Question: Perceiving urban community well-being through the lens of city mobility patterns.

This paper delves into the intricate dynamics of social power within group conversations, specifically focusing on the automatic identification of dominance patterns from sensor data—a critical area in the field of social computing. Dominance, as a manifestation of power, is intrinsically linked to social interaction and is communicated and perceived through a combination of verbal and nonverbal cues. Our study offers a comprehensive analysis on the automatic modeling of dominance in group meetings, utilizing nonverbal activity cues derived from audiovisual data captured by multiple cameras and microphones. We explore various efficient audio and visual cues that effectively characterize dominant behavior, examining their performance both individually and in combination. The paper also evaluates unsupervised and supervised methods for dominance modeling. To ensure the objectivity of our findings, we subject the activity cues and models to rigorous testing through a series of dominance-related classification tasks, which are based on an analysis of the variability in human perception of dominance in group discussions. Our research underscores the efficacy of straightforward yet potent techniques in the context of dominance modeling, while also highlighting the complexities involved in integrating audiovisual data. This work represents the most thorough investigation into the automatic modeling of dominance in meetings to date.

In essence, this study contributes significantly to the understanding of social dynamics in group conversations by employing advanced computational methods to model dominance based on nonverbal cues. It not only provides insights into the behavioral expressions of power but also offers practical applications in social computing, particularly in scenarios involving group meetings. The findings can be instrumental in developing more sophisticated social interaction models and improving the analysis of human behavior in various social settings.

How can we innovate smart systems for smart cities, to make data available homogeneously, inexpensively, and flexibly while supporting an array of applications that have yet to exist or be specified?

While indoor portable navigation using portable devices is becoming increasingly required, it faces many challenges in obtaining accurate positioning performance. One of the methods to improve navigation results is to recognize the mode of motion of the user carrying the portable device containing low-cost microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) motion sensors. Pattern recognition methodology has been employed to detect a group of motion modes that are common indoors, namely, walking, stationary, going up/down stairs, standing on an escalator, walking on an escalator, standing on a moving walkway, and walking on a moving walkway. The performance of the motion mode recognition module was examined on different types of mobile computing devices, including various brands of smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, and smartglasses, and the results obtained showed the capability of enhancing positioning performance. The module does not require satellite or wireless positioning signals, and depends only on MEMS sensors.

With the rapid proliferation of sensor-rich smartphones, mobile crowd sensing has become a popular research field. In this article, we propose a four-stage life cycle (i.e., task creation, task assignment, individual task execution, and crowd data integration) to characterize the mobile crowd sensing process, and use 4W1H (i.e., what, when, where, who, and how) to sort out the research problems in the mobile crowd sensing domain. Furthermore, we attempt to foresee some new research directions in future mobile crowd sensing research.


Question: In what way can corrections transform into defects?

Automatically Detecting Errors in System Code: A Deviant Behavior Approach

A significant barrier to identifying program errors in complex systems is the lack of clear guidelines on the rules that these systems must follow. Often, these rules are either not documented or are specified in a haphazard way, making it difficult to pinpoint where things go wrong. This paper outlines methods for automatically extracting checking information directly from the source code, eliminating the need for prior knowledge of the system's rules. The heart of our strategy lies in uncovering the "beliefs" of the programmer, which we then scrutinize for inconsistencies. These beliefs are inferred from the code itself; for instance, a pointer dereference suggests the programmer believes the pointer is not null, or a call to "unlock(l)" indicates the programmer believes "l" was previously locked.

When we encounter beliefs that the programmer must hold, such as the pointer dereference example, any contradiction is immediately flagged as an error. For beliefs that the programmer might hold, we assume these beliefs are valid and apply a statistical analysis to rank the resulting errors based on their likelihood. For example, if a call to "spin lock" is followed by a call to "spin unlock" in almost all cases but deviates once, we can infer that the deviation is likely an error. The beauty of this approach is that it does not require any prior knowledge of what is true; if two beliefs conflict, we know that one of them is incorrect, without needing to know which belief is correct.

Our methodology involves extracting beliefs by customizing rule "templates" to fit the system in question. For example, we identify all functions that match the rule template "<a> must be paired with <b>." We have created six checkers based on this framework, which have uncovered numerous bugs in real systems like Linux and OpenBSD. These template checkers have significantly reduced the manual effort required for system checks, finding ten to one hundred times more rule instances than previous methods and identifying properties that were previously impractical to specify manually.

In summary, this paper introduces a novel approach to automatically detecting errors in system code by inferring programmer beliefs and checking them for contradictions. This method does not require any prior knowledge of system rules and has proven effective in identifying a large number of bugs in real-world systems, thereby reducing the manual effort needed for system checks.


Question: How can corrections transform into defects?

In the realm of software development and maintenance, ensuring the integrity of code after modifications is a critical concern, leading to the practice of regression testing. This process aims to validate that alterations haven't inadvertently introduced new issues or altered the functionality of existing features. A significant challenge within regression testing lies in efficiently selecting a subset of test cases from the original test suite that can effectively identify any potential regressions. Regression-test-selection techniques are devised to tackle this issue by identifying tests that may yield different results before and after the software modifications. While safety is paramount in these techniques, ensuring that all relevant tests are included, precision and efficiency are equally important, especially in the context of large-scale software systems. Existing methods often struggle to strike a balance; highly efficient techniques may lack the necessary precision, leading to a surplus of tests that offer little savings, while precise techniques can be prohibitively costly for extensive systems. This paper introduces a novel regression-test-selection technique for Java programs that not only meets the criteria of safety and precision but also scales effectively to accommodate large software systems. Accompanying this technique is a tool that has been developed and tested on a diverse range of subjects, from 70 to over 500 KLOC (thousands of lines of code). The results of these studies demonstrate the technique's capability to significantly streamline regression testing, thereby achieving substantial savings in testing effort.

Radiation-induced single event upsets (SEUs) pose a major challenge for the design of memories and logic circuits in high-performance microprocessors in technologies beyond 90nm. Historically, we have considered power-performance-area trade offs. There is a need to include the soft error rate (SER) as another design parameter. In this paper, we present radiation particle interactions with silicon, charge collection effects, soft errors, and their effect on VLSI circuits. We also discuss the impact of SEUs on system reliability. We describe an accelerated measurement of SERs using a high-intensity neutron beam, the characterization of SERs in sequential logic cells, and technology scaling trends. Finally, some directions for future research are given.


