A study comparing the speed, accuracy, and user satisfaction of three different touch screen strategies was performed.The purpose of the experiment was to evaluate the merits of the more intricate touch strategies that are possible on touch screens that return a continuous stream of touch data. The results showed that a touch strategy providing continuous feedback until a selection was confirmed had fewer errors than other touch strategies. The implications of the results for touch screens containing small, densely-packed targets were discussed.

Abstract-Many modern software systems are implemented as client/server architectures, where a server handles multiple clients concurrently. Testing does not cover the outcomes of all possible thread and communication schedules reliably. Software model checking, on the other hand, covers all possible outcomes but is often limited to subsets of commonly used protocols and libraries.Earlier work in cache-based software model checking handles implementations using socket-based TCP/IP networking, with one thread per client connection using blocking input/output. Recently, servers using non-blocking, selector-based input/output have become prevalent. This paper describes our work extending the Java PathFinder extension net-iocache to such software, and the application of our tool to modern server software.

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This study explores the use of a hypertext system by patrons of three museums. Data on the articles accessed, the time spent in each, the number of times the index was accessed, etc., were collected from a total of more than 5000 sessions. Results show that visitors at all three museums used the embedded menus of the Hyperties hypertext system in moving from one article to another far more than the traditional index. Article selection appears to reflect anticipated interests of patrons at each museum suggesting success in traversing the database. At the third museum, the data collection was complemented by direct observation and interviews of the museum patrons. This last approach appears to be more appropriate to analyze the usage data as well as to improve the user interface and database structure. IntroductionInteractive databases have been widely used in settings such as business offices, airline reservation counters, libraries, and supermarkets for the purpose of storing, retrieving, and manipulating data. The use of databases for browsing and educational purposes is less common, and research on the use of interactive databases in museums is nonexistent. This article describes a study of Hyperties, an interactive encyclopedia system, in three museum settings.Hyperties* was developed at the University of Maryland for use by novices in a museum and other environments. It is a software tool for constructing and reading a database composed of articles containing text and pictures on a given topic (Shneiderman, 1987). Such hypertext systems (Conklin, 1987) have become popular, especially since the recent development of Apple's HyperCard. *Hyperties is available from Cognetics Corp., 55 Princeton-Hightstown Rd., Princeton Junction, NJ 08550, Phone (609) 799-5005.