Smart intersections have the potential to improve road safety with sensing, communication, and edge computing technologies. Perception sensors installed at a smart intersection can monitor the traffic environment in real-time and send infrastructure-based warnings to nearby travelers through vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication. This study investigated how infrastructure-based warnings can influence driving behaviors and improve roundabout safety through a driving simulator experiment. A co-simulation platform integrating Simulation of Urban Mobility (SUMO) and Webots was developed to serve as the driving simulator. A real-world roundabout in Ann Arbor, Michigan was built in the co-simulation platform as the study area, and merging scenarios were investigated. 36 participants were recruited and asked to navigate the roundabout under three aggressiveness levels (low, medium, and high) and three collision-warning designs (no-warning, 1-second-in-advance warnings, and 2-second-in-advance warnings). Experiment results indicate that advanced warnings can significantly enhance safety by minimizing potential risks compared to scenarios without warnings. Earlier warnings enable smoother driver responses and reduce abrupt decelerations. In addition, a personalized intent prediction model was developed to predict drivers’ stop-or-go decisions when the warning was displayed. Among all tested machine learning models, the XGBoost model achieves the highest overall prediction accuracy.

Application icons are a pivotal part of graphical user interface of mobile devices. Despite a trend away from complexity to simplicity in user interface design, there is lack of evidence supporting the superiority of icon simplicity from a psychophysiological perspective. This study investigates the effects of icon complexity and simplicity on user cognition using an event-related potentials (ERPs) technique. Eighteen participants completed an icon cognition and evaluation experiment in an electrophysiological laboratory. Their subjective evaluations, behavioral data, and ERP data were recorded and analyzed. The results of subjective evaluation showed that the simplest icons were regarded as more useful in helping subjects extract icon information than more complex ones. For the ERP measures, P1 amplitudes induced by complex icons were larger than those elicited by simple icons. In the parietal area, P2 amplitudes and latency were larger and later for complex icons than for simple ones. Simple icons are subjectively more helpful than complex ones, partially because they demand fewer attention resources in early stimulus-driven perceptual detection of icon features (P1 during 120–190 ms) and induce more positive emotional arousal (P2 during 190–200 ms). Simple icon designs minimize cognitive demands and are deemed more helpful than complex ones. Our study highlights that the ERP technique represents a tool to explore how users process icon and interface design.

Users’ first impressions of a website have a great impact on their subsequent behaviors and attitudes toward the website. Visual complexity and order are two key factors of webpage design that influence users’ first impressions of webpages. Consequently, we investigated those factors in the present study, using an event-related potential (ERP) technique to analyze users’ evaluative processing. The results show that website complexity and order evaluations were processed within 100–160 ms, influencing N1 amplitude, which is an ERP component related to early visual attention resource allocation. Webpages higher in complexity and order received more attentional resources than did lower ones. Webpage complexity and order continued to have an influence on P2 amplitude in the 160–240 ms period, which may reflect users’ subsequent information processing and emotional evaluations. More cognitive resources were needed for information processing for the low-order webpages, and more positive feelings were evoked by low-complexity webpages than by high-complexity webpages. Subsequently, webpage complexity and order also influenced P3 amplitude in the time interval of 300–440 ms, suggesting an influence on explicit attentional resource allocation. In detail, the ERP results suggest that participants may prefer low-complexity webpages because those webpages evoked positive emotional experiences and that they were inclined to allocate more attention resources to information processing for low-order webpages than for high-order ones. The results of this study provide evidence from brain activity that webpage complexity and order are processed quickly and, as a consequence, likely influence users’ first impressions. The findings suggest that to induce positive first impressions, designers should adopt well-ordered webpages for attracting users’ attention and low-complexity webpages for inducing positive emotional responses.

