The goal of this study was to discover the feasibility of adding haptic and auditory displays to traditional visual geographic information systems (GIS). The experiment was conducted with 51 participants to explore the difference in user performance (task completion time and accuracy) and user satisfaction with a multimodal GIS system, which was implemented with a haptic display, auditory display, and combined display. The experiment consisted of a series of 36 tasks in which the participants were asked to identify the highest or the middle valued state among nine U.S. states on maps. The results showed that haptic displays produce faster and more accurate performance than auditory displays and combined displays for more complex tasks. In terms of user satisfaction, the participants preferred the combined display even though they performed best with the haptic display.
The purpose of this study is to explore the possibility of multimodal bivariate thematic maps by utilizing auditory and haptic displays. With four different modes of display, the completion time of tasks and the recall (retention) rate were measured in two separate experiments. In terms of the completion time, haptic displays seem to interfere with other modalities. However, ColorAuditory displays performed similarly to ColorColor displays. For the recall rate, multimodal displays have higher recall rate, with users performing the best on Auditory-Haptic displays.These findings confirmed the possibility of using auditory and haptic displays in visually dominant geographic information systems (GIs). We speculate that the natural quantitative hierarchies in auditory and haptic displays provide an advantage in the use of multirnodal displays.
Purpose -The purpose of this study is to analyze the mobile websites of newspapers in terms of their user interface, particularly for the space usage for content. Design/methodology/approach -Since the early age of the web in the mid-1990s, many usability recommendations have made for desirable web page design to maximize the valuable but limited space of a screen. To verify whether those recommendations have been applied appropriately to the recent development of mobile web pages, the first pages of 775 online news mobile sites were captured and analyzed in terms of the relationship between the words of the content and various design aspects of the sites. The dependent variable is the number of content words displayed on the first page and the independent variables are the different aspects of the mobile web pages' interface design. Findings -Multiple practices of wasting space were identified such as too large advertisement areas and navigation only first pages. Suggestions to save the space are made, including automatic URL box hiding. Discussions are carried for various issues such as links to desktop versions and search boxes. Originality/value -This research is unique in that a large number of mobile news sites were analyzed for their usability and its findings and discussions provide mobile web developers useful information for better mobile web design.
More and more academic libraries are offering their services via a mobile web platform. This study examined the current status of the mobile web interface of academic libraries in terms of their usability and tried to suggest an effective mobile service design for academic libraries. Seventy‐six mobile academic library web sites were identified. Their first pages were captured and their menu systems were analyzed for different aspects, such as frequently appearing menu items, a search box and search links, URL hiding, menu icons and textual menus. We found many undesirable interfaces that waste space or cause users to be confused. A significant gap between users' needs and the services offered was also identified. To overcome this gap, more efforts should be made in finding users' needs first and implementing services as much as possible to meet such demands.
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