Aim/Purpose: This paper explores how professional doctorate candidates responded to the restricti... more Aim/Purpose: This paper explores how professional doctorate candidates responded to the restrictions and changed context of COVID-19. Using connectivism as a theoretical framework, it explores the ways in which their patterns of study were recalibrated in light of the restrictions caused by the pandemic. Specifically, this study aims to: explore the experience of the professional doctorate student during the pandemic; and demonstrate the ways in which networks are recalibrated and adapt to changing circumstances. Background: In 2020, in response to COVID-19 many countries, including the UK, went into lockdown resulting in most doctoral candidates being confined to their homes and restricted to online contact with peers and supervisors. Part-time students have a finely balanced pattern of work which was required to be recalibrated and refocused which required considerable adaptation on the part of the candidates. Methodology: A qualitative methodology was used comprising four focus g...
We present a study that investigates the effect of incorporating memory in the interaction for a ... more We present a study that investigates the effect of incorporating memory in the interaction for a virtual robotic tutor in terms of helping children achieve a pedagogical goal and the perceived likeability and empathy of the tutor. The domain is a virtual robotic tutor who is guiding and helping learners through a mobile Treasure Hunt exercise that tests their map reading skills. The contribution described in this paper is the discovery that incorporating ‘memory’ through utterances that recall events from previous interactions significantly increases the learner’s ability to perform a pedagogical task. However, the virtual tutor with memory was perceived as less likeable and the instructions given as harder to follow than with a virtual tutor without memory. In addition, there was a significant drop in perceived empathy. This work has a large potential influence in the field of interaction design for agents as one cannot blindly add in human-like features, such as, memory that impro...
Conference companion on Human factors in computing systems common ground - CHI '96, 1996
The introduction of HCI to Bane Sabadell is described, providing a brief history. Attempts to imp... more The introduction of HCI to Bane Sabadell is described, providing a brief history. Attempts to improve application usability and to encourage a focus on HCI issues are detailed. Several applications are described, identifying the success of the incorporation of HCI at Bane Sabadell. INTRODUCTION OF HCI TO BANC SABADELL Bane Sabadell is a medium sized Spanish bank, with 400 branches and 4000 employees. The inforrnatics division has 200 employees, who develop applications and provide user support. Programming is provided by external companies. Before 1990, there was a reliance on character based interfaces. In 1989, an application with a graphical interface, BOSS which provides transactional operations, was initiated. In its pre-introduction phase a human factors evaluation was performed. The resulting savings highlighted HCI potential and identified a need for HCI expertise. In 1994, an HCI specialist was employed fill-time. Since then, an HCI group, now consisting of 3 people, has evolved which provides support to Project Heads for usability issues, interface design and identification of user needs. BANC SABADELL NEEDS AND REQUIREMENTS Bane Sabadell has a dual language policy, and applications are produced in Catalan and Spanish. In-house development permits the development of customised applications and to facilitate this we have purchased an interface design tool. @ Copyright on this material is held by the author(s) Application homogeneity is encouraged to reduce costs of training, development and maintenance, demanding HCI group effort in determining how varying user needs cam be supported with the same application. HCI AND APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT Knowledge transfer has been facilitated through producing interface design guidelines, an important issue as there is little HCI information in Catalan (the informatics division working language). Interface standards have been produced for applications which use software such as MicroSotl Access. A BOSS interface generator permits rapid development whilst ensuring consistency to in-house standards. To ensure high quality graphical design and a consistent corporate image for our InterNet web, a Page Editor has been developed which has a defined set of graphical elements and interaction standards. Recent activities include the use of iterative design and rapid prototyping. This enables project costing to remain acceptable, whilst permitting savings due to usability problem discovery early in the lifecycle. Prototyping has facilitated communication with users, improving input of constructive criticism and reducing misunderstandings. Channels for user ideas and improvements are provided through an “Initiative Competition. ” Suggestions vary from simple improvements to task structures up to ideas for full scale projects. Each suggestion is evaluated for improvement in productivity, quality (for clients and users) and costbenefits. Users are asked to rank applications monthly, helping to identify unsuccessfid applications which may need usability testing and modification. The HCI group is extending the project lifecycle to include issues such as usability goal setting, user testing
Data modelling is an important skill tbr students undertaking university courses in computing and... more Data modelling is an important skill tbr students undertaking university courses in computing and Infi~rnlation Systems. It is a complex task which is not currently well provided with tool based support. This paper describes extensions to a learning environment for data modelling which is based on a text based virtual reality panldigm. This learning environment has been enhanced by the
Aim/Purpose: This paper explores how professional doctorate candidates responded to the restricti... more Aim/Purpose: This paper explores how professional doctorate candidates responded to the restrictions and changed context of COVID-19. Using connectivism as a theoretical framework, it explores the ways in which their patterns of study were recalibrated in light of the restrictions caused by the pandemic. Specifically, this study aims to: explore the experience of the professional doctorate student during the pandemic; and demonstrate the ways in which networks are recalibrated and adapt to changing circumstances. Background: In 2020, in response to COVID-19 many countries, including the UK, went into lockdown resulting in most doctoral candidates being confined to their homes and restricted to online contact with peers and supervisors. Part-time students have a finely balanced pattern of work which was required to be recalibrated and refocused which required considerable adaptation on the part of the candidates. Methodology: A qualitative methodology was used comprising four focus g...
