Saudi Cultural Missions Theses & Dissertations
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Item Restricted Exploring Gamification by Evaluating Interfaces of Task Management Apps and Developing an Interface to Ensure Inclusiveness of Different Students’ Needs.(Newcastle University, 2024-09) Almakran, Raneem; Claisse, CarolineThe aim of this project is to evaluate and develop a prototype of a gamified task management app that enhances engagement for diverse students in academic contexts, such as students with ADHD symptoms. ADHD students face challenges with managing tasks, which affect their academic performance. Existing task management apps are designed for general users, but none specifically fulfill the needs of students with ADHD symptoms. Therefore, this paper evaluates two existing task management apps and presents a prototype designed to manage tasks in an enjoyable way by including gamification features such as competing with friends, collecting points, and taking care of a plant by achieving tasks. To understand user needs, semi-structured interviews were conducted with two students who identified with ADHD symptoms. Interviews were analysed using a qualitative approach. The results demonstrated the challenges faced in academia and how students tend not to use current task management apps for academic tasks. To test the usability of the gamified prototype, one participant was interviewed. Before the usability test, an ADHD persona and some scenarios were presented to the participant. The results were encouraging, suggesting that the gamified interface is engaging and enjoyable while managing tasks.50 0Item Restricted EXPLORING USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY IN LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY IN HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION HEURISTICS(University of North Texas, 2024-04-04) Algamdi, Shabbab; Ludi, StephanieMobile educational software has assumed a pivotal and indispensable role in the con- temporary educational landscape. It has become an essential tool for facilitating the use of mobile application software for crucial tasks such as hosting Zoom meetings, tracking classroom attendance, aiding in homework assignments, and facilitating quizzes and ex- aminations. Notably, Canvas and Blackboard have emerged as prominent and influential applications within this context. This study emphasizes the critical importance of non-functional requirements, with an emphasis on the usability of mobile applications, and falls under the purview of the Computer Science Department, under the realm of software engineering. This aspect establishes itself as a foundational cornerstone in ensuring the efficacy and user-friendliness of educational software, necessitating a thorough and meticulous exploration and evaluation. Usability holds a significant place as a non-functional requirement for mobile appli- cations, with usability and accessibility being key facets of Human-Computer Interaction within software engineering. This research comprises three interconnected studies, all anchored in the usability evaluation of mobile education applications, with guidance from the well-established Jakob Nielsen factors to Heuristic Evaluation. The first study delves into the analysis of mobile application reviews using a deep learning model and machine learning to unearth usability issues. The second investigates the user experience of educational applications, offering a comparative analysis of Blackboard and Canvas based on app reviews. The third extends to an empirical evaluation of the usability of these educational applications at different educational institutions. Mobile applications have emerged as a means of communication between educators and students, facilitating a more intuitive and inclusive digital learning environment and ul- timately benefiting learners across the spectrum, particularly those with specific educational requirements. In this paper, we examine the usability of two prominent educational applications, namely, the Canvas application and the Blackboard application, integrated within Prince Sattam bin Abdulaziz University (PSAU). We conducted an empirical investigation, inspecting the Canvas and Blackboard applications at the University of North Texas (UNT) and employing a student-oriented perspective. Through the synthesis of findings and insights from antecedent studies, we seek to augment the current body of knowledge and offer realistic recommendations for the enhancement of mobile education application usability. Our find- ings have the potential to improve the efficacy of platforms, offering developers a roadmap to refine application features and optimize the learning experience for both educators and learners.40 0Item Restricted EVALUATION OF UNIVERSITIES WEBSITES BASED ON USABILITY AND MACHINE LEARNING WEB CLUSTERING(Saudi Digital Library, 2023-09-10) Alkhuwaitem, Mohammed Abdulmohsen; Hasan, Layla Rasheed AbdallahA university website is considered to be its main gateway to the world. The usability of a university website affects the way prospective students look for a program in a university for the first time, students who are using the website, and university staff who are accessing the website in their day-to-day tasks. That being said, there is a lack of research when it comes to evaluating the usability of universities’ websites using their web vitals. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the usability of universities’ websites using web vitals, and cluster universities based on the usability of universities’ websites. This research has three objectives. The first objective is to measure the response time of universities’ websites using web vitals to be used as a metric. The second objective is to examine the relationship between the usability of universities’ websites and university ranking systems. The third and final objective is to apply unsupervised machine learning for clustering universities based on the usability of their websites. The findings of this research will benefit universities when it comes to understanding more about the web vitals of their websites, examining the relationship between university ranking systems and the usability of universities’ websites, and exploring the most severe flaws that occur in universities websites. This research was carried out in three phases. Phase 1 started with measuring the performance, accessibility, best practices, search engine optimization, progressive web application, and other response time metrics, and verifying the collected data as well as collecting the universities’ ranking information. Phase 2 is where the data is cleaned and exploratory data analysis is applied to examine the relationship between the usability of universities websites and university ranking systems, and the flaws of universities websites were explored to determine the most severe flaws. Phase 3 is where the dataset was visualized and an unsupervised machine learning clustering algorithm was applied on the data to group universities based on the usability of their websites. This research has distinctively demonstrated that web vitals are effective metrics when it comes to precisely measuring the response time and the overall usability of universities’ websites, which addresses the identified research gap. Also, this research showed that the relationship between the usability of universities’ websites and the QS world university rankings 2023 and THE world university rankings 2023 is weak. In addition, this research grouped universities based on the usability of their websites into three different clusters.13 0Item Restricted Electrtactons: Designing and Evaluating Electrotactile Cues(2023-06-05) Alotaibi, Yosuef; Brewster, StephenElectrotactile feedback is a novel haptic feedback modality that can be used to evoke a desired level of alertness and emotion or convey multidimensional information to the user. However, there is a lack of research investigating its basic design parameters and how they can be used to create effective tactile cues. This thesis investigates the effect of Electrotactile feedback on the subjective perception of specific sensations, such as urgency, annoyance, valence and arousal, to find the number of distinguishable levels in each sensation. These levels are then used for designing structured, abstract, electrotactile messages called Electrotactons. These have potential benefits over vibration-based cues due to the greater flexibility of the actuators. Experiments 1, 2 & 4 investigated the effects of manipulating the basic electrotactile parameters pulse width, amplitude and pulse frequency on perceived sensations. The results showed that all parameters have a significant effect on the perceived sensations, except for pulse frequency not having an effect on valence. Also, pulse frequencies of 30 PPS and above did not influence the perceived sensations. Experiment 3 investigated the use of pulse width, amplitude and pulse frequency to convey three types of information simultaneously encoded into an electrotactile cue. This was the first attempt to design Electrotactons using the basic parameters of electrotactile feedback. The results showed overall recognition rates of 38.19% for the complete Electro- tactons. For the individual component parameters, pulse width had a recognition rate of 71.67%, amplitude 70.27%, and pulse frequency 66.36%. Experiment 5 investigated intensity and pulse frequency to determine how many distinguishable levels could be perceived. Results showed that both intensity and pulse frequency significantly affected perception, with four distinguishable levels of intensity and two of pulse frequency. Experiment 6 investigated the use of intensity and pulse frequency from in Experiment 5 to improve the design of Electrotactons on three body locations using two different size electrodes. The results showed overall recognition rates of up to 65.31% for the complete Electrotactons. For the individual component parameters, intensity had a recognition rate of 68.68%, and pulse frequency 94.41%. These results add significant new knowledge about the parameter space of electrotactile cue design and help designers select suitable properties to use when creating electrotactile cues.22 0