Volume 22, Issue 3

Poor software quality results in avoidable costs of trillion dollars annually in the United States alone. Augmented Reality (AR) applications are a relatively new software category. Currently there are no standards to guide the development process and testing is predominantly ad hoc and manual. Consequently, design guidelines and software test automation techniques are intended to remedy the situation. Here, we present a concept for test automation of AR applications. The concept consists of two parts: design guidelines and process model for testing AR applications, and a case study with a prototype application for test automation. The design guidelines and the process model are based on the state-of-the-art. The prototype application presented in this article demonstrates test automation for a multi-platform AR application for Android devices as well as the HoloLens 2. The presented test automation case study is designed to cover a large part of the functions, such as the different interaction variants. This research work shows that by using the proposed process model and test automation techniques, testing of some features of AR applications can be automated. The results of this research can serve as a basis for future research and contribution towards AR application development standardization efforts.

Mobile cobots can increase the potential for assembly work in industry. For human-friendly automation of cooperative assembly work, user-centered interfaces are necessary. The design process regarding user interfaces for mobile human-robot cooperation (HRC) shows large research gaps. In this article an exemplary approach is shown to design a graphical user interface (GUI) for mobile HRC at assembly workplaces. The design is based on a wireframe developed to support situation awareness. An interactive mockup is designed and evaluated. This is done in two iterations. In the first iteration, a user analysis is carried out using a quantitative survey with n = 31 participants to identify preferred input modalities and a qualitative survey with n = 11 participants that addresses touch interfaces. The interactive mockup is developed by implementing design recommendations of the usability standards ISO 9241 – 110, 112 and 13. A heuristic evaluation is conducted with n = 5 usability experts and the measurement of situation awareness with n = 30 end users. In the second iteration, findings from the preceding iteration are implemented in the GUI and a usability test with n = 20 end users is conducted. The process demonstrates a combination of methods that leads to high usability and situation awareness in mobile HRC.

Personas have been established as an indispensable tool in software and product development. They continuously accompany the development process and seek to build empathy and establish an emotional relationship between developers and users. However, this does not always succeed, with the reasons for failure often lying in the personas themselves. If they do not have a sufficient level of detail or do not reflect everyday people, they lose credibility and therefore their purpose of representing the user. Poor communication of personas is another reason they are quickly forgotten. In this paper, we present a new approach to experiencing personas beyond traditional means such as posters or slides. With the help of virtual reality, we create immersive, three-dimensional personas that can be visited in their own living room. The basis of the implementation is a comprehensive dataset, containing aggregated data from over 8000 detailed face-to-face interviews. We base the layout of the apartment, the furniture, and the characters themselves on the archetypal characteristics of their corresponding user group. In the future, we plan to validate whether this approach can be successful in creating a deeper and more sustainable connection between personas and developers and designers.

In recent years, there have been several attempts to help visually impaired and illiterate people to overcome their reading limitations through developing different applications. However, most of these applications are based on physical button interaction and avoid the use of touchscreen devices. This research mainly aims to find a solution that helps both visually impaired and illiterate people to read texts present in their surroundings through a touchscreen-based application. The study also attempts to discover the possibility of building one application that could be used by both type of users and find out whether they would use it in the same efficiency. Therefore, a requirements elicitation study was conducted to identify the users’ requirements and their preferences and so build an interactive interface for both visually impaired and illiterate users. The study resulted in several design considerations, such as using voice instructions, focusing on verbal feedback, and eliminating buttons. Then, the reader mobile application was designed and built based on these design preferences. Finally, an evaluation study was conducted to measure the usability of the developed application. The results revealed that both sight impaired and illiterate users could benefit from the same mobile application, as they were satisfied with using it and found it efficient and effective. However, the measures from the evaluation sessions also reported that illiterate users had used the develop app more efficiently and effectively. Moreover, they were more satisfied, especially with the application’s ease of use.

In human-computer interaction, much empirical research exists. Online questionnaires increasingly play an important role. Here the quality of the results depend strongly on the quality of the given answers, and it is essential to distinguish truthful from deceptive answers. There exist elegant single modalities for deception detection in the literature, such as mouse tracking and eye tracking (in this paper, respectively, measuring the pupil diameter). Yet, no combination of these two modalities is available. This paper presents a combined approach of two cognitive-load-based lie detection approaches. We address study administrators who conduct questionnaires in the HCI, wanting to improve the validity of questionnaires.

Identifying appropriate methods for any process, such as uncovering needs of juveniles in social welfare or designing interactive systems, requires intensive research and generally using a categorization system that brings methods in a systematic order. These taxonomy systems are heavily responsible for the later method usage and start the thinking process for researchers and practitioners alike in a specific direction. So making participation visible in such taxonomy systems directly affects the later method usage and makes participation more visible and easier to use. This article presents the Method Radar, a visualized categorization of methods with a focus on participation using the ladder of participation, that makes participation visible right at the beginning of any method selection. The Method Radar builds on the radar representation established in the technology sector, which allows a multi-dimensional classification. In addition, an implementation and systematic process for categorizing these methods are presented. It can be used for any form of method categorization in which participation is supposed to be thought of.