Browsing by Author "McCrickard, D. Scott"

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    Amplifying the Griot: Technology for Preserving, Retelling, and Supporting Underrepresented Stories
    Kotut, Lindah Jerop (Virginia Tech, 2021-05-24)
    As we develop intelligent systems to handle online interactions and digital stories, how do we address those stories that are unwritten and invisible? How do ensure that communities who value oral histories are not left behind, and their voices also inform the design of these systems? How do we determine that the technology we design respect the agency and ownership of the stories, without imposing our own biases? To answer these questions, I rely on accounts from different underrepresented communities, as avenues to examine how digital technology affect their stories, and the agency they have over them. From these stories, I elicit guidelines for the design of equitable and resilient tools and technologies. I sought wisdom from griots who are master storytellers and story-keepers on the craft of handling both written and unwritten stories, which instructed the development of the Respectful Space for technology typology, a framework that informs our understanding and interaction with underrepresented stories. The framework guided the approach to understand technology use by inhabitants of rural spaces in the United States--particularly long-distance hikers who traverse these spaces. I further discuss the framework's extensibility, by considering its use for community self-reflection, and for researchers to query the ethical implications of their research, the technology they develop, and the consideration for the voices that the technology amplifies or suppresses. The intention is to highlight the vast resources that exist in domains we do not consider, and the importance of the underrepresented voices to also inform the future of technology.
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    Applying Curricular Alignment to Improve the Effectiveness of CS Education
    Elsherbiny, Noha Ibrahim Mohamed (Virginia Tech, 2020-07-13)
    According to Fossati and Guzdail, many CS instructors rely on their intuition, feedback from students and anecdotal advice from other instructors to make course improvements. Guzdail noted that: "Computing educators' practice would dramatically improve if we drew on evidence, rather than intuition". This means that Computer Science instructors may benefit from processes and tools that help them make informed changes to their curriculum. An evidence-based approach to course improvement is curriculum alignment, which evaluates the degree which the learning objectives, course content, and assessment methods are in agreement with each other. This provides instructors with a detailed view of their course and areas that need improvement. Current alignment processes are impractical for a course instructor to apply, requiring a panel of experts and training on the process. In this research, I developed a computer-assisted alignment process (CAAP) that uses the concept of traceability from software engineering, to define a process that is applicable by a single course instructor limiting the need for a panel of experts. In an initial application CAAP took 75 hours to apply, consequently a prototype alignment tool (AlignET) was designed to automates the new alignment process providing instructors with results they can use to make course improvements. I evaluated the practicality of AlignET by conducting collective case studies with four participants. Observations and interviews were used to collect data. AlignET reduced the time to complete CAAP to less than 11 hours and the participants identified course improvements, gaps in their instructional methods, and learning objectives they emphasized more than others. The findings from the case study presented key improvements to AlignET.
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    Applying Information Visualization Techniques to Visual Debugging
    Costigan, John A. (Virginia Tech, 2003-04-24)
    In the arena of software development, implementing a software design (no matter how perfect the design) is rarely done right the first time. Consequently, debugging one's own (or someone else's) software is inevitable, and tools that assist in this often-arduous task become very important with respect to reducing the cost of debugging as well as the cost of the software life cycle as a whole. Many tools exist with this aim, but all are lacking in a key area: information visualization. Applying information visualization techniques such as zooming, focus and context, or graphical representation of numeric data may enhance the visual debugging experience. To this end, drawing data structures as graphs is potentially a step in the right direction, but more must be done to maximize the value of time spent debugging and to minimize the actual amount of time spent debugging. This thesis will address some information visualization techniques that may be helpful in debugging (specifically with respect to visual debugging) and will present the results of a small pilot study intended to illustrate the potential value of such techniques.
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    The Attitudes of African American Middle School Girls Toward Computer Science: Influences of Home, School, and Technology Use
    Robinson, Ashley Renee (Virginia Tech, 2015-05-13)
    The number of women in computing is significantly low compared to the number of men in the discipline, with African American women making up an even smaller segment of this population. Related literature accredits this phenomenon to multiple sources, including background, stereotypes, discrimination, self-confidence, and a lack of self-efficacy or belief in one's capabilities. However, a majority of the literature fails to represent African American females in research studies. This research used a mixed methods approach to understand the attitudes of African American middle school girls toward computer science and investigated the factors that influence these attitudes. Since women who do pursue computing degrees and continue with graduate education often publish in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) in greater proportions than men, this research used an intervention to introduce African American middle school girls to computational thinking concepts using HCI topics. To expand the scope of the data collected, a separate group of girls were introduced to computational thinking concepts through Algorithms. Data were collected through both quantitative and qualitative sources, and analyzed using inferential statistics and content analysis. The results show that African American middle school girls generally have negative attitudes toward computer science. However, after participating in a computer science intervention, perceptions toward computer science become more positive. The results also reveal that four factors influence the attitudes of African American middle school girls toward computer science, such as the participation in an intervention, the intervention content domain, the facilitation of performance accomplishments, and participant characteristics like socioeconomic status, mother's education, school grades, and the use of smart phones and video game consoles at home.
