Layout attributes and recall

The spatial arrangement of elements such as icons in a computer interface may influence learning the interface. However, the effects of layout organization on users' information processing is relatively little studied so far. The three experiments of this paper examined two attributes of layouts: spatial grouping by proximity and semantic coherence. Learning was assessed by tasks in which 30 participants recalled icon-like items' labels, locations, or both as a series of study-recall trials. The results show that layout organization interacts with task demands. Semantic organization improves recall of labels, and spatial grouping supports recall of locations. When both labels and locations …

Towards Ethical Guidelines of Using Telepresence Robots in Residential Care

AbstractRobotic telepresence is a potential technology to help alleviating the loneliness of elderly people. The impacts of long-term use of telepresence robots in residential care are not well known. We were interested in how using a telepresence robot influences the resident, family members and care workers at a facility, and what challenges and solutions there are for wider adoption of such robots in residential care. With a telepresence robot Double, we arranged a series of three trials in two separate residential care facilities: one 12-week trial in a private facility and two successive 6-week trials in a public facility. In each trial, we installed the telepresence robot in a room of…

Fillets: Cues for Connections in Focus+Context Views of Graph-Like Diagrams

Positive Turn in Elder-Care Workers' Views Toward Telecare Robots.

AbstractRobots have been slowly but steadily introduced to welfare sectors. Our previous observations based on a large-scale survey study on Finnish elder-care workers in 2016 showed that while robots were perceived to be useful in certain telecare tasks, using robots may also prove to be incompatible with the care workers’ personal values. The current study presents the second wave of the survey data from 2020, with the same respondents (N = 190), and shows how these views have changed for the positive, including higher expectations of telecare robotization and decreased concerns over care robots’ compatibility with personal values. In a longitudinal analysis (Phase 1), the positive change…

Visual search in graphical interfaces : a user psychological approach

Marketta Niemelä yhdistää väitöskirjassaan käyttäjän psykologian tutkimusta ihmisen ja tietokoneen välisen vuorovaikutuksen tutkimukseen. Ei riitä, että tunnetusta psykologiasta irrotetaan soveltuvaa detaljitietoa käyttöliittymien suunnittelun tueksi, vaan käyttäjää on pystyttävä ymmärtämään syvällisemmin, jotta pystytään suunnittelemaan helppokäyttöisiä tietokoneita. Ihmistä on tutkittava silloin, kun hän toimii tietokoneen kanssa.Marketta Niemelä painottaa käyttäjäpsykologista näkökulmaa käyttöliittymien tutkimuksessa. Erityisesti ihmisen psykologisen tiedonkäsittelyn periaatteiden tunteminen on tärkeää. Tiedonkäsittelypsykologia eli kognitiivinen psykologia tutkii muun muassa ihmisen hav…

Visuaalinen haku MacIntosh-käyttöliittymässä

Improving graphical information system model use with elision and connecting lines

Graphical information system (IS) models are used to specify and design IS from several perspectives. Due to the growing size and complexity of modern information systems, critical design information is often distributed via multiple diagrams. This slows search performance and results in reading errors that later cause omissions and inconsistencies in the final designs. We study the impact of large screens and the two promising visual integration techniques of elision and connecting lines that can decrease the designers' cognitive efforts to read diagrams. We conduct a laboratory experiment using 84 computer science students to investigate the impact of these techniques on the accuracy of t…

Visual Search for Grouped versus Ungrouped Icons in a Computer Interface

The paradigm of visual search was used to investigate how participants looked for a target file among distracter files in an icon-based computer interface. The purpose of these experiments was to study the effect of icons and spatial grouping on scanning speed. Does spatial grouping of identical icons increase the scanning speed? Do icons themselves speed up the search for a target file when compared with a condition in which the files are indicated with mere textual labels? Our results showed that both the presence of icons and their grouping had a significant positive effect on the scanning speed. Potential applications of this research include the design of graphics-based interfaces, su…