Thaxton, Chen, Whitmore, Whitmire and Arias (#1)
Lockheed Martin, NASA Johnson Space Center, Wyle
Laboratories
Presentation
Habitable Volume Assessment Tools: Results of 2012 NASA
Habitable Volume Workshop
With NASA s vision for humans to explore space beyond
low-orbit, habitability and human factors issues will be more critical.
Inadequate design and insufficient habitable volume may lead to reduced crew
safety, decreased efficiency, and lower satisfaction. The Space Human
Factors and Habitability (SHFH) and Behavioral Health and Performance (BHP)
Elements of NASA s Human Research Program (HRP) hosted the 2012 Habitable
Volume Workshop, which focused on assessing habitable volume for
long-duration missions. One of the key strengths of this workshop was the
inclusion of industry experts from fields such as oil and gas, maritime
shipping, military, and mining. The workshop produced concrete products to
aid in the design and assessment of habitable volume in space vehicles and
habitats based on both NASA and industry approaches, and it sought to
identify research and technology development gaps and provide
recommendations for forward work.
Workshop products included the Process Flow, Task List,
and Metrics and Tools Lists. Together these products form a suite of tools
for engineers, designers, and integrators in driving the design of habitable
volumes, assessing the goodness of design, and assisting in communication
among stakeholders. The Process Flow identifies three major elements in
human systems engineering and habitability design - Plan, Design, and Assess
- and establishes how they feed one another in an iterative work flow for
assessing habitable volume. The Task List provides a minimal set of
long-duration mission tasks that are volume-driving, and provides design
constraints as well as volume and layout characteristics to inform the
design process. The Metrics and Tools Lists capture design and behavioral
metrics as well as example methods and tools that are used to measure them.
As part of gap mitigation efforts, volume-impacting
countermeasures for optimizing behavioral health and performance were
identified. Critical steps in determining whether countermeasures should be
implemented, such as characterizing their effectiveness, may be addressed by
further research. A list of outcomes, standardized measures, and
long-duration spaceflight analog mission characteristics was defined and is
being used towards the development of a joint research plan.
This presentation summarizes the workshop and its
products, which expanded the existing NASA knowledge base by collaborating
with industries such as oil and gas, and by placing special emphasis on
design for long-duration missions. The workshop and its products serve as a
critical step on the path to address HRP risks related to reduced safety and
efficiency due to an inadequately designed vehicle or habitat. The products
also have potential to benefit human factors engineers, designers, and
integrators in fields outside of human spaceflight, providing a model for
assessing and designing for humans who work and live in habitats of limited
volume.
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Thaxton, Litaker, Whitmore, Whitmire and Arias (#2)
Lockheed Martin
Poster
Space Habitability Observation Reporting Tool:
Development, Testing, and Transition to Operations Plan
INTRODUCTION The Human Factors and Habitability Assessment Tool Directed Research
Project (Hab DRP) aims to develop tools to assist in assessing vehicle
habitability. This has included the development of an application to collect
data near real-time and an assessment of targeted use of video data. Future
plans include assessment of utilization of space within vehicles and
habitats. For this poster, the focus is on the development, testing, and
transition to operations plans for the Space Habitability Observation
Reporting Tool (iSHORT).
iSHORT DEVELOPMENT
iSHORT is an iPad-based application that allows crewmembers to document
observations about their surroundings using text, photographs, video, and
audio recordings. It was developed by Space Human Factors Engineering (SHFE)
personnel based on previous habitability tool development at Johnson Space
Center.
ANALOG MISSION TESTING NASA Extreme Environments
Mission Operations (NEEMO) provides an opportunity for researchers to work
with crewmembers participating in analog missions in the Aquarius habitat,
which is located on the ocean floor off of the coast of Key Largo, FL.
During NEEMO 16, each of the four crewmembers was scheduled to use iSHORT at
least once daily throughout their 12-day mission. At the end of the mission,
crewmembers completed a questionnaire regarding iSHORT. Based on the high
quality of reports submitted during NEEMO 16 and positive feedback from the
crewmembers, the project team has elected to assess the feasibility of
transitioning iSHORT to operations on the International Space Station.
TRANSITION TO OPERATIONS PLAN iSHORT has potential for
everyday use on ISS, allowing crewmembers to quickly and easily document
positive and negative observations about their environment. This data may
play a role in providing human performance data and supplementing the ISS
Crew Comments Database, allowing researchers to better understand the
current state of habitability on ISS. In addition to making iSHORT available
on existing ISS iPads, there is potential to coordinate with stakeholders
who would like to specifically request feedback; for example, principal
investigators for science experiments could schedule the occasional use of
iSHORT following their test protocols.
The specific aims of the Hab DRP s iSHORT transition to
operations for ISS are:
a.
Establish relationships with potential stakeholders for data
collected using iSHORT
b.
Determine software requirements, processes, and documentation based
on discussions with operations and other appropriate groups
c.
Develop a plan for distributing, archiving, and analyzing data
received through iSHORT
d.
Propose a plan for ISS operations including considerations such as
training and scheduling
e.
If appropriate, pursue implementation of ISS operations plan
In addition to
ISS transition to operations, the Hab DRP team will pursue opportunities to
make iSHORT available as a data collection tool for activities such as
ground-based flight analog missions.
FORWARD WORK
Forward work for iSHORT includes coordination efforts with stakeholders and
operations personnel as well as updates to the software. Updates include
changes to data handling to integrate more smoothly with existing systems
and databases, and also enhanced features such as the capability for
crewmembers to flag reports as private, enabling the use of iSHORT for
collecting sensitive data.
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Mehta (#3)
Texas A&M Health Science Center
Presentation
Relationship between fatigue and cognitive function
during orthostatic challenge: A neuroergonomics approach
Postflight orthostatic intolerance is a major health
concern among astronauts that fly long duration missions. Additionally,
astronauts experience high levels of workload resulting in fatigue, which
can affect performance. However,
the effects of concurrent orthostatic challenge and fatigue on performance
have not been adequately investigated.
The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between
fatigue and cognitive function during orthostatic challenge by employing a
neuroergonomics approach.
Neuroergonomics is an emerging science that is defined as the study of the
human brain in relation to performance at work and in everyday settings,
including both cognitive and physical work. Sixteen healthy participants
performed 1) a compensatory tracking task, and 2) a serial-n mental
arithmetic task, in the absence and presence of a prior 1-hour fatiguing
exercise, on separate days under orthostatic challenge (lower body negative
pressure). Study variabl es
included task performance and prefrontal cortex oxygenation using functional
near infrared spectroscopy. Results indicated that in general, orthostatic
challenge decreased cerebral oxygenation.
