would be willing to repeat the immersive virtual reality experience, and importantly, most of the students and Earth Science academics who took part in the navigation confirmed the usefulness of this approach for geo-education purposes.

ANALISIS USER EXPERIENCE DAN USER INTERFACE (UI/UX) PADA WEBSITE MENGGUNAKAN METODEGOOGLE DESIGN SPRINT

CV Tirta Kalimaya is a company engaged in Water Treatment which has products in two categories, namely Hexabion and Biotech. The marketing technique uses digital marketing, namely market places and websites. The current condition of the website has very few visitors, one of the factors is because the user interface and user experience are not quite right. It is important to pay attention to the user interface and user experience (UI/UX) so that the product can be used properly by users according to its functionality. This study aims to make the CV Tirta Kalimaya company website able to provide what users/website visitors need in terms of functional and visual design by analyzing and designing the user interface and user experience using the Google Design Sprint method, which consists of 5 stages namely, understand, diverge. , decide, prototype and validate. For the validate process using A/B Testing by displaying two variables to see which variable gets good performance. Based on the analysis, implementation and evaluation resulted in a final prototype that has been validated, in terms of appearance, duration of use to consideration of criticism and suggestions from users. And produce user interfaces with matching color schemes, consistent layouts and user experiences that match the respondent's mindset to get information or achieve goals

Enhancing Recommender System with Collaborative Filtering and User Experiences Filtering

Recommender systems have become an essential part in many applications and websites to address the information overload problem. For example, people read opinions about recommended products before buying them. This action is time-consuming due to the number of opinions available. It is necessary to provide recommender systems with methods that add information about the experiences of other users, along with the presentation of the recommended products. These methods should help users by filtering reviews and presenting the necessary answers to their questions about recommended products. The contribution of this work is the description of a recommender system that recommends products using a collaborative filtering method, and which adds only relevant feedback from other users about recommended products. A prototype of a hotel recommender system was implemented and validated with real users.

An empirical investigation of command-line customization

The interactive command line, also known as the shell, is a prominent mechanism used extensively by a wide range of software professionals (engineers, system administrators, data scientists, etc.). Shell customizations can therefore provide insight into the tasks they repeatedly perform, how well the standard environment supports those tasks, and ways in which the environment could be productively extended or modified. To characterize the patterns and complexities of command-line customization, we mined the collective knowledge of command-line users by analyzing more than 2.2 million shell alias definitions found on GitHub. Shell aliases allow command-line users to customize their environment by defining arbitrarily complex command substitutions. Using inductive coding methods, we found three types of aliases that each enable a number of customization practices: Shortcuts (for nicknaming commands, abbreviating subcommands, and bookmarking locations), Modifications (for substituting commands, overriding defaults, colorizing output, and elevating privilege), and Scripts (for transforming data and chaining subcommands). We conjecture that identifying common customization practices can point to particular usability issues within command-line programs, and that a deeper understanding of these practices can support researchers and tool developers in designing better user experiences. In addition to our analysis, we provide an extensive reproducibility package in the form of a curated dataset together with well-documented computational notebooks enabling further knowledge discovery and a basis for learning approaches to improve command-line workflows.

User Experiences with a Short Message Service-Based Illness Self-Management Intervention: A Mixed Methods Study (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Limited access to mental health care services due to provider shortages, geographic limitations, and cost has driven the area of mobile health (mHealth) care to address these access gaps. Reports from the Cohen Veterans Network and National Council for Behavioral Health show that in states where mental health care is more accessible, there is still 38% of people who are not receiving the care they need. MHealth strategies help to provide care to individuals experiencing these barriers at lower cost and greater convenience, making mHealth a great resource to bridge the gap. OBJECTIVE We present a mixed-methods study to evaluate user experiences with the mental mHealth service, Cope Notes. Specifically, we aimed to investigate the following research questions: 1. How do Cope Notes users perceive the service as it relates to stigma, impact of the intervention, and perceived usefulness? 2. How do Cope Notes users rate the Cope Notes service and messaging along various dimensions of acceptability? 3. What is the relationship between Cope Notes message ratings and user personality and coping strategies? 4. What are user perspectives of ubiquitous sensing technologies, including integration of ubiquitous sensing for the improvement in timeliness of the intervention and quality of tailored content? METHODS We performed qualitative interviews with Cope Notes users (n=14) who have used the service for at least 30 days to evaluate their experience and usefulness of the service. These interviews were coded by two raters, and interrater reliability was calculated with SPSS at 61.8%. Additionally, participants completed quantitative measures, including a user experiences survey, personality inventory (Big Five-10), and coping assessment (Brief COPE). RESULTS We derived seven main overarching themes from our qualitative interviews: Likes/Perceived Benefits, Dislikes/Limitations, Suggested Changes, Stigma/Help Seeking, Perceptions of Ubiquitous Sensing, Cultural Sensitivity, and Alternative mHealth Resources. Exploratory analyses between acceptability ratings of Cope Notes and personality factors from BF-10 yielded statistically significant positive relationships between seeing oneself as someone who is generally trusting and various acceptability items, the most significant being item 7 (“I fully understood the sentiment behind Cope Notes Messages”) with (rs(10) = 0.82, P = .001). We also found statistically significant relationships between the acceptability items and Brief COPE items, with the strongest positive correlation between participants strongly endorsing coping by accepting the reality that an event has happened and acceptability item 7 (rs(8) = 0.86, P = .001). CONCLUSIONS Our study found that Cope Notes subscribers appreciate the service for reframing and refocusing their mental wellness with statistically significant correlations between personality and the acceptability of the service. We found that some users prefer a more personalized experience with neutral to positive reactions to a potential companion app that continuously monitors user behavior via smartphone sensor readings to provide just-in-time interventions when users need it the most.