Search results for "Human-computer Interaction"

Digital Diasporas : An Overview of the Research Areas of Migrationand New Media Through a Narrative Literature Review

2019

Academic research on migration and the use of new media constitutes a growing field. The first studies dealing explicitly with the field appeared in the end of the 1990s. Now, it has become an established research area. The impact and importance of the new technologies for migrants is well established. Appropriation of ICTs and new media environments have become a ubiquitous feature of everyday life in migrant groups. The research area is still understudied, characterized by rapid changes and shifts, and is shaped by the changing structural conditions of migrants and the proliferation of forms of media. In this article, I provide an overview of the developing research area through a review …

The individuals’ interest in preventing everyday accidents and crises : A Swedish explorative study of the importance of motivation

2014

This explorative study presents an empirical examination of the connection between motivation and the measures individuals take to prevent everyday accidents and prepare for crises. Positional factors (age and gender) and situational factors (education, size of locality, and household composition) are included because the literature highlights their importance. The study used data gathered in a 2010/2011 poll of randomly selected Swedish residents aged 16–75 (N = 2000; 44.8% response rate). A factor analysis reduced the theoretical model for situational motivation (Guay, Vallerand, & Blanchard, 2000) from four to two dimensions: motivation and amotivation. Subsequent regression analyses sta…

Book Review_ Public Access ICT Across Cultures: Diversifying Participation in the Network Society

2017

Human Technology : Toward the Second Decade

2015

The inaugural issue of Human Technology: An Interdisciplinary Journal on Humans in ICT Environments was published in 2005. The 10 volumes of two to three issues comprise well over 2000 pages. Upon starting as editor in chief in January 2015, I browsed through the archives and noticed that just over 100 articles had been published in the journal. Examining these titles, it is evident that they address a wide variety of topics. Nevertheless, four broad themes emerge:  The user of technology, with such foci as user experience, user characteristics, usability, user interface, and, on a more theoretical level, cognition;  The learner in a technological environment, covering aspects such as inf…

Measuring expectation for an affordance gap on a smartphone user interface and its usage among older adults

2020

The smartphone has become a ubiquitous mobile communication tool that plays a crucial role in the daily lives for Malaysian older adults. However, it is not easy for older adults to learn new interaction modes and adopt the smartphone user interface. In this paper, we aim to examine the affordances of a smartphone user interface and its usage by older adults through the lens of Norman’s execution/evaluation action cycle (EEAC) framework. A mobile-user interaction study was administered with four tasks. A paired sample t-test was conducted to analyze the affordance gap between different levels of expectation. The results revealed that three tasks (making phone calls, adding contacts, and usi…

Open Access Publishing as a Bridge Across the Digital Divide

2007

In today’s world of snappy catchphrases, the complexity of a phenomenon is often hiddenbehind the simplicity of the terminology. Take, for instance, the concept of the digital divide.In short, the term means that there is a gap between those people who have effective access todigital technologies (and all the benefits that brings) and those who do not (Organization forEconomic Cooperation and Development [OECD], 2001; Selhofer & Husing, 2002). Whilethe definition seems simple enough, in fact, there are numerous reasons for the technologygap among people in the world. Typical reasons for the digital divide include material access(i.e., no access to a computer, lack of access to specific soft…

From Technology to the Human User

2008

When thinking of users, it is possible to look at them from a variety of perspectives. One essential way of considering users within the human–technology environment involves technical concepts. In this manner, we define what users should be able to do with a particular technical system. As such, there are tasks to accomplish and goals to reach by means of some technology, and therefore specific operations must be carried out in order to reach those goals or fulfill those tasks. For example, if someone wishes to buy boots from an eShop, it is necessary to get onto the Internet, find the eShop, find the boots, load them into a virtual shopping cart, and follow the process to check out. Savvy…

Mobile media, gender, and power in rural India

2019

This article traces the diffuse connections between mobility and power by exploring how mobile phone use contributed to gendered power relations in rural India. It is based on ethnographic fieldwork on the use of mobile phones, conducted periodically between 2005 and 2013 in the village of Janta in West Bengal, India, and compared to earlier fieldwork in Janta, before the village had any phone system. Analysis of the increased mobility reveals how mobile phone use emerges within interconnected, changing fields of power. The political sphere earlier perceived as predominantly local was replaced by translocal political practices characterized by increasing mobility. Although new political pra…

Why Study Online in Upper Secondary School? Qualitative Analysis of Online Learning Experiences

2015

In Finland, online learning has become more common in recent years. In this study, we examined why adult students chose to study online for upper secondary school. The research also focused on the support needed for learning from a special education perspective. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected using an electronic questionnaire. In total, 58 students responded. Data were analyzed qualitatively using the content analysis technique. The findings indicate that the main reasons for online studies are similar in Finland to those found internationally: flexibility of timetables, the student’s health condition, and family situations. The findings also indicate that a student’s…

Warm experts for elderly users : who are they and what do they do?

2018

This paper examines “warm experts”—that is, nonprofessional persons who help inexperienced users come to terms with digital devices—and their significance for the use of digital media in everyday life by elderly Swedes. We analyze data from a national survey (N = 1264) and from qualitative, semistructured interviews with 18 elderly Swedes (aged 65+). Our data reveal that the warm expert usually is a closelyrelated person, often a child or grandchild, who is strongly involved in nearly every stage of technology domestication, from appropriation (i.e., identifying the need, buying the item, and installing and adjusting it) to incorporation (i.e., choosing and downloading suitable apps, teachi…