Introduction of the cognitive tasks during orthostatic challenge
improved cerebral blood flow, however, oxygenation decreased significantly
with the cognitive tasks under the fatigue conditions, particularly during
the tracking task. While there
was little evidence to suggest any cognitive performance decrements due to
fatigue, the results revealed cognitive-stressor specific differences in
neural activation related to fatigue that may be useful in the development
of countermeasures for orthostatic intolerance.
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Marsalia (#4)
Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Rural Public
Health
Poster
A Study on IPad Usability in Medicine and Industry
A Study on IPad Usability in Medicine and Industry
Angela Marsalia, Robert Locke, Taliat Fawole, Wesley Fikes Environmental &
Occupational Health Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Rural Public
Health Advised by Dr. Mark Benden CPE, PhD
Introduction: The advancement of technology, such as
touchscreens is evermore increasing and changing in different workplaces.
Currently, there are no gloves designed for use for either the medicine or
industrial fields that allow personnel to use a touchscreen product while
performing their job tasks. The purpose of this study is to understand how
touchscreens, specifically the IPad, can be incorporated into various
sectors by using proper gloves or techniques to decrease the likelihood of
mistakes or human errors, and to increase the efficiency with which work is
done. Approach/Methods: In this study, there were 19 individuals, including
10 female and 9 male, from 20-40 years old that participated in the
Bryan/College Station, TX area. The industrial gloves tested were knit
gloves, leather work gloves with sewn on tips, and leather work gloves with
pin tips. The medical gloves were latex and nitrile, with the addition of
two ziploc bags that were different thicknesses (1.5m
m and 2mm) covering the IPad. Discussion & Significance: The details
on the results, limitations, and recommendations of this study are presented
here as an example of an applied ergonomics and usability case study
involving medicine and industry occupations.
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Stoll, Bartha and Harper (#5)
HP
Presentation
Direct and Indirect Input use on Windows 8 Laptops and
All-in-Ones
The study examines the use of direct (touchscreen) vs.
indirect (touchpad/clickpad) input in common computer-based activities,
across different form-factors of computer. 14 participants who were familiar
with Windows 8 were recruited externally (6 laptop and 8 all-in-one users).
They were asked to perform sample activities involving web-browsing,
video watching, playing games and reading eBooks. Each activity was designed
to exhibit a variety of interactions relevant to the task such as scrolling,
selecting, typing, zooming and the use of Windows 8 swiping gestures.
Participants completed each activity 3 times. First, they used exclusively
one type of input (direct or indirect, with the order counterbalanced),
followed by the other type. Finally, they were given a free choice of which
input to use. Participants input
selections for each aspect of each activity in the free choice tasks were
recorded. Afterwards, participants were interviewed about why they made
those choices.
Laptop users were found to use direct input near
exclusively. All-in-One users were also found to use direct input more often
than indirect. However, All-in-One users were more likely to use indirect
methods than Laptop users. Users of both types of computer were more likely
to use indirect input for fine navigation, scrolling, tasks where touch use
would block viewing, and leisurely tasks where one wants to avoid reaching
for the screen.
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Clark and Maida (#6)
Lockheed Martin/NASA JSC
Presentation
Investigation of Color-Rendering Performance Indicators
for Lighting Systems
The lighting industry has not baselined a new color
assessment test for light-emitting diode (LED) lighting, even though experts
in the lighting industry have determined that color rendering index (CRI) is
inadequate and sometimes inaccurate for solid-state light sources.
Solid-state light sources can have complicated or simple spectral
power-distribution curves, depending on the LED light emitters and optics
used in the lighting system.
Because NASA is determined to use LED lighting systems instead of
traditional lighting solutions, such as incandescent or fluorescent, it is
important to determine a better method for verifying the color performance
of a LED lighting system. This
test method needs to be a quantifiable, reproducible method that can be used
by lighting system designers and test engineers to prove that a lighting
system meets requirements. The
goal of this investigation is to determine a best practice for future
light-source evaluations and to improve requirements and verification
documentation regarding color perception and the usability of future
lighting systems.
Initial findings in the investigation showed that a
wide array of methods for color-perception testing have been developed over
the past 70 years. A majority of
color-perception and color-rendering evaluations are based on color theory
developed in the 1940s via human testing of light sources and printed
materials. The tests that have
been developed have a range of goals that include evaluations of human color
vision, acceptable appearance of materials, and rating of a light source s
ability to render color.
Depending on the test, the evaluations may involve human test subjects,
require special light sources, require calibrated color chips, or require
the use of color measurement systems like spectrophotometers.
Algorithms to interpret the data use mathematical models that assume
human vision transformation functions, color space, reference colors, and
reference spectral power distributions.
The level of assumptions, the complexity of the math model, and the
rigors of the testing are largely driven by industry.
The evaluations have to provide a cost-effective synopsis that is
quickly understandable and easily translatable to verification of hardware
and the color vision of personnel.
These ties to industry, tooling, and cost are some of
the reasons color-vision and color-perception metrics have not evolved, even
though lighting and materials technology has.
The progress to date on this investigation has shown
that different methods of evaluation should be used according to the unique
needs of the project. In some
cases, color performance of a lighting system should be evaluated using
several metrics instead of one, thus increasing the number of tests but also
increasing the reliability of the analysis.
Our presentation will outline the pros and cons of various methods
and our plan for developing modern, reliable methods for color-perception
evaluation of light sources.
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Wheeler (#7)
Texas Tech
Presentation
Uncovering Mental Models to Inform Mobile Information
Architecture: The Use of Repeated Cluster Analyses on Card Sort Data
Objective: This study shows how a novel cluster
analysis method can be used to aggregate data collected using a card sort
technique to inform the design of a hierarchical mobile menu.
Background: Mobile human interface guidelines
frequently suggest some hierarchical navigation (e.g., iOS and Android).
Card sorting techniques could possibly inform the design of this navigation.
Card sorting involves asking users to organize cards with items on them into
piles of related items. Card sort data can be used to identify users
mental representation of how items
are related. Aggregating users
responses can sometimes be challenging due to the number of items that are
being organized. Cluster analysis methods can provide a quantitative means
of aggregating users responses
to inform interface design (Lewis, 1991). Toms, Cummings-Hill, Curry, and
Cone, (2001) suggest analyzing multiple cluster analysis solutions in order
to develop a hierarchical menu structure.
This approach could provide valuable insight into how mobile users
conceptualize features and content. This could inform the design of
hierarchical menus sometimes required in these interfaces.
Method: In the present study, 10 iOS (Apple Inc. s
mobile operating system) users sorted items from the iOS settings menu into
piles of related items using websort.net (UX Punk Ltd.). Websort.net is an
online application which allows users to arrange items on virtual cards into
groups and then name these groups with meaningful names. We then counted the
number of times individual items were grouped with other items. Using these
data, we then conducted two cluster analyses. In the first cluster analysis
we grouped the items into the average number of clusters users employed. In
the second cluster analysis, we grouped the items into the maximum number of
clusters a single user leveraged during the card sort.
