Information Appliances Research Articles

Cross-Cultural Effects in Adoption Patterns of a Mobile Coaching Service for studies

This study applied an adoption model, inspired by the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Multipurpose Information Appliances Adoption Model (MIAAM), to compare key variables explaining adoption patterns of a mobile coaching app that guides and encourages students via a technology-based platform. This article constitutes a pioneer effort to compare adoption behaviors across a developed country and an emerging country (France and Mexico) with differences in level of use of mobile apps. A multi-group structural equation modelling approach was used to test the causal structure of the conceptual model. Results confirmed significant differences and similarities across samples and identified critical factors. Perceived usefulness was found to be the most important driver with mediating effects. Organizations implementing coaching services with an improved perceived usefulness could boost their adoption rates.

Differences between LIS and non-LIS undergraduates’ conceptions of smart libraries: a drawing analysis approach

Purpose This study aims to compare similarities and differences in library and information science (LIS) and non-LIS undergraduates’ conceptions and perceptions of smart libraries via drawing analysis. Design/methodology/approach In this study, a total of 156 undergraduate students described their perceptions of smart libraries as drawings and textual descriptions. A modified coding scheme with 8 categories and 51 subcategories was used to analyse the undergraduate students’ drawings. Findings Most of the undergraduate students’ conceptions of smart libraries still involve self-checkout and learning/reading, focusing on information appliances, technical services, activities and objects. The differences are that the LIS undergraduates’ drawings showed smart libraries with robots, interactive book borrowing with technology tools, intelligent services, location-aware services or mobile applications, whereas non-LIS undergraduates presented smart libraries as readers (learners), other activities and no smart technology services. LIS undergraduates focused on providing patron services with technologies. Non-LIS undergraduates were more likely to draw a complex space with immediate access to books or digital resources, quiet reading and the freedom to engage in library activities. Originality/value The results provide a baseline for future research on the topic and provide preliminary evidence of using the methods to discern LIS and non-LIS undergraduates’ conceptions of smart libraries.

Cross-Cultural Effects in Adoption Patterns of a Mobile Coaching Service for Studies

This study applied an adoption model, inspired by the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Multipurpose Information Appliances Adoption Model (MIAAM), to compare key variables explaining adoption patterns of a mobile coaching app that guides and encourages students via a technology-based platform. This article constitutes a pioneer effort to compare adoption behaviors across a developed country and an emerging country (France and Mexico) with differences in level of use of mobile apps. A multi-group structural equation modelling approach was used to test the causal structure of the conceptual model. Results confirmed significant differences and similarities across samples and identified critical factors. Perceived usefulness was found to be the most important driver with mediating effects. Organizations implementing coaching services with an improved perceived usefulness could boost their adoption rates.

АРХИТЕКТУРА И ДИЗАЙН: НОВАЦИИ В ХУДОЖЕСТВЕННОЙ ПОДГОТОВКЕ ПО ИЗОБРАЗИТЕЛЬНЫМ ДИСЦИПЛИНАМ В ПРОЕКТНОЙ СФЕРЕ

The purpose of our exploration is to investigate the computer technology impact on the development of art component in the modern design and engineering education. This is a case in the first instance of traditional arts such as Drawing, Painting and Sculpture. The thematic justification there is to analyse transformation trends of art image creation in a changing development context in the design area. The evolving methodological modern concept requires preservation and development the evolution way of things from its realistic perception (image) to its usage in the capacity of artistic tools and modern information technology tools. It would be instructive to examine the painting methodology of such authors as Nikolai Beschastnov, Vadim Kulakov, Irina Stor, Yuriy Avdeev, Gusein Guseinov, Victor Dyminskiy, Aleksey Sheboldaev (Painting), Yuriy Kirtser (Drawing and painting) as well as the legacy of classic and modern painters. In process of training painting and decorative transformations, information technology adaptation and appliance aim to educate high-level designers and architects. Careful study of nature combine with information technology art tools – this is a key stone of student training of Fine Arts departure of Institute of Architecture and Design Altay State Technical University. Perfect art skills together with technical achievements provides an opportunity to expand and enrich creative potential in carrying out tasks of any kind of complexity importing an art component in the modern design culture. Interest in information technology in a class-room environment Drawing-Painting-Sculpture is no doubt. It’s fascinatingly for students. New methodologies of Institute of Architecture and Design test and endorse in several subjects: Painting and Coloristics, Drawing, Colour transformations in design culture. Based on methodological experiments developed in Fine Arts departure of Institute of Architecture and Design Altay State Technical University and other Russian universities authors suppose that the modern information technology impact on new art architect training methodologies, student abilities for abstract creative reasoning, preserving art component legacy in architect education.

