articles+ search results

Information & communication technologies, Tourism management, Human-machine relationship, On-demand marketing, and Electronic commerce

Polynomials, Symbolic computation, and Chebyshev polynomials

Undoubtedly, one of the most powerful applications that allow symbolic computations is Wolfram Mathematica. However, it turns out that sometimes Mathematica does not give the desired result despite its continuous improvement. Moreover, these gaps are not filled by many authors of books and tutorials. For example, our attempts to obtain a compact symbolic description of the roots of polynomials or coefficients of a polynomial with known roots using Mathematica have often failed and they still fail. Years of our work with theory, computations, and different kinds of applications in the area of polynomials indicate that an application 'offering' the user alternative methods of solving a given problem would be extremely useful. Such an application would be valuable not only for people who look for solutions to very specific problems but also for people who need different descriptions of solutions to known problems than those given by classical methods. Therefore, we propose the development of an application that would be not only a program doing calculations but also containing an interactive database about polynomials. In this paper, we present examples of methods and information which could be included in the described project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computer-supported cooperative work and PORTAL (Computer program language)

Computer supported collaborative work (CSCW) allows people to cooperate by computers from different places and at different times. To enable an easier integration of such collaborative components into web-based communities and portals, a Shared Workspace Open Framework (SWOF) was developed. This framework provides the basic features of shared workspaces and can be customized to different cooperation cases. High usability is an important aspect of the implementation. To achieve these aims SWOF focuses on an information space with more task-suited item-types that can help to pre-structure the information. Thus, on the one hand the system can help the users to write down the needed information in a consistent way and, on the other, could reduce the arguments between the group members on how to structure their workspace. As a use case for SWOF the development of a Web-based portal for the community of man-machine interaction was chosen. In the project MMI-Interaktiv, a portal is built with a SWOF-based shared workspace component. An evaluation for this use case is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Periodicals, Information retrieval, Information services, Information technology, Information resources management, and Human-machine systems

This article focuses on "The Journal of the American Society for Information Science." It is a refereed journal whose scope includes all of the wide fields of information systems, information science, and aspects of library science. The subject headings discussed in the journal are theory of information science, theory of communication, man-machine interaction, management, economics, and marketing, applied information science, information system operations, and social and legal aspects of information.

Knowledge management, Information services management, Smartphones, Human-machine systems, and Short-term memory

With the increasing pervasiveness of smart phones and smart devices, dialogue systems are gaining ever growing attention from both academic and industry. These systems can be broadly classified into two categories, one that is aimed at helping user to gain new knowledge and one that can chat with users without completing any specific tasks. Although dialogue systems are improving substantially, the user experience of such systems are still unsatisfactory as there are no specific rules covering all possible situations of real human–machine dialogue, resulting in breakdowns. There are two technical issues affecting the detection of dialogue breakdown in an open domain conversation: human resources to prepare and annotate a large chunk of conversation data and dialogue histories containing words that don't appear directly in training data. To tackle these issues, we propose a novel encoding method for temporal utterances with memory attention based on end-to-end dialogue breakdown detection. Specifically, long short-term memory (LSTM) is employed to encode each word of all previous user and system utterances. Encoded vectors from LSTM (user and system utterances), along with system and user utterances from sentence embedding, are then stored in memory wherein an attention mechanism is applied to select the most relevant piece of words from system and user utterances for breakdown detection. An evaluation of the proposed approach on a breakdown detection task (DBDC3) showed that the model for single-labeled breakdown detection outperforms other state-of-the-art methods in a classification task. In conclusion, a more effective knowledge gain and management can be achieved by integration of our proposed breakdown detection into dialogue systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Citation analysis, Bibliometrics, Scholarly peer review, Human-robot interaction, Human-machine systems, Logistic regression analysis, and Conferences & conventions

The peer review process is an essential component for the progress of science. The ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction is the prime publication channel for the field and this study evaluates its peer review process. The results show that the number of accepted papers are unevenly distributed across countries, organizations and authors. The contributions from the US outweigh all others contributions. A Binary Logistic Regression analysis showed that only for 85.5% of the papers the reviewers' scores accurately predict its acceptance or rejection. Moreover, there was no significant correlation between the reviewers' scores and the citations the papers later attract. 73% of the authors only ever submitted one paper and the proportion of newcomers at the conferences ranges from 63-77%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial intelligence, Patents, Artistic creation, and Human-machine systems