Results: This technique allowed me to identify two
hierarchical levels of items. Specifically, the second cluster analysis
broke the first set of clusters into smaller groups. This solution showed
that users mental model does not
correspond with the current iOS settings menu structure.
Conclusion: This study shows how analyzing multiple
cluster analysis solutions can inform the design of a hierarchical mobile
menu. Future work needs to test the usability of the hierarchy identified in
this study.
Application: Mobile user experience designers can
leverage this method to understand mobile users
mental models. They can then utilize the results of this analysis
technique to inform the design of hierarchical mobile menus.
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Neilson (#8)
Texas Tech University
Presentation
The Effects of Physiological Self-Regulation Training
using LaRC MindShift Invention Technology on Users
Psychophysiology and Cognitive Performance
There are several factors associated with the operation
of any human-machine system: the operator (e.g., skill and experience),
system interface, and distribution of work or functions (e.g., task load).
Each of these factors impact operator performance. While improving system
design is imperative to the science of human factors, implementing training
methods should not be neglected. Training operators to regulate their
physiological state based upon autonomic and central nervous system activity
can reduce cognitive workload and thereby improve operator performance. A
recent spin-off from flight deck adaptive automation research at NASA
Langley Research Center (LaRC) is a biocybernetic invention referred to
informally as MindShift, and its purpose is to train operators to
self-regulate their physiological functioning. When using the MindShift
technology, a person is able to play off-the-shelf Nintendo
Wii games enhanced with
biofeedback training. Therefore, the user experiences the challenge of
regulating their physiological responses during gameplay in addition to the
intended challenges presented in the video game. The purpose of the present
study was to examine subjective workload and cognitive performance effects
of training users to regulate physiological states using NASA LaRC s
MindShift invention technology. Multi-session physiological self-regulation
training using the NASA LaRC MindShift technology was hypothesized to
decrease self-reported workload over time and improve cognitive performance
over time.
Subjects were randomly assigned to one of two Nintendo
Wii games that were
adapted to be used with NASA LaRC MindShift (Nintendo
Wii Sports Golf Game and
Link s Crossbow Training Game) and trained to regulate their physiological
states using the technology weekly, for up to four weeks. Subjects completed
computerized cognitive tasks, the Multi-Attribute Task Battery-II, and the
Workload Rating Scale before and after physiological self-regulation
training to track their cognitive performance and self-reported workload
over time. Eleven volunteers (6
men and 5 women) participated in the study at NASA LaRC. Data collection for
the study is ongoing, but preliminary analyses were conducted and will be
presented. The current results suggest that average self-reported workload
decreased and multi-task cognitive performance increased after physiological
self-regulation training, but this should be interpreted as a potential
trend in the data and not taken as conclusive regarding the effectiveness of
this training technology. The results of this study will be used to develop
follow-up experiments assessing transfer of learning physiological
self-regulation using these technologies to on-the-job performance.
Biocybernetic technology like NASA LaRC MindShift is applicable to skill
training on manually controlled critical tasks, such as unmanned aerial
vehicle teleoperation, thus enabling the training of cognitive skills to be
concurrent with manual skills.
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Burks and Harper (#9)
Hewlett-Packard
Presentation
Windows 8 in the Home: A Diary Study
Windows 8, the new operating system from Microsoft,
marks the biggest change to Windows since Windows 95. It s designed to be
touch friendly and scalable across form factors including traditional
desktops, hybrids, and tablets. Since its release, it has been criticized by
the press and users alike for its completely new UI and interaction model,
but is it as bad as it s portrayed to be? Any operating system that results
in a negative user experience could lead to poor sales, returns, and
increased customer support calls. A three week ethnographic diary study was
conducted with users in the Houston area to uncover specific Windows 8 pain
points. Users were first observed performing the out of box setup in their
home environments. This was followed by written and video blogs, survey
questions, and directed tasks over the three week period. Our findings show
that overall there is a learning curve and some major pain points. However,
the data also show that while Window
s 8 satisfaction decreases during the initial learning period, over
time satisfaction returns to the initial level. Findings were used to
provide feedback to Microsoft, revise documentation and highlighted a need
to improve discoverability of the HP Getting Started with Windows 8 App.
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Nguyen and
Bartha (#10)
Hewlett Packard
Poster
The Use of Swype on Tablets: Better Performance or
Better Experience?
Swype is a popular alternative virtual keyboard for
mobile phones that uses shape writing for text input. Shape writing involves
drawing the desired word
with your finger or a stylus in one continuous motion on a virtual keyboard.
Swype, initially introduced to smart phones, is advertised as being faster
than traditional methods of keying on a virtual keyboard. This technology is
relatively new to the market, and to date there is little available research
on the performance of Swype on smart phones, and none on the even newer
tablet devices, such as a Samsung Galaxy Tab. The current study looks to
investigate performance (words per minute/average errors per word) and
preference associated with the use of Swype for text input compared to
keying on the virtual keyboard with the prediction/suggestion function
turned on. An identical study was conducted previously but the keyboard
software was unable to have the prediction/suggestion function turned on
because of soft ware
limitations. The effect of orientation and keyboard sizes within an
orientation were also examined. For typing speed, keying provided a
significantly faster typing speed compared to Swype. Additionally, typing in
the portrait orientation yielded significantly faster typing speeds than in
landscape. An interaction was also found between input method and viewing
orientation. In regards to errors, keying was found to have a significantly
higher number of errors per word than Swyping. Additionally, Swype was rated
significantly better than keying on four out of five preference measures.
Findings show that when input methods perform at their fullest ability,
Swype provides a slower typing speed but better experience for users.
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Reid and Rajulu (#11)
Lockheed Martin
NASA - Johnson Space Center
Presentation
Preliminary Ergonomic Evaluation Methods for the
Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU)
Overview: Standalone suit design and limb mobility are
well understood topics for spacesuit engineers and technicians. How that
suit interacts with human users however, is a topic in which clear
understanding is limited. This is due to the fact that current suits are
designed to be small, enclosed pressurized vessels, rather than
close-fitting clothes. To help suit engineers and technicians better
understand this human-suit relationship, the Anthropometry and Biomechanics
Facility at NASA s Johnson Space Center conducted testing with the
Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) suit to evaluate the feasibility of an
initial set of methods for quantifying suit arm mobility performance and
human-suit interaction.
Method: Six test subjects (4 male, 2 female) were
assessed in medium and large-sized Hard Upper Torsos (HUTs) of the EMU while
standing attached to a suit-donning stand and performing six right-shoulder
movements (flexion/extension, adduction/abduction, and internal/external
transverse). Particular focus was put on the shoulder portions of the
arm-HUT interface to assess the shoulder joint range of motion (ROM),
impingements, pressure points, musculoskeletal discomfort, and skin
irritation from movement. Additionally, measurements of sleeve displacement
at the wrist bearing and the fingertip gap (between glove and middle
fingertip) during the shoulder movements were collected. Testing conditions
included unsuited, fully suited pressurized, fully suited unpressurized, and
suited unpressurized with arm/wrist components removed. Data collection
methods included use of FARO 3D point clouds (for gathering shoulder
bearing-to-body clearance), Vicon motion capture (for gathering ran
ge of motion, reach envelope, and displacement of the wrist bearing),
and subjective survey (for gathering human-suit contact information).