Technology Developments for Biodiversity Monitoring and Conservation

Over the next 5 years major advances in the development and application of numerous technologies related to computing, mobile phones, artificial intelligence (AI), and augmented reality (AR) will have a dramatic impact in biodiversity monitoring and conservation. Over a 2-week period several of us had the opportunity to meet with multiple technology experts in the Silicon Valley, California, USA to discuss trends in technology innovation, and how they could be applied to conservation science and ecology research. Here we briefly highlight some of the key points of these meetings with respect to AI and Deep Learning. Computing: Investment and rapid growth in AI and Deep Learning technologies are transforming how machines can perceive the environment. Much of this change is due to increased processing speeds of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), which is now a billion-dollar industry. Machine learning applications, such as convolutional neural networks (CNNs) run more efficiently on GPUs and are being applied to analyze visual imagery and sounds in real time. Rapid advances in CNNs that use both supervised and unsupervised learning to train the models is improving accuracy. By taking a Deep Learning approach where the base layers of the model are built upon datasets of known images and sounds (supervised learning) and later layers relying on unclassified images or sounds (unsupervised learning), dramatically improve the flexibility of CNNs in perceiving novel stimuli. The potential to have autonomous sensors gathering biodiversity data in the same way personal weather stations gather atmospheric information is close at hand. Mobile Phones: The phone is the most widely used information appliance in the world. No device is on the near horizon to challenge this platform, for several key reasons. First, network access is ubiquitous in many parts of the world. Second, batteries are improving by about 20% annually, allowing for more functionality. Third, app development is a growing industry with significant investment in specializing apps for machine-learning. While GPUs are already running on phones for video streaming, there is much optimism that reduced or approximate Deep Learning models will operate on phones. These models are already working in the lab, with the biggest hurdle being power consumption and developing energy efficient applications and algorithms to run complicated AI processes will be important. It is just a matter of time before industry will have AI functionality on phones. These rapid improvements in computing and mobile phone technologies have huge implications for biodiversity monitoring, conservation science, and understanding ecological systems. Computing: AI processing of video imagery or acoustic streams create the potential to deploy autonomous sensors in the environment that will be able to detect and classify organisms to species. Further, AI processing of Earth spectral imagery has the potential to provide finer grade classification of habitats, which is essential in developing fine scale models of species distributions over broad spatial and temporal extents. Mobile Phones: increased computing functionality and more efficient batteries will allow applications to be developed that will improve an individual’s perception of the world. Already AI functionality of Merlin improves a birder’s ability to accurately identify a bird. Linking this functionality to sensor devices like specialized glasses, binoculars, or listening devises will help an individual detect and classify objects in the environment. In conclusion, computing technology is advancing at a rapid rate and soon autonomous sensors placed strategically in the environment will augment the species occurrence data gathered by humans. The mobile phone in everyone’s pocket should be thought of strategically, in how to connect people to the environment and improve their ability to gather meaningful biodiversity information.

Implantable Technologies in the Military Sector [Concluding Remarks

We have heard and reflected here at the 9th Workshop on the Social Implications of National Security (SINS16), on a diverse range of issues, presented by an excellent array of speakers, from Prof. R.E. Burnett's insightful presentation on human information appliance schema, Prof. Donna Dulo's visionary quandary of “NanoTech and the Military: National Threat or National Security?,” to considering some of the nontechnical aspects of our subject as presented by Dr. Rain Liivoja in his informative talk on “Implantable Technologies in the Armed Forces: Some International Law Considerations,” Tim McFarland's searching presentation on “Can Implants Be Weapons Under the Law?,” and the challenging views of Dr. Rob Nicholls on ”Implanting Military Rights and Wrongs.” My comments here by no means detract from the valuable contributions of the other speakers not mentioned.

