How do you design personalized user experiences that delight and provide value to the customers of an eCommerce site? Personalization does not guarantee high quality user experience: a personalized user experience has the best chance of success if it is developed using a set of best practices in HCI. In this book 35 experts from academia, industry and government focus on issues in the design of personalized web sites. The topics range from the design and evaluation of user interfaces and tools to information architecture and computer programming related to commercial web sites. The book...

TV viewers today are exposed to overwhelming amounts of information, and challenged by the plethora of interactive functionality provided by current set-top boxes. To ensure broad adoption of this technology by consumers, future Digital Television will have to take usability issues thoroughly into account. In particular, serious attention must be paid to facilitate the selection of content on an individual basis, and to provide easy-to-use interfaces that satisfy viewers' interaction requirements.

This volume collects selected research reports on the development of personalized...

Embodied conversational agents (ECAs) are autonomous software entities with human-like appearance and communication skills. These agents can take on a number of different roles, for example, as an assistant, tutor, information provider, or customer service agent. They may also simply represent or entertain a user.

The precise nature and benefits of different characteristics of ECAs requires careful investigation. Questions range from the function of an eyebrow raise to mechanisms for assessing and improving ECA trustworthiness.

This book will help experts and designers in the...

"Web Engineering: Modelling and Implementing Web Applications" presents the state of the art approaches for obtaining a correct and complete Web software product from conceptual schemas, represented via well-known design notations.

Describing mature and consolidated approaches to developing complex applications, this edited volume is divided into three parts and covers the challenges web application developers face; design issues for web applications; and how to measure and evaluate web applications in a consistent way.

With contributions from leading researchers in the field...

Cognition, Communication and Interaction examines the theoretical and methodological research issues that underlie the design and use of interactive technology. Present interactive designs are addressing the multi-modality of human interaction and the multi-sensory dimension of how we engage with each other. This book aims to provide a trans-disciplinary research framework and methodology for interaction design. The analysis directs attention to three human capacities that our engagement with interactive technology has made salient and open to constant redefinition. These capacities are...

"Maturing Usability" provides an understanding of how current research and practice has contributed towards improving quality issues in software, interaction and value.

Divided into three parts, 'Quality in Software' looks at how using development tools can enhance the usability of a system, and how methods and models can be integrated into the process to help develop effective user interfaces. 'Quality in Interaction' addresses theoretical frameworks on the nature of interactions; techniques and metrics for evaluation interaction quality; and the transfer of concepts and methods...

By now, most people have become familiar with the basic functionality and interfaces of computers. However, developing new or modified applications that effectively support users' goals still requires considerable expertise in programming that cannot be expected from most people. Thus, one fundamental challenge for the coming years is to develop environments that allow users who do not have background in programming to develop or modify their own applications, with the ultimate aim of empowering people to flexibly employ advanced information and communication technologies.

The...

Most learning takes place in communities. People continually learn through their participation with others in everyday activities. Such learning is important in contemporary society because formal education cannot prepare people for a world that changes rapidly and continually. We need to live in learning communities.

This volume gathers together all of the scholarly materials directly emanating from a workshop held in August 2005, when a multidisciplinary group of scholars met at Penn State's College of Information Sciences and Technology to discuss 'learning in...

This book integrates a wide range of research topics related to and necessary for the development of proactive, smart, computers in the human interaction loop, including the development of audio-visual perceptual components for such environments; the design, implementation and analysis of novel proactive perceptive services supporting humans; the development of software architectures, ontologies and tools necessary for building such environments and services, as well as approaches for the evaluation of such technologies and services.

The book is based on a major European Integrated...

By now, most people have become familiar with the basic functionality and interfaces of computers. However, developing new or modified applications that effectively support users' goals still requires considerable expertise in programming that cannot be expected from most people. Thus, one fundamental challenge for the coming years is to develop environments that allow users who do not have background in programming to develop or modify their own applications, with the ultimate aim of empowering people to flexibly employ advanced information and communication technologies.

The...