HMD vs. PDA: A Comparative Study of the User Out-of
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1. 21 Overall Summary Evaluation Poor Fair Satisfactory Good Excellent l l O O O Comments Notes Requests 22 FIGURE LEGENDS Figure 1 Head Mounted Display Device Figure 2 Personal Digital Assistant with Lifeview Flyjacket i3800 attached Figure 3 PDA vs HMD OOBE for the Configuration category Figure 4 PDA vs HMD OOBE for the Doing Work category Figure 5 The OOBE for the PDA according to User Types Figure 6 The OOBE for the HMD according to User Types Figure 7 Gender impact on the HMD OOBE Figure 8 Gender impact on the PDA OOBE 23 TABLES Table 1 Main causes of ease of use dissatisfaction from EoURoundtable 2000 Area of Dissatisfaction Main Cause of Dissatisfaction Boot Reboot Users perceive they have to reboot too frequently and booting takes too long Communications Users have trouble accessing and using the internet Environment Users perceive PC performance and reliability can degrade over time Failour Detecetion Users perceive hardware and software fail too often and failours are difficult to diagnose Install Uninstall Users often feel it is difficult to install and uninstall hardware and software Interoperability Compatibility As users add applications and hardware applications and harware some2. Name Age Vision Problems if known Sex M F Background How long have you been using computers PC Laptop Months Years Do you regularly use electronic mail Yes No e mail L L Do you regularly use search engines Yes No Google AltaVista L L Do you regularly use word processing Yes No applications Ms Word WordPerfect L L Do you regularly use spreadsheet Yes No applications Ms Excel Lotus O O Have you ever successfully installed Yes No software on a computer L E Have you ever written and successfully Yes No run a computer program L L Please tick M1 the appropriate box below considering that 1 Strongly Disagree 2 Disagree 3 Neutral 4 Agree 5 Strongly Agree C1 Packaging PDA HMD The boxes are too heavy for their content to be carried around It is easy to identify the contents of the boxes based on their labels It is easy to group organise the boxes in to a transportation vehicle The boxes are designed in such manner that eases the transportation The boxes have handles to help in their transportation C2 Unpacking It is easy to access the content of the box and access the user s manual It is easy to understand the interior organisation of the box It is easy to do an inventory check on the content of the box based on the manual It is eas
3. 30 were applied to analyse the participants responses A significance level of p lt 0 05 was adopted for the study 5 3 Experimental Material In our experiments participants interacted with two devices The first was an Olympus Eye Trek FMD 200 head mounted display which uses two liquid crystal displays and allows a greater autonomy of movement than a generic computer monitor Each one of the displays contains 180 000 pixels and the viewing angle is 30 0 horizontal 27 0 vertical It supports PAL Phase Alternating Line format and display weight is 85g Figure 1 The other device was a Hewlett Packard iPAQ 5450 personal digital assistant with 16 bit touch sensitive transflective thin film translator liquid crystal display that supports 65 536 colour The display pixel pitch of the device is 0 24 mm and its viewable image size is 2 26 inch wide and 3 02 inch tall It runs the Microsoft Windows for Pocket PC 2002 operating system on Intel 400Mhz XSCALE processor and allows the user complete mobility By default it contains 64MB standard memory and 48MB internal flash read only memory Additionally in the course of this experiment a 128 MB Secure Digital memory card was also used Figure 2 while the interface between the HMD and the PDA was provided by a Lifeview FlyJacket 13800 The FlyJacket has its own internal rechargeable battery and provides VGA S Video and Composite output from the PDA device It supports full motion vide
4. PDA difficult is in this case expected and most probably due to the technical know how and navigational skills required to accomplish this particular task The last two tasks found to be user dependent is a possible indication of the rather limited console type interface consisting of four multi functional buttons that the HMD provided for their realisation on its control panel Accordingly the two tasks focused on switching on the HMD and the setting of appropriate colour brightness levels and it is quite likely that Experienced users given their familiarity with the concept and use of multi functional interfaces would have found these tasks significantly easier than the other user categories considered in our study 6 3 Gender Impact on the OOBE A Mann Whitney test on our experimental results showed that there were no significant differences between females and males as regards their OOBE for the HMD Figure 7 The same analysis revealed that with the exception of six tasks the same observation held true for the PDA Figure 8 Additionally no significant differences were found between the lengths of time it took females and males to complete the tasks of our experiments Most of the tasks in which there were significant differences between the PDA OOBE for females and males can be broadly categorised into two main groups the first mainly covers set up and interconnection of devices whilst the second deals with wireless oper
5. users manual and if the respective manuals structure is considered to be user friendly User OOBE was assessed via a questionnaire given in Appendix B which the participants had to complete as they went through the tasks Accordingly after the users had completed the profile questions they were asked to indicate on a five point Likert scale of 1 5 for each task undertaken their opinions ranging from 1 Strongly Disagree to 5 Strongly Agree with respect to a statement regarding the respective task In its final part the questionnaire also solicited any open ended comments that the participants might have wished to make Participants were accordingly instructed to work their way through the tasks and complete the relevant sections of the questionnaire as they went along To ensure that the participants did not feel under test conditions it was made clear that their skills ability to interact with the devices was not being tested rather it was the case of evaluating initial contact with the devices and that they consequently should not be concerned if they were unable to complete any of the tasks that the experiment contained Furthermore they were told to accomplish the tasks at their own pace with no pressure being put on the part of the experimenter the same experimenter was used throughout for participants to abort finish early any of the experimental tasks However as the duration of the OOBE is one of its ke