Enhanced Spoken Sentence Retrieval Using a Conventional Automatic Speech Recognizer in Smart Home

With the rapid evolution of smart home environment, the demand for spoken information retrieval (e.g., voice-activated FAQ retrieval) on information appliances is increasing. In spoken information retrieval, users’ spoken queries are converted into text queries using automatic speech recognition (ASR) engines. If top-1 results of the ASR engines are incorrect, the errors are propagated to information retrieval systems. If a document collection is a small set of sentences such as frequently asked questions (FAQs), the errors have additional effect on the performance of information retrieval systems. To improve the performance of such a sentence retrieval system, we propose a post-processing model of an ASR engine. The post-processing model consists of a re-ranking and a query term generation model. The re-ranking model rearranges top-n outputs of the ASR engines using the ranking support vector machine (Ranking SVM). The query term generation model extracts meaningful content words from the re-ranked queries based on term frequencies and query rankings. In the experiments, the re-ranking model improved the top-1 performance results of an underlying ASR engine with 4.4% higher precision and 6.4% higher recall rate. The query term generation model improved the performance results of an underlying information retrieval system with an accuracy 2.4% to 2.6% higher. Based on the experimental result, the proposed model revealed that it could improve the performance of a spoken sentence retrieval system in a restricted domain.

Effect (Comparison between Elderly Person and Youth) of the Break in the Touch Typing Learning Comparison

The technical education using the information appliance of the old worker is required. However, an elderly person is negative about the utilization of the information appliance. I experimented on, this study about an appropriate break to suppress fatigue of the elderly person, and to learn a touch typing technology effectively and made it clear. The experiment performed two kinds of touch typing learning by the Computer Based Training software. I performed an experiment of elderly person and “Consecutive learning short break models” “Massed practice long break models” which changed the interval of learning and the break by the touch typing software for youths. I performed a questionnaire to a subject to collect the subjective data of fatigue and the learning burden at the same time. As a result, I knew the thing that “the elderly person controlled fatigue by a learning method to put a break in diligently for a short time in this experiment, and could learn a touch typing skill” “having a long it than a youth as for the time to be concerned with the touch typing of the elderly person.” that “the elderly person can learn a touch typing skill early by enjoying CBT learning.”

A novel algorithm for defect inspection of touch panels

Automatic optical inspection plays an important role to control the appearance quality of wide range of products in the product process. Recently, the high popularity of smartphones and information appliances drives significant demand of touch panels. However, the traditional frequency-based method which exploits the line structure feature of texture images is not effective for the defect detection of touch panels. The paper presents a novel spatial domain algorithm to inspect the defects on touch panel. By utilizing the characteristics of periodic patterns of the sensing circuits, an adaptive model for each pattern is learned online to effectively extract defects. The experimental results indicate that our proposed method achieves accurate detection with efficient computation. In addition, the users pay very little effort for the testing of different panel products.

ZnO Nanowire Based Photoelectrical Resistive Switches for Flexible Memory

In this work, a non-volatile resistive optoelectronic memory was demonstrated in a flexible system that plays the dual roles of a reversible photo-reactive element and a signal-collecting element. We attempted to demonstrate the tactile sensor by detecting the rotation angle and bending angle of the wearable information appliance worn by the user. This motion-sensing for certain critical angle and information-storing functionality is enabled by photo-tunable resistive switching behaviors, which results from bending the flexible device in diverse convex angles with respect to the incident light direction. Furthermore, we investigated the basic mechanism of resistive photoelectrical switching behaviors by studying the effects of electrostatic barrier at the Au/ZnO junction, e.g., a Schottky barrier depending on the photonic and electric condition. Moreover, by employing a polymer structure, application in a prototype device provided improved endurance or retention of data.

Research on the ARM-Based Smart Home Remote Monitoring System

As people continue to pursue high-quality life, smart home industry will definitely become the sunrise industry in the future information appliances industries. This paper analyzed the development and application of smart home industry in China and designed a AM-based small home monitoring system with low-cost, high efficiency, scalability after the actual investigation and device selection.

A Cognitive Engineering Design of a Smart Phone Information Appliance with Improved Usability

This paper focuses on a cognitive engineering design for a smart phone application with improved usability at a software-level update of an information appliance (digital video remote controller). The design process is based on the Norman's cognitive engineering framework that can be used to detect human-interface problems with the existing controller through a usability assessment. The process includes considering a menu structure and error location in a more detailed-level analysis, and proposes an improved design for the smart phone application that emulates a video controller. The resultant system is tested to show how much the usability has been enhanced. The proposed method indicates that smart-phone applications can be regarded as useful alternatives to improve the information appliances, yielding a typical case study toward the next generation cognitive computing systems.

