In this paper, we present the results of a systematic review involving the use of usability techniques in software developments where agile methodologies were used. The search strategy identified 307 studies, where only 32 were finally selected for the review. We found that complementary techniques are the most frequent techniques used with agile methodologies. In addition, most studies performed usability evaluations only during the implementation phase, and these evaluations were mostly constructed as elaborations of case studies.

We present a new framework for conducting controlled driving behavior studies based on multiuser networked 3-D virtual environments. The framework supports: 1) the simulation of multiuser immersive driving; 2) the visualization of surrounding traffic; 3) the specification and creation of reproducible traffic scenarios; and 4) the collection of meaningful driving behavior data. We use our framework to investigate the “rubbernecking” phenomenon, which refers to the slowing down of a driver due to an accident on the opposite side of the road, and its effect on the following drivers. The main contribution of the paper is the Scenario Markup Language (SML) framework, which is composed of: 1) the SML as a practical tool to specify dynamic traffic situations (e.g., an accident) and 2) the Scenario Control System to ensure the reproducibility of particular traffic situations, so that traffic engineers can obtain comparable data and draw valid conclusions. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our framework, we specified the traffic accident scenario in SML and conducted a study about the rubbernecking phenomenon. We report on the results of our study from two viewpoints: 1) the reproducibility of the traffic accident situation (i.e., state variables of interest are recreated successfully in 78% of the cases); and 2) the interactive car-following behavior of human subjects embedded in the traffic situation of the virtual environment.

We present the Scenario Markup Language (SML), a powerful language for authoring realistic traffic situations. This effort is part of a novel framework for automatically generating complex scenarios with static and dynamic elements. SML facilitates the scripting of behavioral driver studies in networked multi-user online three-dimensional (3D) virtual worlds.

The aim of this paper is two-fold. First, it describes a scripting language for specifying communicative behavior and interaction of computer-controlled agents ("bots") in the popular three-dimensional (3D) multiuser online world of "Second Life" and the emerging "OpenSimulator" project. While tools for designing avatars and in-world objects in Second Life exist, technology for nonprogrammer content creators of scenarios involving scripted agents is currently missing. Therefore, we have implemented new client software that controls bots based on the Multimodal Presentation Markup Language 3D (MPML3D), a highly expressive XML-based scripting language for controlling the verbal and nonverbal behavior of interacting animated agents. Second, the paper compares Second Life and OpenSimulator platforms and discusses the merits and limitations of each from the perspective of agent control. Here, we also conducted a small study that compares the network performance of both platforms.

Agriculture has a strong impact in the environment; it has played key role in the development of food security and food safety. In this paper, we are proposing a 3D multilingual Internet game, developed by using the on-line virtual world platform, that lets the player experience the potential effects of agriculture in the environment. The main idea is to foster awareness of agriculture's environmental issues, by not only making the player learn the impact of fertilizers and deforestation that affect the sources of water and weather, respectively, but also enhance the importance of food quality. To make players care for these issues, the game creates a direct impact by using the happiness of people that is represent by the villagers. To reduce the language barrier when sharing knowledge across the countries is needed, the game also supports multi-language to make it more understandable to the player. This paper describes details of the game design, the system architecture and the experiment. The experiment conducted with the game showed promising results.

The sharing of academic knowledge through printed publications has been widely and successfully utilized for more than a hundred years. However, the need to process huge amounts of data in scientific analysis and communicate its results to the scientific community has presented a big challenge for researchers in the data-intensive era. In addition to providing accurate and flexible graphical representations of data, the entire research process should ideally be made verifiable by peers. While web-based tools have been proposed to address this problem, most of them lack important features for scientific work such as real-time collaboration, powerful multimedia visualization and interaction, and environment persistency. Therefore, in this paper, we will propose the use of virtual world technology to address these issues. In particular, we will give an overview of the different methods that we have implemented in the context of multimedia interaction, which is considered the most critical factor in the development of virtual worlds as sound platforms for human-centered multimedia systems.

We motivate an approach to evaluating the utility of life-like interface agents that is based on human eye movements rather than questionnaires. An eye tracker is employed to obtain quantitative evidence of a user's focus of attention. The salient feature of our evaluation strategy is that it allows us to measure important properties of a user's interaction experience on a moment-by-moment basis in addition to a cumulative (spatial) analysis of the user's areas of interest. We describe an empirical study in which we compare attending behavior of subjects watching the presentation of an apartment by three types of media: an animated agent, a text box, and speech only. The investigation of users' eye movements reveals that agent behavior may trigger natural and social interaction behavior of human users.