We investigated the impact of color salience and location of a website link on users’ performance, affective experiences and approach-avoidance tendencies with 10 mock mobile Web directories. Task completion times were recorded by a computer program, and users’ affective experiences and approach-avoidance responses were reported in questionnaires. Results implied that visual attention in the display area on a mobile Web directory is directed by a combination of bottom-up and top-down processes, which is different from the primarily top-down process implicated in a similar study of PC Web directories. A salient color of the website link helped attract users’ attention and increase users’ sense of control over the process. Also, users are likely to search webpages from top left to bottom right. Our findings suggest that a target website link placed in the top left corner or displayed in a distinct color in the center area not only attracts users’ attention but also results in a more highly rated affective experience. Color of the target website link can be changed to increase users’ sense of control of a Web directory and approach behaviors.

Android 5 informs users of all permissions requested when downloading an app and gives users an all-or-nothing acceptance decision to make for the permissions. In contrast, Android 6 informs users of each permission upon first use of the downloaded app. We conducted an online study with participants recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk to compare the relative usability of the two permissions interfaces. Each interface condition contained a simulation of the Google Play Store and instructed participants to role-play the task of downloading an app. Afterward, each participant was questioned about which permissions were seen and the functions of those permissions. The Android 5 interface showed better performance with informing users as to which permissions access their device, whereas the Android 6 interface fared better with presenting the functions of the permissions. Also, the Android 6 interface was found to be more intuitive to use than that of Android 5. Although a pilot study showed that users favored the Android 6 permissions interface over Android 5’s, the present study found no clear evidence that it was more effective than Android 5.

Previous studies on mobile Web browsers have focused on phone features and technical performance, but not on the user interface. In this study, we compared three mobile Web browsers in the iPhone and ultimately proposed recommendations for the design of mobile Web browsers for smartphones. To develop such recommendations, we redefined the user interface (UI) components of mobile Web browsers from previous studies to conform to smartphones and compared the Chrome, Safari, and Opera Mini-browsers. To do this, we conducted experiments on usability tests with several dependent variables, including usefulness, perceived time reduction, minimal action, usability, ease to memorize, learnability, fun, and satisfaction. Finally, we developed several recommendations, based on the experimental results and participant interviews, which will fulfill user needs for the interface design of mobile Web browsers for smartphones. Multi-windows need to be implemented in a 3D environment. Developers should consider UI components and features that ease learning how to use the browser for novice users.

Operation of heavy construction equipment is a cognitively demanding task, and training of operators is risky and costly. Advances in computer-based virtual training systems have emerged as a solution to limitations associated with use of actual equipment, effectively reducing risk and on-machine training time, and allowing flexibility in learning environments. We report an experiment that compared two training methods for the initial phase of learning to operate a simulated hydraulic excavator: (a) audiovisual instructions for teaching operation of controls, and (b) hands-on operation of the excavator. After receiving one or the other of these training methods, participants performed a Controls Familiarization test that requires execution of appropriate joystick control actions in response to verbal stimuli presented visually that correspond to the desired action (e.g., “Activate the bucket close function”). For both groups, the actions were executed faster and with fewer errors as they practiced the Controls Familiarization task. Participants taught with the instructional method performed better than those who learned control operation through hands-on exploring, with this benefit apparent mainly for the two more difficult control functions—moving the stick in or out, and opening or closing the bucket. Increasing the allotted time for hands-on learning from 1 to 5 min did not seem to increase the amount of learning that took place. Instructions convey control–machine relations that are difficult to learn just through “free play” operation of a simulated machine.

The primary goal of this special issue is to provide an overview of select topics in cognitive science and their applications to the design of interactive systems. Authors were requested to show ho...

Mnemonic strategy has been recommended to help users generate secure and memorable passwords. We evaluated the security of $6$ mnemonic strategy variants in a series of online studies involving $5,484$ participants. In addition to applying the standard method of using guess numbers or similar metrics to compare the generated passwords, we also measured the frequencies of the most commonly chosen sentences as well as the resulting passwords. While metrics similar to guess numbers suggested that all variants provided highly secure passwords, statistical metrics told a different story. In particular, differences in the exact instructions had a tremendous impact on the security level of the resulting passwords. We examined the mental workload and memorability of 2 mnemonic strategy variants in another online study with $752$ participants. Although perceived workloads for the mnemonic strategy variants were higher than that for the control group where no strategy is required, no significant reduction in password recall after $1$ week was obtained.

