UMCR

Mobile applications beyond pure mobile telephony are becoming more and more popular for everyday users. In recent years, with the advent of 3G mobile networks such as UMTS and also higher computing power and storage capabilities of mobile devices, multimedia has reached the mobile user. The user’s individual usage context and needs are becoming more and more important for the design of mobile applications. However, the concepts needed to achieve real comprehensiv user-centric mobile applications are just evolving. In this paper, we present selected concepts and prototypes from our research in the field of mobile multimedia systems that specifically address the mobile user’s needs. We shortly discuss the aspects of user-centered mobile applications and the challenges we see. Our selected research approaches and prototypes show different concepts towards better supporting the concrete user by mobile applications. In this context, we take a look on the specific challenges of image and video retrieval that arise from placing the user in the center of the mobile application design. In our point of view, user-centered mobile multimedia applications pose interesting challenges not only to the retrieval of multimedia content but introduce new challenges and potentials from acquisition, enhancement, storage, retrieval and delivery to the usage of mobile multimedia content.

ABSTRACTUser Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) are two crucial factors in the success of information systems, especially web-based applications and mobile applications. Design elements in web or mobile applications can be made more atrractive, by applying several elements in human-computer interaction theory based on user segmentation, product knowledge, consumer behavior, latest marketing theories, both in terms of visuals, after-effects, display sets, content, multimedia, lay-out menus on the web or mobile applications. In the recent state development of tourism in Bali, tourism transactions and promotions are already based on E-Tourism using web media and mobile applications. Making it easier for tourists to access information and services related to ticketing, transportation, accommodation and even travel packages. This study uses the User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) methods to view usability and web-quality from a web-based E-Tourism websites that promotes tourism in Bali.Keywords: User Interface, User Experience, E-Tourism, Informastion System, Bali Tourism.ABSTRAKUser Interface (UI) dan User Experience (UX) adalah dua faktor krusial dalam keberhasilan sistem informasi, terutama aplikasi berbasis web dan aplikasi mobile. Elemen desain dalam web dapat dibuat lebih menarik, dengan menerapkan beberapa elemen dalam teori interaksi manusia-komputer berdasarkan segmentasi user, pengetahuan produk, perilaku konsumen, teori pemasaran terbaru, baik dari segi visual, after-effect, display set, konten, multimedia, lay-out menu di web atau aplikasi mobile. Dalam perkembangan pariwisata di Bali saat ini, transaksi dan promosi pariwisata sudah berbasis E-Tourism dengan menggunakan media web dan aplikasi mobile. Sehingga mempermudah wisatawan dalam mengakses informasi dan layanan terkait dengan ticketing, transportasi, akomodasi bahkan paket perjalanan wisata. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode User Interface (UI) dan User Experience (UX) untuk melihat usability dan web-quality dari website layanan E-Tourism yang berbasis web yangmempromosikan pariwisata di Bali.Kata kunci: User Interface, User Experience, E-Tourism, Sistem Informasi, Pariwisata Bali.

Mobile content contribution and retrieval: An exploratory study using the uses and gratifications paradigm

Mobile services and mobile content is available to diverse users in possession of the necessary mobile phones. However, some of the mobile services and mobile content is text intensive and this discounts low literate users in participation in the related mobile applications. Exploring typical challenges experienced by low literate users and adapting these mobile applications using visual interfaces can provide low literate users with usable access to mobile services and mobile content.

The accelerated development of new technology, particularly on mobile application has increased teacher’s responsibility as a learning facilitator. Since technology is improving, many applications keep on coming into the market to fulfill user demands. Mobile learning application is very useful in enriching the mobile learning experience of children. However, some applications fail to assist and increase children knowledge on the subject they studied. Moreover, some children are not interested in mobile applications due to issues such as poor interfaces. In this paper, some previous studies on quality attributes used to evaluate mobile learning applications were reviewed. A systematic literature review approach was employed to search previous papers and studies on usability quality attributes, particularly for mobile learning applications. The search strategy identified numerous studies on usability for mobile learning applications for children. The result showed that the top four usability quality attributes are efficiency, effectiveness; learnability and user satisfaction. The studies reviewed showed that usability evaluations were conducted during implementation phase only, and evaluation is often built as a description of the case study. This study explored the current literatures on the subject matter and stimulates further studies that will lead to improved usability and design of mobile learning applications for children.

