Research Article
Human-Computer Interaction Research Status and Trends Based on the Taiwan Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
Department of Applied Geoinformatics, Chia Nan University of Pharmacy and Science, Taiwan 717, Republic of China
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research has already had a history of thirty or forty years in America and Europe. The environment of HCI had developed from differ device of desktop, laptop, palmtop to handheld. From this perspective, as computing curricula have evolved, HCI has gradually become part of many of them and the recent ACM/IEEE report on the core of computing science and engineering includes HCI as one of the fundamental subareas that should be addressed, HCI also is a rapidly evolving discipline which implies that courses in this area must be carefully put together so that they do not become quickly out of date (Santos, 2006). HCI is concerned with investigating the relationship between human beings, computer systems and applications. Su and Liu (2012) and Love (2005) also described that HCI was multidisciplinary area with various academic subjects making contributions that it was also a discipline concerned with an understanding of the users, the consideration needs, the design systems and implementation of interactive mobile computing systems for human beings use. Even though major improvements have been made in many areas regarding HCI, important issues still remain unresolved (Szameitat et al., 2009). For this reason, the purpose of the study is to investigate and explore the Taiwan research work of academic HCI fields in 2000s. Moreover it also discusses the development, the scopes, the change and the tendency of domestic HCI research activities. In this regard, researchers have used content analysis as one of the key research methods for the study of HCI, because identifying HCI research status and trends that would trigger some particular types of HCI is a important issue in HCI. Based on the findings, the study provided recommendations and references for the educational administrative organizations, school administrations, teachers, designers of future HCI educational plans and further research.
In his review on HCI, Shackel (1985) concluded that HCI is a major interdisciplinary conjunction of several sciences and technologies: Indeed some of the evidence to be presented in this review suggests that it is fast becoming an established discipline in its own right. Shackel (1985) indicated that the first recorded papers in the literature was published nearly 40 years ago, including the prospect for "Man-computer symbiosis" heralded by Licklider (1960). After 40 years, the growth of research and application, as reflected in numbers of publications, conforms closely to growth curves already well-recognized in other sectors of science and technology, as indicators of maturity (Shackel, 1985). Reddy and Basir (2010) so eloquently argued that HCI has been the focus of attention for researchers in the past decade with considerable work being done in the various modalities for communicating with a computer. At the same time Fallman (2010) found that HCI from the early 1990s onwards, researchers and designers have become increasingly interested in better understanding and designing for these new kinds of relationships between users, artifacts and contexts. Alternatively Carroll (1997) pointed out that HCI has emerged relatively recently as a highly successful area of computer science research and development and of applied psychology. Therefore, the researches of Fallman (2003), Gaver et al. (1999) and Jordan (2000) showed that a recent trend in HCI is also to seek inspiration in design methods, theory and practice rather than in formal methods of evaluation, Novak et al. (2012) addressed that since the early studies of HCI, researchers have been interested in learning how humans respond to the physical and psychological demands of working with technology.
Usability is a term that has several meanings. According to ISO 9241 usability is "the extent to which a computer system enables users, in a given context of use, to achieve specified goals effectively and efficiently while promoting feelings of satisfaction". In addition to general description of what usability is, several attributes of usability have also been proposed (Lee, 2007).
Nielsen (1993) separated five attributes for usability-represented in the usability branch in Learnability, Efficiency, Memorability, Errors, Satisfaction, as shown in Fig. 1.
• | Learnability: Easy to learn so that the user can rapidly start getting some work done with the system |
• | Efficiency: Efficient to use, so that once the user has learned the system, a high level of productivity is possible |
• | Memorability: Easy to remember, so that the casual user is able to return to the system after some period of not having used it, without having to learn everything all over again |
• | Errors: Low error rate, so that users make few errors during the use of the system and so that if they do make errors they can easily recover from them. Further, catastrophic errors must not occur |
Lee (2007) pointed out that researchers and practitioners in the field of human factors, software/hardware engineering, control, reliability, safety and many other disciplines, have been cultivating the solid and sound heritage of formal methods.
Moreover, HCI promises to support more sophisticated and natural input and output, to enable users to perform potentially complex tasks more quickly and to increase user satisfaction. Therefore, every designer wants to build high-quality and friendliness interfaces that are admired by users. The user interfaces had been made for a user-centered system development process, a process in which usability was a primary goal (Yen, 2007).
Harrison and Thimbleby (1990) stated that HCI is a multidisciplinary field in need of formal methods for precise notations and mathematical methods.
