In this issue:
1. Supriya: Issues of Translation
2. Prof Lindgaard’s Fellowship Visit Wrap Up
3. Papers: Participatory Design; Trust & Control
4. Upcoming Conferences & Calls for Papers
5. Useful Links & References

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1. Supriya: Issues of Translation
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Professor Gitte Lingaard’s visit allowed us to place our approaches to UCD within an international framework. She was impressed with our strength in the discovery phase of design, and our multi-disciplinary work both within UCD and between the UCD and the technology program researchers and our industry partners. She was also able to see our experience in participatory design that will come to the fore as we work across programs on the design of SITs. Usability testing has of course been one of the earliest and most recognised faces of UCD.

What was less developed here and internationally is to convert our understandings of the context and detail of user behaviour to a user requirements brief for the design of technologies. There is little available in this area which resonates equally with social scientists and technologists. It means translating one kind of knowing into another. We look forward to exploring this process of translation together with our partners in the technology programs and industry. Documenting this process as we work collaboratively will lead to a valuable contribution to UCD methodology.

Supriya

Assoc Prof Supriya Singh,
Project Leader
supriya.singh@rmit.edu.au

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2. Prof Lindgaard’s Fellowship Visit Wrap Up
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One is entitled to wonder why anyone in their right mind would choose to descend on Melbourne in the midst of winter, especially when coming from six months of snow and darkness in the northern hemisphere. Alas, I was excited to be invited to meet people from the SITCRC and others involved with User-Centred Design (UCD) on the local scene. Many of the folks I ran into I know from my years of involvement with the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) cum UCD, Human Factors, Ergonomics, whatever-you-care-to-call-it community in Melbourne and indeed Australia. It has been very refreshing to rekindle these relationships and to learn more about the work being undertaken in the User Environment (UE) group of the CRC.
I was especially impressed by the sheer number of people from different disciplines who contribute to the UE projects, and pleased also to see that some of the projects are enjoying a direct relationship with industry sponsors. It is not easy to establish and nourish such relationships in the Australian context, where research/industry relationships traditionally ‘belonged’ to the CSIRO rather than being links between academia and industry.

The projects that I have had an opportunity to get a glimpse of are very exciting. For example, the strong focus on accessibility is very timely as well as being important for Australia and also offering an excellent public platform for UCD. Although the U.S. has legislation in place via the ‘Section 508’ Rehabilitation Act and the ‘Section 255’ Telecommunications Act that mandate accessibility, there is no enforcement, and it is difficult for industry to know whether their products actually are compliant with the relevant Act. My guess is that, sooner or later, these two Acts will result in compliance requirements globally, so for Australia to be working actively on accessibility through the SITCRC is an important step towards implementing such requirements very early. Industry will need assistance translating the Acts and delivering compliant products. The outcomes of projects undertaken in the CRC in this respect will play an important role in this respect once the Acts become a reality.

Likewise, evolving technology usage patterns by young people, as well as the online banking projects will yield important strategic information for providers of future products and services, giving Australia a potentially important commercial advantage further down track.

In turn, I hope I have been able to contribute something to the local community through my talks on cost/benefit analyses in terms of the importance of quantifying UCD contributions and using such quantifications to demonstrate their value in tangible ways. The opportunity to talk about some of our research into the links between user satisfaction, perceived and actual usability, aesthetics, and trust, was one I really appreciated. That work seems to be one area in which we can and should further the relationship between the CRC and Carleton University.

A warm thank you to those people who worked very hard behind the scenes to make this visit a reality, and thank you also to those who braved the weather and came to some of my talks.

Gitte

Prof Gitte Lindgaard
Director of the Human Oriented Technology Lab
Carleton University
Ottawa, Canada

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3. Papers: Participatory Design; Trust & Control
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* Beekhuyzen, J., von Hellens, L., Morley, M. and Nielsen, S. (2003) “Searching for a Methodology for Smart Internet Technology Development” Paper to be presented to ISD '03 Twelfth International Conference On Information Systems Development Methods & Tools \ Theory & Practice Melbourne Australia, 25-27 August, 2003

Participatory Design is an approach to the design of computer-based systems and software that involves the users to a much greater extent than traditional design approaches and draws on diverse fields such as "user-centred design, graphic design, software engineering, architecture, public policy, psychology, anthropology, sociology, labor studies, communication studies, and political science" (Kuhn & Muller 1993).

This paper examines various approaches to Participatory Design (PD) from a theoretical basis. Drawing on the authors' experiences in the SITCRC, the paper explores the use of User-Centred Design (UCD). Early experiences of applying this methodology to a multidisciplinary project team are discussed.