Results: Human-suit shoulder clearance information from
the FARO device was able to show linear vertical and horizontal distance
between the shoulder bearing and the arm scye circumference. These data were
useful in showing the individual anthropometric makeup of the subjects and
their range-of-motion performance differences. When fully suited, there were
notable reductions in shoulder range of motion and reach envelope when
compared to unsuited. Wrist bearing displacement and glove-fingertip gap
fluctuated by type of shoulder movement and by subject. Of the types of
suit-body contacts noticed in the subjective surveys for the pressurized
condition, touching and pressure point contacts were the two most often
noted. Regardless of shoulder movement type, the upper arms, chest, back,
and shoulder/deltoid regions were the parts of the body that were most
contacted by subjects. Contact intensity was shown to be between light and
moderate contact levels.
Conclusion: Despite the limitations of conducting
suited testing in 1g and while subjects stood connected to a suit-donning
stand, the data collected were able to provide better insight into the
human-suit interactions that take place during movement. These techniques
proved of interest to suit engineers because they provided a clearer picture
of human-suit interaction. Modified FARO and subjective survey techniques
will add more ideal results for future work. In addition, future work should
consider volumetric body-suit assessment, other possible quantification
methods for human-suit contact, and quantification of arm movement
programming paths.
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Payne and Kortum (#12)
Rice University
Poster
Is There a Benefit to Delaying the Introduction of
Performance Supports?: An Exploration of Predictive Spell-Check
The question of when a performance support should be
introduced and specifically, whether there is a benefit to delaying the
introduction of a performance support has remained unanswered even as their
prevalence increases. Integrated support systems, such as anti-lock breaks
that automatically help without user activation, are already known to
improve the performance of users. However, previous research has not
determined whether delaying the introduction of those support systems will
result in higher end performance than introducing the performance supports
immediately. To gain an understanding of the impact that the timed
introduction of performance supports has on end performance, the present
study explored whether delaying the introduction of a predictive spell-check
program, also known as
auto-correct , on iPod Touch virtual keyboards resulted in higher end
performance than having it turned on from the beginning. To investigate this
issue, participants typed out a series of passages six times with their
error rates captured after each iteration. Participants were randomly
assigned to either have auto-correct always turned off, always turned on, or
turned off initially and turned on after the fourth set of passages. Our
findings reveal that the auto-correct program does provide a significant
performance improvement, that there is a skill curve for all conditions, and
that those who had auto-correct turned off initially perform no better once
they have auto-correct turned on than those who always had the program on.
This suggests that there is no benefit to experience gained prior to
utilizing the program and further, that auto-correct should be turned on as
soon as possible because the skill gained with auto-correct turned off does
not transfer over to the skill of typing with auto-correct turned on.
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Lopez and Parnell (#13)
University of Houston-Clear Lake
Poster
Postures and Related Discomfort while Using iPads:
Focus on the Non-Dominant Arm and Hand
The field of Ergonomics has become very important with
the increasing use of new computer technologies such as handheld touchscreen
devices such as smart phones and tablets. Although there is a growing body
of work on the ergonomic impact of using these devices (Berolo et al.,
2011), much of this work has focused on the activity and discomfort for the
users dominant hand. Given that
often people must use both hands when using tablet type devices, it is
important to examine the potential ergonomic implications for both the
dominant and non-dominant hands. To do so, we had 60 users participate in a
study where the played a game on a tablet device (iPad® 1st generation) for
6 minutes. Participants were video taped while they used the device insuring
that the video was taken from their non-dominant hand side. A summary of the
user-adopted postures focusing on the non-dominant hand, the hand that
typically holds the device, will be presented and implications will be
discussed.
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Thompson, Haddock and Overland (#14)
Lockheed Martin
NASA, JSC
Presentation
Development of a Voice and Gesture System for
Spaceflight Operations
Natural User Interface (NUI) is a term used to describe
a number of technologies such as speech recognition, multi-touch, and
kinetic interfaces. Gesture and voice are two new and exciting computer
input modalities for the NUI. The goal of NUI is to develop interfaces that
do not have a steep learning curve and the interaction with these interfaces
that are natural
and intuitive to the user. The goal of the current evaluation was to
develop a proof-of-concept voice/gesture system that could be applied to
future spaceflight operations. Our NUI system of choice for this proof of
concept is the Microsoft Kinect sensor. The prototype interface was designed
to show how gesture and voice recognition could be used to control a simple
system. This concept provided both gesture and voice input. Voice input was
implemented to illustrate the flexibility of the system by allowing truly
hands-free interaction.
The prototype provided a set of lighting and thermal
controls such as those possibly found in a space habitat. Since the
prototype system did not actually control any real lighting and thermal
systems, a control box was built that consisted of three LED lights and a
dial mounted on a servo to provide visual feedback of the outputs based on
the user commands. To interact with the system, the user began with the main
menu screen where the user could navigate to the lighting controls screen
and a thermal control screen. For the lighting controls, users employed a
focus box to navigate through selections using their left hand/arm and
selecting with the right hand/arm. Thermal controls were commanded via a
slider control by the right hand/arm. Although this was a very simple
system, the voice and gesture command concepts can be extrapolated to a
larger and more complex interface. Overall, all users enjoyed interacting
with the system and felt that as a proof of concept we had achi
eved our goal. Some participants felt that the utility of the system
would be application and environment specific. Most thought the system added
flexibility to human-computer interaction, especially either during
multitasking or far away from an input device. Participants liked not being
confined to a traditional input device, but concerns did exist with the
accuracy of gestures and voice commands. In some cases, the focus box was
difficult to control and the voice recognition system did not understand a
command. Further work is still needed to refine the interactions. For
example, it is not known what types of gestures are appropriate for certain
interface elements. Our eventual goal is to develop NUI standards and
requirements for space habitats and add to the general body of knowledge
with respect to gesture/voice commanding and interface design.
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McIntyre, Jones and Schmidlin (#15)
Texas Tech University
Poster
Using Ecological Psychology to Build More Capable
Robots: An Update
J.J. Gibson (1979) argued that perception and action
must be considered on an ecological scale, i.e., one that considers how
perceivers fit their environment. Furthermore, Gibson argued that perceivers
gain direct awareness of the action-relevant relations between themselves
and their environment (i.e., their affordances) through active exploration.
As a whole, Gibson s perspective is referred to as Ecological Psychology.
