This paper surveys and evaluates some techniques for eliciting requirements of computer-based systems, paying particular attention to how they deal with social issues. The methods surveyed include introspection, interviews, questionnaires, and protocol, conversation, interaction, and discourse analyses. Although they are relatively untried in Requirements Engineering, we believe there is much promise in the last three techniques, which grew out of ethnomethodology and sociolinguistics. In particular, they can elicit tacit knowledge by observing actual interactions in the workplace, and can also be applied to the system development process itself.

Four focus groups were held with young Web users (10 to 13 years of age) to explore design criteria for Web portals. The focus group participants commented upon four existing portals designed with young users in mind: AskJeevesforKids,KidsClick,LycosZone,andYahooligans! This article reports their first impressions on using these portals, their likes and dislikes, and their suggestionsforimprovements.Designcriteriaforchildren’s Webportalsareelaboratedbaseduponthesecomments under four headings: portal goals, visual design, informationarchitecture,andpersonalization.Anidealportal should cater for both educational and entertainment needs, use attractive screen designs based especially on effective use of color, graphics, and animation, provide both keyword search facilities and browsable subjectcategories,andallowindividualuserpersonalization in areas such as color and graphics.

This study aims to explore and model the central consumer perceptions that affect the decision of whether to use mobile payment systems. In particular, we study whether the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) describing user acceptance of technology offers comprehensive explanation for consumer decisions related to adoption of mobile payments. This study is based on two rounds of focus group interviews, the total number of subjects interviewed being 61. Our analysis suggests that the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) provides a good basis to explain use of mobile payment solutions, yet, our data proposes that a new construct, trust, should be included into the model to augment the present descriptors in explaining consumer adoption decisions in the mobile payment context.

This paper examines consumer adoption of a new electronic payment service, mobile payments. The empirical data for the explorative study was collected by establishing six focus group sessions. The results suggest that the relative advantages of mobile payments include time and place independence, availability, possibilities for remote purchases, and queue avoidance. The interviewees found mobile payments to be mostly compatible with digital content and service purchases and to complement small value cash payments. Interestingly, the findings suggest that the relative advantages of mobile payments depend on certain situational factors such as lack of other payment methods or urgency. There are, however, several barriers to the adoption of mobile payments, including premium pricing of the payments, complexity of payment procedures, a lack of widespread merchant acceptance, and perceived risks.

Negotiation support systems (NSS) can enhance humans’ performance in negotiations. Much research in this area focuses on finding optimal bids. However, there is little research on human factors in technological negotiation support. We believe an in-depth analysis of the task involving experts and users is needed to build a new generation of NSS focusing on manmachine collaboration. We describe a scenario-based approach to gathering requirements for such a system. We wrote five scenarios containing part of the envisioned functionality in the most important use situations, e.g. face-to-face negotiation, on the phone, collaborative or mobile preparation. We used claims analysis to clarify our design decisions. To evaluate our claims we organized focus groups including six general and six job negotiation experts. The filmed scenarios were used together with two claims each to guide the discussion. Based on the data analysis we constructed 12 design guidelines for NSS.

Studies were conducted to assess driver acceptance of and trust in distraction mitigation strategies. Previous studies have shown that in-vehicle tasks undermine driver safety, and that there is a need for strategies to reduce the e#ects of in-vehicle distractions. Trust and acceptance of such strategies strongly influence their e#ectiveness. Di#erent strategies intended to reduce distraction were categorized in a taxonomy. Focus groups were conducted to help refine this taxonomy and explore driver acceptance issues related to these strategies. A driving simulator experiment was then conducted using two of the strategies: an advising strategy that warns drivers of potential dangers and a locking strategy that prevents the driver from continuing a distracting task. These strategies were presented to 16 middle-aged and 12 older drivers in two modes (auditory, visual) with two levels of adaptation (true, false). Older drivers accepted and trusted the strategies more than middle-aged drivers. Regardless of age, all drivers preferred strategies that provided alerts in a visual mode rather than an auditory mode. When the system falsely adapted to the road situation, trust in the strategies declined. The findings show that display modality has a strong e#ect on driver acceptance and trust, and that older drivers are more trusting and accepting of distraction mitigation technology even when it operates imperfectly.

Live music-making using interactive systems is not completely amenable to traditional HCI evaluation metrics such as taskcompletion rates. In this paper we discuss quantitative and qualitative approaches which provide opportunities to evaluate the music-making interaction, accounting for aspects which cannot be directly measured or expressed numerically, yet which may be important for participants. We present case studies in the application of a qualitative method based on Discourse Analysis, and a quantitative method based on the Turing Test. We compare and contrast these methods with each other, and with other evaluation approaches used in the literature, and discuss factors affecting which evaluation methods are appropriate in a given context. Key words: Music, qualitative, quantitative 1.

This thesis offers a feminist-poststructuralist analysis of the role and function of verbal abuse in the constitution of adolescent masculinities and femininities in boys and girls in Year 9 in a range of secondary schools in metropolitan Adelaide, South Australia. Research methods included a survey and discourse analysis of the transcripts of 17 focus groups and 32 interviews. This study found that verbal abuse was a cultural technique used by adolescents within a regime of discursively-constructed gendered practices to draw attention to, enact, mark, punish, police or enforce stereotypical, hetero-normative gender boundaries. It was not just the words that were damaging in the way they were used to subordinate and marginalise boys and girls who did not conform to the dominant ideals of masculinity and femininity, but also the discourses that turned insults, taunts or ‘put downs ’ into particular types of statements with associated assumptions about the ‘normal ’ and ‘abnormal ’ forms of masculinity, femininity and sexuality that they exposed. Bystanders were made aware that they were also potential targets of abuse if they transgressed the gender boundaries. Girls and boys constituted and enacted their gender in opposition to each other within a regime of normalising practices in which there were consistent, identifiable markers of ideal masculinity and femininity. Some markers were broad-based,

with the political transition also comes a media transition. This article examines the media transition

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