Seventy percent of smartphone applications employ third party libraries for advertisement and usage analysis. Because the host application and those third party libraries have to be packed into one application package, they share the same set of privileges. This worries users because of the concern that third party libraries might abuse the host application's privileges. This is not a desirable situation for application developers, either, because they are forced to add privileges for advertising libraries that are not necessary for their application, and users tend to avoid applications with sensitive privileges. Although advertising libraries are generally not welcomed by users, mobile advertisements play a key role in a mobile application eco-system that promotes the popularity of free applications. Therefore, we need a solution that will not hamper a mobile advertising agency service while addressing the concerns of users and developers. In this paper, we designed SanAdBox, a privilege separation framework for Android applications and a third party library that will not interfere with the behavior of third party libraries. In SanAdBox, each third party library is installed as an independent application so that it runs in a separate sandbox. In this way, the privileges of applications and libraries are strictly separated, solving the above-mentioned problems. Furthermore, because SanAdBox does not require modification of the Android operating system, we can install it on smartphones with the normal Android operating system.

BackgroundInterest in mindfulness has increased exponentially, particularly in the fields of psychology and medicine. The trait or state of mindfulness is significantly related to several indicators of psychological health, and mindfulness-based therapies are effective at preventing and treating many chronic diseases. Interest in mobile applications for health promotion and disease self-management is also growing. Despite the explosion of interest, research on both the design and potential uses of mindfulness-based mobile applications (MBMAs) is scarce.ObjectiveOur main objective was to study the features and functionalities of current MBMAs and compare them to current evidence-based literature in the health and clinical setting.MethodsWe searched online vendor markets, scientific journal databases, and grey literature related to MBMAs. We included mobile applications that featured a mindfulness-based component related to training or daily practice of mindfulness techniques. We excluded opinion-based articles from the literature.ResultsThe literature search resulted in 11 eligible matches, two of which completely met our selection criteria–a pilot study designed to evaluate the feasibility of a MBMA to train the practice of “walking meditation,” and an exploratory study of an application consisting of mood reporting scales and mindfulness-based mobile therapies. The online market search eventually analyzed 50 available MBMAs. Of these, 8% (4/50) did not work, thus we only gathered information about language, downloads, or prices. The most common operating system was Android. Of the analyzed apps, 30% (15/50) have both a free and paid version. MBMAs were devoted to daily meditation practice (27/46, 59%), mindfulness training (6/46, 13%), assessments or tests (5/46, 11%), attention focus (4/46, 9%), and mixed objectives (4/46, 9%). We found 108 different resources, of which the most used were reminders, alarms, or bells (21/108, 19.4%), statistics tools (17/108, 15.7%), audio tracks (15/108, 13.9%), and educational texts (11/108, 10.2%). Daily, weekly, monthly statistics, or reports were provided by 37% (17/46) of the apps. 28% (13/46) of them permitted access to a social network. No information about sensors was available. The analyzed applications seemed not to use any external sensor. English was the only language of 78% (39/50) of the apps, and only 8% (4/50) provided information in Spanish. 20% (9/46) of the apps have interfaces that are difficult to use. No specific apps exist for professionals or, at least, for both profiles (users and professionals). We did not find any evaluations of health outcomes resulting from the use of MBMAs.ConclusionsWhile a wide selection of MBMAs seem to be available to interested people, this study still shows an almost complete lack of evidence supporting the usefulness of those applications. We found no randomized clinical trials evaluating the impact of these applications on mindfulness training or health indicators, and the potential for mobile mindfulness applications remains largely unexplored.

Modeling approaches based on standards are of paramount importance in the field of front-end design for web and mobile applications. Problems are often encountered during the selection of tools for designing applications for developers and researchers, particularly applications that are related to time and cost in the market and academia. The Interaction Flow Modeling Language (IFML) is a recently standardized modeling language designed for managing the content expression, user interaction and behavior control of front-end applications. IFML brings several benefits to the development process of web and mobile front-end applications. Thus, several tools have been developed for the exploitation of technical artifacts offered by current specifications. In this study, we discuss the tools proposed for modeling IFML to provide a comparative analysis while considering various criteria. The result can be used as a basis of tool selection for specific aspects.

Interacting with the Web of Things

Lately, mobile augmented reality (AR) has become very popular and is used for many commercial and product promotional activities. However, in almost all mobile AR applications, the user only views annotated information or the preset motion of the virtual object in an AR environment and is unable to interact with the virtual objects as if he/she were interacting with real objects in the real environment. In this paper, in an attempt to realize enhanced intuitive and realistic object manipulation in the mobile AR environment, we propose an integrated view-input AR interaction method, which integrates user device manipulation and virtual object manipulation. The method enables the user to hold a 3D virtual object by touching the displayed object on the 2D touch screen of a mobile device, and to move and rotate the object by moving and rotating the mobile device while viewing the held object by way of the 2D screen of the mobile device. Based on this concept, we implemented three types of integrated methods, namely the Rod, Center, and Touch methods, and conducted a user study to investigate the baseline performance metrics of the proposed method on an AR object manipulation task. The Rod method achieved the highest success rate (91%). Participants' feedback indicated that this is because the Rod method is the most natural, and evoked a fixed mental model that is conceivable in the real environment. These results indicated that visualizing the manipulation point on the screen and restricting the user's interactivity with virtual objects from the user's position of view based on a conceivable mental model would be able to aid the user to achieve precise manipulation.