Our lab exploits what we know about Ecological Psychology to develop more
capable robots. We introduced our research at the 8th Annual Houston Human
Factors and Ergonomics One Day Symposium.
This poster serves to update the community on our research in the
following areas (past, present, and future).
Tele-operated robots. 1)
What factors constrain whether a robot can be tele-operated through a given
aperture? 2) Can tele-operators
accurately judge whether a robot can be tele-operated through an aperture?
3) Do such judgments improve with practi
ce? If so, do those
improvements stem from exploratory movements, feedback, or a combination
thereof? Autonomous robots.
a) Can we develop robots that acquire information through active
exploration? If so, what are the
advantages/disadvantages of doing so?
b) Can robot vision systems exploit the actions people take to inform
their perceptions of affordances in order to determine human intentions and
capabilities? c) Do people judge the affordances of autonomous robots via
the same methods that they use to judge the affordances of other people?
Does it matter whether the robot has human-like capabilities?
d) Can we leverage what we know about how people judge affordances
associated with other people to design robots that have that ability?
Ultimately, our reason for pursuing these questions is to use
Ecological Psychology to build more capable robots and improve human-robot
interaction.
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McIntyre, Jones, Schmidlin and Wheeler (#16)
Texas Tech University
Presentation
How do people judge the capabilities of a robot?
Objective: This study replicated and extended Jones,
Schmidlin, & Wheeler (2012), which investigated whether people accurately
judge a robot s action capabilities, as well as what variables people
utilize to make those judgments.
Background: To cooperate effectively, humans and
autonomous robots need to understand certain things about each other.
For example, humans may need to understand what actions their robots
can complete (Jones & Schmidlin, 2011).
This will not be as simple as consulting their robots
owners manuals because
users will likely want their autonomous robots to complete tasks that the
robots designers never
anticipated. Accordingly, users
will need to judge for themselves whether robots are capable of a given
task. Research indicates that
humans can make accurate judgments of another human s capabilities
(Stoffregen, Gorday, Sheng, & Flynn, 1999). For example, Mark (2007) showed
that participants accurately judged an actor s stair-climbing capability,
and that participants based
their judgments on leg length, which is a relevant biomechanical variable
that partially determines stair-climbing ability (Warren, 1984).
In the context of robots, Jones, Schmidlin, and Wheeler (2012) showed
that people can accurately judge the action capabilities of an autonomous
robot, but their examination of what informed those judgments was not
conclusive.
Method: The experiment employed two versions of a robot
that were identical except for their wheel diameters.
Short and tall versions of the robot had wheels of 1.96 and 2.99
inches in diameter, respectively.
Participants completed four tasks with each version of
the robot. First,
they watched a video of one version of the robot autonomously moving around
a room. Second, they watched a short video clip of that same robot balancing
next to a step. Third, they indicated whether the robot could climb the step
unassisted. Participants responded by clicking
yes or
no buttons on the screen.
Fourth, participants repeated second and third tasks with different
video clips of varying step heights. Participants then repeated all four
tasks with the other version of the robot.
The order of the two versions of the robot was counterbalanced.
Results: Participants accurately distinguished between
the relative capabilities of the two versions of the robot, i.e., that the
tall robot could climb higher steps than the short robot. Furthermore,
participants appeared to base their judgments on wheel height, which (like
leg length in the human studies) is a variable that partially determines the
robot s ability to climb the step. Lastly, participants
judgments about the capabilities of the short robot were accurate;
however, their judgments about the tall robot s capabilities were not
accurate.
Conclusion: Consistent with Jones, Schmidlin, & Wheeler
(2012), this study found that people distinguish between the relative
capabilities of the different versions of the robot. Further, this study
suggests that humans based their judgments on aspects of the robot s
dimensions (wheel height) that partially determine the robot s climbing
ability. Future work should examine what characteristics of robots
dimensions affect accuracy and whether these findings transfer to
robots performing other actions.
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Pham and Evaldez (#17)
University of Houston-Clear Lake
Poster
A Comparison of the Ergonomic Implications of Using a
Conventional Mouse, Touchpad, and Touchscreen Pointing Devices
As technology develops, new pointing devices are
designed to allow a growing number of computer users to interact with their
machine. Past research using
electromyography (EMG) revealed that prolonged computer use could cause
repetitive strain injuries (RSI) in users.
Other experiments revealed that physical design differences affected
user muscle activity and performance in various tasks with pointing devices.
This study will use modified body discomfort diagrams to allow
participants to report their level of strain while completing common
computer tasks such as online shopping, digital drawing, and spreadsheet
modification. Three pointing devices will be utilized: the traditional
mouse, the touchpad, and a touchscreen desktop.
A common machine will use the three interaction devices to minimize
extraneous variables from form differences (desktop, laptop, tablet).
The different devices and tasks can then be compared to determine
which can be the most strenuous.
This data can be used for the design of future pointing
devices and analyses involving the classic mouse and the newer touch
technologies.
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Garcia (#18)
University of Houston-Clear Lake
Presentation
Designing a WYSIWYG Editor for Open Educational
Resources
Open Education Resources (OER) are freely accessible
and openly licensed content that can be used for teaching and learning at
all levels of education. Benefits of OER include reducing the cost of
educational material--making education more accessible to underprivileged
persons, as well as freeing up the monetary resources of more affluent
persons--and making educational content remixable, to be adapted and refined
by contributors worldwide. A barrier to the proliferation of OER is the
usability of the technologies needed for its production. Typically these
technologies require authors of OER to be familiar with markup languages, or
authoring systems that are too complex for most educators and potential
contributors. From studying end-users
behaviors and needs, and collaborating with subject matter experts,
usability goals and requirements were defined, and a high level interactive
mock-up of a WYSIWYG editor was created. Initial usability testing on a
sample of 30 potential end users uncovered approximately 69 unique usability
issues, and obtained a score of 73 of perceived usability on the System
Usability Scale (SUS). Using a 95% confidence interval, the true SUS score
may fall between 68 and 79. Four more iterations of the editor were designed
based on data from subsequent usability tests, and the majority of usability
issues have been resolved.
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Wheeler and Klein (#19)
Texas Tech
Presentation
Prior Experience in Laparoscopic Surgery Enhances
Performance in Novel Conditions
Objective: This study aimed to assess whether prior
experience in a laparoscopic surgery simulator, with a camera projecting the
target site onto a monitor, affects subsequent simulator performance under
novel camera arrangements.