For further information about this paper, please contact:
Jenine Beekhuyzen jenine@cit.gu.edu.au or
Liisa von Hellens l.vonhellens@cit.gu.edu.au

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* Singh, S. and Satchell, C. (2003). “Trust, control and design: A study of computer scientists” Paper to be presented to ISD '03 Twelfth International Conference On Information Systems Development Methods & Tools \ Theory & Practice Melbourne Australia, 25-27 August, 2003

A qualitative study of computer scientists' use of email in Australian universities shows that computer scientists equate trust with control. They seek information that gives them control to personalise and scrutinise the system. In equating trust solely with control, computer scientists are unlike middle-income residential users or young people. The level of control that computer scientists demand is often so great that they do not use the technologies they design. For middle-income residential users," "comfort" and "caring" are important dimensions of trust. Computer scientists also differ significantly from young users who see control primarily as physical control, rather than control over information to personalize and scrutinize the system.

This paper draws on three separate qualitative studies. The first and central study is of computer scientists and their use of technologies with a focus on email. The second and third studies – with which the first is compared – are of middle-income residential consumers’ use of money and a continuing study of young people’s use of technologies.

For further information about this paper, please contact:
Supriya Singh Supriya.singh@rmit.edu.au

UCD Project Members may view the paper by visiting:
http://www.ucd.smartinternet.com.au/auth.php?file=trust%20ISD.pdf

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4. Upcoming Conferences & Calls for Papers
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* INFORMS Telecommunications Conference 2004

The Seventh INFORMS Telecommunications Conference will be held March 7?10, 2004 at the Deerfield Beach Hilton, near Boca Raton, Florida. In the tradition of previous conferences, the Seventh Conference will focus on the theory and application of operations research to problems in telecommunications, with particular emphasis on new and emerging technologies.

The call for papers for the conference will open September 1, 2003 and papers are encouraged on a wide range of topics – check the conference website for further information.

For further details, please visit: http://www.informs.org/Conf/Telecom04
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* Prato 2003

The Centre for Community Networking Research, Monash University, Australia and the Community Informatics Research Group from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA invite researchers, practitioners and policy makers to participate in “Many Voices Many Places - Electronically Enabling Communities for An Information Society Colloquium” to be held 15-16 September, at the Monash Centre, Prato (Florence), Italy.

For further information, please visit: http://www.ccnr.net/prato2003/

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5. Useful Links and References
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Nah, F., and Davis S., 2002, “HCI Research Issues in E-Commerce,” Journal of Electronic Commerce Research, Special Issue: Human Factors in Web-based Interaction, 3:3

This article outlines a number of important research issues in human-computer interaction in the e-commerce environment. It highlights some of the challenges faced by users in browsing Web sites and conducting searches for information, and suggests several areas of research for promoting ease of navigation and search. Also, it discusses the importance of trust in the online environment, describing some of the antecedents and consequents of trust, and provides guidelines for integrating trust into Web site design. The issues discussed in this article are presented under three broad categories of human-computer interaction - Web usability, interface design, and trust - and are intended to highlight what we believe are worthwhile areas for future research in e-commerce.

http://www.csulb.edu/web/journals/jecr/issues/20023/paper1.pdf
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Manolis Tsiknakis et al, “An open, component-based information infrastructure for integrated health information networks,” International Journal of Medical Informatics 68:1-3, pp 3-26 (18 December 2002)

A fundamental requirement for achieving continuity of care is the seamless sharing of multimedia clinical information. Different technological approaches can be adopted for enabling the communication and sharing of health record segments. In the context of the emerging global information society, the creation of and access to the integrated electronic health record (I-EHR) of a citizen has been assigned high priority in many countries. This requirement is complementary to an overall requirement for the creation of a health information infrastructure (HII) to support the provision of a variety of health telematics and e-health services. This paper discusses current international priorities and trends in developing the HII. It presents technological challenges and alternative approaches towards the creation of an I-EHR, being the aggregation of health data created during all interactions of an individual with the healthcare system. It also presents results from an ongoing R&D effort towards the implementation of the HII in the regional health information network of Crete, Greece, using a component-based software engineering approach. Critical design decisions and related trade-offs, involved in the process of component specification and development, are also discussed and the current state of development of an I-EHR service is presented. Finally, Human Computer Interaction and security issues, which are important for the deployment and use of any I-EHR service, are considered.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1386-5056(02)00060-6
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Paschalina (Lilia) Ziamoua et al, “Commercializing new technologies: consumers' response to a new interface,” Journal of Product Innovation Management 19:5, pp 365-374 (10 September 2002)

Successful commercialisation of new technologies is the riskiest and most rewarding form of new product development activity. New technologies are often commercialised using innovative interfaces that determine how consumers interact with a new product to obtain its functionality. Consumers' perception of uncertainty about the performance of a novel interface is a key issue in the acceptance of new products involving new interfaces. Building on prior research on new product development, human-computer interaction, and consumer decision-making, this paper examines the factors that influence consumers' judgments of uncertainty about the performance of a new interface and consumers' adoption intentions. Specifically, the authors present the findings of their experiment to investigate the effect of the newness of the functionality of a new product and the effect of imagery on consumers' uncertainty about the performance of a novel interface and consumers' adoption intentions. Their results show that consumers perceive lower uncertainty about the performance of a new interface and higher intentions to adopt a new product when the new interface is introduced with a new (vs. pre-existing) functionality.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0737-6782(02)00153-4

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