6. Environments FIVEi95 21 Kennedy RS Lanham DS Drexler JM Massey CJ Lilienthal MG 1995 Cybersickness in several flight simulators and VR devices A comparison of incidences symptom profiles measurement techniques and suggestions for research in Proceedings of Framework for Immersive Virtual Environments FIVEi95 22 Kolasinki EM 1995 Simulator sickness in virtual environments Technical Report 1027 U S Army Research Institute for the Behaviour and social Sciences Alexandria VA 15 23 Geelhoed E Falahee M Latham K 2000 Safety and Comfort of Eyeglasses Displays Publishing Systems and Solutions Laboratory HP Laboratories Bristol 24 Pablo Research Group 2002 Intelligent Information Spaces http www pablo cs uiuc edu Project SmartSpaces SmartSpaceOverview htm retrieved 8 June 2003 25 Ebina O Owada N Ohinata Y Adachi K Fukushima M 2002 Wearable Internet Appliances and Their Applications Hitachi Review 51 1 pp 7 11 26 EoURoundtable 2000 Improving Ease of Use A report from Ease of Use PC Quality Roundtable Ease of Use Roundtable http www eouroundtable com files EOUupdatewp2000 pdf retrieved 2 March 2004 27 Thurrott P 2000 Preview Windows ME Out of Box Experience OOBE http www winsupersite com showcase millennium_oobe asp retrieved 16 April 2003 28 McMurtrey K 2001 Defining the Out of the Box Experience A Case Study STC Proceedings http www stc org confproceed 2001 PDFs
7. Geelhoed et al 23 investigated the comfort level of various tasks such as text reading and video watching on two different head mounted displays identifying that tasks requiring more long term attention such as watching video causes a greater level of discomfort to the user Despite the computational costs and usability drawbacks of the head mounted displays they are used widely in active research ranging from virtual environments 24 to wearable Internet applications 25 However to the best of our knowledge the OOBE associated with HMDs is an insufficiently explored research area moreover bearing in mind the inter operability and inter connectivity of devices it is essential that the OOBE of HMDs when connected to other devices such as PDAs is examined and this is what we endeavour to do in the present paper 4 THE OUT OF BOX EXPERIENCE An integral part of the human computer interaction is represented by the initial user contact and experiences with the computers the out of box experience which is of a great strategic and marketing importance Accordingly the OOBE has been acknowledged as such by most major players in the industry through studying it within the context of in house research groups 7 or cross company consortia 26 and by endeavouring to ensure that products are shipped with the capability and know how that will enhance the user s buyer s OOBE 27 The challenges faced by designers of the OOBE a
8. HMD vs PDA A Comparative Study of the User Out of Box Experience T SERIF AND G GHINEA Department of Information Systems and Computing Brunel University Uxbridge Middlesex UBS 3PH UK E mail Tacha Serif George Ghinea brunel ac uk Tel 44 1895 27400 ex 2729 3635 Fax 44 1895 251686 ABSTRACT The Out of Box Experience OOBE has been identified as a significant factor contributing to user perception and acceptance of products and technologies Whilst there has been considerable emphasis placed on formalising methodological procedures for evaluating the OOBE and on the creation of positive user experiences through appropriate interfaces and applications relatively little work has been undertaken examining how the OOBE is impacted when the experience itself covers a range of possibly interconnected devices In this paper we report the results of an empirical study which examined the OOBE when a Personal Digital Assistant and Head Mounted Device were configured and then connected for inter operability purposes Our findings show that type of device has a considerable impact on the OOBE with the ask of interconnecting devices having a detrimental effect on the OOBE The OOBE however is in main unaffected by user type and gender KEYWORDS OOBE Head Mounted Display Personal Digital Assistant Interconnection User Type Gender 1 Introduction Although a considerable amount of work has been undertaken from a usabil
9. M CHI 2001 pp 395 396 3 MacKay B 2003 The Gateway A Navigation Technique for Migrating to Small Screens in Proceedings of CHI 2003 pp 384 385 4 Waycott J Kukulska Hulme A 2003 Students Experience with PDAs for reading course materials Personal Ubiquitous Computing 7 1 pp 30 43 5 EoURoundtable 2001 Ease of Use PC Quality Roundtable Internet Communications Design Revision 1 0 http www eouroundtable com Files ICDG pdf retrieved 10 March 2004 6 EoURoundtable 2002 Ease of Use PC Quality Roundtable Unmanaged Wireless Networking Revision 1 0 http www eouroundtable com files WirelessWP pdf retrieved 18 February 2004 7 IBMa 2004 Ease of Use User Centered Design Process http www 306 ibm com ibm easy eou_ext nsf Publish 19 retrieved 20 March 2004 8 IBMb 2004 Ease of Use Defining Users http www 306 ibm com ibm easy eou_ext nsf Publish 74 retrieved 20 March 2004 9 Fouts JW 2000 An Out of Box Experience Communications of the ACM 43 11 pp 28 29 10 Weiser M 1998 The Future Of Ubiquitous Computing On Campus Communications of the ACM 41 1 pp 41 42 11 Kim L Albers MJ 2001 Web Design Issues when Searching for Information in a Small Screen Display in Proceedings of ACM SIGDOC 01 pp 193 200 12 Fulk M 2001 Improving Web Browsing on Handheld Devices GVU Center amp College of Computing Georgia Institute of Technology in ACM CHI 2001 pp 395 396 13 Jones M Ma