Background: Laparoscopic surgery is a minimally
invasive surgical technique that requires surgeons to use long thin graspers
and cameras, inserted through small incisions, to perform the surgery. It
has been recommended that surgeons insert the camera through a port between
their hands (Emam, Hanna, & Cuschieri, 2002), providing a top-front view of
the target tissue. However, surgeons are not always able to adhere to this
arrangement. Sometimes, they need to place the camera to the right or the
left of their hands or even opposite to themselves (Ferzli & Fingerhut,
2004). This results in a visuomotor distortion. Researchers have found that
even expert surgeons do not perform optimally under all camera
configurations (Ames, Frisella, Yan, Shulam, & Landman, 2006). Therefore, a
need exists to identify training methods aimed at improving performance
under a variety of different camera locations in the laparoscopic
environment. Movement scientists have found that experience with
certain visuomotor rotations can hinder or facilitate
motor-performance in novel conditions when participants make occluded
movements using their index finger on a two-dimensional plane (Bock, Abeele,
& Eversheim, 2003). Thus, the goal for the present study was to assess if
prior exposure to a 45° rotation in a laparoscopic surgery simulator impacts
subsequent performance at 135°, 180°, and 225° of counter-clockwise,
horizontal rotations. Such simulators induce the visuomotor distortions
inherent in laparoscopy.
Method: Eighteen right-handed undergraduates
participated in our study. Participants performed pointing movements using a
model laparoscopic instrument inserted into a laparoscopic simulator.
Participants were randomly assigned to a control condition or an
experimental condition, with the restriction that half were assigned to
each. Participants assigned to the control condition completed 12 practice
blocks of 33 pointing movements each while viewing the target area directly
through an opening in the top of the simulator. Participants assigned to the
experimental condition completed 12 practice blocks of 33 pointing movements
each using a camera that was rotated 45° counter-clockwise and projected the
target area onto a monitor; direct view was prevented in this and all
subsequent camera-rotations. After this practice phase, participants of both
the control and experimental conditions were randomly assigned to perform
one block of 33 pointing movements in either the 135º, 180
º, or 225º test rotations, with the restriction that three control
participants and three experimental participants were assigned to each of
the three test rotations.
Results: Preliminary data analyses indicated that prior
exposure to a 45° rotation resulted in improved performance in the three
test rotations.
Conclusion: Practice using the 45° rotation in
simulated laparoscopic surgery can facilitate performance under novel
simulator distortions.
Application: These preliminary results may have crucial
implications for the development of laparoscopic training programs. Further,
future studies need to assess the long-term effects of this type of practice
and the generalizability of these findings to in-vitro surgery.
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Wheeler, McIntyre, Levulis and Hippalgaonkar (#20)
Texas Tech
Poster
Optimizing Difficulty: Enhancing Game Experience Using
Simplified Facial Coding
Objective: This study shows how a simple facial coding
schema can be used to identify the optimal level of difficulty in a
tower-defense game.
Background: There is a need to identify measures which
can efficiently identify optimum game enjoyment from variables such as
difficulty. One possible measurement method is facial coding. Paul Ekman
(1978) designed a facial coding schema which was designed to identify
emotions. However, the original version of this schema requires extensive
training and analysis time. Previous work has used motion tracking to make
this process more efficient (Kaiser & Wehrle, 1992). However, motion
tracking equipment can be costly. In human factors research, one should make
sure that there are not excessive costs to measurement (Meister, 2004). In
this study, we created a modified version of Ekman s schema which allowed us
to efficiently and affordably identify gamers
engagement.
Method: In the present study, we designed a level for
the game Dungeon Defenders by Trendy Entertainment. Dungeon Defenders is a
tower-defense game which requires gamers to defend against a variety of
enemies. We needed to identify the optimal strength and rate of the enemies
that the gamers should defend against in order to maximize their enjoyment
from gameplay. By manipulating these variables, we designed three levels of
difficulty: Easy ,
Medium , and Hard . We
had nine volunteers play the level at one of these levels of difficulty. We
video recorded participants
facial expressions during gameplay and then had them complete the In-Game
Experience Questionnaire (iGEQ; van den Hoogen, IJsselsteijn, & de Kort,
2008). We also recorded level completion rates. We then analyzed the gamers
expressions by having three of the authors independently classify the
facial recordings. We classified facial expressions into five categories:
frustration, fiero (sudden joy), focus, bore
dom, and wonderment. We used example pictures and descriptions from
Paul Ekman s 2007 book to operationally define these expressions. This
served as a modified coding schema.
Results: We found that all gamers successfully
completed the Easy level, 67% of gamers completed the Medium level, and no
gamers completed the Hard level. We therefore eliminated the Hard level from
further consideration. Level difficulty had a significant effect on the
iGEQ, with the Medium difficulty level resulting in the highest ratings.
There was also agreement between both of these measures and our facial
ratings. The Medium level resulted in a greater number of ratings of fiero,
and wonderment and a lower number of ratings of boredom compared to the Easy
level. We selected the Medium level as the level to implement.
Conclusion: Our modified facial coding schema was shown
to be an efficient method for identifying an optimal gaming experience.
Further, this measure met the human factors measurement requirements that it
be sensitive to experimental manipulations and be cost effective (Meister,
2004).
Application: A simplified facial coding schema provides
the possibility of a more efficient and cost-effective means of identifying
optimal difficulty in a game.
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Hoyle, Peres and Amonette (#21)
University of Houston-Clear Lake
Poster
Use of Sonification for Biofeedback
During many activities of daily living such as walking,
rising from a chair, etc., people must coordinate the activation of several
muscles. Depending on the specific activity (e.g., lifting something heavy),
if the coordination of the muscles is not done correctly, it can result in
injury. Thus, to better identify risks for occupational injury, physical
therapists, professionals and scientists in many domains need to evaluate
the biomechanics of human movement. During the past decade, there has been
an increased focus on neuromuscular prevention strategies to combat knee
injuries resulting from incorrect jumping and landing movements. Often,
surface Electromyography (sEMG) is used as part of these prevention
strategies. sEMG signals show muscle activation, intensity or force demands
of movement, fatigue, and muscle contraction velocity. A drawback of this
technique is that it can only be evaluated after the person has done the
movement. Another technique to correct injurious movement patterns is to
provide real-time visual feedback as the subject performs the landing
movement. The limitation to this
feedback is that a subject s movement is restricted in that they must remain
positioned in front of a computer screen and may result in a significant
reduction in the time it takes a subject to observe mechanical flaw, process
the information in the brain, and incorporate the correction into the motor
plan. An alternative technique
for enhancing motor performance may be the use of biofeedback with sEMG,
where the people have access to their muscle activity while they are
performing the activity. However, similar to the visual feedback, this would
restrict the person s movement, as he or she would have to be able to see
the screen with the sEMG information. The proposed project will develop a
biofeedback technique using sEMG that has been converted to sound or
sonified . This could be a simplified, more useful technique to help
people al ter movement patterns
in a jumping and landing sequence. Specifically, intensity and timing of the
hamstrings muscle contraction relative to the quadriceps is important to
determine if a subject is landing correctly. Thus, the sonification of these
two muscles may provide unique and important feedback to the user. Moreover,
the sEMG sonification could provide continuous auditory feedback of muscle
movements. Two studies will be conducted: 1. Ground reaction force data of
athletes jumping will be sonified. We will then test whether people can
detect a good jump or a bad jump using a sound only display. 2. The other
study will determine if biofeedback using sonification of a 2-joint muscle
system alters landing mechanics. The work proposed in each of these projects
are a part of a bigger effort in the development of a real-time sonification
system using sEMG data. Our end goal is to create an auditory biofeedback
that aids in understanding the dynamic motion involving multiple muscular
groupings, with the ultimate aim of exploring whether different designs of
sonification are needed for different applications of the same data, along
with identifying whether design changes are necessary based on the
individual task involved.