Due to the widespread use of mobile phones and wireless applications, there is unquestionably a surge in cybercrimes. As a result, there is an urgent need for mobile forensics. The investigators should decide one of the three gathering types—manual, logical, or physical—to use before starting an investigation. The existing mobile acquisition technologies exploit these in various ways to create images of all mobile content, files of particular data categories, or data from a particular application. The tool may capture more data than necessary, forcing researchers to individually filter data may, or it may obtain all of the data, but this does not help with the examination of instances involving a particular mobile application. Data from the application without adequate analysis both in instances need a lot of work and time. This study compares and analyses forensics presently accessible and gives a demonstrated view of available tools that can perform data extraction and forensic investigations on WhatsApp. This study also discusses the mechanism behind the messenger technology, protocols behind the technology, and different ways to extract the data from the mobile phone to perform forensic analysis. Additionally, this study focuses on the weak points of the tools technology and suggests better methods to improve the vast field of WhatsApp forensics.

The article is devoted to the issue of expanding the functions of cartographic images for transmitting geospatial information using mobile devices. It discusses the functions of mobile mapping applications. Based on the classification of the main types of perception, a study was conducted on the correlation of user-accepted geospatial information with the means of its transmission. Since modern mobile technologies make it possible to obtain cartographic information with the help of visual, auditory, tactile perception, and also make it possible to sense space, movement and time, the map in combination with these types of perception becomes more intuitive. Actual in the visualization of the cartographic image on the screen of the mobile device is the question of exploring the user interface and displaying the contents of the map at different scale levels. In this regard, the requirements for interfaces are generalized, the principles necessary for the development of the interface of cartographic applications are formulated and presented, based on the condition: “Conditional sign — interface element”. The proposed principles can be divided into three groups: principles that define the general issues of building the interface of mobile cartographic applications, their structure as a whole and user interaction; principles governing the design of the interface of mobile cartographic applications; principles governing the development of mobile cartographic applications, taking into account the features of their use and new technical capabilities. Using the example of level-by-level compilation of elements of navigation charts, a conclusion is drawn on the correspondence between the display of spatial information on a mobile device and the user's perception of reality. Generalized features of cartographic image visualization in mobile devices, such as: intuitive readability, map adaptability, generalization by motion factor, multiscale and multimedia.

Multi-touch gestures like swipe and pinch have introduced a new interaction paradigm that is currently used in developing mobile applications. Such applications can include different user gestures that cause different results for different interactions with the same user interface element. Testing such user interaction is complex. We present a formal task-based approach to automate testing of user gestures in mobile applications. In previous work, we used TaMoGolog, a formal task modelling language built on the top of the Golog family of high-level programming languages, for evaluating user interfaces along the development process. In this work, we present MobiGolog that extends TaMoGolog to support the testing of users' multi-touch gestures in the developing and developed mobile applications.

The evaluation of mobile user interfaces can be a tedious task, especially if usability tests under real-world conditions should be performed. In particular, the evaluation of high-fidelity prototypes provides valuable measures about the quality of mobile applications, which helps designers to identify potentials of improvement for the next revision. Due to their costs or missing expert knowledge evaluation techniques such as cognitive walkthroughs or heuristic evaluation are often not used. Additionally, commercial frameworks provide insufficient details on usability as they only address commercial statistics regarding user loyalty, in-app purchases or demographics.

The development of methodologies and techniques to evaluate smartphones usability is an emerging topic in the scientific community and triggers discussions about which methodology is most appropriate. The lack of consensus is due to the inherent difficulty on capturing context data in the scenarios where the experiments take place and on relating them to the found results. This work aims to correlate potential usability problems in mobile applications with contextual factors that may occur during users interactions on different devices, such as: environment luminosity, device screen resolution, and the user's activity while interacting with the application. The following methodology was applied to carry out a field experiment: (1) identification of contextual factors that may influence users' interaction; (2) use of UXEProject Infrastructure to support the automatic capture of applications' context data, by monitoring and storing quantitative, subjective and contextual data from applications' use; (3) implementation of experiments with real users, which have different profiles, on using three different mobile applications over an one year period. In this paper, we present and discuss the results obtained during this study.