Calendar applications for small handheld devices are growing in popularity. This led us to develop DateLens, a novel calendar interface for PDAs designed to support complex tasks. It uses a fisheye representation coupled with compact overviews to give the big picture in a small space. The interface also gives users control over the visible time period, as well as supporting integrated search to discover patterns and outliers. Designed with device scalability in mind, DateLens currently runs on desktop computers as well as PDAs. Two user studies have been conducted to examine the viability of DateLens as a replacement for traditional calendar visualizations. In the first study, non-PDA users performed complex tasks significantly faster with DateLens than with the Microsoft Pocket PC 2002 ™ calendar (using a PDA emulator). In addition, they rated DateLens as being easier to use than the default calendar application for a majority of the tasks. In the second study, the participants were expert Pocket PC users and the software was run on their own devices. Again, DateLens performed significantly faster for the complex tasks, and there were satisfaction differences favoring each calendar for different kinds of tasks. From these studies, it is clear that DateLens is superior for more complex tasks such as those associated with longer time periods. For daily event tracking, users familiar with the default Pocket PC calendar strongly preferred its daily view and behaviors. Categories and Subject Descriptors:

Mobile internet technologies, such as WAP, are important for pervasive, anytime, anywhere computing. Although much progress has been made in terms of technological innovation, many of mobile internet systems are difficult to use, lack flexibility and robustness. They give a poor user experience. Evaluation and theoretical analysis of usability combined with innovative design can achieve significant improvements in user performance and satisfaction. Using such multidisciplinary methods explains the negative reactions to WAP, and - more constructively - suggest ways of developing more effective and efficient devices and services.

The Rigi reverse engineering system is designed to analyze and summarize the structure of large software systems. Two contrasting approaches are available for visualizing software structures in the Rigi graph editor. The first approach displays the structures through multiple, individual windows. The second approach, Simple Hierarchical Multi-Perspective (SHriMP) views, employs fisheye views of nested graphs. This paper describes the design of an experiment to evaluate these alternative user interfaces. Various results from a preliminary pilot study to test the experiment design are reported.

The challenge of automatically summarising Web pages and sites is a great one. However, currently there is no solution which offers an easy way to produce unbiased, coherent, and contentfull summaries of Web sites. In this work we suggest a new approach, which relies on the structure of hypertext and the way people describe information in it. As a proof-of-concept, we applied our approach to the problem of tailoring coherent snippets for search results. In this paper we describe the approach as it is implemented in our system, InCommonSense, and present results from a large scale evaluation of the snippets produced. We conclude by suggesting other applications that could make use of this technique.

Current methods to represent system or task usability in a single metric do not include all the ANSI and ISO defined usability aspects: effectiveness, efficiency & satisfaction. We propose a method to simplify all the ANSI and ISO aspects of usability into a single, standardized and summated usability metric (SUM). In four data sets, totaling 1860 task observations, we show that these aspects of usability are correlated and equally weighted and present a quantitative model for usability. Using standardization techniques from Six Sigma, we propose a scalable process for standardizing disparate usability metrics and show how Principal Components Analysis can be used to establish appropriate weighting for a summated model. SUM provides one continuous variable for summative usability evaluations that can be used in regression analysis, hypothesis testing and usability reporting. ACM Classification

Software programs, especially legacy programs, are often large, complex and poorly documented. To maintain these programs software engineers require a variety of efficient analytical tools. Some software maintenance tools use visualizations (i.e. graphical views) to communicate information about software systems. Although many software visualization tools exist, the majority of them are not very effective in practice. Part of the problem is that they are designed in an ad hoc manner, with little empirical evaluation. They are often criticized because they try to force programmers to use a specific approach to understanding software rather than supporting their own approaches. The result is that current software visualization tools do not play as big a role in industry as was anticipated by some researchers. The tools that are used are very basic, consisting of mainly text editors and searching features. With increasingly fast computing platforms, there is great potential for the use of...

Information and knowledge management in a knowledge-intensive and time-critical environment presents a challenge to information technology professionals. In law enforcement, multiple data sources are used, each having different user interfaces. COPLINK Connect addresses these problems by providing one easy-to-use interface that integrates different data sources such as incident records, mug shots and gang information, and allows diverse police departments to share data easily. User evaluations of the application allowed us to study the impact of COPLINK on law-enforcement personnel as well as to identify requirements for improving the system. COPLINK Connect is currently being deployed at Tucson Police Department (TPD). D 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

In recent years there has been increasing interest in the phenomena of “gaming the system, ” where a learner attempts to succeed in an educational environment by exploiting properties of the system’s help and feedback rather than by attempting to learn the material. Developing environments that respond constructively and effectively to gaming depends upon understanding why students choose to game. In this article, we present three studies, conducted with two different learning environments, which present evidence on which student behaviors, motivations, and emotions are associated with the choice to game the system. We also present a fourth study to determine how teachers ’ perspectives on gaming behavior are similar to, and different from, researchers ’ perspectives and the data from our studies. We discuss what motivational and attitudinal patterns are associated with gaming behavior across studies, and what the implications are for the design of interactive learning environment. 186 Baker, Walonoski, Heffernan, Roll, Corbett, and Koedinger In recent years, there has been increasing evidence that students choose to use interactive learning environments in a surprising variety of ways (Wood &

Multi-fidelity prototyping combines within a single user interface prototype several elements whose representations are reproduced with different levels of fidelity with respect to the final user interface: no fidelity at all, low fidelity, medium fidelity, and high fidelity. In order to effectively and efficiently support multi-fidelity, an original set of techniques is defined and discussed: multiple representation manipulation by sketching and gesture recognition, smooth transition between any representation at any time, prototype reusability, multi-platform support, and multiple user interface prototyping facilities. The full implementation of these techniques in prototyping software provides designers and developers with a unique environment for exploring multiple designs with unprecedented support for quickly designing interfaces from scratch or from previously existing design templates. An experimental study reveals that the multiple representation manipulation together with smooth transition represents a valuable advantage for naturally designing user interfaces. The prototyping software supports several aspects involved in the user interface development life cycle and is convenient for non-WIMP user interfaces.

First working prototypes of mobile phones with integrated pico projectors have already been demonstrated and it is expected that such projector phones will be sold within the next three years. Applications that require interaction with large amounts of information will benefit from the large projection and its high resolution. This paper analyses the advantages and disadvantages of an integrated projector when interacting with maps, and discusses findings useful for the development of mobile applications for projector phones. We report in particular the implementation of an application that uses either the screen of the mobile phone, the projection or a combination of both. These three options were compared in a user study in which the participants had to perform three different tasks with each option. The results provide clear evidence for the positive aspects of using a built-in projector, but also show some negative aspects related to text input.