International Conference On Engaging Pedagogy

This year’s International Conference on Engaging Pedagogy is coming to NCI. One of the themes mentioned in the call for papersrefers to e-Learning: “The value of technology – Are we adopting new technology just because it is new or because it makes a difference?” That’s in fact one of NELL’s main concerns. Does it actually make a difference? Is there empirical evidence that suggests we should use this technology for a particular target group or a particular subject matter?

Submissions are due October 3, 2011. The conference itself will take place on December 16, 2011, here in NCI.

If the above applies to you, then we have the solution for you. We developed a Style Guide for lecturers. It is intended as a support for lecturers when creating course pages in Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) such as Moodle or Blackboard. The Style Guide offers a series of solutions of typical problems that can occur when making online materials and learning activities available.

The Style Guide is meant to be a living document. If you have any suggestions or comments, don’t hesitate to contact us or respond to this block post.

The Style Guide was developed in the context of the How do you Moodle? project and was supported by a grant from the National Academy for Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning (NAIRTL).

Just download the Style Guide and improve the learning experience of your students.

Just last week started a project with ClipSure and Modeva. They offer an innovative way to track the effects of TV marketing campaigns on social media. They developed technology to analyse ads and the response to these ads across channels in a systematic way.

UX in the Cloud

We are currently developing a new MSc in Cloud Computing. This is next big thing, I am told. It’s everywhere. Even this blog is in the Cloud if you like. There is quite a bit of confusion on what Cloud Computing really is. These days everyone wants to be in the Cloud  and so naturally people just interpret the term as suits. More often than not, people seem to confuse Cloud Computing with Software as a Service (SaaS). Sure, that’s an important aspect, but as far as I can see, changes on the software side are triggered by advances on the infrastructure and platform side. Hence, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS). If this trend continues, we might have UX as a Service soon.

What does Cloud Computing mean for UX? Well, at first glance there is nothing new. In fact, the user in many cases doesn’t see whether an interface is cloud-based or not, and most of them frankly don’t care either. But before you turn away, have a closer look. Here are three trends that will have an impact on UX design and evaluation.

• Thin clients: We have seen thin clients before and we will see many more of them. Whether it’s a virtual desktop or a chromebook. Thin clients come with a number of advantages for UX design: We don’t have to care as much about hardware configuration and maybe even software configuration.  Things are managed and updated centrally, the user can focus on the tasks at hand. But the thin client may (potentially) come with less computing power for say some graphical effects, real-time simulation or modelling.
• Variety of devices: Even more so than now, we will access our data through an ever increasing variety of devices. Your laptop just ran out of power? Why don’t you use that plasma TV screen over there. Just login and you can continue working were you stopped. The idea is that it doesn’t matter any more where or how we access our working environment, you’ll get a comparable user experience on any device. Well as I said, that’s the idea. There is actually still quite a bit of research and development to do, before we get there. System metaphors that work on the desktop may not work on a mobile device. Layouts that work on the mobile device may be a waste in kiosk mode on a large screen.
• Mash-ups: Already now, many websites provide much more than their own information. They combine existing services and information streams into a new offer. From a software development perspective it is quite straightforward now to stick in yet another news stream, search box, video, you name it. That’s great in terms of breaths of functionality, but bad in terms of consistency. UX designers need to take care that all components have the same look & feel, behave in the same way and support the overall structure of the site. A lot can be achieved by simple CSS, but if you cannot tweak the behaviour to make it conform with the rest of your site, I would recommend to leave it out.

None of the above is revolutionary. Nevertheless, the shift towards public and private clouds, mainly driven by cost considerations, will facilitate developments such as the above. This will bring new challenges for UX. Let’s make sure UX doesn’t end up out in the rain, but up in the cloud.

For those of you who missed our Deep Dive, you can access   the  presentation by clicking the link below:

The eYe Factor; how to improve your website through eye-tracking

Brought to you my Prezzi, a great on-line presentation tool.

The eYe Factor; how to improve your website through eye-tracking

Why come to this event?

Did you know? Vision dominates and uses 50 per cent of the brain’s cerebral cortex, which plays  a key part in memory, attention, perceptual awareness, thought, language, and consciousness

Eye-tracking is based on the Eye-mind hypothesis  that says that people look at what they are thinking about.    Eye-tracking data is a useful part of UX research in that it allows us to better explain elements of people’s behaviour when they are engaging with on-line applications.

So come along and find out more about how eye-tracking works and what  lessons we have learned here in NELL and how these can be used to improve your own designs. 

But be warned! this is a participatory event  – you might just become part of the show…

Pics4Learning Mandelbroitset

As we know, traditional usability testing (as detailed in ISO standards), allows us to look at how effective and efficient a system performs against defined usability tasks.  However, in recent years, we have seen this term expand to become ‘user experience (UX)’ which looks beyond the functional and technical aspects of testing to consider how the social environment or wider human experiences and emotions can impact on user engagement with a system (Hassenzahl and Tractinsky 2006)

As technology is becoming more accessible and users more technologically sophisticated, we see that users are increasingly looking past the mere functionality of an application and seeking to engage in interactions that are not only usable but also offer a positive emotional experience.