10. STC48 000101 PDF retrieved 15 January 2004 29 Brown B and Brown M 2002 PC Ease of Use Getting Better or Worse http www extremetech com article2 0 3973 1157156 00 asp retrieved 12 November 2003 30 Stephen P Hornby S 1997 Simple Statistics for Library and Information Professionals London Library Association 31 Lawton CA 1994 Gender differences in way finding strategies Relationship to spatial ability and spatial anxiety Sex Roles 30 pp 765 779 16 APPENDIX A Out Box Experience Categories and Tasks for HP iPAQ 5450 amp Eye Trek Please use the same tasks to answer the Head Mounted Display HMD and Personal Digital Assistant PDA sections of each category on the questionnaire The only exceptions for this are categories 5 and 6 which tasks and response for these sections are clearly marked as 5a 5b 6a and 6b C1 Packaging T1 Try to carry around the one and or two of the devices at the same time T2 Try to identify the item based on the label on the boxes T3 Try to group the boxes of the appliances in a car or any means of transport T4 Carry the boxes from the means of transport to your office house TS Try using the handles on the boxes for easier transport C2 Unpacking T1 Try opening the boxes finding the hard copies of the manuals if exists T2 Try identifying the devices that work together and have to be linked together from the organisation of the interior item
11. asy to do the colour settings 12 3 4 5 Bi a pS l It is straightforward to set the security settings on the HMD 12 34 5 aed cel vei The user s manual provides enough help on this and it s easy 1 2 3 4 5 to understand kt ee a l C7 Doing Work File transfer from the desktop to the PDA 1 2 3 4 5 12 34 5 is easy et l el Cal Ss eT iT It is easy to run an application on the 1 2 3 4 5 L234 5 PDA a a l i l The wireless access settings are simple 1 2 3 4 5 12 3 4 5 and easy to use a sO l OOOO It is straightforward to use the Internet 1 2 3 4 5 12 34 5 via existing wireless connection 0 o0 l l EEE EE The user s manual provided enough 1 2 3 4 5 12 34 5 information regarding this phase ae a eh see EEN C8 Assistance The application itself provides real time 1 2 3 4 5 12 34 5 help when required ed EY felt A al l The user manuals are easy to understand 1 2 3 4 5 12 34 5 and provides wide information on how to LJ O O LDO Fc Sa EN solve problems Broader help provided through the 1 2 3 4 5 12 34 5 website of the company ououogo0 l agog li The company has other ways of 12 3 4 5 12 34 5 providing assistance i e e mail O LU OLDO I OOOO telephone The assistance language can be selected 1 2 3 4 5 12 34 5 according to requirements ONOOoodo OOO
12. ation Accordingly the interconnection between the cradle and the PDA task T2 of the Configuration category as well as the synchronisation between the PDA and the desktop as well as personalising and synchronising the PDA tasks T2 T4 of the Initial Use category were found to be harder by female participants In the second group we find tasks T3 and T4 of the Doing Work category dealing with configuring the PDA for wireless networking It is our belief that a possible explanation for these results rests with the diminished spatial ability of females 31 although this is an interesting avenue for future work 13 7 CONCLUSIONS This paper examined the OOBE when the experience extends across two interconnected devices a Personal Digital Assistant and a Head Mounted Display The findings of our empirical study have highlighted several issues the first is that the device type can have a significant effect on the OOBE particularly when configuring the devices and trying to perform routine tasks Moreover most of the participants in our study found the experience of interconnecting the devices daunting and frustrating Whilst our study has a relatively small sample size our results question the assumption that smart gadgets by themselves have sufficient novelty appeal to ensure a positive user OOBE this is especially more so when such devices need to be interconnected in order to provide for instance the premises for a user to ex
13. e difficult when users had to accomplish these when viewing the interface on the HMD as opposed to the simpler case when direct input to the PDA was required Moreover for both the Configuration and Doing Work categories of the OOBE the documentation was found to be more helpful in the case of the PDA This was in spite of the fact that the PDA did not have one single manual which the users could consult but rather a collection of booklets each addressing particular functionalities e g Bluetooth WiFi Setup which was found by some participants to be a source of insecurity and disorientation in finding help However in the case of troubleshooting for help in the setup of the two devices the last task of the Setup category the fact that the HMD had an explicit troubleshooting section in its manual explains why users found the HMD documentation in this case to be better than the one of the PDA Analysis of our results also revealed that the carrying the devices boxes task T1 of the Packaging category was found to be significantly easier in the case of the HMD though which might be a reflection of the fact that whilst the overall weight of the two boxes was similar the one containing the PDA was more voluminous On the other hand the easiness of identifying the boxes respective contents based on the labelling used was found to be significantly greater in the case of the PDA This in our opinion is due to a rather ambiguous exterio
14. ered by our study is generally unaffected by the particular user type novice familiar and experienced this is the conclusion of a Kruskal Wallis k sample test applied to our results This analysis highlighted that only sporadic tasks four in all out of a total of forty were found to be user dependent an observation which probably reflects the care taken by designers to make sure that the OOBE is not perceived differently by different categories of users Figures 5 and 6 Moreover this conclusion is further reinforced by the fact that the same analysis also revealed that the length of time taken by users to complete our experiment is again unaffected by the particular user type Tasks that were found to be dependent on user type include in the case of the PDA surprisingly task T3 of the Power On category and task T5 of the Initial Use category In the case of the HMD tasks T1 and T3 for the Initial Use category were found to be user dependent The first of these has to do with noticing the blinking light of the PDA indicating that the device is being powered We believe that user type being an influencing factor in this case is probably a reflection of the fact that 12 Novice users in our experiments whilst noticing the light itself did not in fact make the connection to it being an indicator of available power supply The fact that Novice and Intermediate users found transferring files on the Secure Digital memory card of the