This study explored how artificial intelligence (AI) could assist patent examiners as part of the prior art search process. The proof-of-concept allowed experimentation with different AI techniques to suggest search terms, retrieve most relevant documents, rank them and visualise their content. The study suggested that AI is less effective in formulating search queries but can reduce the time and cost of the process of sifting through a large number of patents. The study highlighted the importance of the humanin-the-loop approach and the need for better tools for human-centred decision and performance support in prior art searching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile apps, Electronic health records, Hospital automation, Human-machine systems, and Medical quality control

Background: There is an increased demand in hospitals for tools, such as dedicated mobile device apps, that enable the recording of clinical information in an electronic format at the patient's bedside. Although the human-machine interface design on mobile devices strongly influences the accuracy and effectiveness of data recording, there is still a lack of evidence as to which interface design offers the best guarantee for ease of use and quality of recording. Therefore, interfaces need to be assessed both for usability and reliability because recording errors can seriously impact the overall level of quality of the data and affect the care provided. Objective: In this randomized crossover trial, we formally compared 6 handheld device interfaces for both speed of data entry and accuracy of recorded information. Three types of numerical data commonly recorded at the patient's bedside were used to evaluate the interfaces. Methods: In total, 150 health care professionals from the University Hospitals of Geneva volunteered to record a series of randomly generated data on each of the 6 interfaces provided on a smartphone. The interfaces were presented in a randomized order as part of fully automated data entry scenarios. During the data entry process, accuracy and effectiveness were automatically recorded by the software. Results: Various types of errors occurred, which ranged from 0.7% for the most reliable design to 18.5% for the least reliable one. The length of time needed for data recording ranged from 2.81 sec to 14.68 sec, depending on the interface. The numeric keyboard interface delivered the best performance for pulse data entry with a mean time of 3.08 sec (SD 0.06) and an accuracy of 99.3%. Conclusions: Our study highlights the critical impact the choice of an interface can have on the quality of recorded data. Selecting an interface should be driven less by the needs of specific end-user groups or the necessity to facilitate the developer's task (eg, by opting for default solutions provided by commercial platforms) than by the level of speed and accuracy an interface can provide for recording information. An important effort must be made to properly validate mobile device interfaces intended for use in the clinical setting. In this regard, our study identified the numeric keyboard, among the proposed designs, as the most accurate interface for entering specific numerical values. This is an important step toward providing clearer guidelines on which interface to choose for the appropriate use of handheld device interfaces in the health care setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial intelligence, Big data, Digital media, Computer hacking, Conferences & conventions, Game theory software, Human-machine systems, Internet security, Task analysis, and Security systems

The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence was pleased to present the AAAI 2014 Spring Symposium Series, held Monday through Wednesday, March 24- 26, 2014. The titles of the eight symposia were Applied Computational Game Theory, Big Data Becomes Personal: Knowledge into Meaning, Formal Verification and Modeling in Human-Machine Systems, Implementing Selves with Safe Motivational Systems and Self-Improvement, The Intersection of Robust Intelligence and Trust in Autonomous Systems, Knowledge Representation and Reasoning in Robotics, Qualitative Representations for Robots, and Social Hacking and Cognitive Security on the Internet and New Media). This report contains summaries of the symposia, written, in most cases, by the cochairs of the symposium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information-seeking behavior, Information-seeking strategies, Information needs, Information services research, and Human-machine systems

Information behavior is an important field, which is increasingly studied by different disciplines. It is known that the first studies conducted related with information behavior were system focused, their aim was to resolve problems of the system and the subject was approached in terms of information centers. However after 1980, the topic was tackled in terms of user/ individual. During the last decade, the focus shifted from individual information behavior to collaborative information behavior. The collaborative information behavior assists in taking ideal decisions by generating common sense through collaboration within the teams/communities. Both theoretical as well as technical studies related with this subject are still in the pre-paradigm stage. Limited numbers of models are developed with the increase of theoretical and technical studies. Factors like common platform, context, awareness, triggers, trust and their impact on the behavior are investigated in the collaborative information behavior. The variety of the interaction scenarios between man-machine (for example man-man, man-machine, man-machine-man, etc.), requires that the subject is tackled from social and/or technical perspectives and this leads to challenges in the conceptualization. Why and how the studies on information behavior, which is relatively a new field, evolved from individual information behavior to collaborative information behavior, where we stand now in terms of the studies and the opportunities presented by this field are discussed in the present study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

User interfaces, Information storage & retrieval systems, Websites, HTML (Document markup language), and Human-machine systems

