Romanian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction

6-10

Authors: Costin Pribeanu

Recent work on usability and user experience shows several concerns on the validity of evaluation instruments. There is a debate on the use of standardized scales versus short scales, such as UMUX and UMUX-LITE or even a single-item measure of usability. Nevertheless, there are relatively few papers reporting the testing of these scales together for reliability and validity. This paper aims at discussing the UMUX and UMUX-LITE scales that have been tested in the context of Facebook use by university students. From a theoretical point of view, both scales are questionable. From an empirical point of view, the testing results confirmed a lack of unidimensionality as well as a poor reliability and convergent validity of these scales.

22-25

Authors: Stefan Traușan-Matu, Brahma Dathan

This paper presents the results of an experiment in which students are asked to reposition rectangular shapes in a window in two cases: when they are or they are not told that the window should be considered the configuration of a graphical user interface (GUI). The main aim of the research is to investigate if users have different aesthetical preferences in the two distinct cases. Other goals are to see if, in the case of a GUI, the aesthetical criteria relate to cognitive ergonomics and if there are some preferred shape patterns.

36-41

Authors: Szabolcs Orban, Teodor Stefanut

This article shows our approach on determining the global position of an Android device user, who wants to navigate in an interior of a building. The application is based on our previous application, which offers the possibility to navigate through a 3D model using the movement of a mobile phone, determined by its own sensors. Previously the application used the navigations starting position given by the user himself. The method presented in this article adds to the accuracy of the existing application by using predefined points detected with the phone’s camera. These points are placed in the building to determine the initial position or to correct the placement errors of the user. After the location is determined the application switches back to the navigation using the phone’s sensors.

46-49

Authors: Marian-Nicolae Pinzariu, Adrian Iftene

The current paper exposes the development of a game application that combines augmented reality, modern robotics, mobile features and multiplayer networking in order to create an immersive collaboration system, where people can interconnect to have fun and complete entertaining tasks together. SMAUG is a game based on Sphero 2.0 robotic ball, where multiple players share the same driving control of the robot. Depending on the game session and quest, a player can influence a certain moving direction or the robot's speed. Furthermore, the playground is augmented on the driving surface, so each player is looking to the game scene through his/her mobile’s camera. The main objective here is that players need to collaborate in order to accomplish various tasks: collecting game artifacts, drive on augmented tracks, break down walls/gates, escape mazes and so on. In order to accomplish this objective the game is demanding collaboration: the game artifacts are distributed to different players augmented views, so they will need to communicate often in order to drive Sphero in the right direction. Finally, the most important objective was to open a new perspective on the Sphero-driven application development, creating at the same time the possibility of using mobile devices to conduct team-building activities.

58-64

Authors: Ioana Monica Ciolan, Sabin C. Buraga, Ion Dafinoiu

Virtual reality is a new technology used in the treatment of nicotine addiction that involves immersing smokers in environments with specific stimuli in order to reduce the level of craving. The present study aims to present a new virtual reality technology (in this case, Oculus Rift) used to assess craving of Romanian smokers. Results showed that smokers feel a higher craving after the exposure to virtual reality environments with specific stimuli than neutral stimuli.

69-75

Authors: Mihaela Ciugudean, Dorian Gorgan

This paper aims to illustrate a methodology for identifying and assessing a set of performance issues encountered in a particular web application, with impact on the usability level. Throughout this methodology, several visual techniques are determined and investigated by taking advantage of the functionalities offered by available performance monitoring tools such as JMeter and VisualVM. This way, the major performance concerns and their impact on the web application usability are easily determined. Therefore, by identifying the problematic parts of a system, corrective measures could be taken, particularly designed to operate on the root cause of the problem, thus leading to the targeted objective. Moreover, some performance improvement recommendations are further on presented in order to enhance the overall usability and the user experience, the actual goal of the research and development activities conducted. These performance concerns might be designed and implemented after fixing the critical parts causing usability problems and consequently, maximizing the user satisfaction and comfort when exploring the functionalities offered by a particular web application.

81-85

Authors: Gabriel Gorghiu, Valentina Iuliana Manea, Dragoș Daniel Iordache, Costin Pribeanu

Recent research on the use of social networking websites reveals an intense use of Facebook that may cross the boundaries between use and abuse and may lead to dependence. The objective of this paper is to analyze the relationship between the Facebook dependence and the negative consequences of the excessive use of Facebook on the students’ university work. An associated objective is to adapt and test two sub-scales measuring the withdrawal syndrome and the negative effects on the university work. The results of two empirical study that used samples from two Romanian universities show a significant positive correlation between the Facebook dependence and its negative effects on the work of students.

91-94

Authors: Carmen Holotescu

With the proliferation of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) providers, like Coursera, edX, FutureLearn, UniCampus.ro, NOVAMOOC.uvt.ro or MOOC.ro, it’s a real challenge to find the best learning resource. MOOCBuddy – a MOOC recommender system as a chatbot for Facebook Messenger, based on user’s social media profile and interests, could be a solution. MOOCBuddy is looking like the big trend of 2016, based on the Messenger Platform launched by Facebook in the mid of April 2016.

103-106

Authors: Andrei - Bogdan Baran , Adrian Iftene

Twitter is among the fastest-growing online social networking services, with more than 140 million users producing over 400 million tweets per day. It enables users to post status updates (tweets) about a huge variety of topics to a network of followers using various communication services such as cell phones, e-mails, Web interfaces, or other third-party applications. Monitoring and analyzing this rich and continuous user-generated content can lead to obtaining valuable information about local and global news and events, because virtually, any person witnessing or involved in any event is nowadays able to disseminate real time information, which can reach the other side of the world as the event unfolds. Having a rich data set, we are going to show how to process the tweets in order to obtain valuable information in real time, based on user preferences and different search criteria.

113-118

Authors: Alexandre Philippe Mangra, Adrian Sabou, Dorian Gorgan

This paper presents an approach to terrain synthesis from minimal-detail user-provided height-maps. There is no assumption regarding the level of detail provided, in order to allow users without access to powerful height-map tools and/or resources to generate usable terrain based on a self-provided crude feature plan. We present the issues stemming from a lack of detail in user input, notably sharp altitude increases and oversimplified feature edges, and proceed to elaborate on using the terrain synthesis algorithm to solve the issues and create a level of detail that more closely resembles realistic terrain models. The algorithm pipeline is presented and parametrized to show how the user can influence the resulting model.