Question: In what way can corrections transform into defects?

This study delves into the critical issue of software reliability by exploring the likelihood that modifications to software will lead to failures. Assuming that software evolution is a series of incremental changes, we focus on developing a predictive model for the risk associated with these changes. Our approach hinges on analyzing the characteristics of the changes themselves, including the volume of code added, deleted, or left unchanged, the breadth of the change across files, modules, and subsystems, measures of the developer's expertise, and the nature of the change—whether it's a correction of an existing issue or the introduction of new code. This model, grounded in historical data, is designed to forecast the potential risks of impending changes. When applied to updates in 5ESS® software, our findings underscore the critical role of change diffusion and developer experience in failure prediction. The predictive model is transformed into a web-based tool for real-time risk assessment of software changes. This capability to anticipate change quality empowers decision-makers to tailor inspection, testing, and deployment strategies accordingly. Given that many commercial software projects meticulously document historical change records, our methodology holds promise for broad practical application.

For many applications a laser beam needs to be scanned across a plane. Several methods exist to accomplish this.One method, dual galvanometer pre-objective scanning, is particularly well suited to precise laser marking applications. The laser beam impinges on a first mirror mounted on a galvanometer motor, then on a second mirror with its rota tion axis parallel to the laser axis, and passes then through the flat-field objective lens, which focuses the beam onto the image plane. Figure 1 shows a photograph of the SILAMATIK laser marker. This letter investigates what amount of distortion is intro duced and how it can be corrected electronically. We as sume that the lens is axial symmetric. The geometry is that of Fig. 2. Say the first mirror is rotated a mechanical angle a/2 from its rest position and the second mirror an angle 6/2. The direction vector lR of the beam that falls on the lens is


Question: How can corrections transform into defects?

This study delves into the dynamics of software aging, focusing on how code structure can impede understanding and modification, defining such code as aged or decayed. The degree of decay is quantified by tracking fault occurrences over time within a codebase. Utilizing data from a comprehensive change management system associated with a large, mature software project, the research investigates how change history metrics correlate with fault incidence across different modules. The findings highlight that process-oriented measures derived from change history are more effective in forecasting fault frequencies than traditional code-centric metrics. Specifically, the number of revisions a piece of code has undergone is a stronger predictor of fault presence than the code's length. Additionally, the analysis reveals that older modules tend to have lower fault rates, with each additional year reducing the average fault count by approximately one-third, compared to similar modules of lesser age. The most accurate predictive model developed in this study assesses a module's fault susceptibility based on the cumulative impact of all previous modifications, giving greater weight to significant and recent changes. Keywords: Fault propensity, code deterioration, change management records, metrics, statistical evaluation, generalized linear models.

This paper presents a grammatical error correction (GEC) system that provides corrective feedback for essays. We apply the neural sequence-to-sequence model, which is frequently used in machine translation and text summarization, to this GEC task. The model is trained on EF-Cambridge Open Language Database (EFCAMDAT), a large learner corpus annotated with grammatical errors and corrections. Evaluation shows that our system achieves competitive performance on a number of publicly available testsets.

In wafer fabrication, Fluorine (F) contamination may cause F-induced corrosion and defects on microchip Al bondpad, resulting in bondpad discoloration or non-stick on pad (NSOP). In the previous paper [1], the authors studied the F-induced corrosion and defects, characterized the composition of the “flower-like” defects and determined the binding energy of Al fluoride [AlF6]3- using X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) and Time of Flight Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (TOF-SIMS) techniques. In this paper, we further studied F-induced corrosion and defects, and characterized the composition of the “crystal-like” defects using XPS. The experimental results showed that the major component of the “crystal-like” defect was Al fluoride of AlF3. The percentages of the components of the “crystal-like” defects on the affected bondpad are: Al (22.2%), Al2O3 (5.4%), AlF3(70.0%) and [AlF6]3- (2.4%). During high-resolution fitting, the binding energies of Al (72.8eV)Al2O3 (74.5eV), AlF3 (76.3eV) and [AlF6]3- (78.7eV) were used.


Question: How can corrections transform into defects?

Introducing Chianti: A Java Change Impact Analysis Tool for Eclipse
This paper discusses the development and functionality of Chianti, a specialized tool designed for change impact analysis within Java programs, seamlessly integrated into the Eclipse environment. Chianti's core capability involves the analysis of two distinct versions of an application, breaking down their differences into a series of atomic changes. The tool's output is presented in terms of affected tests (either regression or unit tests) whose execution outcomes may have been altered by these changes. For each impacted test, Chianti identifies a subset of changes responsible for the test's altered behavior, distinguishing between those that directly caused a test failure and those affecting other tests. This feature can be particularly useful in debugging scenarios where a test unexpectedly fails following a prolonged editing session. Chianti's effectiveness was assessed using a year's worth of CVS data from M. Ernst's Daikon system (2002), revealing that on average, 52% of Daikon's unit tests were affected. Notably, each impacted unit test was, on average, influenced by just 3.95% of the atomic changes. These results indicate that Chianti's change impact analysis is a promising approach for aiding developers in understanding program modifications and debugging.

Radiation-induced single event upsets (SEUs) pose a major challenge for the design of memories and logic circuits in high-performance microprocessors in technologies beyond 90nm. Historically, we have considered power-performance-area trade offs. There is a need to include the soft error rate (SER) as another design parameter. In this paper, we present radiation particle interactions with silicon, charge collection effects, soft errors, and their effect on VLSI circuits. We also discuss the impact of SEUs on system reliability. We describe an accelerated measurement of SERs using a high-intensity neutron beam, the characterization of SERs in sequential logic cells, and technology scaling trends. Finally, some directions for future research are given.


Question: The influence of website quality and playfulness on customer acceptance of online retail platforms.