Stimulus–response compatibility has been a staple of human factors since the early 1950s, when it was established by Paul Fitts, one of the founders of human factors. The importance of maintaining spatial compatibility is indicated in textbooks, but maintaining compatibility in design is not a simple task, because there are many factors that need to be taken into consideration. This article focuses on spatial compatibility and the more recently investigated affective compatibility, highlighting their implications for human–computer interaction. An overview of other cognitive compatibility principles and examples of their use in human–computer interaction is also provided. Advanced technology has increased the need for systematic consideration of compatibility phenomena in user interface design, and the article ends with a summary of key points for designers.

Mobile platforms, such as Android, warn users about the permissions an app requests and trust that the user will make the correct decision about whether or not to install the app. Unfortunately many users either ignore the warning or fail to understand the permissions and the risks they imply. As a step toward developing an indicator of risk that decomposes risk into several categories, or dimensions, we conducted two studies designed to assess the dimensions of risk deemed most important by experts and novices. In Study 1, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 19 security experts, who also performed a card sorting task in which they categorized permissions. The experts identified three major risk dimensions in the interviews (personal information privacy, monetary risk, and device availability/stability), and a forth dimension (data integrity) in the card sorting task. In Study 2, 350 typical Android users, recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk, filled out a questionnaire in which they (a) answered questions concerning their mobile device usage, (b) rated how often they considered each of several types of information when installing apps, (c) indicated what they considered to be the biggest risk associated with installing an app on their mobile device, and (d) rated their concerns with regard to specific risk types and about apps having access to specific types of information. In general, the typical users' concerns were similar to those of the security experts. The results of the studies suggest that risk information should be organized into several risk types that can be better understood by users and that a mid-level risk summary should incorporate the dimensions of personal information privacy, monetary risk, device availability/stability risk and data integrity risk.

The popularity and advanced functionality of mobile devices has made them attractive targets for malicious and intrusive applications (apps). Although strong security measures are in place for most mobile systems, the area where these systems often fail is the reliance on the user to make decisions that impact the security of a device. As our prime example, Android relies on users to understand the permissions that an app is requesting and to base the installation decision on the list of permissions. Previous research has shown that this reliance on users is ineffective, as most users do not understand or consider the permission information. We propose a solution that leverages a method to assign a risk score to each app and display a summary of that information to users. Results from four experiments are reported in which we examine the effects of introducing summary risk information and how best to convey such information to a user. Our results show that the inclusion of risk-score information has significant positive effects in the selection process and can also lead to more curiosity about security-related information.

Malware has been a major security problem both in organizations and homes for more than a decade. One common feature of most malware attacks is that at a certain point early in the attack, an executable is dropped on the system which, when executed, enables the attacker to achieve their goals and maintain control of the compromised machine. In this paper we propose the concept of Personalized Application Whitelisting (PAW) to block all unsolicited foreign code from executing on a system. We introduce CodeShield, an approach to implement PAW on Windows hosts. CodeShield uses a simple and novel security model, and a new user interaction approach for obtaining security-critical decisions from users. We have implemented CodeShield, demonstrated its security effectiveness, and conducted a user study, having 38 participants run CodeShield on their laptops for 6 weeks. Results from the data demonstrate the usability and promises of our design.

The cell phone is not a simple communication tool. People use embedded mobile phone features such as games, cameras and wireless internet for various purposes of entertainment and shopping. In some cases usability problems impact negatively on product success, whereas in other cases they do not. The objective of our study was to develop a questionnaire for cell phones and investigate the relation between usability and product success. We reviewed existing usability studies and factors for product success to develop the questionnaire for cell phones. Subjects then evaluated the usability and success factors of cell phones. Finally, re-purchase intention and success scores including usability scores were analysed to determine whether they are positively related and which usability factors impact cell phone product success. Design, customer needs and innovativeness of cell phones were especially important among success factors, whereas more attention should be paid to satisfaction, feedback and efficiency among the usability dimensions.