15. ield of view which in turn impacts the perceived level of experienced immersion A low field of view decreases the experienced level of user immersion yet a higher field of view involves spreading the available pixels which can cause distortion on the picture Finally ergonomic and usability factors vary considerably between different devices Issues such as display size weight and adjustability of physical and visual settings all affect the usability of a particular head mounted display for any specific task 17 Although there is now a wide range of head mounted displays there are several drawbacks that prevent their everyday popularity Thus the current high cost of the head mounted displays that display both high resolution and wide field of view is a major factor The large and encumbering size is also an important factor for users especially those of cathode ray tube based displays 18 Moreover the visual limitation within the real world and reduced interactions with colleagues are also possible reasons that prevent head mounted displays from regular everyday popularity Lastly other factors such as hygiene and weight also have possible unknown long term medical implications on the supporting muscles and indeed even on the eyes A number of research studies thus exist looking at the symptoms related to head mounted display usage such as nausea 19 dizziness 20 headaches 21 and eyestrain 22 From a different perspective
16. ilities The main aim is to reaffirm that users product decision was wise and give them confidence that they will be able to use the product to its fullest capabilities A similar approach to the Configuration category is used due to the feature differences of the devices concerned For the PDA participants were asked to personalise and synchronise the device with a desktop computer and set the security settings so no one else can access their data For the HMD participants were asked to personalise the device colour settings and reset the password according to their preference C7 Doing work This class of questions examines how easy it is for the user to do meaningful things that they want to do The main aim is to make productive use of the device used Accordingly for both devices the participants were asked to transfer a video clip file from a desktop computer to the PDA and play the specific movie on the PDA Following this they had to turn on the wireless networking and surf the local network C8 Assistance The availability of multiple assistance sources for every step of the initial experience such as written instructions troubleshooters online support and user help groups is typically examined here The aim is to help the user resolve problems and get assistance as quickly as possible In this category the participants were asked whether the devices provide real time help whether a support website is clearly provided on the
17. ity perspective in the design of mobile and wearable devices 1 4 the established emphasis has been on issues such as ergonomics multimodal interaction haptics personalisation navigation as well as novel interaction paradigms Consequently such work has frequently ignored the initial user experiences with the device the Out of Box Experience OOBE which in many cases can be crucial to user acceptance of the technology Whilst there has been an increasing recognition of the importance of the OOBE to the consumer experience research in this area has prevalently examined issues such as ease of use the establishing of appropriate factorisations of the OOBE as well as the creation of appropriate evaluation methodologies 5 8 Moreover while there have been indications that the OOBE may suffer when the user contact extends across several companies 9 an important question namely how is the OOBE affected when the experience itself spans several devices is yet to be answered though In this paper we address this issue and explore the user out of box experience for two mobile devices a Personal Digital Assistant PDA and a wearable Head Mounted Device HMD both of which are ultimately interconnected to give the user a mobile wearable computing experience Accordingly the structure of the paper is as follows Sections 2 and 3 describe general usability issues pertaining to PDAs and HMDs respectively whilst Section 4 gives an ove
18. ned here The aim is to prepare all components to use as quickly as possible and leave no opportunity for mistakes In this category the participants are asked to understand the physical arrangement of the components and assemble them C4 Power on The design of the power on experience is looked at here this includes issues such as feedback that setup was successful rewards together with elements such as thank you and welcome messages The aim is to immediately verify that setup or assembly was done properly and everything is working correctly In this category the participants were asked to read the appropriate section of the user manuals and turn on the devices to observe the responses according to their expectations C5 Configuration This class of questions measures the post setup configuration experience The aim of the configuration element is to be as automatic and transparent as possible with minimal user interaction Due to the substantial difference between device types and their respective configuration methods two separate sets of tasks were prepared For the PDA the participants were asked to agree with licence terms and install ActiveSync in order to subsequently synchronise the Pocket PC with a desktop computer For the HMD the participants were asked to link the HMD with the PDA and unlock the HMD device using a default password C6 Initial Use This category measures easy accessibility of product features and capab