The need for accessibility evaluation tools is motivated by several endogenous and exogenous reasons coming from the end user (the designer and the developer) and companies releasing information systems. Existing evaluation tools mainly concentrate on examining the code of Web pages: Web pages more and more frequently contain non-HTML parts that entirely escape from being treated by existing techniques. This is the case of the advanced human-machine interface (AHMI), a piece of software programmed in C/C++, used for controlling the advanced flight management system in the aircraft cockpit. Studying this new user interface (UI) requires a structured approach to evaluate and validate AHMI designs. The goal in this work is to develop an evaluation tool to automate the process of evaluating the AHMI. The method addresses: support of multiple bases of guidelines (accessibility or usability or both) on-demand (partial or total evaluation), with different levels of details (a presentation for developers and for those responsible for certifying accessibility). The method goes a step toward the automatic evaluation of UI containing non-HTML parts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge management, Information processing, Classification, Human-machine systems, Quality of service, Constraint satisfaction, and Feature selection

Abstract: Taxonomies enable organising information in a human–machine understandable form, but constructing them for reuse and maintainability remains difficult. The paper presents a formal underpinning to provide quality metrics for a taxonomy under development. It proposes a methodology for semi-automatic building of maintainable taxonomies and outlines key features of the knowledge engineering context where the metrics and methodology are most suitable. The strength of the approach presented is that it is applied during the actual construction of the taxonomy. Users provide terms to describe different domain elements, as well as their attributes, and methodology uses metrics to assess the quality of this input. Changes according to given quality constraints are then proposed during the actual development of the taxonomy. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Artificial intelligence, Negotiation, Decision making, Contracts, and Philosophy of emotions

The article offers information on the negotiation support agents. It mentions that negotiation is a complex emotional decision making process aiming to reach an agreement to exchange goods or services. It reports that negotiation can not be handled by artificial intelligence alone due to involved emotions and hence a human-machine collaborative system is required. It discusses goals and challenges and approaches for the creation of next generation of negotiation support agents.

User interfaces, Systems design, Human-computer interaction, Human-machine systems, and Journalists

Interactive Topic Detection and Tracking (iTDT) refers to the TDT works which focus on user interaction, user evaluation and user interfaces aspects. This article investigates and identifies elements of the design of an interface that aims to facilitate journalists performing TDT tasks such as tracking and detection. It presents an (iTDT) interface called Interactive Event Tracking (iEvent), and evaluates the usability of the features introduced. The findings indicate the features that facilitated the participants in performing both tasks: cluster labelling and top terms features in Cluster View, a histogram with the timeline and document content features in Document View, and a keyword approach feature in Term View. Meanwhile, features such as cluster visualisation in Cluster View and histogram with the timeline in Term View only facilitated participants during the tracking task. The study shows that the interface enables journalists to perform well in TDT tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Eye movements, Road users, Intention, Human-machine systems, Automatic systems in automobiles, and Driverless cars

In the future, automated cars may feature external human–machine interfaces (eHMIs) to communicate relevant information to other road users. However, it is currently unknown where on the car the eHMI should be placed. In this study, 61 participants each viewed 36 animations of cars with eHMIs on either the roof, windscreen, grill, above the wheels, or a projection on the road. The eHMI showed 'Waiting' combined with a walking symbol 1.2 s before the car started to slow down, or 'Driving' while the car continued driving. Participants had to press and hold the spacebar when they felt it safe to cross. Results showed that, averaged over the period when the car approached and slowed down, the roof, windscreen, and grill eHMIs yielded the best performance (i.e., the highest spacebar press time). The projection and wheels eHMIs scored relatively poorly, yet still better than no eHMI. The wheels eHMI received a relatively high percentage of spacebar presses when the car appeared from a corner, a situation in which the roof, windscreen, and grill eHMIs were out of view. Eye-tracking analyses showed that the projection yielded dispersed eye movements, as participants scanned back and forth between the projection and the car. It is concluded that eHMIs should be presented on multiple sides of the car. A projection on the road is visually effortful for pedestrians, as it causes them to divide their attention between the projection and the car itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

User interfaces, Meta-analysis, Medical care, Medical personnel, Medical care use, Test systems, and Human-machine systems

Background: The personalization of conversational agents with natural language user interfaces is seeing increasing use in health care applications, shaping the content, structure, or purpose of the dialogue between humans and conversational agents.Objective: The goal of this systematic review was to understand the ways in which personalization has been used with conversational agents in health care and characterize the methods of its implementation.Methods: We searched on PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, PsycInfo, and ACM Digital Library using a predefined search strategy. The studies were included if they: (1) were primary research studies that focused on consumers, caregivers, or health care professionals; (2) involved a conversational agent with an unconstrained natural language interface; (3) tested the system with human subjects; and (4) implemented personalization features.Results: The search found 1958 publications. After abstract and full-text screening, 13 studies were included in the review. Common examples of personalized content included feedback, daily health reports, alerts, warnings, and recommendations. The personalization features were implemented without a theoretical framework of customization and with limited evaluation of its impact. While conversational agents with personalization features were reported to improve user satisfaction, user engagement and dialogue quality, the role of personalization in improving health outcomes was not assessed directly.Conclusions: Most of the studies in our review implemented the personalization features without theoretical or evidence-based support for them and did not leverage the recent developments in other domains of personalization. Future research could incorporate personalization as a distinct design factor with a more careful consideration of its impact on health outcomes and its implications on patient safety, privacy, and decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial intelligence, Conferences & conventions, Socioeconomic factors, Quality of work life, Human-machine systems, and Societies