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    Chatterbox Opener: A Game to Support Healthy Communication and Relationships
    Wang, Wei-Lu; Haqq, Derek; Saaty, Morva; Cao, Yusheng; Fan, Jixiang; Patel, Jaitun V.; McCrickard, D. Scott (ACM, 2023-10-06)
    Computer Mediation Communication (CMC) applications are utilized to foster closer relationships between individuals. Various shared experience strategy designs were widely applied to technologies in order to enhance communications and interactions in family relationships. However, there needs to be more research on how shared experience approaches work in different family communication patterns. This paper presents insights into the effectiveness of three types of shared experience approaches for different family communication patterns and design considerations for game design from a diary study of Chatterbox Opener, the game we developed for families and couples to enhance communication orientation.
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    The Claims Library Capability Maturity Model: Evaluating a Claims Library
    Allgood, Christian (Virginia Tech, 2004-05-12)
    One of the problem that plagues Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) software is its development cost. Many software companies forego the usability engineering aspect of their projects due to the time required to design and test user interfaces. Unfortunately, there is no "silver bullet" for user interface design and implementation because they are inherently difficult tasks. As computers are moving off the desktop, the greatest challenge for designers will be integrating these systems seamlessly into our everyday lives. The potential for reuse in user interfaces lies in reducing the time and effort required for this task, without sacrificing design quality. In this work we begin with an iterative development cycle for a claims library based on prominent literature within the HCI and software engineering fields. We constructed the Claims Library to be a repository of potentially reusable notification system claims. We examine the library through theoretical and practical perspectives. The theoretical perspective reveals tradeoffs in the initial implementation that relate to Krueger's taxonomy of reuse. The practical perspective stems from experience in designing and conducting usability testing for an in-vehicle input device using the Claims Library. While valuable, these examinations did not provide a distinct method of improving the library. Expecting to uncover a specific diagnosis for the problems in the library, it was unclear how they should be approached with further development efforts. With this realization, we saw that a more important and immediate contribution would not be another iteration of the Claims Library design. Rather, a clarification of the underlying theory that would better inform future systems development seemed a more urgent and worthy use of our experience. This clarification would need to have several characteristics to include: composed of a staged or prioritized architecture, represents an ideal model grounded in literature, and possesses intermediate development objectives and assessment points. As a solution, we propose the Claims Library Capability Maturity Model (CL-CMM), based on the theoretical deficiencies that should guide development of a claims library, as noted in the two evaluations. This thesis delivers a five-stage model to include process areas, goals, and practices that address larger threads of concern. Our capability maturity model is patterned after models in software engineering and human resource management. We include a full description of each stage, a gap analysis method of appraisal, and an example of its use. Several directions for future work are noted that are necessary to continue development and validation of the model.
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    Claims Reuse for Notification Systems Design: LINK-UP Vision and IRC Equations
    Chewar, Christa M.; McCrickard, D. Scott (Department of Computer Science, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, 2003)
    Extending previous work on the concept of claims reuse, an approach for cataloging and reusing design knowledge in human-computer interaction, we introduce a vision for a system, LINK-UP. The system is intended to parallel a usability engineering process that involves claims analysis. While we initially target notification system design support, we believe that the general method is extensible to other design concerns. A key aspect of the LINK-UP system is its iterative assessment of critical parameters---essential target values that describe anticipated user goals. In notification systems design, three critical parameters are interruption, reaction, and comprehension, referred to as IRC. While the parameter values represent abstract concepts, a pivotal challenge in the development of LINK-UP is determining methods for consistent and accurate parameter specification. To this end, we introduce equations for calculating user's model IRC parameters, either from analytical or empirical data. Presented here are details of variable justification and equation behavior. Future work will assess consistency and accuracy of artifact classifications using the equations.