We present a study that investigates the effect of incorporating memory in the interaction for a ... more We present a study that investigates the effect of incorporating memory in the interaction for a virtual robotic tutor in terms of helping children achieve a pedagogical goal and the perceived likeability and empathy of the tutor. The domain is a virtual robotic tutor who is guiding and helping learners through a mobile Treasure Hunt exercise that tests their map reading skills. The contribution described in this paper is the discovery that incorporating ‘memory’ through utterances that recall events from previous interactions significantly increases the learner’s ability to perform a pedagogical task. However, the virtual tutor with memory was perceived as less likeable and the instructions given as harder to follow than with a virtual tutor without memory. In addition, there was a significant drop in perceived empathy. This work has a large potential influence in the field of interaction design for agents as one cannot blindly add in human-like features, such as, memory that impro...
Conference companion on Human factors in computing systems common ground - CHI '96, 1996
The introduction of HCI to Bane Sabadell is described, providing a brief history. Attempts to imp... more The introduction of HCI to Bane Sabadell is described, providing a brief history. Attempts to improve application usability and to encourage a focus on HCI issues are detailed. Several applications are described, identifying the success of the incorporation of HCI at Bane Sabadell. INTRODUCTION OF HCI TO BANC SABADELL Bane Sabadell is a medium sized Spanish bank, with 400 branches and 4000 employees. The inforrnatics division has 200 employees, who develop applications and provide user support. Programming is provided by external companies. Before 1990, there was a reliance on character based interfaces. In 1989, an application with a graphical interface, BOSS which provides transactional operations, was initiated. In its pre-introduction phase a human factors evaluation was performed. The resulting savings highlighted HCI potential and identified a need for HCI expertise. In 1994, an HCI specialist was employed fill-time. Since then, an HCI group, now consisting of 3 people, has evolved which provides support to Project Heads for usability issues, interface design and identification of user needs. BANC SABADELL NEEDS AND REQUIREMENTS Bane Sabadell has a dual language policy, and applications are produced in Catalan and Spanish. In-house development permits the development of customised applications and to facilitate this we have purchased an interface design tool. @ Copyright on this material is held by the author(s) Application homogeneity is encouraged to reduce costs of training, development and maintenance, demanding HCI group effort in determining how varying user needs cam be supported with the same application. HCI AND APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT Knowledge transfer has been facilitated through producing interface design guidelines, an important issue as there is little HCI information in Catalan (the informatics division working language). Interface standards have been produced for applications which use software such as MicroSotl Access. A BOSS interface generator permits rapid development whilst ensuring consistency to in-house standards. To ensure high quality graphical design and a consistent corporate image for our InterNet web, a Page Editor has been developed which has a defined set of graphical elements and interaction standards. Recent activities include the use of iterative design and rapid prototyping. This enables project costing to remain acceptable, whilst permitting savings due to usability problem discovery early in the lifecycle. Prototyping has facilitated communication with users, improving input of constructive criticism and reducing misunderstandings. Channels for user ideas and improvements are provided through an “Initiative Competition. ” Suggestions vary from simple improvements to task structures up to ideas for full scale projects. Each suggestion is evaluated for improvement in productivity, quality (for clients and users) and costbenefits. Users are asked to rank applications monthly, helping to identify unsuccessfid applications which may need usability testing and modification. The HCI group is extending the project lifecycle to include issues such as usability goal setting, user testing
Data modelling is an important skill tbr students undertaking university courses in computing and... more Data modelling is an important skill tbr students undertaking university courses in computing and Infi~rnlation Systems. It is a complex task which is not currently well provided with tool based support. This paper describes extensions to a learning environment for data modelling which is based on a text based virtual reality panldigm. This learning environment has been enhanced by the
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Papers by Lynne Hall