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Amos and Peres (#22)
University of Houston-Clear Lake
Poster
CUMULATIVE TRAUMA DISORDER IN OFFICE WORKERS: MEASURING
THE RATE OF ERGONOMIC RISK FACTORS OF DIFFERENT JOB TITLES
Cumulative trauma disorders (CTD) have become more
common in the office environment. These disorders are affecting not only
productivity but also the personal lives of those affected by them.
Ultimately, these disorders can become debilitating and irreversible, if the
risk factors associated with them are not identified so that preventive
measures can be put into action. Many efforts have been made to better
understand the issues concerning CTD but there is more work to be done to
prevent them. The American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists
(ACGIH) threshold limit value (TLV®) has been set for jobs that resemble
repetitive work. There is a possibility that the ratings in the ACGIH-TLV
model are too high when evaluating office workers. Using the tool as it is
today may produce TLV scores that would allow risk factors to remain in the
environment. This study focuses on the office environment, the rate at which
employees are exposed to certain risk factors, and how the TLV can be
modified to better measure these exposures. Obtaining this information will
potentially help modify the ACGIH TLV for office workers by including
posture and exposure rating.
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Pham, Peres, Lin, Overland and Sanchez (#23)
University of Houston-Clear Lake, University of
Houston-Downtown, NASA Johnson Space Center
Poster
Interface Anywhere and Anyhow:
Exploring the Use of Alternative Modalities with a Human-Machine
Interface
The graphical user interface (GUI) is the most commonly
used interface. Typically, people use a mouse and a keyboard to manipulate
elements of the GUI. However, alternatives such as voice and gesture are
becoming more prominent. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA) developed a human-machine interface they call
Interface Anywhere that
can be used with different interface modalities such as voice, gesture, eye
gaze, and electroencephalography (EEG). As such, this interface can be
utilized to test the effectiveness and efficiency of the interaction
techniques individually and in combination. NASA is looking to test these
interaction techniques to improve spaceflight missions. However, given that
many of these interaction techniques are already being used in other
domains, the information from these studies will be broadly beneficial to
the human factors community. Two experiments will be conducted.
One will explore the use of different input moda
lity pairings (gesture and voice, gesture and eye gaze, etc.) with
specific Interface Anywhere
tasks (temperature adjustment, lighting control, and modality
switching.) The other will examine using the Emotiv EEG headset to complete
the same tasks, and investigate practical training methodologies and
protocols.
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Craig and Crites 24
Texas Tech University
All Work and No Play is Poor Human Factors: Party-Going
and Work Satisfaction
Poster
Research on the effects of leisure time suggests
significant psychological benefits, including reduced psychological strain,
and improved work engagement and performance (Sonnentag, 2012). However, it
is not necessarily clear whether this leisure time should be relaxing in
nature or merely provide a distraction from work in order to reduce
work-related fatigue. To extend this research, this study utilizes publicly
available large-scale survey data (MIDUS II; Ryff, Seeman, & Weinstein,
2009) to determine the degree to which the frequency and enjoyment of
party-going influences general affect and attitudes towards work. The
participants in this sample range from middle-aged to older adults.
Participants self-reported on the frequency and enjoyment of their
party-going, along with the Mood and Symptom Questionnaire (MASQ), the
Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), the Speilberger Trait Anger Inventory, a
social anxiety scale, and the Relational Interdependent Self-Construal scale, and a scale assessing work attitudes. The analyses suggest that both
enjoyment and party-going frequency is associated with decreased negative
affect, increased positive affect, decreased stress, decreased work anxiety,
and an improved attitude towards the value of work. The implications of
these findings are that more intense forms of leisure may also be associated
with improved well-being and work engagement, particularly for those
individuals who enjoy parties. Even more promising, these relationships hold
true for a sample of middle-aged adults, as opposed to college-aged
individuals typically surveyed in psychological studies. Given the
established positive relationship between work satisfaction and productivity
(Halkos & Bousinakis, 2010), the primary application of these findings would
be the structured promotion of gatherings outside of the work environment to
foster both worker well-being and a positive attitude towards work and the
work environment. Future research in this area should investigate whether the results of the current
study are contingent on personality factors (see Nicodemus, 2012) and
whether the social group with which the workers are engaging are in-group
(i.e., employees of the same company) or out-group members (e.g., friends
and family). Furthermore, other specific types of work detachment (e.g.,
family time) should be investigated to examine their possible impact on
worker satisfaction.
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Phillips (#25)
University of Houston-Clear Lake
Poster
mCommerce app for Waste Management
This project
focused on the designing of a mCommerce app for Waste Management. The
objective of this project was to
familiarize myself with the processes and stages associated with the User
Centered Design (UCD) process, while also keeping with the demands from a
stakeholder. The project aids understanding of the context and purpose of
UCD as it relates to achieving usability design of a product. The project
reinforces the importance of structured investigation methodical process
when designing for humans never design based on
common sense. The project
also allowed me to apply the skills learned in class by incorporating as
many steps as possible so that I could obtain some practical experience with
the UCD process, and dealing with a industry stakeholder.
The usable product for the user should be easy to
learn, use, and perform in the suitable settings it was designed for.
Usability testing is one of the most important process, both during and
after the development of a product. Testing during the development process
allows the designers to create prototypes and go through an iterative
process with constant user and target audience feedback. This process
requires consistent communication between the usability specialists, product
designers and the consumer.
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Crites, Gorman (#26)
Texas Tech University
Poster
Completing a Familiar Task Using Different Coordination
Modes: Investigation of Mode Effects and Transfer
People coordinate hand movements alone (e.g., opening a
door) and with others (e.g., shaking hands) everyday. In the context of
interacting with everyday objects, people also coordinate their hand
movements in a variety of ways, called coordination modes, including
unimanual (one-handed), bimanual (two-handed), and intermanual (two
individuals coordinating hand movements). Transitioning from one
coordination mode to another can cause either an increase (positive
transfer) or decrease (negative transfer) in performance (Gorman & Crites,
2013), depending on the order of coordination modes. Research has also shown
mode effects, such that
intermanual tends to be significantly faster than bimanual (Zheng,
Swanström, & Mackenzie, 2007). However, those effects disappeared rapidly
with practice, and both of the aforementioned studies required participants
to complete novel tasks.