19. ngly users who answered ves to 0 2 of the questions were categorised as Novice those who answered yes to 3 4 of the questions were categorised as Novice those who answered yes to 3 4 of the questions were deemed to be Familiar whilst those who answered yes to 5 6 questions were assigned to the Experienced category The split of users according to gender and user category is given in Table 3 where as can be seen the participants in our experiments turned out to be evenly distributed in terms of their computer expertise Table 3 5 2 Experimental Variables Three experimental variables were examined in our study these were type of user type of device and gender Type of user is an important factor which has been identified in the OOBE context 8 whereas the influence of device type was looked at in order to gauge the effect if any on the OOBE The two types of devices used in our experiments were a PDA and an HMD whose technical characteristics are given in Section 5 3 whilst the possible impact of gender on the OOBE was also examined in order to see the extent to which possible customisation of the OOBE can reach Data were analysed with the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences SPSS for Windows version release 11 5 An ANalysis Of VAriance ANOVA suitable to test the significant differences of three or more categories and t test suitable to identify the differences between two categories
20. o previewing up to 30 frames per second and 1024x768 VGA resolution 7 5 4 Experimental Process Our experiments followed the User Centred Design UCD process 7 in order to appraise the OOBE Accordingly user OOBE was broken down into eight categories with the user having to accomplish a set of five tasks for each of the categories identified Appendix A The OOBE categories were Cl Packaging This category measures the users first impressions regarding the packaging of the equipment Ideally a product should be packaged in a way that allows the user to transport it to a target location easily and safely and clearly identify the contents of each box Thus in this category the participants were asked to check the weight of the packages to identify the content of the package based on their labels and finally to check whether or not it would be easy to transport them C2 Unpacking This category concerns itself with the efficiency and the easiness of the users unpacking experience The aim is for the package to be ready for setup quickly and easily In this category participants were asked to understand the interior organisation of the package do an inventory check on the content using the manual and finally to identify the related components i e cables adaptors and connectors C3 Setup The easiness of physical arrangement and assembly of components as well as intuitiveness of the related instructions provided are exami
21. o if something goes wrong me a el C5a Configuration PDA It is easy to install the ActiveSync Application provided 1 2 OI It is easy to link the PDA device to the cradle 1 2 OI It is easy to create partnership between the desktop and the 1 2 PDA L It is easy to identify which applications I want to be 1 2 synchronised with the PDA BN The user s manual provides enough help for this phase 1 2 OI C5b Configuration HMD It is easy to identify the components required 1 2 zai It is easy to understand how to attach the Fly Jacket with the 1 2 HMD O It is easy to understand how to do the initial set up of the 1 2 HMD L Overall linking the PDA and the HMD is straightforward 1 2 OI The user s manual provides enough help for this phase 1 2 OI 20 C a Initial Use PDA It is easy to find where the turn on button 12 34 5 Ebak eE sE It is easy to synchronise the PDA with the desktop I 2 3 ANS eT SE ell It is easy to personalise the PDA based on the requirements 12 34 5 A i lI It is easy to set the security settings for the PDA device 12 34 5 A Sa l Removing files from the SD Storage Card card is easy 12 34 5 a a gh l C6b Initial Use HMD It is easy to turn on the HMD 12 34 5 Cal Sh ee It is easy to start the HMD up 12 34 5 Cals Ei ss It is e
22. perience wearable computing This finding would seem to indicate that integration of multiple functionalities on a single device with the corresponding reduced need for interconnection coupled with enhanced multi modal interaction to possibly compensate for the one wearable device fits all functionalities setting might be the way forward Whether indeed such a device would have a better OOBE than the scenario studied by us is an interesting question deserving future work On a positive note our findings have also shown that the OOBE is mainly unaffected by user computer experience and gender which highlights that the OOBE designers of the two devices have made efforts to consider these categories and provide a broadly uniform OOBE Whilst we attributed the limited gender impact to differences in spatial awareness this in itself is also a worthy opportunity for future exploits In concluding we remark that the OOBE should not be viewed in isolation indeed if one wishes to have true integration of devices then this should also happen at all levels of the user experience beginning with the OOBE Only by so doing will the claim of building integrated user friendly systems ring true 14 REFERENCES 1 Buyukkokten O Garcia Molina H Paepcke A Winograd T 2000 Power Brower Efficient Web Browsing for PDAs in Proceedings of ACM CHI 2000 pp 430 437 2 Fulk M 2001 Improving Web Browsing on Handheld Devices in Proceedings of AC