Information on several symposia sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) on artificial intelligence (AI) and information management is presented. The conferences focused on AI community to improve the quality of lives and promote socioeconomic developments among poor regions in the world. The symposia featured several researchers on robotics, control systems, human machine interaction, and communication technologies.

Cataloging, Online library catalogs, Library catalogs & users, User interfaces, Digital libraries, Libraries, Computer software, and Human-machine systems

The article offers information on the Summon, an application providing a user interface, library indexing and cataloging services from Serial Solutions Inc. Summon has a large index and a comprehensive 'Application Programming Interface' (API) that encourages active website development. As mentioned, most libraries will likely focus their deployment strategy on the web application of Summon. As stated, customers can customize the user experience and presentation of results in a way that works best for their patrons by learning to finesse the data that Summon indexes, and writing software lying between Summon's index and the library's online library catalogs (OPAC).

Computer interfaces, Systems design, Electronic data processing, Computer network resources, Designers, User-centered system design, Computer input-output equipment, Expansion boards (Microcomputers), and Human-machine systems

The article reports on the role of the design teams to get both interface and users story correctly in the U.S. It states that one way to resolve some of the issues are to look other visual and story-telling media. Another is the establishment of a user-centered design principles to keep their attention on user experience and to focus on the key interactive aspects. In addition, it also helped guide incorporation of game design techniques into the overall design and resolve the contradiction between the goal of games and the goals of transaction process.

Smart cards, Computer software, Vending machines -- Design & construction, Human-machine systems, Touch screens, Automatic speech recognition, Tickets, and Marketing

The new RATP ticket vending machine for the Paris/ Ile-de-France network handles two forms of devices: magnetic tickets with magnetic strips or RFID technology smartcards with a no-contact system. The main feature of this ticket vending machine is obviously to provide a general public MMI (Man Machine Interface) with a touch-sensitive screen, and a second interface – specially dedicated to the visually impaired/partially sighted and non-sighted – with a touch screen and voice guidance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information & communication technologies, Standardization, Emergency medical services, Multidisciplinary practices, Police, Ambulance service, Fire fighters, and Human-machine systems

In this article we have tried to establish how the nature of professional routines affects the ICT supported standardization and scripting of work performed by operators in Dutch colocated emergency response control rooms. In this type of multidisciplinary emergency control room three professions – police, fire rescue services and ambulance services – share the same technical facilities and are housed under the same roof. In the control rooms under study, efforts to create a more integrated control room are accompanied by a pursuit to further script and standardize operator intake and dispatch routines with the help of ICTs. Findings suggest that important impediments to the ICT supported scripting and standardization of operator intake and dispatch routines are not of a Human-Machine Interface (HMI) nature, but can mainly be attributed to differences in the nature of each of the three disciplines' professional routines themselves. These impediments are primarily related to ostensive as well as performative aspects of distinct sets of routines in the colocated control room. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information-seeking behavior, World Wide Web, End users (Information technology), Internet searching, Information-seeking strategies, Information literacy, Internet users, Tasks, Everyday life, Human-machine relationship, Contextual analysis, Demographic characteristics, and Human-machine systems

This study examines how tasks influence information seeking behavior in the World Wide Web. There are three primary reasons for considering this issue: to understand the nature of people's information seeking tasks, to investigate the ways in which they attempt to execute tasks in their user-system interactions, and to facilitate the development and design of a system that serves people's task goals and supports their task-related information seeking behavior. Thirty students with backgrounds in library and information science participated in this study in a laboratory setting. Three different types of tasks were assigned. Significant differences were found in searching behavior on the Web among task types. Furthermore, the relationship of searching behavior with task difficulty, prior knowledge, and searchers' demographic characteristics varied by task types. The results suggest that information systems should be structured in ways that support users' tasks. Future study should focus on such issues and then propose how information systems and services can be tailored to the task in context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural language processing, Computers in medicine, Latent semantic analysis, Speech acts (Linguistics), Speech processing systems, Human-machine systems, Pattern recognition systems, DIALOG (Information retrieval system), Vector spaces, Grammar checkers (Computer software), Questions & answers, and Bilingualism