Fig. 1: | System acceptability attributes (Nielsen, 1993) |
Table 1: | Content of HCI |
Even though the scope is limited in some way, its still worthwhile to use formal methods. Researchers think that formal methods have two practical values (Lee, 2007).
First practical value (Kieras and Polson, 1985):
• | Possibility of simulations models using the formal representations |
• | Quantitative measures of user complexity resulting from simulation modeling |
• | Basis for the generation and evaluation of training materials and reference documentation |
Second practical value (Parnas, 1969):
• | Clear and concise notation and representation |
• | Served as a method to divide the development tasks |
• | Utilities for eliminating identical states, violation and other improvement, such as algorithms for finding equivalent machine and machine minimization |
According to the ACM special interest group on human-computer interaction (Hewett et al., 1992). HCI is a discipline concerned with the design, evaluation and implementation of interactive computing systems for human use and the study of major problems surrounding them.
Fig. 2: | Human-computer interaction |
The topics in Table 1 derived from a consideration of five interrelated aspects of human-computer interaction: The nature of human-computer interaction (N), the use and context of computers (U), human characteristics (H), computer system and interface architecture (C) and the development process (D). Although not content areas, per se and not discussed in the inventory below, project presentations and examinations (P) have been included as a category in Table 1 to stress the importance of having students be exposed to content both through lecture and through the process of actually working on course projects and in recognition of the fact that in most instructional environments some sort of evaluation of student mastery of content is necessary.
More than that, ACM/SIGHCI pointed out that some of the interrelationships among these topics are represented in Fig. 2. Computer systems exist within a larger social, organizational and work milieu (U1). Within this context there are applications for which we wish to employ computer systems (U2). But the process of putting computers to work means that the human, technical and work aspects of the application situation must be brought into fit with each other through human learning, system tailor ability or other strategies (U3). In addition to the use and social context of computers, on the human side we must also take into account the human information processing (H1), communication (H2) and physical (H3) characteristics of users. On the computer side, a variety of technologies have been developed for supporting interaction with humans: Input and output devices connect the human and the machine (C1). These are used in a number of techniques for organizing a dialogue (C2). These techniques are used in turn to implement larger design elements, such as the metaphor of the interface (C3). Getting deeper into the machine substrata supporting the dialogue, the dialogue may make extensive use of computer graphics techniques (C4).
Based on the above literatures, we have adopted ACM/SIGHCI, defined that Human-Computer Interaction including three categories: "Use and Context", "Human", "Computer" and "Development Process".
Taiwan Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations belong to National Central Library (NCL). NCL provides free online services to general public on theses and dissertation of academic degrees. There are over 25,000 users online during peak hours and we offer more than 800,000 inquiries every day so that it is now one of the most important academic support web sites in the country. Based on the law regarding the awarding of academic degrees, article 8, the National Central Library (NCL) is the only national depository library of theses and dissertations, they are responsible of collecting original paper versions of theses and dissertations as well as preserving and enabling public readers.
Over years, being entrusted by Ministry of Education, NCL has established national class complete bibliographic database and integrated information platform on theses and dissertations. Based on "Open Access", freedom, equality and open spirit, to promote collaborative production and sharing of theses and dissertations of national academic degrees. We base on the service concept of national resources should be used on people as were acquired from people, so we promote freedom of communicating academic information, take care of those information vulnerable people so to realize social justice of academic equality. Through this nationwide academic research support platform, NCL provides following value-add services on theses and dissertations knowledge, so that to contribute to the important infrastructure of upgrading academic research culture and exposing research achievements of national higher education.
• | Using website to represent government so that to help universities and graduate students exposed to the world and grasp perfect opportunities to be certified academic degrees and publicized in global academic domain based on their academic achievements |
• | Assisting universities to get higher exposure, citation frequency and academic coverage in international academic fields |
• | Through this open communication mechanism of academic information, combined with the public opinions to supervise and protect so that theses plagiarizing and ghostwriter can be ceased |
• | To help universities to preserve permanently, fine reserve and permanent usage of electronic full text of national theses and dissertations |
• | Through non-exclusive authorization to ladle out educational resources in order to the whole capacity of national academic research |
Sample: The samples for this research were selected from "Taiwan Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations" about "Human-Computer Interaction", "HCI" title from 1983-2010 in Taiwan. The totals of 219 papers were selected to this study-content analysis.
Content analysis: The content analysis method derives from 18th century Sweden. Content analysis is also known as informational analysis or documentary analysis. Studies from numerous fields acquire data from published literature which makes content analysis valuable and significant. Neuman (1997) defined content analysis as: A technique for gathering and analyzing the content of text. The "content" refers to words, meanings, pictures, symbols, ideas, themes, or any message that can be communicated. Content analysis including three steps: Open coding, axial coding and selective coding, it would be step by step to complete.