This paper delves into an extended version of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), initially proposed by Davis in 1989, to elucidate the determinants of individual acceptance and utilization of websites. Specifically, it explores the influence of perceived ease-of-use, usefulness, and enjoyment on users' attitudes towards using, intentions to use, and actual use of websites. A novel element introduced in this study is "perceived visual attractiveness," posited to affect usefulness, enjoyment, and ease-of-use. To validate these hypotheses, the research was conducted in collaboration with a Dutch generic portal boasting over 300,000 subscribers at the time. The web survey yielded a sample size of 825 participants. The findings supported all 12 hypotheses, with three notable outcomes: (1) attitude was the most significant predictor of intention (β = 0.51), (2) ease-of-use, enjoyment, and usefulness had comparable effects on attitude towards using (β = 0.23, 0.23, and 0.17, respectively), and (3) visual attractiveness had a substantial impact on ease-of-use, enjoyment, and usefulness (β = 0.41, 0.35, and 0.21). This study makes three key contributions: (1) it uses a single website as the unit of analysis, (2) it introduces visual attractiveness as a variable, and (3) it employs real website users instead of student samples. Future research could explore the connection between specific website features and usage, a link that the TAM framework effectively bridges. Factors Influencing the Usage of Websites: The Case of a Generic Portal in the Netherlands

**Question**: The impact of Web quality and playfulness on user acceptance of online retailing

**Documents**: The Role of Playfulness in Online Retailing: An Empirical Investigation of the Antecedents and Consequences of Playful Experience
This study examines the role of playfulness in online retailing, specifically focusing on its antecedents and consequences. Playfulness is defined as the extent to which an activity is perceived as enjoyable and engaging without the pursuit of an explicit goal. The study proposes a model that incorporates the dimensions of website design (visual appeal and ease of use), the consumer's need for playfulness, and the impact of playfulness on user satisfaction and behavioral intentions. Data were collected through an online survey of 327 respondents who had recent experience shopping on e-commerce websites.

Although existing models of e-learning effectiveness in information systems (IS) have increased our understanding of how technology can support and enhance learning, most of our models do not take into account the importance of social presence. Thus, this study extends previous research by developing a model of e-learning effectiveness which adds social presence to other oft studied variables including application-specific computer self-efficacy (AS-CSE), perceived usefulness, course interaction, and e-learning effectiveness. Using data from 345 individuals, this model was validated through a field study in an introductory IS survey course. Results indicate that AS-CSE and perceived usefulness were related to course performance, course satisfaction, and course instrumentality. In addition, course interaction was related to course performance and satisfaction. Finally, social presence was related to course satisfaction and course instrumentality. Implications for research and practice are discussed. r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Higher penetration of powerful mobile devices – especially smartphones – and high-speed mobile internet access are leading to better offer and higher levels of usage of these devices in commercial activities, especially among young generations. The purpose of this paper is to determine the key factors that influence consumers’ adoption of mobile commerce. The extended model incorporates basic TAM predictors, such as perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, but also several external variables, such as trust, mobility, customization and customer involvement. Data was collected from 224 m-commerce consumers. First, structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to determine which variables had signif-

Although mobile purchase is convenient in the age of mobile commerce, many consumers still do not utilize mobile purchase to its full potential. From the mobile vendor’s perspective, retaining current customers and facilitating their continued purchase are crucial to create profitability and achieve a sustainable development. An understanding of the continuance intention towards mobile purchase can provide insights into mobile vendors’ marketing campaigns. Therefore, it is important to examine the determinants that impact continuance intentions of consumers for mobile purchase. Drawing upon information success model, flow theory and trust, this study proposed and empirically tested an integrated model to better understand the determinants of consumers’ continued intention to purchase on mobile sites. Empirical data from 462 users who had experience with mobile purchase were tested against the proposed research model by using structural equation modelling (SEM). The results indicated that information quality, and privacy and security concerns are the main factors affecting trust, whereas service quality is the main factor affecting flow. System quality, and privacy and security concerns affect satisfaction. Trust affects flow, which in turn affects satisfaction. These three factors together affect continued intention towards mobile purchase. The findings of this study provide several important implications for mobile commerce research and practice. 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Nowadays, a prosperity of electronic commerce (E-commerce) not only gives more convenience to consumers but brings more new opportunities in online advertising and marketing. Online advertisers can understand more about consumer preferences based on their daily online shopping and browsing behaviors. The development of big data and cloud computing techniques further empower advertisers and marketers to have a data-driven and consumer-specific preference recommendation based on the online browsing histories. In this research, a decision support system is proposed to predict a consumer purchase intention during browsing sessions. The proposed decision support system categorizes online browsing activities into purchase-oriented and general sessions using extreme boosting machines. With the browsing content entropy features, the proposed method achieves 41.81% recall and 34.35% F score. It further shows its strong predictive capability compared to other benchmark algorithms including logistic regression and traditional ensemble models. The proposed method can be implemented in real-time bidding algorithms for online advertising strategies. Ad deliveries on browsing session with potential purchase intention not only improve the effectiveness of advertisements but significantly increase last-touch attributions for campaign performance.

In the WWW, people are engaging in interaction with more, and more diverse information than ever before, so there is an increasing need for information “filtering.” But because of the diversity of information resources, and the lack of traditional quality control on the WWW, the criteria of authority and quality of information that people have used for this purpose in past contexts may no longer be relevant. This paper reports on a study of people’s decision making with respect to quality and authority in the WWW. Seven facets of judgment of information quality were identified: source, content, format, presentation, currency, accuracy, and speed of loading. People mentioned source credibility with two levels: institutional level and individual level. Authority was identified as a underlying theme in source credibility. Institutional authority involved: institutional domain identified by URL; institution type; and institution reputation recognized by names. Individual authority involved: identification of creator/author; creator/author affiliation; and creator/author’s name. People were more or less concerned with evaluating information quality depending upon: the consequence of use of information; act or commitment based on information; and the focus of inquiry. It was also found that people believed that the web, as an institution, was less authoritative and less credible than other types of information systems.

Review helpfulness is attracting increasing attention of practitioners and academics. It helps in reducing risks and uncertainty faced by users in online shopping. This study examines uninvestigated variables by looking at not only the review characteristics but also important indicators of reviewers. Several significant review content and two reviewer variables are proposed and an effective review helpfulness prediction model is built using stochastic gradient boosting learning method. This study derived a mechanism to extract novel review content variables from review text. Six popular machine learning models and three real-life Amazon review data sets are used for analysis. Our results are robust to several product categories and along three Amazon review data sets. The results show that review content variables deliver the best performance as compared to the reviewer and state-of-the-art baseline as a standalone model. This study finds that reviewer helpfulness per day and syllables in review text strongly relates to review helpfulness. Moreover, the number of space, aux verb, drives words in review text and productivity score of a reviewer are also effective predictors of review helpfulness. The findings will help customers to write better reviews, help retailers to manage their websites intelligently and aid customers in their product purchasing decisions.