23. play unit In related 2 work MacKay 3 looked into the web content adaptation for small screened devices using a gateway transcoder The proposed gateway displays the web page designed for a large screen on a smaller one by reducing the web page in scale to fit the screen The users of the gateway can focus on any part of the screen to interact with it or just to navigate helping the user to create a mental model of the site s he is visiting and feel in control From a different perspective Waycott and Kukulska Hulme 4 evaluated student experiences using PDAs when employed as tools for reading and learning and their findings showed that due to the aforementioned problems typical of PDAs it was difficult to read and interact with documents using such devices A fresh approach is the one proposed by Siemens Corporate Research who put forward a framework that accommodates ubiquitous multimedia access using small screened devices This allows PDA users to access rich multimedia content and services without having to shrink or tailor the content to match the capabilities of the PDA device This is achieved by the collaboration of the PDA with its surrounding electronic appliances e g TV mobile phone under the coordination of a Smart Server 14 3 Head Mounted Displays Head mounted displays are a sub set of wearable computer technology which aim to allow hands free access to computer functionality Users reasons for hands free acces
24. r label on the HMD box which 11 depicted a person wearing an HMD whilst also playing a computer game on a console whilst the PDA box had a clear picture of the device contained therein unencumbered by secondary connections A related observation is to be made in the case of repacking task T5 of the Unpacking category which was found to be significantly easier in the case of the PDA where internal compartmentalisation was aided by appropriately moulded plastic diving sheets as opposed to the case of the HMD which relied on simple unmoulded cardboard dividers whose exact position in the box once taken out was far from straight forward to figure out Lastly the OOBE was significantly better in the case of the PDA than that of the HMD for task T4 of the Initial Use category which concerned itself with initialising security settings for the devices and for task T1 of the Assistance category The former result probably is a consequence of the fact that the PDA has a dedicated streamlined interface for this task in contrast to the HMD in which this task can only be accomplished with the user interacting via a non dedicated multi functional set of buttons On the other hand the latter result comes about due to the PDA running a modified version Windows CE of the Windows Operating System and users general familiarity with obtaining help in this environment 6 2 Impact of User Type on the OOBE The OOBE for the two devices consid
25. re numerous these range from ensuring a consistent initial user experience across a range of possibly interconnected interdependent devices 9 to establishing the essential components of the OOBE 28 and indeed towards formulating a generic approach for the OOBE design itself 7 8 29 The importance of the OOBE has also been highlighted in a study EoURoundtable 2000 which examined core areas of user dissatisfaction based on data gathered from usability tests tech centre support calls and user research from 26 companies including major industry players such as Intel Microsoft IBM Dell Siemens and Hitachi According to the findings of the report there were eight main causes behind user dissatisfaction Table 1 with OOBE being the only non technical one Table 1 Further examination of user experiences 26 showed that the most frequent causes for discontent with the OOBE were e PC initial setup time e Too many physical cables connectors adaptors e An overwhelming amount of documentation and e Confusing content of user manuals Lastly OOBE research is ongoing and currently examining the experience impact of mobile and wireless devices The findings on wireless devices show that the setup of such equipment requires that the user is familiar with networking and computer hardware and because of this it is frequently an intimidating and frustrating process for most users 6 Moreover research has also highlighted
26. rsden G Mohd Nasir N Boone K Buchanan G 1999 Improving Web interaction on Small Displays in Proceedings of 8 International WWW Conference pp 51 59 14 Pham T Schneider G Goose S 2000 A situated framework for mobile and ubiquitous multimedia access using small screen and composite devices in Proceedings of the 8 ACM international conference on Multimedia pp 323 331 15 Gips J DiMattia P Curran F X Olivieri P 1996 Using EagleEyes an Electrodes Based Device for Controlling the Computer with Your Eyes to Help People with Special Needs in Fifth International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs ICCHP 96 Linz Austria 16 Xybernaut 2003 Xybernaut Corporation http www xybernaut com retrieved 10 July 2003 17 Bowman D Datey A Ryu Y Farooq U Vasnaik O 2002 Empirical Comparison of Human Behavior and Performance with Different Display Devices for Virtual Environments in Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting pp 2134 2138 18 Lantz E 1997 Future Directions in Visual Display Systems Computer Graphics 31 2 pp 38 45 19 Regan EC 1995 An investigation into nausea and other side effects of head coupled immersive virtual reality Virtual Reality 1 1 pp 17 32 20 Cobb S Nichols S Wilson JR 1995 Health and safety implications of virtual reality In search of and experimental methodology in Proceedings of Framework for Immersive Virtual
27. rview of the main themes of OOBE research Section 5 details the methodology followed by our experiments while results are presented and analysed in Section 6 Lastly conclusions are drawn and possibilities for future work identified in Section 7 2 Personal Digital Assistants Improvements in technology especially in wireless networking have pushed the barriers of anywhere anytime information access Portable information access raises the need for portable information access devices such as communicator devices and personal digital assistants which promise to supplant the desktop computer as ubiquitous technology on campuses and in business 10 with Gartner Research predicts a 260 increase in the unit sales from 9 39 million units in 2000 to 33 7 million units in 2004 11 Personal Digital Assistants inherit human computer interaction and ergonomic related issues such as small screen size slow input facilities low bandwidth small storage capacity limited battery lifetime and slow computer processor unit speed which are all possible obstacles to the success of mobile and pervasive computing objectives 1 12 It is not surprising then that PDA research is mainly involved in overcoming such barriers Thus for instance Jones et al 13 studied the effect that screen sizes have on web browsing related tasks and their results showed that users with small screens followed hyper links less frequently than those with a larger dis