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    Code Reading Dojo: Designing an Educationally-oriented Mobile Application Aimed at Promoting Code Reading Skills
    Ghaed, Zahra (Virginia Tech, 2017-06-07)
    In recent years, much attention has been directed to the use of educational games for learning computer science concepts. The motivation of game-based learning with positive experience has been deeply studied in the literature, but game design for improving code reading skills have much room for improvement. Being good at the reading code is important to a professional developer. To address this issue, we defined a new educationally-oriented mobile game application, aimed at promoting the development of code reading skills in a new and fun way. The strategy of this game is to find errors in pieces of codes. At each level, students should find all syntactic and semantic errors in the code in a certain time in order to advance to the next level. Of the numerous programming languages, we chose Java because it is one of the most popular programming languages. In many colleges, Java plays a major role in introductory courses. Our vision is to allow instructors to employ the game in their introduction to programming in Java course. In addition, we hope it could be adapted for use in introductory courses using different programming languages. Data collected during the project helps us evaluate the impact of game-based learning on code reading in programming languages. We asked undergraduate students at the department of computer science at Virginia Tech to play with the game during Spring 2017 semester. The collected data analyzed, and students believe that Code Reading Dojo improves their code reading skills in Java and overall programming ability, in additions to help them find errors in their own program.
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    CoListen
    Stewart, Michael Clark (Virginia Tech, 2018-09-19)
    Humans need to feel connected to one another. With each new technology we create and re-create ways to connect with others we care about. Thanks to the ubiquity of powerful mobile technology in certain parts of the world, we have nearly immediate access to those remote others. Despite these advances our shared experiences are diminishing, and the ways we most often connect with our remote framily members seem to be superficial and at the expense of more meaningful interaction with collocated family members. People are not likely to give up the convenience and entertainment afforded by their mobile technology, but might those same technologies be capable of supporting interactions that help the users be the selves they wish they were, rather than the consumers their technologies were designed to support? To investigate the space of technological support for people's feelings of togetherness I conducted three studies. The first study was a diary study over 14 days where I asked about the current practices of middle schoolers for communicating with friends out side of school and for listening to music. In the second study, I conducted a design charrette where participants designed a technology to support co-listening, and then tried my first prototype. CoListen is a streaming music player that supports a listener in listening to the same music at the same time as a friend or family member. CoListen is designed with the explicit intent of requiring as little of the listener's attention as possible. In the third study, I deployed Colisten v1.0 in the wild and conducted a 14-day diary study asking participants about their experiences. I found that many of the participants from my target population listen to music and communicate with their friends, and that phatic communication (as opposed to goal-oriented communication) was prominent. I also found participants to be interested in the idea of technology to support co-listening and intrigued by how few little the barrier to co-listening can be, and how little attention is required. In study 3 I found that people enjoyed the experience of remote co-listening and did listen to music as a background activity. Many participatns reported feeling more together with their framily members with whom they co-listened.
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    Collaborating on Affinity Diagrams Using Large Displays
    Judge, Tejinder K.; McCrickard, D. Scott (Department of Computer Science, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, 2008)
    Gathering and understanding user requirements is an essential part of design. Techniques like affinity diagramming are useful for gathering and understanding user data but have shortcomings such as the difficulty to preserve the diagram after its creation, problems during the process such as searching for notes, and loss of shared awareness. We propose an early prototype that solves problems in the process of creating an affinity diagram and enhances it using a large screen display in combination with individual PDAs.
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    Collaborative Design for Young Children with Autism: Design Tools and a User Study
    McCrickard, D. Scott; Abel, Troy D.; Scarpa, Angela; Wang, Yao (Department of Computer Science, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, 2013-09-30)
    This paper provides an overview of a collaborative design effort that involves computer scientists, psychologists, and designers working together to investigate design methods to help in the creation of technology to people with cognitive disabilities. The focus of this effort was in developing techniques to help novice designers create technology interfaces to support anger management in young people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The primary output for designers is a card set for which each card has a claim about an anger management technique that can help young people. Design activities leveraging scenarios and personas are suggested that leverage the card set in the creation of technology interfaces. This paper introduces the card set and supporting techniques, describes a design session in an undergraduate classroom setting, and speculates about future directions for this work.