Data processing and analysis: This study used the "Taiwan Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations" as inspection tool, analyses the papers that titled with "Virtual reality". Two hundred and nineteen papers were adapted during 1983-2010. The researcher uses conceptualization, as well as coding skill. Hewett et al. (1992) defined that Human-Computer Interaction including four categories: "Use and Context", "Human", "Computer" and "Development Process".
Percent agreement: This criterion is concerned with whether codes agree as to the precise values assigned to a given variable. For Holsti (1969), in cases in which two coders codes the same units (which is the recommended method), this is equal to percent agreement. A conceptual formula for percent agreement could be written as in Eq. 1:
(1) |
where, PA stands for "Proportion agreement, observed," X is the number of agreements between two coders and Y and Z are the number of units coded by coders Y and Z, respectively.
Table 2: | Reliability of content analysis on virtual reality. |
This statistic also ranges from 0 (no agreement) to 1.00 (perfect agreement).
Reliability: Reliability should be assessed at two points in a content analysis. A formula could be written as follows and in Table 2:
(2) |
where, N is the total number of coders:
Average PA = (0.86+0.84+0.89)/3 = 0.86
Content reliability = 3×0.86/[1+(3-1)×0.86] = 0.95
One of the most important achievements of human-computer interaction is integrated research and practice and evolving models. Regarded as the interaction cognitive science and cognitive project at first, has explained this model. Later on, it includes in different scientific foundations ambitiously, especially the society and organizing the cognition of the psychology, activity theory, dispersing type and human activity of sociology and anthropology method, including design, development of technology and activity of allocating funds. At present, this model includes in designing practice and research to cross the broad spectrum, for example, experiencing and ecological sustainability of the user theorizing it. Develop in the state of affair, human-computer interaction has offered a blueprint for the fact that science and practice are all unprecedented interaction. Always referred to as designing scientifically or courting the teacher HCI of instruction, this regard the ones original border as, it study single human-computer interaction which contributing design and much richer ontologies of user experience.
Research samples: Table 3 illustrated the number of studies on "Human-Computer Interaction" from 1983-2010. In longitudinal aspect, the number of studies on "Human-Computer Interaction" has increased from 1983-1999, 2000-2005, 2006-2007 and 2008-2010.
Categories of human-computer interaction: Table 4 showed the shifts of categories from 1983-2010. The category "Development Process" ranked top one, with the number of studies of 89 of the total research papers. The category "Human" also ranked top two, with an average of 22.37% of the total research papers.
Fig. 3: | Research trends for Human-Computer Interaction |
Table 3: | Papers and percentages of virtual reality |
Table 4: | Papers and percentages of categories |
The third category is "Use and Context" with an average of 19.63% of the total research papers. Finally, the category "Computer" ranked last one with an average of 17.35% of the total research papers.
Take a look at the trends of Human-Computer Interaction of curve. Here are the trends of lines that the HCI from Year 1983-2010 in Taiwan. In Fig. 3, the horizontal axis represents the year. The vertical axis shows papers. It includes three research domains: Development Process, Human, Use and Context and Computer. Lets turn our attention to the trends of lines. As you can see Development Process line was higher than Human, Use and Context and Computer.
This study used the "Taiwan Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations" as inspection tool, content analyses the papers that titled with "Human-Computer Interaction". The 219 papers were adapted from 1983 and 2010. Four findings were concluded, the result of this research will offer the trend of HCI as the result for the reference of the further study.
After open coding, implements axial coding and by ACM/SIGHCI it was defined that Human-Computer Interaction including four categories: "Use and Context", "Human", "Computer" and "Development Process", also proposed that suggested to the HCI study and the HCI educations research, discovers common and the different point, the concept changes into three categories.
In all research papers, the "Development Process" category was the most. Especially, developing the system and simulation that educate or train the user.
From the quantitative, the number of research paper was the most in 2010. These results were consistent with National Science Council of Taiwan has been investing in Human-Computer Interaction from 2010.
Although, the trend of the HCI research has increased, especially, the Taiwan began launching a series of action plans for "six emerging industries" and "four smart industries" which these consist of the HCI industry that Taiwan currently enjoys an advantage in "Use and Context", "Human", "Computer" and "Development Process".
The authors would like to thank the National Science Council of Taiwan, R.O.C., for financially supporting this work under Grant NSC 100-2221-E-041-011.