28. s T3 Based on the content list provided on the manual check the inventory T4 Empty all the contents of the box put the related devices next to each other T5 Try packing back the content of each box using their original boxes and bags C3 Setup T1 Read the users manual and understand the instructions for the initial setup T2 Read about how to assemble the components that came with the device T3 Assemble the components that came with the device T4 Go back to the users manual to check whether the components are linked correctly T5 If not check the user manuals Frequently Asked Questions FAQ section or troubleshooter C4 Power On T1 After all the setup has been done turn on the device and verify that it works T2 Try to identify whether the device has been setup properly T3 Try to spot the welcome messages and or thank you notes T4 Based on the message received compared with the expected message image that is provided on the users manual T5 In case of a problem try to solve the problem using the FAQ section or troubleshooter C5a Configuration PDA T1 Make sure that the cradle is not attached to the USB port of your computer T2 Install the required applications for the device such as ActiveSync provided in setup compact disk CD T3 When the installation wizard requests position the PDA on the cradle and connect the cradle to the computer using the USB socke
29. s to computing devices is often varied and range from individuals with a restrictive physical disability 15 to individuals working in dangerous or hazardous conditions 16 Integration of wearable mobile devices with network technology touch pen speech recognition inputs interactive glove or face mounted devices as in the case of Xybernaut s Mobile Assistant allow extremely adaptable mobile solutions Devices such as head mounted displays have often been considered synonymous with virtual reality development however due to falling cost and improved technology head mounted displays devices are becoming more commercially available and have recently gained commercial importance for high street companies such as Olympus and Sony The head mounted display is made of two canonical displays and usually consists of two liquid crystal or cathode ray tube display screens that are either mounted on a helmet or glasses frame structure There are several attributes that affect the usability of the head mounted displays Head mounted displays can be either binocular showing the same image to both eyes or stereoscopic in nature showing different images to each eye The choice between 3 binocular or stereoscopic depends on whether three dimensional interaction or presentation is required Whilst head mounted displays use a range of display resolutions it is important to note however that a trade off exists between the resolution used and the f
30. se of the PDA Figure 3 whilst in the Doing work category users responses indicated that all tasks in this class were again significantly easier in the case of the PDA Figure 4 10 This result highlights the difficulties that users found in interconnecting devices and particularly with wiring and audio video cable identification essential components of this goal as is software installation Thus in order to link the HMD with the PDA users had to attach the Lifeview FlyJacket to the PDA and install the associated device drivers Whilst users did not encounter particular difficulty in installing the ActiveSync software associated with the PDA they did so in the case of the FlyJacket device drivers A similar observation can be made with respect to the interconnection between the PDA and the desktop machine where users had comparatively little trouble achieving this whilst the task of connecting the PDA to the HMD was found to be significantly more difficult This result complements the observation of Fouts 9 who argues that the OOBE when extended across several companies can be compromised in our research we did indeed find that the initial inter connection of different devices proved to be one of the hardest tasks experienced by users with consequent negative implications on their OOBE Our experiments also showed that routine tasks such as file transfers and the running of a typical application Windows Media Player was mor
31. t T4 Follow the installation process and create a standard partnership between your computer and the personal digital assistant PDA T5 In case of a problem try to solve the problem using the FAQ section or troubleshooter 17 C5b Configuration HMD T1 Make sure that all required hardware to link the PDA with the Fly Jacket is there T2 If they are on turn off both of the devices T3 Using the manuals provided try to link the Fly Jacket with the HMD device T4 Position the PDA in the Fly Jacket and install the provided drivers to project the contents of the PDA screen to the HMD T5 In case of a problem try to solve the problem using FAQ section or troubleshooter C a Initial Use PDA T1 Turn on the PDA device T2 Position the PDA on the cradle and synchronise the applications running on the PDA with the ones on your desktop T3 Personalise the synchronisation setting of the PDA by tapping on the Name section on the screen and type your name on the provided To save hit OK T4 Set the security settings for the device using fingerprint and password locking so that no one else can access your data T5 Try accessing Secure Digital SD storage memory area and delete its content C6b Initial Use HMD T1 Turn on the HMD device T2 Put on the Eye Trek and insert the initial password provided in the users manual to enable the device T3 Personalise the colour set