This article presents a bilingual ontology-based dialog system with multiple services. An ontology-alignment algorithm is proposed to integrate ontologies of different languages for cross-language applications. A domain-specific ontology is further extracted from the bilingual ontology using an island-driven algorithm and a domain corpus. This study extracts the semantic words/concepts using latent semantic analysis (LSA). Based on the extracted semantic words and the domain ontology, a partial pattern tree is constructed to model the speech act of a spoken utterance. The partial pattern tree is used to deal with the ill-formed sentence problem in a spoken-dialog system. Concept expansion based on domain ontology is also adopted to improve system performance. For performance evaluation, a medical dialog system with multiple services, including registration information, clinic information, and FAQ information, is implemented. Four performance measures were used separately for evaluation. The speech act identification rate was 86.2%. A task success rate of 77% was obtained. The contextual appropriateness of the system response was 78.5%. Finally, the rate for correct FAQ retrieval was 82%, an improvement of 15% over the keyword-based vector-space model. The results show the proposed ontology-based speech-act identification is effective for dialog management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computer software, Human activity recognition, Sign language -- Study & teaching, Social integration programs, and Rehabilitation of deaf people

Research in the field of sign language recognition has made significant advances in recent years. The present achievements provide the basis for future applications with the objective of supporting the integration of deaf people into the hearing society. Translation systems, for example, could facilitate communication between deaf and hearing people in public situations. Further applications, such as user interfaces and automatic indexing of signed videos, become feasible. The current state in sign language recognition is roughly 30 years behind speech recognition, which corresponds to the gradual transition from isolated to continuous recognition for small vocabulary tasks. Research efforts were mainly focused on robust feature extraction or statistical modeling of signs. However, current recognition systems are still designed for signer-dependent operation under laboratory conditions. This paper describes a comprehensive concept for robust visual sign language recognition, which represents the recent developments in this field. The proposed recognition system aims for signer-independent operation and utilizes a single video camera for data acquisition to ensure user-friendliness. Since sign languages make use of manual and facial means of expression, both channels are employed for recognition. For mobile operation in uncontrolled environments, sophisticated algorithms were developed that robustly extract manual and facial features. The extraction of manual features relies on a multiple hypotheses tracking approach to resolve ambiguities of hand positions. For facial feature extraction, an active appearance model is applied which allows identification of areas of interest such as the eyes and mouth region. In the next processing step, a numerical description of the facial expression, head pose, line of sight, and lip outline is computed. The system employs a resolution strategy for dealing with mutual overlapping of the signer’s hands and face. Classification is based on hidden Markov models which are able to compensate time and amplitude variances in the articulation of a sign. The classification stage is designed for recognition of isolated signs, as well as of continuous sign language. In the latter case, a stochastic language model can be utilized, which considers uni- and bigram probabilities of single and successive signs. For statistical modeling of reference models each sign is represented either as a whole or as a composition of smaller subunits—similar to phonemes in spoken languages. While recognition based on word models is limited to rather small vocabularies, subunit models open the door to large vocabularies. Achieving signer-independence constitutes a challenging problem, as the articulation of a sign is subject to high interpersonal variance. This problem cannot be solved by simple feature normalization and must be addressed at the classification level. Therefore, dedicated adaptation methods known from speech recognition were implemented and modified to consider the specifics of sign languages. For rapid adaptation to unknown signers the proposed recognition system employs a combined approach of maximum likelihood linear regression and maximum a posteriori estimation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Personal information management, Information resources management, Systems design, User interfaces, Computer users, Structured techniques of electronic data processing, Database design, End users (Information technology), Information retrieval, Knowledge management, System analysis, Human-machine systems, User-centered system design, and Interviewing

Personal Information Management (PIM) is an activity in which an individual stores personal information items to retrieve them later. In a former article, we suggested the user-subjective approach, a theoretical approach proposing design principles with which PIM systems can systematically use subjective attributes of information items. In this consecutive article, we report on a study that tested the approach by exploring the use of subjective attributes (i.e., project, importance, and context) in current PIM systems, and its dependence on design characteristics. Participants were 84 personal computer users. Tools included a questionnaire (N = 84), a semistructured interview that was transcribed and analyzed (n = 20), and screen captures taken from this subsample. Results indicate that participants tended to use subjective attributes when the design encouraged them to; however, when the design discouraged such use, they either found their own alternative ways to use them or refrained from using them altogether. This constitutes evidence in support of the user-subjective approach as it implies that current PIM systems do not allow for sufficient use of subjective attributes. The article also introduces seven novel system design schemes, suggested by the authors, which demonstrate how the user-subjective principles can be implemented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information theory, Search engines, Information resources management, Human-machine systems, Engineering systems, and Human-machine relationship

The article presents an overview of a research project aimed at analyzing human-agent interaction from the perspective of information behavior, interactive aspects and system design with respect to usability contexts. The researchers studied interaction of users with information search agent Copernic, as well as utilized socio-cognitive perspective. To connect this cognitive approach with information system design, they considered usability engineering, socio-technical design and cognitive system engineering framework.

