University of Saskatchewan

About: University of Saskatchewan is a education organization based out in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Health care. The organization has 25021 authors who have published 52579 publications receiving 1483049 citations. The organization is also known as: USask.

The mechanics of collaboration: developing low cost usability evaluation methods for shared workspaces

Abstract: We introduce a conceptual framework that articulates the mechanics of collaboration for shared-workspace groupware: the low level actions and interactions that must be carried out to complete a task in a shared manner. These include communication, coordination, planning, monitoring, assistance, and protection. The framework also includes three general measures of these mechanics: effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction. The underlying idea of the framework is that some usability problems in groupware systems are not inherently tied to the social context in which the system is used but rather are a result of poor support for the basic activities of collaborative work in shared spaces. We believe that existing low-cost evaluation methods-heuristic evaluation, walkthroughs, user observations and questionnaires-can be modified to include this framework in a way that helps a groupware evaluator uncover these usability problems.

Personification in Advertising

Abstract: All forms of personification draw on anthropomorphism, the propensity to attribute human characteristics to objects. In an experiment, we show that visual personification—pictures in an ad that metaphorically represent a product as engaged in some kind of human behavior—can trigger anthropomorphism. Such personification, when embedded in an ad, appears to lead to more positive emotions, more positive attributions of brand personality, and greater brand liking. Implications for advertisers are discussed.