To further investigate these coordination mode effects,
Crites and Gorman (in press) conducted a study in which participants
completed a highly-practiced task, tying shoelaces, using bimanual and
intermanual coordination modes. This study required participants to first
tie a shoe-like apparatus as they normally would, bimanually, for 10 trials;
next, they tied the shoe with a partner, intermanually, for 20 trials;
finally, they tied the shoe bimanually for 10 trials. Results revealed, not
surprisingly, a significant mode effect, such that participants were faster
bimanually compared to intermanually. This result, illustrates that mode
effects reported in previous studies may be due in part to the novelty of
the task. Moreover, there was a significant speed advantage in the second
set of bimanual trials compared to the first, which may suggest positive
transfer to the second bimanual condition following tying with a partner.
In the current follow-up study, participants were
required to tie the shoe in an unfamiliar coordination mode, unimanually, on
their own and without a partner.
Hence, we examined whether positive transfer to the second set of bimanual
trials was due to working with a partner. Participants first tied the shoe
bimanually for 10 trials, then unimanually for 20 trials, and then once more
bimanually for 10 trials. Again, results revealed a significant mode effect,
wherein participants were faster bimanually compared to unimanually. In
contrast to our previous findings, however, there was no significant
difference between the first and second set of bimanual trials, which
suggests an absence of positive transfer from the unimanual to bimanual
coordination mode. Finally, a comparison between the two studies revealed a
significant mode effect, such that participants were faster intermanually
compared to unimanually.
The findings from the current set of manual
coordination mode studies have several practical implications. Foremost,
this research may inform new
training or design strategies to facilitate relearning of manual
coordination skills after loss of limb function (e.g., after amputation).
After losing limb function, individuals need to relearn bimanual
manipulation of everyday objects either unimanually or intermanually;
understanding transfer should lead to more effective learning interventions
for such situations. Furthermore, understanding how people learn a manual
task with an external aid, such as intermanually, has implications for how
individuals learn to coordinate performance with an external agent (e.g.,
human-robot interaction).
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Duffield (#27)
University of Houston-Clear Lake
Poster
An information architecture for the CSTEMbreak social
media network
The social network at www.cstem-break.org currently
hosts a diverse community of students and teachers working together to teach
students about careers and opportunities in communications, science,
technology and mathematics. CSTEMbreak has been created to serve both
teachers and students to share their ideas and communicate with their peers
in the CSTEM program. In order for individuals to quickly accomplish their
goals using this interface, it must have an intuitive structure that is easy
to understand. When designing and developing a website interface, there are
several techniques that can be utilized to increase the likelihood of the
interface being intuitive and usable. One such technique is an open card
sort which can define the structure of the site's information. In order to
do this, we review all the current information on the website and create a
list of items currently listed on the site. The participants are then given
a list of items that show informati
on on the website and asked to sort them into groups that they think
fit the information best. We are then able to look at how the information
could be organized and how other people think about different information
groupings. This improved information architecture makes the CSTEMbreak
social media network easier to use by improving workflows, menu structure,
web site navigation paths and the overall usability of the website.
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Beedles, McLellan and Muddimer (#28)
Schlumberger
Poster
Game on: a case study of competition as user motivation
for tasks in private software development teams
Gamification refers to the relatively new application
of game design elements to non-game contexts in order to drive user
motivation and participation, often with the goal of encouraging greater
engagement with the non-game context by providing symbolic rewards such as
points, prizes, or other recognitions (ACM SIGCHI 2011 Gamification
Workshop). While there is a vast literature on enterprise software developer
motivation, very few consider
productivity improvements
(Sharp, 2007). While Gartner estimates that, by 2014, 70% of large companies
will use gamification for at least one business process and 40% of the
Global 1000 organizations will use gamification as the primary mechanism to
transform business operation (Gartner, 2012), the application of this
technique in the literature for improving activities of private software
firms development teams like bug
triage and fixing is non-existent, with even the serious non-gaming ranking
of developers in software bug
repositories not yet implemented
(Nagwani/Verma, 2012). While there are some attempts at gamifying
other software engineering practices like version control, these utilize
student populations in educational settings for learning (Singer, 2012). And
while the differences in motivation between software developers and project
managers (Baddoo, 2002; Sharp, 2008) and between co-located and distributed
software development teams (Steinberga, 2009; Junior, 2012) and between open
source developers and private software developers (Kaufman/Schulze, 2011;
McLellan/Muddimer, 2012) have been studied, a search of the literature on
the differences in motivations of gamified software development activities
between these different team members has not been addressed.
At the end of 2012 and beginning of 2013, a small
software product development of team of 20 at a Schlumberger Information
Systems technology center piloted a gamification technique as part of its
formal bug fixing process activities during construction and test cycles.
While the initial process goal was to improve the triage of product bugs
with an up-to-date leaderboard of bug fixing activity each week for project
team members, and while relatively small team size falls inside the
psychological N-effect of population size--the more competitors you have the
less motivated you are to do your best (Viadero, 2009)--we were interested
in answering questions such as:
1. How is gamification of bug triage and fixing
perceived by project team roles?
2. Are manager and developer (co-located, distributed)
motivations for this technique different and how?
3. Does gamification of bug fixing improve this
developer task, at least in the short term?
4. Does gamification improve the triage of product
bugs?
5. Does gamification of bug fixing show other
quantitative or qualitative side benefits?
6. Do the results recommend duplication in other small
project development teams?
The analysis was performed via complementary methods:
1. a single user motivation survey aggregated from
recent publications related to crowdsource, gaming, and software engineering
motivators 2. individual face-to-face interviews, 3. anecdotal evidence
collected during the construction and test phases of the project, and 4.
automated mining of the project bug reporting and resolution repository.
This poster reports the results of this 4-month
gamification case study.
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Muddimer (#29)
Schlumberger
Poster Standing up to work: but.. how will that work?
In 2012 I was asked by a manager to review a user desk
setup, he thought that the user was endangering herself and others around
her. The user had set all of their computer equipment on books, lots of
books, and had everything at a height where they could stand up to work. I
thought this was a brilliant idea, a great way to get variety into her day
and very flexible and adjustable. Of course I did also agree that this may
not be the best way to set the equipment from a safety standpoint. That very
same week I was invited to a local office ergonomist network meeting, HOGEN,
and the speaker presented on standing up to work, perfect timing. The advice
I received was to set the desk at a standing height and leave it there, not
to be adjustable, but to be set. The user would then start and be standing
whenever the move from their desk, providing a standing height chair, like
an old draftsman chair, and most important a two height footrest to provide
relief while standing and a platform when sitting. I thought this was worth
a try and so we set-up 3 trial desks. After much experimentation, we
discovered a good solution to retrofit our existing desks and now the group
has group to 10 standing users. Presented here are the before, and after,
and a few key items to remember.
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