It is widely acknowledged that digital games can provide an engaging, motivating and “fun” experience for students. However an entertaining game does not necessarily constitute a meaningful, valuable learning experience. For this reason, experts espouse the importance of underpinning serious games with a sound theoretical framework which integrates and balances theories from two fields of practice: pedagogy and game design (Kiili, 2005; Seeney & Routledge, 2009). Additionally, with the advent of sophisticated, immersive technologies, and increasing interest in the opportunities for constructivist learning offered by these technologies, concepts of fidelity and its impact on student learning and engagement, have emerged (Aldrich, 2005; Harteveld et al., 2007, 2010). This paper will explore a triadic theoretical framework for serious game design comprising play, pedagogy and fidelity. It will outline underpinning theories, review key literatures and identify challenges and issues involved in balancing these elements in the process of serious game design. DOI: 10.4018/ijgbl.2012100103 42 International Journal of Game-Based Learning, 2(4), 41-60, October-December 2012 Copyright © 2012, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. game design (Kiili, 2005; Seeney & Routledge, 2009). While a sound pedagogical framework is considered essential to their effectiveness as learning tools, equally important is the integration of game play elements which harness and sustain player engagement. Additionally, with the advent of sophisticated and immersive technologies, as exemplified in the virtual worlds of contemporary games, and increasing interest in the opportunities for constructivist learning offered by these worlds, concepts of fidelity, and its impact on student learning and engagement, have emerged (Aldrich, 2005; Harteveld et al., 2007, 2010). This paper will explore this triadic theoretical framework for serious game design, outlining underpinning theories, reviewing key literatures and identifying associated challenges and issues (Figure 1). The paper begins by reflecting on pedagogical theories commonly utilised to conceptualise game-based learning, focusing on three constructivist theories. Following this, attention switches to theories used to conceptualise players’ engagement with digital games, and thus inform effective, engaging and “fun” game design. As a key component of engaging and pedagogically effective game design, the concept of fidelity, and how it relates to game design and game-based learning, is discussed. The paper will conclude by reflecting on issues and challenges involved in balancing these components when designing

Information overload has been studied extensively by decision science researchers, particularly in the context of task-based optimization decisions. Media selection research has similarly investigated the extent to which task characteristics influence media choice and use. This paper outlines a proposed study, which would compare the effectiveness of web-based online product review systems in facilitation trust and purchase intention to those of mobile product review systems. We propose that since web-based systems are more effective in fostering focus and are less prone to navigation frustration, information overload is less likely influence the extent to which a consumer trusts an online product review.

Derived from the theory of reasoned action, the technology acceptance model (TAM) focuses on two specific salient beliefs— ease of use and usefulness. It has been applied in the study of user adoption of different technologies, and has emerged as a reliable and robust model. However, this has not discouraged researchers from incorporating additional constructs to the original model in their quest for increased predictive power. Here, an attempt is made in the context of explaining consumer intention to use on-line shopping. Besides ease of use and usefulness, compatibility, privacy, security, normative beliefs, and selfefficacy are included in an augmented TAM. A test of this model, with data collected from 281 consumers, show support for seven of nine research hypotheses. Specifically, compatibility, usefulness, ease of use, and security were found to be significant predictors of attitude towards on-line shopping, but privacy was not. Further, intention to use on-line shopping was strongly influenced by attitude toward on-line shopping, normative beliefs, and self-efficacy. # 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Valid measurement scales for predicting user acceptance of computers are in short supply. Most subjective measures used in practice are unvalidated, and their relationship to system usage is unknown. The present research develops and validates new scales for two specific variables, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, which are hypothesized to be fundamental determinants of user acceptance. Definitions for these two variables were used to develop scale items that were pretested for content validity and then tested for reliability and construct validity in two studies involving a total of 152 users and four application programs. The measures were refined and streamlined, resulting in two six-item scales with reliabilities of .98 for usefulness and .94 for ease of use. The scales exhibited high convergent, discriminant, and factorial validity. Perceived usefulness was significantly correlated with both selfreported current usage (r=.63, Study 1) and self-predicted future usage (r =.85, Study 2). Perceived ease of use was also significantly correlated with current usage (r= .45, Study 1) and future usage (r =.59, Study 2). In both studies, usefulness had a significantly greater correlation with usage behavior than did ease of use. Regression analyses suggest that perceived ease of use may actually be a causal antecedent to perceived usefulness, as opposed to a parallel, direct determinant of system usage. Implications are drawn for future research on user acceptance.


Question: The effect of website quality and playfulness on user acceptance in online retailing.

This study explores the significance of incorporating "playfulness" within the Expectation-Confirmation Theory (ECT) framework when evaluating the ongoing use of a website, specifically in a web portal context. Initially, ECT models focused on cognitive beliefs and their impact on an individual's decision to continue using an information system. In this research, an augmented ECT model, which introduces a direct link between perceived playfulness and satisfaction, was tested against a conventional model that directly links perceived usefulness to satisfaction. The findings revealed that the inclusion of perceived playfulness significantly improved the model's explanatory power. Perceived playfulness, along with confirmation leading to satisfaction and perceived usefulness, were all found to be substantial factors influencing the user's intention to revisit the website. Consequently, the extended ECT model, with the addition of perceived playfulness, is deemed a more accurate and comprehensive method for understanding the dynamics of website usage and user satisfaction.