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    Collaborative Storyboarding: Artifact-Driven Construction of Shared Understanding
    Wahid, Shahtab; Branham, Stacy; Harrison, Steven R.; McCrickard, D. Scott (Department of Computer Science, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, 2009)
    Collaborative storyboarding, with a focus on aggregating designers’ expertise in the storyboarding process, offers the opportunity for a group of designers to make progress toward creating a visual narrative for a new interface or technology, but it requires the designers to work together to explore ideas, differentiate between options, and construct a common solution. Important in collaborative storyboarding is the shared understanding that emerges among the designers and the obstacles they face in establishing that understanding. This paper defines a model for collaborative storyboarding, presents a study that explores group interactions in collaborative storyboarding, and analyzes the interactions using the distributed cognition and common ground theories. Our findings demonstrate that joint interaction and enthusiastic efforts within each phase lead to active information exchanges and shared understanding among the members of the group.
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    Complexity of Engineering Identity: A Study of Freshmen Engineering Students
    Trammell, Melanie Kaye (Virginia Tech, 2019-07-15)
    The General Engineering Program exists at Virginia Tech to provide curriculums that engage, challenge and support entry-level engineers. One important part of this initiative is helping students identify with a specific engineering branch, and overtime develop an identity within it. Yet, there exists little research on what entry-level engineers believe it means to be an engineer, especially during these stages of early formation and continual shifting. In order to generate insight on this topic we developed a contextual inquiry method to help inquire into engineering identity. Two participants were placed in an online chatroom and allowed to talk for ten minutes, with one trying to answer the question 'Am I talking to an engineer or not?' and asked to give their reasoning. Comparisons allow entry-level engineering students to articulate their beliefs on what characteristics, behaviors and personalities make up their cohort -- thus exposing their ideas about identity. Moreover, this methodology also provides opportunities for participants to critique their own bias and further develop and expose their opinions on identity. Additionally, our findings showcase the complexity around student's perceptions of engineers. For example, participants' responses pointed to: many sources that inform identity, the difficulty of identifying what is uniquely engineering, how identity is impacted by the ideal image of an engineer, that identity is a spectrum, and that identity varies with respect to associations and time. As a result, through our inquiry and representation of results we demonstrate the validity of our methodology as a HCI research tool along with the power of narrative forms of representation.
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    Creating an Interactive Learning Environment with Reusable HCI Knowledge
    Fabian, Alain (Virginia Tech, 2006-05-25)
    This thesis proposes creating an interactive learning environment for Human Computer Interaction (HCI) to facilitate access to, and learning of, important design knowledge. By encapsulating HCI knowledge into reusable claims stored in a knowledge repository, or claims library, this learning environment aims at allowing students to effectively explore design features to limit their reliance on intuition to mold their interfaces, help them address proper design concerns, and evaluate alternatives for their designs. This learning approach is based on active learning where students create their own knowledge by gathering information. However, building adequate development records from which students can gather HCI knowledge is critical to support this approach. This thesis explores using effective reusable design components to act as design records to create an interactive learning environment for students learning HCI design. An initial prototype for the learning environment introduces claims as an encapsulation mechanism for design features from which students can gather HCI knowledge. Pilot testing outlines the accessibility, applicability and reusability problems associated with this approach. To solve theses issues, a taxonomic organization of an improved form of claims (reference claims), is introduced to share core design knowledge among students. A taxonomy is designed as a way to expose students to important design concerns as well as a method to categorize claims. Reference claims are introduced as improved claims inspired by reference tasks to expose students to design alternatives for design concerns. A detailed taxonomy and a set of reference claims for the domain of notification systems demonstrate how existing theories of design can be translated into reference claims to create an interactive learning environment. An experiment illustrates the applicability and reusability of reference claims for various designs within a particular domain. Finally, an evaluation assesses the benefits of this learning environment based on reference claims in terms of improving student designs and increasing the amount of HCI knowledge they reuse. Results show that by exposing students to valuable concerns and alternatives for the design of interactive systems, an interactive learning environment based on reference claims can improve students' understanding of the design scope and lead to an increased use of existing HCI knowledge in their designs.
