Recursos

Surveys and questionnaires are commonly used to capture people’s experiences with technology. However, some older users experience issues when reading and filling out forms, and inexperienced computer users may not be comfortable with web-based versions. To improve the report of user experience, we designed and implemented Aestimo, a tangible interface based on a shortened version of the AttrakDiff questionnaire. The interface was evaluated during a study with 20 older adults (age avg. = 65.6). Although completing the Aestimo questionnaire took longer than a paper-and-pen version of AttrakDiff, 60% of participants preferred Aestimo over AttrakDiff. Aestimo was found to be innovative and inviting, and to stimulate the senses and the mind. Participants liked feeling guided by the interface, and also found their experience to be playful and fun. Overall, the evaluation of Aestimo was highly positive and suggests that some user groups may benefit from the availability of innovative evaluation experiences.

In recent years there has been a growing interest in creating applications that allow grandparents to communicate with grandchildren living at a distance, since the involvement of grandparents in the lives of grandchildren is important for both generations. Therefore, it is necessary to know the context of the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren and how they communicate. This article presents a proposal for SINCOM: a simple and intergenerational communication tool that includes the needs and communication preferences of those involved. The proposal has two main characteristics: allowing communication without parental involvement, and incorporating recreational activities to generate conversation topics. These findings help in the development of a functional and complete application that can be evaluated with more users.

With the realization of this article it is to give a better panorama about the leasing of technologies of information in our country, analyzing the advantages and obstacles that it presents, leasing companies criteria, and the legal frame that regulates this financing modality.

El estudio analiza desde la perspectiva de los empleadores de los graduados de la carrera de Informática Empresarial de las sedes regionales de la Universidad de Costa Rica las debilidades y fortalezas en relación con la formación académica y gestión del desempeño. La información se obtuvo de una muestra de 47 empleadores de diferentes provincias del país. Se exponen los resultados relacionados con su género, grado académico y el grado de satisfacción de los empleadores con respecto al lenguaje de programación, administración de las tecnologías de información (TI), economía de los recursos y gestión de recursos de TI.

Tangible User Interfaces allow users to manipulate digital information while taking advantage of their skills in using physical objects. This may be especially advantageous for older users with a lack of experience in technology use. This paper presents the implementation of TorBook, a tangible user interface in book format that detects the page that is open. We conducted an evaluation with 20 older adults to evaluate the functionality of TorBook. We find that participants feel comfortable with a tangible interface that uses a book metaphor, but that manipulation must be improved to become as similar as possible in its use as a regular book.

Monitoring emotional information is highly complex: it is difficult to accurately register it due to subjectivity and technical complexities; and it is difficult to provide reliability and incorporate contextual information. However, it is an important problem in healthcare, since it is useful to monitor people, especially if they are at a high risk of depression or other mental illnesses. Research in affective computing seeks to generate new methodologies to help store, analyze and share this information. Several techniques have been proposed to monitor emotions. One of them is self-report, which is a subjective method of measuring emotions from the perspective of the individual. This work presents a new tangible interface to self-report emotions, called EmoBall, specifically designed for people with low digital competences, since it requires practically no previous knowledge of technology. We evaluated this interface and analyze the results of the evaluation, considering the digital skills of the interviewed users. We found EmoBall to be a promising first step towards a tangible interface to self-report emotions; however, we did not find evidence of digital competences affecting user perceptions of the device. This paper discusses our insights regarding the reasons for these results, as well as directions for future research.

With the realization of this article it is to give a better panorama about the concepts and characteristic of the Engineering of Requirements (IR), looking for to stand out their importance inside the cycle of development of projects of software development, to know the different alternative or techniques that exist to identify them, as well as to show the importance that have the automated tools inside this process of administration of requirements.

El comercio electrónico se presenta en la sociedad costarricense como una nueva forma de realizar negocios, como una estrategia de las compañías para mantener competitividad y como forma de mostrarse y expanderse a través de todo el mundo. Sin embargo, como todo proceso nuevo, el e-commerce trae con sigo transformaciones y temores que se deben superar. Esta bien un cambio cultural y requiere, sin duda, un proceso de educación para lograr incorporarlo en la cotidianeidad. Requiere además cambios en el aparato legal, económico y social de nuestra sociedad. Este trabajo presenta algunos de los factores que se deben superar y algunos beneficios que el comercio electrónico puede traer a nuestra sociedad.

While user experience assessment enables understanding users' perception about a product, limitations have been encountered when elders use questionnaires to evaluate user experience. In this paper we present the design process of Aestimo, a tangible interface to assist elderly people when evaluating the user experience of interactive prototypes. Our prototype is a simplification of the AttrakDiff questionnaire, which gives a chance to record one's overall opinion (i.e., speech) and emotions. In addition, our design uses playful interaction styles that are familiar to the elderly. In a preliminary evaluation, elderly found Aestimo entertaining and easy to use. As future work, we aim to explore new materials in building Aestimo and to perform a comprehensive evaluation with several elders.

Affective computing has focused on emotion acquisition using techniques of objective (sensors, facial recognition, physiological signals) and subjective measurement (self-report). Each technique has advantages and drawbacks, and a combination of the information generated from each could provide systems more balanced and accurate information about user emotions. However, there are several benefits to self-reporting emotions, over objective techniques: the collected information may be more precise and it is less intrusive to determine. This systematic literature review focuses on analyzing which technologies have been proposed to conduct subjective measurements of emotions through self-report. We aim to understand the state of the art regarding the features of interfaces for emotional self-report, identify the context for which they were designed, and describe several other aspects of the technologies. A SLR was conducted, resulting in 18 selected papers, 13 of which satisfied the inclusion criteria. We identified most existing systems use graphical user interfaces, and there are very few proposals that use tangible user interfaces to self-report emotional information, which may be an opportunity to design novel interfaces, especially for populations with low digital skills, e.g. older adults.