M oving some Web consumers along to the purchase click is proving to be difficult, despite the impressive recent growth in online shopping. Consumer online shopping revenues and related corporate profits are still meager, though the industry is optimistic, thanks to bullish forecasts of cyberconsumer activity for the new millennium. In 1996, Internet shopping revenues for U.S. users, excluding cars and real estate, were estimated by Jupiter Communications , an e-commerce consulting firm in New York, at approximately $707 million but are expected to How merchants can win back lost consumer trust in the interests of e-commerce sales. reach nearly $37.5 billion by 2002 [1]. Meanwhile, the business-to-business side is taking off with more than $8 billion in revenues for 1997 and $327 billion predicted by 2002 just in the U.S., according to For-rester Research, an information consulting firm in Cambridge, Mass. [4]. On the consumer side, a variety of barriers are invoked to explain the continuing difficulties. There are, to be sure, numerous barriers. Such factors as the lack of standard technologies for secure payment, and the lack of profitable business models play important roles in the relative dearth of commercial activity by businesses and consumers on the Internet compared to what analysts expect in the near future. Granted, the commercial development of the Web is still in its infancy, so few expect these barriers to commercial development to persist. Still, commercial development of the Web faces a far more formidable barrier—consumers' fear of divulging their personal data—to its ultimate com-mercialization. The reason more people have yet to shop online or even provide information to Web providers in exchange for access to information, is the fundamental lack of faith between most businesses and consumers on the Web today. In essence, consumers simply do not trust most Web providers enough to engage in " relationship exchanges " involving money and personal information with them. Our research reveals that this lack of trust arises from the fact that cyberconsumers feel they lack control over the access that Web merchants have to their

The development of dot com companies in 90s opened a new door of sales and revenue generation for the businesses world wide. The number of online shoppers increased dramatically within a very short span of time. While some people found it a convenient and sophisticated way of shopping, others remained reluctant to adopt this medium. Different factors are considered responsible for this variation in online behavior. Most of the researches on this topic are conducted in the developed countries so there is a need to study the phenomenon from the developing countries perspective. Based on existing literature on the topic a research model was developed which was further tested by means of a survey.

It is widely acknowledged that digital games can provide an engaging, motivating and “fun” experience for students. However an entertaining game does not necessarily constitute a meaningful, valuable learning experience. For this reason, experts espouse the importance of underpinning serious games with a sound theoretical framework which integrates and balances theories from two fields of practice: pedagogy and game design (Kiili, 2005; Seeney & Routledge, 2009). Additionally, with the advent of sophisticated, immersive technologies, and increasing interest in the opportunities for constructivist learning offered by these technologies, concepts of fidelity and its impact on student learning and engagement, have emerged (Aldrich, 2005; Harteveld et al., 2007, 2010). This paper will explore a triadic theoretical framework for serious game design comprising play, pedagogy and fidelity. It will outline underpinning theories, review key literatures and identify challenges and issues involved in balancing these elements in the process of serious game design. DOI: 10.4018/ijgbl.2012100103 42 International Journal of Game-Based Learning, 2(4), 41-60, October-December 2012 Copyright © 2012, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. game design (Kiili, 2005; Seeney & Routledge, 2009). While a sound pedagogical framework is considered essential to their effectiveness as learning tools, equally important is the integration of game play elements which harness and sustain player engagement. Additionally, with the advent of sophisticated and immersive technologies, as exemplified in the virtual worlds of contemporary games, and increasing interest in the opportunities for constructivist learning offered by these worlds, concepts of fidelity, and its impact on student learning and engagement, have emerged (Aldrich, 2005; Harteveld et al., 2007, 2010). This paper will explore this triadic theoretical framework for serious game design, outlining underpinning theories, reviewing key literatures and identifying associated challenges and issues (Figure 1). The paper begins by reflecting on pedagogical theories commonly utilised to conceptualise game-based learning, focusing on three constructivist theories. Following this, attention switches to theories used to conceptualise players’ engagement with digital games, and thus inform effective, engaging and “fun” game design. As a key component of engaging and pedagogically effective game design, the concept of fidelity, and how it relates to game design and game-based learning, is discussed. The paper will conclude by reflecting on issues and challenges involved in balancing these components when designing

This research was motivated by our interest in understanding the criteria for measuring the success of a recommender system from users' point view. Even though existing work has suggested a wide range of criteria, the consistency and validity of the combined criteria have not been tested. In this paper, we describe a unifying evaluation framework, called ResQue (Recommender systems' Quality of user experience), which aimed at measuring the qualities of the recommended items, the system's usability, usefulness, interface and interaction qualities, users' satisfaction with the systems, and the influence of these qualities on users' behavioral intentions, including their intention to purchase the products recommended to them and return to the system. We also show the results of applying psychometric methods to validate the combined criteria using data collected from a large user survey. The outcomes of the validation are able to 1) support the consistency, validity and reliability of the selected criteria; and 2) explain the quality of user experience and the key determinants motivating users to adopt the recommender technology. The final model consists of thirty two questions and fifteen constructs, defining the essential qualities of an effective and satisfying recommender system, as well as providing practitioners and scholars with a cost-effective way to evaluate the success of a recommender system and identify important areas in which to invest development resources.

Errors in requirements specifications have been identified as a major contributor to costly software project failures. It would be highly beneficial if information systems developers could verify requirements by predicting workplace acceptance of a new system based on user evaluations of its specifications measured during the earliest stages of the development project, ideally before building a working prototype. However, conventional wisdom among system developers asserts that prospective users must have direct hands-on experience with at least a working prototype of a new system before they can provide assessments that accurately reflect future usage behavior after workplace implementation. The present research demonstrates that this assumption is only partially true. Specifically, it is true that stable and predictive assessments of a system's perceived ease of use should be based on direct behavioral experience using the system. However, stable and behaviorally predictive measures of perceived usefulness can be captured from target users who have received information about a system's functionality, but have not had direct hands-on usage experience. This distinction is key because, compared to ease of use, usefulness is generally much more strongly linked to future usage intentions and behaviors in the workplace. Two longitudinal field experiments show that preprototype usefulness measures can closely approximate hands-on based usefulness measures, and are significantly predictive of usage intentions and behavior up to six months after workplace implementation. The present findings open the door toward research on how user acceptance testing may be done much earlier in the system development process than has traditionally been the case. Such preprototype user acceptance tests have greater informational value than their postprototype counterparts because they are captured when only a relatively small proportion of project costs have been incurred and there is greater flexibility to modify a new system's design attributes. Implications are discussed for future research to confirm the robustness of the present findings and to better understand the practical potential and limitations of preprototype user acceptance testing.

1 kirstens@sims.berkeley.edu, sinha@sims.berkeley.edu ABSTRACT Recommender systems act as personalized decision guides for users, aiding them in decision making about matters related to personal taste. Research has focused mostly on the algorithms that drive the system, with little understanding of design issues from the user’s perspective. The goal of our research is to study users’ interactions with recommender systems in order to develop general design guidelines. We have studied users’ interactions with 11 online recommender systems. Our studies have highlighted the role of transparency (understanding of system logic), familiar recommendations, and information about recommended items in the user’s interaction with the system. Our results also indicate that there are multiple models for successful recommender systems.