32. that the notion of a singular device specific OOBE is potentially flawed the initial user experience increasingly concerns the configuration of more than one device and the consequent interaction between the different device and company specific OOBEs can lead to less than desirable outcomes 9 Indeed in our work the details of which we give in the next section we have sought to examine the OOBE when multiple devices from different companies are set up and subsequently interconnected for intial use 5 EXPERIMENT DESCRIPTION 5 1 Participants Our study involved 18 participants nine male and nine female who were aged between 23 and 37 and were taken from a range of different nationalities and backgrounds students clerical and academic staff as well as white and blue collar workers All participants spoke English well enough to be educated in this medium whilst the average duration of participant computer usage was 7 years and month All participants had not previously used the type of devices employed in our OOBE experiment Table 2 Using the taxonomy of McMurtrey 28 the users were divided into three categories Novice Familiar and Experienced Each user was assigned to one of these categories according to the answers that s he gave to a set of 7 questions in the Background section Table 2 of the OOBE questionnaire used in our experiments the questionnaire is described in detail in Section 5 4 Accordi
33. times do not work very well OOBE Out of Box Experience Many users are dissatisfied with how long it takes and how difficult it is to set up and use the PC for the first time User Task Assistance Users cannot always determine how to do what they want to do on the computer 24 Table 2 User profile questionnaire Do you regularly use electronic mail Yes No e mail LI L Do you regularly use search engines Google Yes No AltaVista L Do you regularly use word processing Yes No applications Ms Word WordPerfect E Do you regularly use spreadsheet Yes No applications Ms Excel Lotus E Have you ever successfully installed software Yes No on a computer UL Have you ever written and successfully run a Yes No O computer program 25 Table 3 Participant breakdown according to gender and type of user User Type Gender Male Female Novice 4 2 Familiar 1 5 Experienced 4 2 26 27
34. tings of the HMD based on your needs T4 Set the security settings for the device using password locking so that no one else can use your HMD T5 In case of a problem try to solve the problem using FAQ section or troubleshooter C7 Doing Work T1 Locate the PDA device on the cradle and using ActiveSync application transfer a file that is located on the C drive of the PC to the SD memory of the PDA device T2 Run the Media Player application on the PDA open and watch the default video clip by pressing the Play button T3 Go the Wireless Network WLAN settings and activate the wireless connection Using the scanner scan for available wireless networks in the area T4 Using the identified wireless network connect to http 192 168 0 2 with the Internet Explorer application T5 In case of a problem try to solve the problem using the FAQ section or troubleshooter C8 Assistance T1 Check for real time assistance that is provided on the devices PDA Eye Trek T2 Search for FAQ or troubleshooter section on the manuals of the devices T3 Try to find out if there is any online web help technical support available T4 Try to find out if there are any free phone lines available for this purpose T5 See if the assistance provided through manual and web site is multilingual 18 APPENDIX B Out of Box Experience Evaluation Form Evaluator Details
35. y components 26 the overall time in which the experiment was completed was recorded for each user even though s he was unaware that this was being done Accordingly the fastest completion time for the experiments was 95 minutes whilst the longest was 211 minutes The average duration of our experiment was calculated to be 136 minutes Lastly we mention that environmental variables were kept constant for all participants in the experiment as this took place in the same room of the Brunel University usability laboratory A pilot test study of 2 participants was used to check and validate the questionnaire and the experimental process Apart from requests for slight rephrasing of questions statements in order to ease their understanding this study revealed that one of the initial tasks in the Doing work category could not be successfully undertaken due to limitations of PDA memory size and battery power Accordingly in the final version of our experiments this task was replaced by a feasible one Task T3 of Category C7 as given in Appendix A 6 RESULTS 6 1 Device Impact on the OOBE The most important result to come out of our analysis was that there are significant differences in the Configuration and Doing Work categories of the user OOBE depending on the particular device at hand PDA or HMD Accordingly a Wilcoxon test highlighted that in the Configuration category users found tasks T1 T4 to be significantly easier in the ca
36. y to understand the functionality and the relation between devices It is easy to repack the devices back to their original wrappings 19 C3 Setup PDA HMD The user s manual is easy to understand 1 2 3 4 5 I 2 and leaves no opportunity for mistakes ae LI It is easy to understand the physical 1 2 3 4 5 LZ arrangement of the components a ge Ti It is easy to assemble the components 1234 5 1 2 i l OI It is easy to find a specific section onthe 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 manual LESERE LI It is easy to find a specific section onthe 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 Frequently asked questions or UU UU Tal troubleshooter C4 Power on PDA HMD It is easy to see that the device works 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 Light blinking showing that it has O O U O O Till battery The initial welcome screen makes clear 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 that the device works properly 0 EECH LI It is hard to understand if everything isok 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 or not Bf a O I After reading the manual I know whatI 1 2 3 4 5 2 should expect as start up screen le eo LI The manual provides guidelines about 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 what to d
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