Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism

From the Publisher:
Written by the author of the best-selling HyperText & HyperMedia, this book provides an excellent guide to the methods of usability engineering. Special features: emphasizes cost-effective methods that will help developers improve their user interfaces immediately, shows you how to avoid the four most frequently listed reasons for delay in software projects, provides step-by-step information about which methods to use at various stages during the development life cycle, and offers information on the unique issues relating to informational usability. You do not need to have previous knowledge of usability to implement the methods provided, yet all of the latest research is covered.

Usability Engineering

How has Japan become a major economic power, a world leader in the automotive and electronics industries? What is the secret of their success? The consensus has been that, though the Japanese are not particularly innovative, they are exceptionally skilful at imitation, at improving products that already exist. But now two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hiro Takeuchi, turn this conventional wisdom on its head: Japanese firms are successful, they contend, precisely because they are innovative, because they create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies. Examining case studies drawn from such firms as Honda, Canon, Matsushita, NEC, 3M, GE, and the U.S. Marines, this book reveals how Japanese companies translate tacit to explicit knowledge and use it to produce new processes, products, and services.

The knowledge-creating company : how Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation

The literature on interference in the Stroop Color-Word Task, covering over 50 years and some 400 studies, is organized and reviewed. In so doing, a set of 18 reliable empirical finding is isolated that must be captured by any successful theory of the Stroop effect. Existing theoretical positions are summarized and evaluated in view of this critical evidence and the 2 major candidate theories ―relative speed of processing and automaticity of reading― are found to be wanting. It is concluded that recent theories placing the explanatory weight on parallel processing of the irrelevant and the relevant dimensions are likely to be more sucessful than are earlier theories attempting to locate a single bottleneck in attention

/pdf/half-a-century-of-research-on-the-stroop-effect-an-31uxjoznng.pdf

Half a century of research on the Stroop effect: an integrative review.

From the Publisher: 
A Question of Identity 
Life on the Screen is a fascinating and wide-ranging investigation of the impact of computers and networking on society, peoples' perceptions of themselves, and the individual's relationship to machines. Sherry Turkle, a Professor of the Sociology of Science at MIT and a licensed psychologist, uses Internet MUDs (multi-user domains, or in older gaming parlance multi-user dungeons) as a launching pad for explorations of software design, user interfaces, simulation, artificial intelligence, artificial life, agents, "bots," virtual reality, and "the on-line way of life." 
Turkle's discussion of postmodernism is particularly enlightening. She shows how postmodern concepts in art, architecture, and ethics are related to concrete topics much closer to home, for example AI research (Minsky's "Society of Mind") and even MUDs (exemplified by students with X-window terminals who are doing homework in one window and simultaneously playing out several different roles in the same MUD in other windows). Those of you who have (like me) been turned off by the shallow, pretentious, meaningless paintings and sculptures that litter our museums of modern art may have a different perspective after hearing what Turkle has to say. 
This is a psychoanalytical book, not a technical one. However, software developers and engineers will find it highly accessible because of the depth of the author's technical understanding and credibility. Unlike most other authors in this genre, Turkle does not constantly jar the technically-literate reader with blatant errors or bogus assertions about how things work. Although I personally don't have time or patience for MUDs,view most of AI as snake-oil, and abhor postmodern architecture, I thought the time spent reading this book was an extremely good investment.

스크린 위의 삶 = Life on the screen : identity in the age of the internet

Consistency is often promoted as an important goal of user interface design, yet few definitions exist, particularly in a form suitable for guiding design. Most design guidelines stress procedural consistency, e.g., low-level interaction techniques, or the assignment of programmable function keys. This paper argues that interface consistency must also be addressed at a conceptual level. Conceptual consistency is defined in terms of the internal coherence of a system's structure and the nature of the mapping from user task goals to system procedures. Interfaces to an automated office system were constructed in which low-level interaction techniques were held constant, but which varied the degree of conceptual consistency. The results of a study in which users performed representative tasks on these systems is reported and discussed with respect to the importance of various kinds of consistency in the interface.

Conceptual consistency in the user interface: effects on user performance

Twenty-two designers were interviewed about their design of interactive systems. They were asked to select a recent project having a significant user interface component, and were probed about the general design process involved, how the design of the user interface fit into that process, and their personal strategies for exploring ideas. Analysis of their responses pointed to two models of the design process. The relationship of these models to the type of user testing done and the strategies used for generating ideas is discussed, especially with respect to the implications for developing tools to support design.

Designing for designers: an analysis of design practice in the real world

Uganda suffers from a severe shortage of professional healthcare workers. Thus, programs aimed at prevention of disease are an important complement to the limited healthcare delivery system. We analyze two deployments of an SMS-based HIV/AIDS education system that uses a quiz format to assess people's knowledge of the disease, including its causes and methods of prevention. The deployments were to two groups in Uganda, one a sample of mobile phone users who live in a town in northwest Uganda; the other, workers at three factories in central and southeastern Uganda. The two samples had accuracy rates above chance levels and workers at the three factories had higher rates of participation (more individuals and more questions) than the sample selected from the cell tower service area. An analysis of incorrect answers suggested that while participants had some difficulty in matching the formatting required by the quiz, literacy did not appear to be a significant problem. We discuss the results in terms of implications for using SMS as a user interface mechanism and explore the possibility of using social ties among participants as a way to promote the scalability and sustainability of this quiz-based education method.

Mobile phones for health education in the developing world: SMS as a user interface

The design and use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has now evolved beyond its workplace origins to the wider public, expanding to people who live at the margins of contemporary society. Through field work and participatory co-design with homeless shelter residents and care providers we have explored design at the common boundary of these two "publics." We describe the design of the Community Resource Messenger (CRM), an ICT that supports both those in need and those attempting to provide care in a challenging environment. The CRM consists of three components: 1) a message center that pools messages to and from mobile users into a shared, persistent forum; 2) a text and voice messaging gateway linking the mobile phones of the homeless with the web-enabled computer facilities of the care providers; 3) a shared message display accessible from mobile texting, voice, e-mail, and the web, helping the two groups communicate and coordinate for mutual good. By democratizing design and use of technology at the margins of society, we aim to engage an entire "urban network," enabling shared awareness and collective action in each public.

A tale of two publics: democratizing design at the margins

Software is playing an increasingly important role in supporting human decision-making. Previous HCI research on decision support systems (DSS) has improved the information visualization aspect of DSS information design, but has somewhat overlooked the cognitive aspect of decision-making, namely that human reasoning is heuristic and reflects systematic errors or cognitive biases. We report on an empirical study of two cognitive biases: conservatism and loss aversion. Two remediation techniques recommended by previous research were tested: the expected return method, an actuarial-inspired approach presenting objective metrics; and bootstrapping, a technique successful in improving judgment consistency. The results show that the two biases can occur simultaneously and can have a huge impact on decision-making. The results also show that the two debiasing techniques are only partly effective. These findings suggest a need for more research on debiasing, and indicate some directions for exploring debiasing techniques and building decision support systems.

Wendy A. Kellogg

Papers

Conceptual consistency in the user interface: effects on user performance

Designing for designers: an analysis of design practice in the real world

Mobile phones for health education in the developing world: SMS as a user interface

A tale of two publics: democratizing design at the margins

Designing Information for Remediating Cognitive Biases in Decision-Making