The ever-changing market demand structure galvanises a shift from product-based to value-based competition. Creativity is regarded as one important source adding supplemental value to the consumer's overall product experience. It also plays a pivotal role in achieving the synergy between both instrumental and hedonic qualities via a comprehensive ergonomic design process, which is superior to what is achieved via the traditional ergonomic design process only considering functionality and usability. This article focuses on website creativity, as compared to previous studies that have mainly dealt with issues regarding traditional hardware product creativity. The authors review relevant literature on creativity, product creativity, website development, consumer behaviour, and measurement tools for creativity, and appraise the salient differences between traditional hardware products and websites. The overall conclusion drawn from the review and appraisal is that web technology has potentially more creativity components and opportunities than do traditional hardware products. By addressing both pragmatic and hedonic design requirements, a creative website should become more attractive, appealing, and thus promote positive user experience and be more commercially competitive.

In the global economy, design of digital media often involves teams of individuals from a variety of cultures who must function together. Similarly, products must be designed and marketed taking specific cultural characteristics into account. Much is known about decision processes, culture and cognition, design of products and interfaces for human interaction with machines, and organizational processes, but this knowledge is dispersed across several disciplines and research areas. This article reviews current work in these areas and proposes a research agenda for fostering increased understanding of the ways in which cultural differences influence decision making and action in design and use of digital media.

Past studies have established a crossmodal spatial attentional link among vision, audition, and touch. The present study examined the dependence of visual attention on the distance between a distal visual target (a changing element among static distractors) and the quadrant of the visual display cued by a proximal tactile stimulus. The distance between the center of the cued visual quadrant and the visual target was one of six values: 0, 90, 180, 350, 450, and 550 pixels. The distances of 0, 90, and 180 corresponded to the valid tactile cueing condition, where the tactile cue and the visual target occurred in the same quadrant. The distances of 350, 450, and 550 corresponded to the invalid tactile cueing condition, where the tactilely-cued quadrant did not match that of the visual change. Results from 10 young adults showed that mean response time increased with respect to the cue-target distance, thereby confirming a gradient of visual attention for proximal-distal tactile cueing. In addition, the response times for valid tactile cues were shorter than those for invalid tactile cues, confirming earlier findings that valid tactile cues facilitate visual search and invalid tactile cues interfere with visual search. The findings of the present study have implications for the design of multimodal attention-cueing systems for practical applications such as collision warning systems in automobiles.

The objective of this study was to examine underlying mechanisms concerning preference differences for content on e-commerce Web sites of online consumers with different cultural backgrounds. Two experiments were conducted to explore Chinese and U.S. online consumers' information preferences with three particular product categories: MP3 players, digital cameras, and laptop computers. For Experiment 1, two prototype e-commerce Web sites were developed that contained the same content but presented in different ways. Twenty-four Chinese and 24 U.S. university students were asked to purchase an MP3 player, a digital camera, and a laptop computer from one of the two sites, and their information preferences were assessed and compared in terms of their performance on the sites. For Experiment 2, two versions of product description were developed for each product used in the experiment with each version focusing on a different information item. The preferences of 24 Chinese and 24 U.S. university students for certain information items were assessed and compared with their preferences for the corresponding product description, indicated on a 7-point Likert scale. The differences between the two cultural groups' information preferences revealed by the experiments are discussed, and their implications for improving the content usability of e-commerce Web sites in China and the United States are offered.

Content preparation is an important stage in e-commerce website development. It is critical to present appropriate information content to facilitate consumers' decision-making. In the international e-commerce setting, to better serve users from different countries, their different information preferences must be accommodated by taking cultural differences between countries into consideration in content preparation. After examining relevant literature, this paper proposes a conceptual model on content preparation for cross-cultural e-commerce. The model explores cultural effects on information processing of consumers by taking into account both normative effects and psychological effects. Tentative conclusions about cultural differences that need to be accommodated in content preparation are also offered.

Three studies examined (a) the amount and types of personal information requested by Web sites from seven different categories, (b) the goals and readability of existing privacy policies for four categories of sites, and (c) users' comprehension and perceptions of privacy policies. Study 1 showed that different amounts of personal information were requested by Web sites, even within the same category. Content and readability analyses of 100 privacy policies in Study 2 showed that policies tended to be high on both privacy protection and vulnerability goals or low on both. The policies were also written at a reading level corresponding to 13 years of education. Study 3 showed, though, that even college students have poor comprehension of the content of privacy policies. The students perceived longer policies that included many privacy goals as providing better assurance of privacy than shorter policies that included fewer goals. From a usability perspective, there is considerable room for improvement in the design of organizations' Web sites with respect to the amount and types of person information solicited and the implementation of privacy policies.