Search engines, Metadata, Computer networks, Virtual reality, and Human-machine systems

A method for mining association rules that reflect the behaviors of past users is proposed for an adaptive search engine. The logs of the users' retrieving behaviors are described with the resource description framework model, from which association rules that reflect successful retrieving behaviors are extracted. The extracted rules are used to improve the performance of a metadata-based search engine. The document repository with adaptive hybrid search engine is also developed based on the proposed method. The repository consists of a document registration module, hybrid search engine, and reasoning base. The document registration module is designed to reduce the cost of adding metadata to documents, and the hybrid search engine combines full-text search with metadata-based search engine to improve the recall of retrieval result. The reasoning base is implemented based on the association rule mining method, which contributes to improve both precision and recall of the hybrid search engine. Experiments are performed with a virtual user model, of which results show that appropriate rules can be extracted with the proposed method. The proposed technologies will contribute to realize the concept of humatronics in terms of establishing symmetric relation between humans and systems, as well as sharing information, knowledge, and experiences via computer networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

User interfaces, Speech therapy instruments, Speech processing systems, Articulation disorders in children, and Human-machine systems

This study has been performed in order to evaluate a prototype for the human – computer interface of a computer-based speech training aid named ARTUR. The main feature of the aid is that it can give suggestions on how to improve articulations. Two user groups were involved: three children aged 9 – 14 with extensive experience of speech training with therapists and computers, and three children aged 6, with little or no prior experience of computer-based speech training. All children had general language disorders. The study indicates that the present interface is usable without prior training or instructions, even for the younger children, but that more motivational factors should be introduced. The granularity of the mesh that classifies mispronunciations was satisfactory, but the flexibility and level of detail of the feedback should be developed further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human-computer interaction, Computer technical support, Ferries, Ferry bridges, Navigation, Automatic control systems, Human-machine relationship, and Human-machine systems

The purpose of this paper is to describe the present conditions for officers who work on high-speed bridges, where manoeuvring and navigation are supported by highly sophisticated technical systems. Moreover, we wanted to explore the kind of support the information environment and the interfaces on the bridge provide an officer, who wants to drive safely, detect targets early and achieve efficiency. The officers have been studied at work, to investigate and better understand the interaction between humans and technical support systems in this environment. A control engineering approach has also been used in subsequent interviews with officers. The paper describes conditions on the bridge related to manoeuvring, navigation, the computer support systems, information presentation, and the way information is acquired and used by the crew at work. Moreover, the interviews have been analysed according to a control-engineering framework. Finally, the elements of a trip have been explored to identify similarities with other means of transportation studied previously. We conclude that the four general preconditions required for control of any system according to control theory are too broad, and need to be decomposed further to provide a correct representation of all the conditions revealed in the interviews. From our findings, we argue that the way which information is integrated and presented to the officers is inappropriate. The present conditions are related to how computers are introduced in these environments. Single instruments are replaced with individual displays and control panels. Moreover, without second thought, menus, mice, display hierarchies, etc. are transferred to ship bridges that have completely different demands on operations than, for instance, an office environment. The task to increase the range or track an approaching ship on the radar display is at present performed in an interaction dialogue similar to that of a desktop computer program. The information required on the bridge is available, but sometimes the integration and layout of information is inadequate. With a better integrated information environment, it would be possible to reduce the number of displays and key panels related to navigational devices on the bridge. A more appropriate and integrated design would improve the officers' ability to operate safely, since captains otherwise may devote significant attention to information search and manipulation of controls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Systems design, User interfaces, Interactive computer systems, Information science, Computer networks, Human-machine systems, Electronic villages (Computer networks), Human-machine relationship, and Social capital