This paper examines human motivations underlying individual acceptance of business-to-consumer (B2C) electronic commerce services. Such acceptance is the key to the survival of firms in this intensely competitive industry. A modified theory of planned behavior (TPB) is used to hypothesize a model of e-commerce service acceptance, which is then tested using a field survey of 172 e-brokerage users. We found TPB useful in explaining e-commerce service acceptance; however acceptance motivations are significantly different from that of typical IS products. Based on a broader conceptualization of TPB’s subjective norm to include both external (mass-media) and interpersonal influences, we report that subjective norm is an important predictor of e-commerce acceptance, behavioral control has minimal impact on e-commerce acceptance, and external influence is a significant determinant of subjective norm. Implications of these findings in light of e-commerce research and practice are discussed.

T paper develops a model of conversion behavior (i.e., converting store visits into purchases) that predicts each customer’s probability of purchasing based on an observed history of visits and purchases. We offer an individual-level probability model that allows for different forms of customer heterogeneity in a very flexible manner. Specifically, we decompose an individual’s conversion behavior into two components: one for accumulating visit effects and another for purchasing threshold effects. Each component is allowed to vary across households as well as over time. Visit effects capture the notion that store visits can play different roles in the purchasing process. For example, some visits are motivated by planned purchases, while others are associated with hedonic browsing (akin to window shopping); our model is able to accommodate these (and several other) types of visit-purchase relationships in a logical, parsimonious manner. The purchasing threshold captures the psychological resistance to online purchasing that may grow or shrink as a customer gains more experience with the purchasing process at a given website. We test different versions of the model that vary in the complexity of these two key components and also compare our general framework with popular alternatives such as logistic regression. We find that the proposed model offers excellent statistical properties, including its performance in a holdout validation sample, and also provides useful managerial diagnostics about the patterns underlying online buyer behavior.

Online dating systems play a prominent role in the social lives of millions of their users, but little research has considered how users perceive one another through their personal profiles. We examined how users perceive attractiveness in online dating profiles, which provide their first exposure to a potential partner. Participants rated whole profiles and profile components on such qualities as how attractive, extraverted, and genuine and trustworthy they appeared. As past research in the psychology of attraction would suggest, the attractiveness and other qualities of the photograph were the strongest predictors of whole profile attractiveness, but they were not alone: the free-text component also played an important role in predicting overall attractiveness. In turn, numerous other qualities predicted the attractiveness ratings of photos and free-text components, albeit in different ways for men and women. The fixed-choice elements of a profile, however, were unrelated to attractiveness.

Computer games have become a highly popular form of entertainment and have had a large impact on how University students spend their leisure time. Due to their highly motivating properties computer games have come to the attention of educationalists who wish to exploit these highly desirable properties for educational purposes. Several studies have been performed looking at motivations for playing computer games in a general context and in a Higher Education (HE) context. These studies did not focus on the differences in motivations between online and offline game players. Equally the studies did not look at the differences in motivations of people who prefer single player games and people who prefer multiplayer games. If games-based learning is to become a recognised teaching approach then such motivations for playing computer games must be better understood. This paper presents the combined analysis of three studies at HE level, performed over a four year period from 2005 to 2009. The paper focuses on differences of motivations in relation to single player/multiplayer preference and online/ offline game participation. The study found that challenge is the top ranking motivation and recognition is the lowest ranking motivation for playing computer games in general. Challenge is also the top ranking motivation for playing games in HE while fantasy and recognition are the lowest ranking motivations for playing games in HE. Multiplayer gamers derive more competition, cooperation, recognition, fantasy and curiosity from playing games and online gamers derive more challenge, cooperation, recognition and control from playing games. Multiplayer gamers and online gamers ranked competition, cooperation and recognition significantly more important for playing games in HE than single players and offline participants. 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.


Question: The influence of website quality and playfulness on user acceptance in online retailing environments.

This study delves into the determinants of Web site success within the framework of electronic commerce, as the commercial utilization of Web technology expands. With the escalating reliance on Web-based solutions, there arises a critical need to evaluate the elements contributing to the success of Web sites. The research design was conceptualized by integrating insights from information systems and marketing literature. A survey targeting Webmasters from the Fortune 1000 companies was conducted to gather data. The investigation led to the identification of four pivotal aspects crucial for Web site success in electronic commerce: (1) the quality of information and services provided, (2) the level of system use, (3) the playfulness of the Web site, and (4) the quality of system design. The analysis of the collected data offers significant managerial implications, guiding the enhancement of Web site performance within the electronic commerce sector. # 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

The study highlights the multifaceted nature of Web site success, particularly in the realm of electronic commerce. It emphasizes the significance of delivering high-quality information and services, ensuring a high degree of system use, fostering an engaging and playful user experience, and maintaining high standards of system design. These findings are of considerable importance for managers and Web developers aiming to optimize the effectiveness of their Web sites in the context of e-commerce. By focusing on these four critical factors, organizations can enhance user satisfaction, increase online engagement, and ultimately, drive greater success in their electronic commerce endeavors.

Service quality is the highest requirement by users, especially for the service in electronic government. During the past decades, it has become a major area of academic investigation. Considering this issue, there are a lot of researches that evaluated the dimensions and e-service contexts. This study also identified the dimensions of service quality, but focuses on a new concept and provides a new methodology in developing measurement scales of e-service quality such as information quality, service quality and organization quality. Finally, this study will suggest a key factor to evaluate e-government service quality better. Keywords—E-government, e-service, e-service quality, dimensionality.

Facebook users are increasingly using the site to conduct commercial activities, by posting advertisements in groups and then buying or selling items from each other. This type of group is called as a C2C Facebook “buy and sell” group in the current work. Drawing from Latent State Trait theory, Heuristic Information Processing, and Observational Learning, we conducted an online field experiment to empirically investigate the effect of the information quality of the advertisement, the trait of the impulsiveness, and the number of “Likes” it receives on consumers’ urge to buy impulsively. The findings and implications of our study are discussed in the

1 kirstens@sims.berkeley.edu, sinha@sims.berkeley.edu ABSTRACT Recommender systems act as personalized decision guides for users, aiding them in decision making about matters related to personal taste. Research has focused mostly on the algorithms that drive the system, with little understanding of design issues from the user’s perspective. The goal of our research is to study users’ interactions with recommender systems in order to develop general design guidelines. We have studied users’ interactions with 11 online recommender systems. Our studies have highlighted the role of transparency (understanding of system logic), familiar recommendations, and information about recommended items in the user’s interaction with the system. Our results also indicate that there are multiple models for successful recommender systems.