The cognitive revolution and the human information-processing approach it adopted are now more than 50 years old. This article provides an overview of the history of human information processing and its relation to human factors and human-computer interaction (HCI). Fundamental concepts and findings concerning human information processing and their applications to HCI are summarized. The last half of the article discusses new developments and evaluates criticisms of human information processing and alternative approaches that have been proposed. Our conclusion is that the information-processing approach has served psychology and HCI well, providing cumulative basic and applied knowledge in a variety of areas and a basis for integrating this knowledge. The approach continues to be a fruitful source of empirical and theoretical advances across a variety of disciplines.

Teleoperated robots in harsh environments have a significant likelihood of failures. It has been shown in previous work that a common type of failure such as that of a joint "locking up," when unidentified by the robot controller, can cause considerable performance degradation in the local behavior of the manipulator even for simple point-to-point motion tasks. The effects of a failure become more critical for a system with a human in the loop, where unpredictable behavior of the robotic arm can completely disorient the operator. In this experimental study involving teleoperation of a graphically simulated kinematically redundant manipulator, two control schemes, the pseudoinverse and a proposed failure-tolerant inverse, were randomly presented under both nonfailure and failure scenarios to a group of operators. Based on performance measures derived from the recorded trajectory data and operator ratings of task difficulty, it is seen that the failure-tolerant inverse kinematic control scheme improved the performance of the human/robot system.

The vast amount of information available through the Web has made it difficult to retrieve information relevant to a specific task. To help ensure that users' interactions with a system are successful, preparation of content and its presentation to users must take into account (a) what information needs to be extracted, (b) the way in which this information should be stored and organized, (c) the methods for retrieving the information, and (d) how the information should be displayed. The goal of this article is to discuss the generic problems facing content preparation and evaluate the current methods available to help remedy them, as well as identify areas in which more research is needed. The material presented in this article was a result of the collective efforts of the participants of a special "white paper" session that was part of the 9th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI International 2001).

Metacognition, a person's knowledge of her or his own cognitive processes, is a concept that can be applied to many areas of human-computer interaction. This article reviews the state of contemporary knowledge regarding metacognition and describes implications for the domain of human-computer interaction. A conceptual framework is presented that distinguishes monitoring and regulation processes of metacognition. One aspect of metacognition, self-evaluation of knowledge, was investigated for a word processing application as an illustration. An experiment was conducted to evaluate which of four methods of self-assessment of expertise was the best predictor of declarative knowledge (accuracy and completeness of descriptions on how to perform a task). In addition, the experiment examined whether classifying users based on self-reported estimates of expertise would produce differences in their declarative descriptions. Results showed that individuals' ratings of their overall knowledge were better predictors than were estimations of frequency of use, as would be expected from the literature on metacognitive monitoring. In addition, classifying users based on their self-ratings of expertise showed differences in accuracy of declarative knowledge and strategy chosen to perform a task. Experts were more accurate in their descriptions of how to complete a task compared to novices and used more complex strategies to complete hard tasks.

Teleoperated robots in harsh environments have a significant likelihood of failures. A common type of failure such as that of a joint "locking up", when unidentified by the robot controller, can cause considerable performance degradation in the local behavior of the manipulator even for simple point-to-point motion tasks. The effects of a failure become more critical for a system with a human in the loop, where unpredictable behavior of the robotic arm can completely disorient the operator. In this experimental study involving teleoperation of a graphically simulated kinematically redundant manipulator, two control schemes, the pseudo-inverse and a proposed failure-tolerant inverse, were randomly presented under both non-failure and failure scenarios to a group of operators. Based on the performance measures derived from the recorded trajectory data and operator responses, it is seen that the failure-tolerant inverse kinematic control scheme improved the performance of the human/robot system.