Purpose - This work aims to probe how interface designers concerned with human-computer interaction of community networks might use the theoretical constructs of social capital and activity awareness. Design/methodology/approach - A design model for community network interfaces is introduced that reconciles various computer-mediated communication research contributions with support for typical community network scenarios of use. Using this model, an inspection is performed on existing community network implementations (available December 2002) and then the adequacy of the model for informing the design process is examined. Findings - Based on the insight gained through this analysis, a generic prototype and new user evaluation method are introduced that allow survey of user reaction to community network design elements under differing conditions. It is shown how results obtained through this method frame a value-chain understanding of conceptual tradeoffs. Research limitations/implications - To demonstrate the new user evaluation method in an analysis of critical design tradeoffs, the issues of persistent virtual identity implementation and usage motivation are probed. However, the evaluation method must be validated with other issues and tested by researchers that were not part of its creation process. Practical implications - Contributions from this paper include tools (a design model, a generic prototype, and an evaluation method) linking theory with community design artifacts, building on previous work. Evaluators now have indicators for assessing community informatics. Originality/value - Interface designers of community networks and those interested in social capital theory will appreciate the link between practice and theory provided by this approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

User interfaces, Electronic publications, Bibliography (Documentation), IDL (Computer program language), Human-machine systems, and Mathematical reformulation

Purpose - Aims to present a comparison and evaluation of four user interfaces of web-based e-journals (Science Direct, ProQuest Direct, EBSCO Host and Emerald). Design/methodology/approach - The systems were assessed in an expert study according to accepted guidelines regarding User friendliness and functionality User friendliness features studied were: language(s) and type(s) of interface; navigation options; personalization; and screen features Functions inspected were: database selection; query formulation and reformulation; results manipulation; and help. Findings - Many similarities were found, but some differences among the systems were also discovered and analysed in detail. The greatest differences were found in the area of query formulation, and between the interface languages and types. Research limitations/implications - The user interfaces of four full-text JR systems offering e-journals which are accessible at the University of Ljubljana are surveyed. Practical implications - The interfaces are surveyed and assessed in order to discover their characteristics, advantages and potential downsides and/or mistakes which may hinder use by an avenge user. The study serves as a basis for a subsequent user study of the information behaviour of the users of these systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information retrieval, Computer software, Information visualization, User interfaces, Information science, and Human-machine systems

This investigation tested the designer assumption that VIBE is a tool for an expert user and asked: what are the effects of user expertise on usability when VIBEs non-traditional interface is compared with a more traditional text-based interface? Three user groups - novices, online searching experts, and VIBE system experts - totaling 31 participants, were asked to use and compare VIBE to a more traditional text-based system, askSam. No significant differences were found; however, significant performance differences were found for some tasks on the two systems. Participants understood the basic principles underlying VIBE although they generally favored the askSam system. The findings suggest that VIBE is a learnable system and its components have pragmatic application to the development of visualized information retrieval systems. Further research is recommended to maximize the retrieval potential of JR visualization systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Systems design, User interfaces, Human-computer interaction, Navigation, Automobile driving, Human-machine systems, and Human behavior

This paper outlines the arguments (and supporting evidence) both for and against allowing drivers to enter a destination with a vehicle navigation system while active in the primary driving task ('on-the-move'). The benefits and limitations of various safety-related interventions are discussed, including the use of warnings/instructions, safeguards and design improvements. Whilst it is clear that the visual, manual and cognitive demands associated with entering destinations using current vehicle navigation systems can be high, it is concluded that inhibiting the use of this functionality whilst on-the-move, particularly through the use of reactionary legislation, will not be the ideal solution. Rather, human factors research must investigate the potential for novel user-interfaces, develop reliable and valid methods for assessing the safety impact of different designs, and consider the wider issues of system use and behavioural adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Driver assistance systems and Human-machine systems

Increasing numbers of intelligent driver assistance systems are now being installed in motor vehicles to support drivers. In order to ensure that the stress reduction benefits obtained from these systems are not nullified or even outweighed by new stresses at the vehicle's man-machine interfaces, the systems' control concepts must be designed to high ergonomic standards. This paper seeks to identify design weaknesses in assistance systems by presenting criteria that must, on the one hand, be observed when designing the control concept of a new assistance system and, on the other hand, be applied when assessing the man-machine interfaces of assistance systems already installed in a vehicle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

User interfaces and Human-machine systems

The desire to make computing available to broader populations has historically been a motivation for research and innovation that led to new breakthroughs in usability. Menus, graphical user interfaces and the World Wide Web are examples of innovative technological solutions that have arisen out of the challenge of bringing larger and more diverse groups of users into the world of computing. Universal usability is the latest such challenge: In order to build systems that are universally usable, designers must account for technology variety, user diversity and gaps in user knowledge. These issues are particularly challenging and important in the context of increasing the usability of the World Wide Web. To raise awareness, web designers are urged to provide universal usability statements that offer users information about the usability of their sites. These statements can inform users and thereby reduce frustration and confusion. Further steps toward universal usability might be achieved through research aimed at developing tools that would encourage or promote usability. The paper closes with five proposals for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

User interfaces, Web development, Library associations, Conferences & conventions, and Human-machine systems

The article discusses the highlights of the LITA Human-Machine Interface Interest Group Meeting at the American Library Association annual conference held in July 2000 in Chicago, Illinois. The interest group focuses on Web usability with the rapidly expanding use of the Internet in the past years, according to the article. Kristen Garlock of JSTOR outlines the basic design principles of a Web site which include usefulness, consistency, simplicity and accessibility.

