Bringing Things Closer: Enhancing Low-Vision Interaction Experience with Office Productivity Applications

Many people with low vision rely on screen-magnifier assistive technology to interact with productivity applications such as word processors, spreadsheets, and presentation software. Despite the importance of these applications, little is known about their usability with respect to low-vision screen-magnifier users. To fill this knowledge gap, we conducted a usability study with 10 low-vision participants having different eye conditions. In this study, we observed that most usability issues were predominantly due to high spatial separation between main edit area and command ribbons on the screen, as well as the wide span grid-layout of command ribbons; these two GUI aspects did not gel with the screen-magnifier interface due to lack of instantaneous WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) feedback after applying commands, given that the participants could only view a portion of the screen at any time. Informed by the study findings, we developed MagPro, an augmentation to productivity applications, which significantly improves usability by not only bringing application commands as close as possible to the user's current viewport focus, but also enabling easy and straightforward exploration of these commands using simple mouse actions. A user study with nine participants revealed that MagPro significantly reduced the time and workload to do routine command-access tasks, compared to using the state-of-the-art screen magnifier.

Impact of Mixed Reality Presentation on STEM Engagement and Comprehension: A Pilot Study on Adult Scientists

Current educational presentation software used in STEM education fail to maximize student engagement and comprehension. Mixed reality presentation is one specific type of digital presentation software that has shown to significantly improve student engagement and comprehension. In this paper, we describe a pilot study on adult scientists which evaluates the usage of an integrated mixed reality presentation software in the Zyndo platform as an enhanced alternative to Adobe PDFs. A group of adult scientists (N = 20), with higher education of at least a bachelor’s degree, from an academic research center at Harvard Medical School were randomized and asked to read two articles (one on Immunology and the other on Bioengineering) presented through either the mixed reality presentation or PDFs. Our results indicate that participants improved in nearly all metrics for engagement (ranging from + 4 to 51% improvement depending on engagement metric and subject matter) when viewing the mixed reality presentation over the traditional PDFs for both articles. Specifically, the participants demonstrated improved comprehension of the scientific content and time spent viewing the presentation in a content-dependent manner. Therefore, 3D mixed reality environments can potentially be applied to enhance student learning in STEM fields, particularly Biomedical Engineering in both on-line and in person classroom settings.

Assessing Faculty Perception of PowerPoint as a Digital Content Authoring Tool

This study sought to identify the perceptions of faculty in utilizing Microsoft PowerPoint as an authoring tool. This research posited that Microsoft PowerPoint has some multimedia authoring features and can possibly be used as a single-point multimedia authoring tool for faculty to utilize to create multimedia content for courses that they teach. However, PowerPoint is traditionally used as a presentation software, and despite its multimedia authoring capabilities, faculty may not be aware or even willing to use such features, having grown accustomed to their traditional use of the software. Nonetheless, from this study, it confirms that faculty are biased to seeing PowerPoint as a presentation tool. However, the study revealed that despite the initial myopia and limitations, post-intervention, participants showed a keen interest in using PowerPoint beyond the realm of presentations.

An interactive analysis of users, use and usability of phenological information

<p>Phenology is the science that studies the timing of periodic plant and animal life cycle events, as well as their causes, interrelations, and variations in space and time. Phenological information has a plethora of use and hence of users. For example, this information is often used to study climate change because phenological timings respond to changes in environmental conditions. Besides this, phenological information helps to model the water, carbon and energy cycles, is necessary to monitor and manage natural and artificial man-made ecosystems and even supports nature lovers and public health practitioners. The well-established EGU session on “Phenology and seasonality in climate change” shows the diversity of phenological research and products and brings together multiple research communities: ecologists, agronomists, foresters, climatologists, geo-information and remote sensing scientists, and of course, citizen science experts. We believe that this diversity deserves attention and propose carrying out a first analysis of users, use and usability of phenological products by interacting with the participants of this EGU session. For this we will use a presentation software that allows posing questions to the audience and collecting their views in real-time. This presentation will then provide a better view of the phenological community, including their most commonly used data sources, tools, and needs. Special attention will be paid to identify major achievements and research and/or operational gaps that can help to define a phenological agenda for this new decade.</p>

By Means of Which: Media, Technology, Organization

This chapter traces and interrogates media, technology, and organization in their foundational relations, their forms, and their constraining and loosening effects and affects. The folding of humans and technology works both ways: human bodies can, too, be apprehended prosthetically as extensions of technologies. The notion of media then applies to any object that conditions the structure of a certain situation and the specific possibilities of perceiving, acting, and thinking in it. If we begin with this understanding of technology and media as fundamental, conditional, and infrastructural, then how organization takes place is predicated upon such apparatuses. The task is then not one of finding better uses of desks, smartphones, presentation software, or high heels, for all of these have modes of subjectification scripted into them. Rather, it is remaining alive to the hesitations already provided: the glitches, accidents, misuses, and alternative projections, and to wander and wonder with them.