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    Describing Trail Cultures through Studying Trail Stakeholders and Analyzing their Tweets
    Bartolome, Abigail Joy (Virginia Tech, 2018-08-08)
    While many people enjoy hiking as a weekend activity, to many outdoor enthusiasts there is a hiking culture with which they feel affiliated. However, the way that these cultures interact with each other is still unclear. Exploring these different cultures and understanding how they relate to each other can help in engaging stakeholders of the trail. This is an important step toward finding ways to encourage environmentally friendly outdoor recreation practices and developing hiker-approved (and environmentally conscious) technologies to use on the trail. We explored these cultures by analyzing an extensive collection of tweets (over 1.5 million). We used topic modeling to identify the topics described by the communities of Triple Crown trails. We labeled training data for a classifier that identifies tweets relating to depreciative behaviors on the trail. Then, we compared the distribution of tweets across various depreciative trail behaviors to those of corresponding blog posts in order to see how tweets reflected cultures in comparison with blog posts. To harness metadata beyond the text of the tweets, we experimented with visualization techniques. We combined those efforts with ethnographic studies of hikers and conservancy organizations to produce this exploration of trail cultures. In this thesis, we show that through the use of natural language processing, we can identify cultural differences between trail communities. We identify the most significantly discussed forms of trail depreciation, which is helpful to conservation organizations so that they can more appropriately share which Leave No Trace practices hikers should place extra effort into practicing.
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    Design and Evaluation of a Web-Based Programming Tool to Improve the Introductory Computer Science Experience
    Tilden, Daniel Steven (Virginia Tech, 2013-06-05)
    Introductory computer science courses can be notoriously difficult for students, especially those outside of the major. There are many reasons for this, but the programming software itself may play a significant role.  To address this issue, we have developed Pythy, a web-based programming environment that allows students to write, execute, and test programming assignments from within the familiar interface of a web browser.  In this work, we discuss various aspects of Pythy in detail, including the rationale behind its design, the system architecture on which it is built, and the various functions offered by the software.  Next, we discuss an evaluation of Pythy\'s effectiveness during a programming course for non CS-majors offered at Virginia Tech, comparing it to a different software solution used in another programming course.  Results suggest that Pythy was successful in several target areas, including making it easier to get started with programming and providing feedback about program behavior.  Access log data from Pythy itself reveals details about how students used the system.  Finally, we conclude with a summary of key contributions and suggest some potential future directions for the system.
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    Designing Attention-Centric Notification Systems: Five HCI Challenges
    McCrickard, D. Scott; Chewar, Christa M. (Department of Computer Science, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, 2005)
    Through an examination of the emerging domain of cognitive systems, with a focus on attention-centric cognitive systems used for notification, this document explores the human-computer interaction challenges that must be addressed for successful interface design. This document asserts that with compatible tools and methods, user notification requirements and interface usability can be abstracted, expressed, and compared with critical parameter ratings; that is, even novice designers can assess attention cost factors to determine target parameter levels for new system development. With a general understanding of the user tasks supported by the notification system, a designer can access the repository of design knowledge for appropriate information and interaction design techniques (e.g., use of color, audio features, animation, screen size, transition of states, etc), which have analytically and empirically derived ratings. Furthermore, usability evaluation methods, provided to designers as part of the integrated system, are adaptable to specific combinations of targeted parameter levels. User testing results can be conveniently added back into the design knowledge repository and compared to target parameter levels to determine design success and build reusable HCI knowledge. This approach is discussed in greater detail as we describe five HCI challenges relating to cognitive system development: (1) convenient access to basic research and guidelines, (2) requirements engineering methods for notification interfaces, (3) better and more usable predictive modeling for pre-attentive and dual-task interfaces, (4) standard empirical evaluation procedures for notification systems, and (5) conceptual frameworks for organizing reusable design and software components. This document also describes our initial work toward building infrastructure to overcome these five challenges, focused on notification system development. We described LINK-UP, a design environment grounded on years of theory and method development within HCI, providing a mechanism to integrate interdisciplinary expertise from the cognitive systems research community. Claims allow convenient access to basic research and guidelines, while modules parallel a lifecycle development iteration and provide a process for requirements engineering guided by this basic research. The activities carried out through LINK-UP provide access to and interaction with reusable design components organized based on our framework. We think that this approach may provide the scientific basis necessary for exciting interdisciplinary advancement through many fields of design, with notification systems serving as an initial model. A version of this document will appear as chapter 3 in the book Cognitive Systems: Human Cognitive Models in Systems Design edited by Chris Forsythe, Michael Bernard, and Timothy Goldsmith resulting from a workshop led by the editors in summer 2003. The authors are grateful for the input of the workshop organizers and conference attendees in the preparation of this document.