But what does a positive emotional user experience mean? And how do we describe it?

The first definition I like is from Hassenzahl  and Tractinsky (2006) who consider UX as “a consequence of a user’s internal state (predispositions, expectations, needs, motivation, mood, etc.), the characteristics of the designed system (e.g. complexity, purpose, usability, functionality, etc.) and the context (or the environment) within which the interaction occurs (e.g. organisational/social setting, meaningfulness of the activity, voluntariness of use, etc.).”

McNamara and Kirakowski (2006) contend that engagement, pleasure, presence and fun have a huge impact on how users interact with a system.  They talk about investigating an individual’s personal experience of using technology and considering questions such as “how the person felt about the experience, what it meant to them, whether it was important to them, and whether it sat comfortably with their other values and goals.”

Beauregard et. al (2007) in their research to better understand a Quality User Experience propose a UX model that looks at user experience in terms of “Emotions, attitudes, thought and perceptions felt by users across usage lifestyle”.

And finally, coming back to Hassenzahl (2010)*  and my favorite description so far, when he talks about experience in terms of a Story “emerging from the dialogue of a person with her or his world through action”. He reminds us that this experience is “subjective, holistic, situated, dynamic, and worthwhile”.

So, while we may not yet have a complete definition or understanding of what constitutes a positive user experience,  the literature suggests that  much of the engagement is psychological in nature and dependant on the users’ attitudes, emotions and feelings.   Nor is it clear the extent these states vary dependent on the type of scenario the user is engaged with or indeed how they might change dependant on the user themselves.

As Oscar Wilde, another well-known UX expert, tells us ‘ the truth is rarely pure and never simple.”   

And though we may not know all the answers yet, asking questions is surely the first step on the road to understanding…

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 *** This is from M Hassenzahl’s featured chapter from the excellent new on-line resource Interaction-Design.org,   The mission of this group is “about the Democratization of Knowledge: That people from all the far corners of the world can get free access to world-class educational materials on HCI”

Spread the word on http://www.interaction-design.org/encyclopedia/

Reference List

Beauregard, R. Younkin, A. Corriveau, P.  Doherty, R. Salskoy, E. (2007). ‘Assessing the Quality of User Experience’, Intel Technology Journal, Vol. 11, No. 1,pp.77-87.

Harper, R ,Rodden T,  Rogers Y &Sellen, A. (eds.) (2008), Being Human: Human-Computer Interaction in the year 2020.Cambridge. Microsoft Research Ltd.

Hassenzahl, M. &Tractinsky, N.(2006), ‘User experience – a research agenda’, Behaviour & Information Technology, Vol. 25, No. 2, March-April 2006, pp. 91 – 97.

McNamara, N.&Kirakowski, J. (2006).‘Functionality, Usability, and User experience: Three areas of Concern’. Interactions, November-December, pp. 26-28.

We have just finishing usability and user experience testing on www.mycareerjourneys.com a very interesting online software service that provides career coaching.  This is a web based resource for career self-development and planning from Rational Careers.

Before testing, we always take some time to fully understand the product we are looking at and I had the opportunity to go through this programme on-line.  This requires you to complete a variety of different exercises and to reflect about what is important to you in your career and your life.  It is not difficult, and the sections are well thought out to guide you through a series of steps that eventually lead you towards a career plan.  But it does take a bit of time to really think about where you think your skills lie and what is of value to you.  Very thought provoking!

Here’s what John Costello, CTO of Rational Careers had to say about the whole experience of usability testing in NELL.

“For us Usability Testing with NCI was an input to a significant product redesign. We learned a lot about how users perceived our product, what they thought it was, what added value they got from it and what their expectations were.   Also, being able to witness the testing was a rich learning experience and we got an excellent report at the end of the testing.  We are currently in the middle of our redesign and the Usability Testing is a real help in guiding us.”

This research was funded by Enterprise Ireland’s Innovation Voucher Initiative.

Sabine will be continuing her work on accesibility and flow experiences and looking at user experience across mulitple devices.  Her research is titled; Accessibility-based Software Engineering Framework for User Experience across Mulitiple Devices.

She will start work in the lab and with Fluid Rock in July 2011.

We look forward to hearing more

Usability testing @ NELL

Usability measures the ease of use of a system or website and looks at whether intended users can carry out tasks successfully and efficiently. In our usability lab, we have undertaken usabilty research with over 15 small companies in the last two years. Here’s what one client had to say about the experience. 

“This study was incredibly useful as in re-enforced Calom Technolgies’ vision for the product and pointed out which areas of the application needed improvedment” 
Adrian Skehill, Owner of Calom Technolgies.

In NELL we can observe and analyse how real users use your system. We will then provide a detailed report on users’ experience, with eye-tracking videos highlighting any areas for improvement.

AND you can apply to Enterprise Ireland for a 5,000 Innovation Voucher to undertake testing with NELL.

See our projects section for more information on previous projects or email Abi on areynolds@ncirl.ie or call on 01 4498 664 for more info.  

Application ends 28 Feb 2011