Lightweight Morphological Analysis Model for Smart Home Applications Based on Natural Language Interfaces

With the rapid evolution of the smart home environment, the demand for natural language processing (NLP) applications on information appliances is increasing. However, it is not easy to embed NLP-based applications in information appliances because most information appliances have hardware constraints such as small memory, limited battery capacity, and restricted processing power. In this paper, we propose a lightweight morphological analysis model, which provides the first step module of NLP for many languages. To overcome hardware constraints, the proposed model modifies a well-known left-longest-match-preference (LLMP) model and simplifies a conventional hidden Markov model (HMM). In the experiments, the proposed model exhibited good performance (a response time of 0.0195 sec per sentence, a memory usage of 1.85 MB, a precision of 92%, and a recall rate of 90%) in terms of the various evaluation measures. On the basis of these experiments, we conclude that the proposed model is suitable for natural language interfaces of information appliances with many hardware limitations because it requires less memory and consumes less battery power.

Performance Evaluation of Thin Film Transistors: History, Technology Development and Comparison: A Review

In the past several years, the thin film transistor technology has progressed intensely, especially in the low temperature, large-area, high throughput fabrication process. Recently, various thin film transistors (TFT) technological sources have been realized, indicating that new information appliances that match new information infrastructures and lifestyles will be available in the future. In this paper, we review different types of TFTs, including amorphous silicon, polysilicon, organic and oxide TFTs. We report here on different techniques e.g. fabrication and simulation based which has been developed to accurately simulate TFT characteristics and to improve the understanding of the device operation. Here, we highlight the problem gap in the TFT technology that includes downscaling of TFTs and stability of p-type zinc oxide (ZnO) TFTs and ways to improve it.

An asymmetric dual-processor architecture for low-power information appliances

As users become increasingly conscious of their energy footprint—either to improve battery life or to respect the environment—improved energy efficiency of systems has gained in importance. This is especially important in the context of information appliances such as e-book readers that are meant to replace books, since their energy efficiency impacts how long the appliance can be used on a single charge of the battery. In this article, we present a new software and hardware architecture for information appliances that provides significant advantages in terms of device lifetime. The architecture combines a low-power microcontroller with a high-performance application processor, where the low-power microcontroller is used to handle simple user interactions (e.g., turning pages, inking, entering text) without waking up the main application processor. We demonstrate how this architecture is easily adapted to the traditional way of building user interfaces using a user interface markup language. We report on our initial measurements using an E Ink-based prototype. When comparing our hybrid architecture to a simpler solution we found that we can increase the battery life by a factor of 1.72 for a reading task and by a factor of 3.23 for a writing task. We conclude by presenting design guidelines aimed at optimizing the overall energy signature of information appliances.

모바일 기기 기반의 이러닝 콘텐츠 품질관리 평가 기준 개발

Abstract A wide variety of contents are now provided along with the development of information appliances. The purpose of this study was to examine what should be considered to boost the quality of mobile device based e-learning contents. For this study, 12 evaluation domains and 26 evaluation items were selected using the Delphi method. The factors to be considered for mobile device based e-learning contents quality are summarized 4 factor. In other words, for the purpose of managing the quality of mobile device based e-learning contents, there exist four areas to be considered, ‘foundation’, ‘contents’, ‘teaching design’ and ‘technology.’ The findings of this study are expected to contribute to the improvement of the quality of the educational contents. Key Words : e-learning Contents, Quality Assurance, Mobile * 본 논문은 2012년 정보통신산업진흥원의 모바일 기반 이러닝 콘텐츠 품질관리 기준 개발 연구비에 의해 지원되었음Received 6 January 2014, Revised 6 February 2014Accepted 20 February 2014Corresponding Author: Yong Kim(Korea National Open Univ.) Email: dragonknou@knou.ac.krⒸ The Society of Digital Policy & Management. All rights reserved. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.otg/licenses/by-nc/3.0), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is ISSN: 1738-1916 properly cited.

Lightweight Word Spacing Model Based on Short Text Messages for Social Networking in Smart Homes

In smart homes, information appliances interact with residents via social network services. To capture residents' intentions, the information appliances should analyze short text messages entered typically through small mobile devices. However, most information appliances have hardware constraints such as small memory, limited battery capacity, and restricted processing power. Therefore, it is not easy to embed intelligent applications based on natural language processing (NLP) techniques, which traditionally require large memory and high-end processing power, into information appliances. To overcome this problem, lightweight NLP modules should be implemented. We propose an automatic word spacing system, the first step module of NLP for many languages with their own word spacing rules, which is designed for information appliances with limited hardware resources. The proposed system consists of a word spacing dictionary and a pattern-matching module. When a sentence is entered, the pattern-matching module inserts spaces by simply looking up the word spacing dictionary in a back-off manner. In comparative experiments with previous models, the proposed method showed low memory usage (0.79 MB) and high character-unit accuracy (0.9460) without requiring complex arithmetical computations. On the basis of these experiments, we conclude that the proposed system is suitable for information appliances with many hardware limitations.