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    Designing Interactive Visualizations for First-time Novice Users
    Krishnamoorthy, Sujatha (Virginia Tech, 2005-11-09)
    Information visualization tools provide visual representations of data (commonly known as visualizations), textual representations of data and interactive operations on both these representations. It is possible, in theory, to make use of only the textual representations in order to detect trends and patterns in data. However, it would be extremely laborious and ineffective and it defeats the purpose of a visualization tool. Novices have had the problem of relying on text and failing to successfully detect trends in data because it was too laborious. We want users to effectively use visual representations to detect trends in data. Information visualization tools have been shown to be successful with experts. But can novice users using a visualization tool for the first-time, adopt visualization-based strategies to finding trends and patterns in data? This thesis derives a framework of learnable elements in an interactive coordinated-view visualization tool. This framework provides an outline of prerequisites to be learned in order to effectively use visualizations. That is, the new aspects of visualization tools must be mastered so that novices can use the tool effectively. Three interface design principles are derived to make these elements learnable to novice users: • The data-first approach - Provide a prominent overview of all available data, as opposed to showing only visualizations. This helps understand the data structure - this may be essential knowledge in being able to navigate to required data attributes. • The "less visualization, more explanation" approach - Show more explanations of visualizations at the expense of being able to pack in more visualizations. Explanations help identify how data is mapped onto visual marks, a crucial step in understanding visualizations. • The "predetermined task-based coordinations" approach - Provide separate predetermined sets of coordinated visualizations that help achieve different tasks. This is different from techniques that simply present all visualization types and expect users to choose coordinations according to tasks. Two versions of Datamaps visualization tool for Census data were tested. Both were equivalent in functionality and the kinds of visualizations offered. But the new version was specifically designed based on the three design principles. A usability study showed that the version that was implemented according to the three design principles successfully led novices to effectively use visualization-based strategies to detect trends and patterns in data.
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    Developing and Testing Smartphone Game Applications for Physical Activity Promotion in Adolescents
    Allen, Kacie C. (Virginia Tech, 2013-05-14)
    Though the benefits of physical activity are numerous and well-known, very few adolescents are meeting physical activity recommendations. Moreover, past research shows that physical activity declines with increasing age with this decline beginning in adolescence. One approach to promote physical activity is through mobile technology such as a mobile phone. Since mobile phone ownership is relatively high (77%) and there is no digital divide by race/ethnicity or socioeconomic status, mobile phones may be suitable for physical activity promotion. Few studies have promoted PA using a mobile phone and those studies showed increased physical activity outcomes. However, more research is needed to explore the effectiveness of mobile phone physical activity promotion especially in more health disparate populations.  The purpose of this research was to develop and test smartphone game application for physical activity promotion in adolescents. The first study included various user-centered approaches (e.g. qualitative data, idea sessions) to get feedback on what was desired from the adolescents in terms of game development and design. The second study examined the degree to which mobile health studies reported on internal and external validity indicators. The last study evaluated the smartphone game applications through a mixed-methods approach. The results of this research showed that physical activity while playing smartphone game applications can yield moderate physical activity intensity. Moreover, adolescents had moderate perceptions of the games and recommended specific changes to the games. Likewise, the data suggest that smartphone physical activity game applications can be enjoyable if they are aesthetically appealing, easy to use, and foster social peer interactions. Overall, this research demonstrated that smartphone games that were developed and designed based on adolescents\' preferences and persuasive technology design principles could increase physical activity in adolescents and provides a tool for further exploration.
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    Developing Heuristic Evaluation Methods for Large Screen Information Exhibits Based on Critical Parameters
    Somervell, Jacob Paul (Virginia Tech, 2004-07-07)
    Evaluation is the key to effective interface design. It becomes even more important when the interfaces are for cutting edge technology, in application areas that are new and with little prior design knowledge. Knowing how to evaluate new interfaces can decrease development effort and increase the returns on resources spent on formative evaluation. The problem is that there are few, if any, readily available evaluation tools for these new interfaces. This work focuses on the creation and testing of a new set of heuristics that are tailored to the large screen information exhibit (LSIE) system class. This new set is created through a structured process that relies upon critical parameters associated with the notification systems design space. By inspecting example systems, performing claims analysis, categorizing claims, extracting design knowledge, and finally synthesizing heuristics; we have created a usable set of heuristics that is better equipped for supporting formative evaluation. Contributions of this work include: a structured heuristic creation process based on critical parameters, a new set of heuristics tailored to the LSIE system class, reusable design knowledge in the form of claims and high level design issues, and a new usability evaluation method comparison test. These contributions result from the creation of the heuristics and two studies that illustrate the usability and utility of the new heuristics.