Digital game-based learning (DGBL) has become a viable instructional option in recent years due to its support of learning motivation. Recent studies have mostly focused on identifying motivational factors in digital games (e.g., curiosity, rules, control) that support intrinsic motivation. These findings, however, are limited in two fronts. First, they did not depict the interactive nature of the motivational processing in DGBL. Second, they excluded the outcome processing (learners’ final effort versus performance evaluation) as a possible motivation component to sustain the iterative game playing cycle. To address these problems, situated in the integrative theory of Motivation, Volition, and Performance (MVP), this study examined the relationship between motivational processing and outcome processing in an online instructional game. The study surveyed 264 undergraduate students after playing the Trade Ruler online game. Based on the data collected by ARCS-based Instructional Materials Motivational Survey (IMMS), a regression analysis revealed a significant model between motivational processing (attention, relevance, and confidence) and the outcome processing (satisfaction). The finding preliminarily suggests that both motivational processing and outcome processing need to be considered when designing DGBL. Furthermore, the finding implies a potential relationship between intrinsic motives and extrinsic rewards in DGBL. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

This paper examines human motivations underlying individual acceptance of business-to-consumer (B2C) electronic commerce services. Such acceptance is the key to the survival of firms in this intensely competitive industry. A modified theory of planned behavior (TPB) is used to hypothesize a model of e-commerce service acceptance, which is then tested using a field survey of 172 e-brokerage users. We found TPB useful in explaining e-commerce service acceptance; however acceptance motivations are significantly different from that of typical IS products. Based on a broader conceptualization of TPB’s subjective norm to include both external (mass-media) and interpersonal influences, we report that subjective norm is an important predictor of e-commerce acceptance, behavioral control has minimal impact on e-commerce acceptance, and external influence is a significant determinant of subjective norm. Implications of these findings in light of e-commerce research and practice are discussed.

This study directly tests the effect of personality and cognitive style on three measures of Internet use. The results support the use of personality—but not cognitive style—as an antecedent variable. After controlling for computer anxiety, selfefficacy, and gender, including the “Big Five” personality factors in the analysis significantly adds to the predictive capabilities of the dependent variables. Including cognitive style does not. The results are discussed in terms of the role of personality and cognitive style in models of technology adoption and use.

This study seeks to assess the business value of e-commerce capability and information technology (IT) infrastructure in the context of electronic business at the firm level. Grounded in the IT business-value literature and enhanced by the resource-based theory of the firm, we developed a research framework in which both the main effects and the interaction effects of e-commerce and IT on firm performance were tested. Within this theoretical framework, we formulated several hypotheses. We then developed a multidimensional e-commerce capability construct, and after establishing its validity and reliability, tested the hypotheses with empirical data from 114 companies in the retail industry. Controlling for variations of firm size and subindustry effects, our empirical analysis found a strong positive interaction effect between IT infrastructure and e-commerce capability. This suggests that their complementarity positively contributes to firm performance in terms of sales per employee, inventory turnover, and cost reduction. The results are consistent with the resource-based theory, and provide empirical evidence to the complementary synergy between front-end e-commerce capability and back-end IT infrastructure. Combined together, they become more effective in producing business value. Yet the value of this synergy has not been recognized in the IT payoff literature. The “productivity paradox” observed in various studies has been attributed to variation in methods and measures, yet we offer an additional explanation: ignoring complementarities in business value measurement implies that the impact of IT was seriously underestimated. Our results emphasized the integration of resources as a feasible path to e-commerce value—companies need to enhance the integration between front-end e-commerce capability and back-end IT infrastructure in order to reap the benefits of e-commerce investments.

Although existing models of e-learning effectiveness in information systems (IS) have increased our understanding of how technology can support and enhance learning, most of our models do not take into account the importance of social presence. Thus, this study extends previous research by developing a model of e-learning effectiveness which adds social presence to other oft studied variables including application-specific computer self-efficacy (AS-CSE), perceived usefulness, course interaction, and e-learning effectiveness. Using data from 345 individuals, this model was validated through a field study in an introductory IS survey course. Results indicate that AS-CSE and perceived usefulness were related to course performance, course satisfaction, and course instrumentality. In addition, course interaction was related to course performance and satisfaction. Finally, social presence was related to course satisfaction and course instrumentality. Implications for research and practice are discussed. r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This research tests and develops the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), introduced by Davis (1986), which attempts to explain end users’ attitudes to computing technologies. It introduces several new variables, including compatibility, user characteristics, system rating and the enduser computing satisfaction (EUCS) construct, a surrogate measure for IT success and acceptance. A questionnaire with over seventy items was completed by a large number of users and LISREL, a technique for modelling a system of structural equations, was used to analyse the responses. The output shows the model as a whole ® ts the data very well and indicates signi® cant relationships between variables in the model. These results con® rm that TAM is a valuable tool for predicting attitudes, satisfaction, and usage from beliefs and external variables. They also show that relative advantage of the system contributed most to attitudes and satisfaction. Compatibility (of the system to the task performed) contributed most to usage and was the most important antecedent of the belief variables, including relative advantage.

The proliferation of E-commerce sites has made web an excellent source of gathering customer reviews about products; as there is no quality control anyone one can write anything which leads to review spam. This paper previews and reviews the substantial research on Review Spam detection technique. Further it provides state of art depicting some previous attempt to study review spam detection. KeywordsNatural language processing, reviews centric spam detection, reviewer centric spam detection


Question: The effect of website quality and playfulness on user acceptance in online retailing scenarios.