Incremental and Radical Innovation: Design Research vs. Technology and Meaning Change

Incremental and Radical Innovation: Design Research vs. Technology and Meaning Change Donald A. Norman, Roberto Verganti Donald A. Norman and Stephen W. Draper, Centered System Design: New Perspectives on Human–Computer Inter- action (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1986); Donald A. Norman, “Human-Centered Product Development,” Chapter 10 in The Invisible Computer: Why Good Products Can Fail, the Personal Computer Is So Complex, and Information Appliances Are the Solution (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), Background Our work began independently. Norman was one of the originators of the class of design exploration now commonly known as user- centered or human-centered design (HCD). 1 These methods have a common framework: an iterative cycle of investigation—usually characterized by observations, an ideation phase, and rapid proto- type and testing. Each iteration builds on the lessons learned from the previous cycle, and the process terminates either when the results are appropriate or when the allotted time has run out. Norman realized that this continual process of checking with the intended users would indeed lead to incremental enhancements of the product; he also realized that it actually was a form of hill climbing—a well-known mathematical procedure for finding local optimization. In hill climbing’s application to design, consider a multi-dimensional hill where position on one dimen- sion—height along the vertical axis—represents product quality; and where position along the other dimensions, represents choices among various design parameters. This image is usually illus- trated with just two axes: product quality along the vertical axis and design parameters along the horizontal, as shown in Figure 1. Hill-climbing is used in situations, such as design, where the shape of the hill cannot be known in advance. Therefore, one makes tiny movements along all the design dimensions and selects the one that yields an increase in height, repeating until satisfied. This movement is precisely what the repeated rapid prototyping and testing is doing in HCD. Think of a blindfolded person trying to reach the top of a hill by feeling the ground in all directions around the current position and then moving to the highest posi- tion, repeating until the “ground” in all directions is lower than the current one: This position would be the top of the hill. Although the hill-climbing procedure guarantees continual improvement, with eventual termination at the peak of the hill, it has a well-known limit: “Climbers” have no way of knowing whether even higher hills might be scaled in some other part of the design space. Hill-climbing methods get trapped in local maxima. © 2013 Massachusetts Institute of Technology DesignIssues: Volume 30, Number 1 Winter 2014 doi:10.1162/DESI_a_00250

Getting into Context Early: A Comparative Study of Laboratory and In-Context User Testing of Low-Fidelity Information Appliance Prototypes

ABSTRACTFor designers developing information appliances, bringing together the physical and digital elements of a product early in the design process presents a prototyping challenge. Whilst prototyping methods have been developed to address this need, these methods have so far only been evaluated using laboratory-based testing approaches. This paper argues that testing in-context should also be supported by prototyping methods, and presents the findings of a comparative study between a laboratory and in-context user test of early information appliance prototypes. A key question was whether the type of ‘rough and ready’ prototypes frequently found in user laboratory setting might, with some careful development, be suitable for in-context testing.The results of the study show that in-context and laboratory testing of early, ‘rough and ready’ prototypes uncovered different usability problems. In this study, in-context testing of prototypes uncovered problems with physical inputs and product format not seen in the laboratory environment. In contrast, the increased opportunities for spontaneous user reflection during laboratory testing provided insights into user expectations of functionality not seen during in-context testing.

Automating Configuration System and Protocol for Next‐Generation Home Appliances

Home appliance manufacturers have recently been trying to provide smart products capable of various Internet services. For example, one health care manufacturer provides a Wi‐Fi‐capable scale. Once users register their information with the manufacturer's server, their weight and body fat records are automatically uploaded to the server whenever they measure their weight. The users can then watch and check their weight log easily using a smart device, such as a smartphone or tablet. One of the biggest problems, however, is that the initial configuration of the appliances and the user registration process may be quite complicated to typical users who are unfamiliar with such IT devices. This paper proposes an autoconfiguration system structure and protocol for Internet‐capable home appliances, which supports the initial configuration and remote maintenance service of the device with only little user effort. Manufacturers can develop their own information appliances and provide differentiated services using the proposed system and protocol.