We describe WEST, a WEb browser for Small Terminals, that aims to solve some of the problems associated with accessing web pages on hand-held devices. Through a novel combination of text reduction and focus+context visualization, users can access web pages from a very limited display environment, since the system will provide an overview of the contents of a web page even when it is too large to be displayed in its entirety. To make maximum use of the limited resources available on a typical hand-held terminal, much of the most demanding work is done by a proxy server, allowing the terminal to concentrate on the task of providing responsive user interaction. The system makes use of some interaction concepts reminiscent of those defined in the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), making it possible to utilize the techniques described here for WAP-compliant devices and services that may become available in the near future.

Four audial navigation structure conditions, designed to support a voice messaging service, each demanding a different degree of cognitive load, were assessed by 40 naive subjects in groups of 10. Three were voice-controlled: Hierarchical , Flexible (direct, no menus) and Guided (Yes/No) and one was keypad-controlled: hierarchical. Voice recognition was simulated by means of a Wizard-of-Oz set-up. The four subject groups were matched regarding spatial ability (High/ Low) as measured by the Duremann-Salde battery. Initial interaction performance was observed over six tasks, without providing the subjects with a conceptual model of the navigation structure or an appropriate command syntax. Neither number of completed tasks (4.6-5.1 out of 6), total completion time (701-849 s), nor subjective attitudes differed significantly across navigation conditions. The simple optimum path measure was significant, favouring the guided (4.1 out of 6) as compared to the flexible structure (2.5 out of 6). A significant interaction effect between total completion time and spatial ability was found. Subjects scoring high on spatial ability obtained shorter task completion time than those scoring low, except for the guided structure, where the opposite effect occurred. The results stress the importance of adapting navigating structure to specific user abilities for user environments such as telephone services. A highly guided navigation style, a structure that maximizes optimum path score, suits users with low spatial ability, especially in the initial learning phase.

The present paper addresses the problem of prosody assignment in the context of a system for text-to-speech conversion of Swedish.The question of what type of textual analysis is needed for prosodic purposes is discussed and the use of Dependency Graphs to this end is proposed.It is argued that this type of analysis provides sufficient syntactic information so that prosodic phrasing and prominence assignment algorithms can be successfully applied.The ability of the system to generate acceptable prosodic descriptions is evaluated by comparison with examples of prosodically analysed naturally spoken sentences.