Expert systems, Emergency management, and Human-machine systems

In many emergency situations, human operators are required to derive countermeasures based on contingency rules whilst under time pressure. In order to contribute to the human success in playing such a role, the present study intends to examine the effectiveness of using expert systems to train for the time-constrained decision domain. Emergency management of chemical spills was selected to exemplify the rule-based decision task. An Expert System in this domain was developed to serve as the training tool. Forty subjects participated in an experiment in which a computerized information board was used to capture subjects' rule-based performance under the manipulation of time pressure and training. The experiment results indicate that people adapt to time pressure by accelerating their processing of rules where the heuristic of cognitive availability was employed. The simplifying strategy was found to be the source of human error that resulted in undesired decision performance. The results also show that the decision behaviour of individuals who undergo the expert system training is directed to a normative and expeditious pattern, which leads to an improved level of decision accuracy. Implications of these findings are examined in the present study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Systems design, User interfaces, Electronic data processing, System analysis, Human-machine systems, and Catalogs

Current research on user interfaces to online public access catalogs is reviewed In an attempt to identify research methods and findings applicable to the design of effective user interfaces to online public access catalogs. A broad definition of user interface is employed which includes data structures, in addition to searching and indexing software. The following features of online public access catalogs are discussed: the demonstration of relationships between records, the provision of entry vocabularies, the arrangement of multiple entries on the screen, the provision of access points, the display of single records, and the division of the catalog into separate files or indexes. For each feature, user studies and other research on online public access catalogs are reviewed and those findings summarized which provide insight into user needs concerning that particular feature; issues are identified and directions for further research are suggested. Implications for cataloging codes and standards and system design are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Automation, Human-machine systems, Engineering systems, Ergonomics, Systems engineering, and Computer input-output equipment

As an exploration of the frustration of users of an online interactive retrieval system, students from the School of Library Science of Syracuse University participated in an experiment using an experimental reference retrieval system for library literature on the IBM system 360/50. The searching consisted of sample searches using key-words. The data base contained library literature citations for the year 1970. In the control group, students were instructed to locate literature related to library management and information retrieval systems. The particular terms in the search and the format were outlined in an instruction session before the students used the system. The experimental group was not restricted to a sample search, or specified search terms, but the format of the searches were to be the same as the control group. It was anticipated that significant variations in the behavior of the users would be displayed and identified by comparing measures of behavior as the man-computer interaction proceeded through the search process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Libraries, Library science, Computer industry, Information science, Computer systems, and Human-machine systems

ELMS (Experimental Library Management System) is an experimental system for total library management, operating an-line with an IBM 360 through IBM 2260 and 2741 terminals. The system is designed to handle large amounts of highly variable information which it processes an command, giving on-line computer service for all library operations. At the same time, it must accommodate the different needs and skills of a broad range of library users, from new patrons to well-trained librarians. Such a system presents programming problems that will be typical of large, interactive computer systems in the seventies. This paper discusses ELMS features that facilitate user interaction, and may prove useful in similar systems: techniques for tutoring the user (display format, one-question, one-answer displays, and KWIC indexing); adaptability for the experienced user (command chains and a standard set of four-letter mnemonic codes for higher-level control); minimization of keying (line numbers, one-character mnemonic codes used with procedures, and use of default conditions); performance of clerical tasks by exception notification; and collection of operational statistics to help improve the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indexers, Information scientists, Computer systems, Statistics, Vocabulary, and Human-machine systems

A statistical measure is developed for predicting the terms from a restricted vocabulary that will be used to index a document given that one of the index terms is known. The results indicate that a large proportion of terms can be predicted using co-occurrence data and that the best method of ordering the terms ranks them first in descending order of co-occurrence frequency and then breaks ties in descending order of total frequency. The central assumption is that data from a previously indexed collection can be useful in predicting the terms to be assigned to a new document. The procedure for presenting an indexer with computer- produced ordered lists of suggested index terms in response to an initial term choice could be implemented in an interactive man-machine environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drone aircraft, Human-machine systems, Propulsion systems, and Vehicle design & construction