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UCD Project News Edition 2, April 28th, 2003
UCD@SITCRC is a fortnightly e-newsletter devoted to increasing
awareness of user-centred design (UCD) principles and contributing
towards a culture of UCD within the SITCRC.
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In this issue:
1. Supriya speaks of communication
2. The new face of UCD at the Virtual Café
3. UCD presentation for the RAC
4. Trevor Barr: outlook is good for UE program
5 . Useful links and references
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1. Supriya speaks of communication
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I hope you have had a happy and restful Easter break.
Communicating the importance, profitability and excitement
of user-centred design is at the center of our project, which
encourages a culture of UCD within the SITCRC. So we are particularly
glad to bring to you this newsletter and the new
website to encourage dialogue and continue conversations
with colleagues in the SITCRC community.
The UCD Project website launch was a great success and the
site received almost 2,500 hits in the first week. We hope
this is indicative of the growing interest in UCD principles
and the work of researchers involved in the project.
We hope that all members of the SITCRC receive the second
edition of the newsletter, as we are now working with a complete
and up-to-date database. You can view a of the first
newsletter. We are also making the second edition more
accessible, moving from an html version to a text only format.
The website too is being developed keeping accessibility and
universal design in mind. The issues we are wrestling with
are those of ensuring confidentiality while sharing our research.
Hence part of the website will be open only to members of
SITCRC via a username and password system. In this restricted
access part of the website, we intend to share our ongoing
collaboration with the technology programs. We look forward
to your participation.
It is of course vulnerable to share ideas that are still being
developed. But we hope that the emerging trust in our research
relationships will allow us to use Internet technologies in
an interactive and collaborative way. At present, we are veering
towards using a blog to facilitate private online discussions
between SITCRC members, hoping that documenting the development
of ideas will itself provide a record of virtual teams and
communication. We hope that this part of the site will be
online soon.
Supriya
Assoc Prof Supriya Singh,
Leader, UCD project, UE program
supriya.singh@rmit.edu.au
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2. Meet the new face of UCD at the Virtual Café
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The UCD Group would like to extend a warm welcome to Paul
Doornbusch who will be working on the initial phase of our
involvement in the Virtual Café project:
Paul Doornbusch, Sonologist, I-Cubed, RMIT
Email: pauld@iii.rmit.edu.au
Web
page
Paul is the resident Sonologist at RMIT’s Interactive
Information Institute and has developed the sound system in
its Virtual Reality Centre. He is a composer, sonologist and
performer.
Paul will lend his expertise to the Virtual Café project
by testing acceptable minimal delay in virtual communication
for different user groups in a variety of activities.
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3. UCD presentation for the RAC
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* Paul Turner presents to the RAC
Dr. Paul Turner presented the achievements of the UCD project
and planned future projects to the Research Advisory Committee
(RAC) on April 16, 2003. Please see Trevor Barr’s comments
below for an overview of presentation outcomes.
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* Briefing paper for the RAC
UCD Project Leader Assoc. Prof. Supriya Singh prepared a briefing
paper that details the UCD group’s progress in achieving
key milestones and deliverables.
View
the briefing paper.
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2. Trevor Barr: outlook is good for UE program
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Two User Environment (UE) grants were successful following
the recent meeting of the Research Advisory Committee. They
were, in summary:
Amivox:
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This project initially emerged from work done on possible
disabilities applications for a smart Internet in the UCD
group. It takes one of the technologies being developed within
the SITCRC– the InCA speech interface prototype –
and tests a new version, incorporating added features and
functionality.
Tim Noonan, himself blind, gave several compelling arguments
to the RAC as to the value of experimenting with blind people
as a ‘test bed’ for what might have substantial
long term market potential. Amivox will now essentially be
designed for mainstream applications for people on the move.
It appears to be a most promising demonstrator within the
UE program and is based on sound methodology.
Responsibility for the project will reside with Gunela Astbrink
of Griffith University (UE program) and Waleed Kadous of University
of NSW (SPA/NAUI program). It is really satisfying to see
such productive outcomes from the linkage work of the UCD
researchers.
For further information about the Amivox project, please contact
Gunela Astbrink g.astbrink@gsa.com.au.
Nymity:
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The Nymity project is a collaboration of the SN/IE, NAUI/SPA
and UE Programs. It will investigate, design, build, and demonstrate
secure, personal information and identity management enabled
devices that are interoperable with each other and other Smart
Internet entities, while allowing control of anonymity and
identity within a variety of networked Intelligent Environments.
The project will also develop intellectual property in the
area of secure, personal information and identity management,
focusing on the security-related aspects of network infrastructures
and protocols, cryptographic key management and ad hoc wireless
networks.
John Zic from Motorola will lead the project and Assoc. Prof.
Supriya Singh will coordinate the UCD Group’s contribution.
For further information about the Nymity project, please contact
John Zic John.Zic@motorola.com
Multimedia Messaging Service:
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This is the first proposal from new partners to the SITCRC,
University of Melbourne and Novel, and also has the support
of Motorola. The project seeks to develop an understanding
of the factors influencing the appropriation of Multimedia
Messaging Services (MMS) and to use this understanding to
envision new opportunities in rich media, especially in the
context of young people.
Principal outcomes will be prototypes of next generation MMS
capabilities and testing of a methodological tool kit. The
research team will be Assoc Prof Steve Howard, Dr Jennie Carroll
and Frank Vetere of the University of Melbourne in association
with commercial partners.
For further information about the MMS project, please contact
Assoc. Prof. Steve Howard showard@unimelb.edu.au
I would like to pay tribute to the superb presentation and
overall contribution of Paul Turner at the RAC meeting. Paul
was thorough and most credible in the way he presented the
scope and outcomes of the UCD Project to date.
Well done to our UE/UCD people.
May there be lots more in August!
Trevor Barr
Program Manager,
UE/ SITCRC
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5 . Useful links and references
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*AACE Digital Library (Association for the Advancement of
Computing in Education)
The AACE Digital Library is a valuable online resource of
peer-reviewed and published international journal articles
and proceedings papers on the latest research, developments,
and applications related to all aspects of Educational Technology
and E-Learning.
http://www.aace.org/DL/
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* Interview with the KDE and Gnome UI/Usability Developers
By Eugenia Loli-Queru, 10.3.2003
It is hoped that the Unix desktop will be revolutionized when
the Gnome and KDE user interfaces (UIs) become interoperable.
In this article, the Gnome project's Havoc Pennington discusses
the usability issues the project faces with Waldo Bastian
and Aaron J. Seigo – “usability engineers”
of the KDE project.
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=2997
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* Marcus, A. (2002) “Return on Investment for Usable
User-Interface Design: Examples and Statistics”
Most software and Website development managers view usability
costs as added effort and expense, but Marcus contends that
the reverse is more commonly true. In this article, he looks
at the evidence of return on investment (ROI) for usability
in user-interface design.
http://www.amanda.com/resources/ROI/AMA_ROIWhitePaper_28Feb02.pdf
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Constantine, L. & Lockwood, L., “Structure and Style
in Use Cases for User Interface Design,” published in
M. van Harmelen (ed.), “Object Modeling and User Interface
Design,” Addison-Wesley, 2001
Various styles for writing are presented with examples and
discussions of their relative advantages and disadvantages.
Their consequences for user interface design and software
usability are discussed.
http://www.foruse.com/articles/structurestyle2.htm
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If you have any comments regarding this e-newsletter or the
UCD website, or you would like to submit an item for publication,
please contact Charlotte Scarf at: charlotte.scarf@rmit.edu.au.
Visit the UCD Project website at: http://www.smartinternet.com.au/UCD
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