This study presents a comprehensive investigation into the development and validation of metrics for evaluating website usability, design, and performance. Through a series of three studies conducted in 1997, 1999, and 2000, the research team aimed to assess key aspects of websites, such as download delay, navigability, content richness, interactivity, and responsiveness. The performance metric developed includes components like user satisfaction, likelihood of revisiting the site, and usage frequency. Data was gathered from corporate websites through three distinct methods: a panel of judges, third-party evaluations, and automated software agents. The significant correlations found between website design features and performance outcomes confirm the constructs' strong nomological validity. Collectively, these studies yield a set of measures with credible validity and reliability. The research reveals no substantial common methods bias across the various data collection techniques. Findings indicate that website success is a primary construct, closely linked to several critical factors: download delay (speed of access and internal display rates), navigation (structure, arrangement, layout, and sequence), content (quantity and diversity of product information), interactivity (personalization and interactive elements), and responsiveness (customer feedback options and frequently asked questions sections). (e-Commerce, Web Metrics and Measurement; Website Usability; Design and Performance Indicators; Construct and Nomological Validity)

Internet development has fueled e-commerce firms’ globalization efforts, but many have met with only limited success. This often stems from the foreign firms’ limited understanding of a focal country’s local culture and idiosyncrasies. Foreign firms are usually viewed as out-group entities, which lowers consumers’ trust in them. The extent of such a phenomenon varies. In locations where people are more skeptical of out-groups, a critical question is whether it is possible to transform such foreign out-group firms into in-groups, specifically with the support of popular social networking media. Based on Social Identity Theory and Trust Transference Process, five strategies leveraging social grouping and social ties to build trust for foreign electronic commerce firms were proposed. A survey was conducted to examine their effectiveness. The results suggest that social-grouping strategies are useful for in-grouping foreign out-group entities to build trust, and the effectiveness of strategies is determined by the social similarity and psychological distance between the consumer and the endorser. This has important implications for scholars and practitioners, both local and abroad, to leverage social grouping to boost Internet sales. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

In the era of social commerce, users often connect from e-commerce websites to social networking venues such as Facebook and Twitter. However, there have been few efforts on understanding the correlations between users' social media profiles and their e-commerce behaviors. This paper presents a system for predicting a user's purchase behaviors on e-commerce websites from the user's social media profile. We specifically aim at understanding if the user's profile information in a social network (for example Facebook) can be leveraged to predict what categories of products the user will buy from (for example eBay Electronics). The paper provides an extensive analysis on how users' Facebook profile information correlates to purchases on eBay, and analyzes the performance of different feature sets and learning algorithms on the task of purchase behavior prediction.

Games are undoubtedly the most successful computer application yet it is not easy to attribute their success to any one particular feature. Nonetheless, when talking about games, gamers and reviewers frequently refer to the immersive experience of the game as an important aspect to be attained. However, it is not clear what immersion is and even if it is a comparable experience between different players and different games. This paper aims to develop more quantifiable and therefore objective measures of immersion. We describe a study into switching from an immersive gaming experience to another task, not in the game world. Though the degree of immersion does seem to have an impact on the ability to perform the task, the experimental approach is complex and possibly quite fragile. We therefore set out hypotheses for a similar experiment with the aim of exploring whether eyetracking and body motion provide better indicators of the degree of immersion.

Even if the benefits of the usability testing are remarkable, it is scarcely adopted in the software development process. To foster its adoption, this paper presents a Web platform, UTAssistant, that supports people, also without skills in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), in evaluating Web site usability.

This compendium constitutes a comprehensive overview of presence measures described in the literature so far. It contains both subjective and objective approaches to presence measurement. The theoretical basis of measures is described, along with research in which they have been applied, and other relevant literature. Authors: Joy van Baren and Wijnand IJsselsteijn Project funded by the European Community under the "Information Society Technologies" Programme

As a novel opportunity to acquire capital from the masses, crowdfunding has attracted great attention in academia and practice. So far, little is known about the factors that promote the success of crowdfunding projects, however. In this paper, we examine in how far the social presence perceived on a project’s website influences the success of the respective crowdfunding project. Based on a data-driven analysis of 2.000 project websites from the largest crowdfunding platforms in the U.S. and Germany, we show that the perceived social presence has a significant influence on the success of crowdfunding projects. The obtained results indicate that using socially rich pictures and a socially rich description in the project presentation positively affects the success of a crowdfunding project. A socially rich profile page of the founder(s) in contrast appears to have a rather limited effect. The success of crowdfunding projects seems to be dependent on the participation behavior of the founder, however. Our results indicate that having backed other projects positively influences the success of one’s own initiative. The number of answered comments might have a negative effect on the success of the initiative, though.

A Although user-centered design is a well-supported concept in the literature on adult computer products, not until recently have publications begun to appear addressing the need to include the user in the design process of children's computer products. Good examples are a recent panel discussion in interactions on the importance of understanding the perspectives and needs of children, and the energizing work of Allison Druin and Cynthia Solomon [1, 2]. Growth has also occurred in evaluation research in both the industrial and academic communities, assessing the effectiveness or appeal of various types of (6 to 10 years), and middle-school-aged children (11 to 14 years). These age divisions are arbitrary , and many behaviors will overlap. In our experience, most children younger than 2 1/2 years of age are not proficient enough with standard input devices (e.g., mouse, trackball, or keyboard) to interact with the technology and provide useful data. Children older than 14 years of age will likely behave as adults in a testing situation and should be treated accordingly. Preschool (ages 2 to 5 years) Preschoolers require the most extensive adaptations of usability testing because their attention span, their motivation to please adults, and their ability to adjust to strange surroundings and new people may change from one moment to the next. In general, children in this age range should be allowed to explore the computer according to their own interests and pacing instead of performing a series of directed tasks. They will often be happy to show you what they know, and what they can do on the computer independently. When assessing appeal or engagement, testers will need to closely observe children's behavior such as sighing, smiling, or sliding under the table. Children this age often have difficulty expressing their likes and dislikes in words. Elementary School (ages 6 to 10 years) Children in this age range are relatively easy to include in software usability testing. Their experience in school makes them ready to sit at a task and follow directions from an adult, and they are generally not self-conscious about being observed as they play on the computer. They will answer questions and try new things with ease. In this age range, children will develop more sophistication about how they can describe the things they see and do. Six-and seven-year-old children will be more hands-on—ready to work on the computer but a little shy or inarticulate when …

The e-government field is growing to a considerable size, both in its contents and position with respect to other research fields. The government to citizen segment of egovernment is taking the lead in terms of its importance and size. Like the evaluation of all other information systems initiatives, the evaluation of egovernments in both theory and practice has proved to be important but complex. The complexity of evaluation is mostly due to the multiple perspectives involved, the difficulties of quantifying benefits, and the social and technical context of use. The importance of e-government evaluation is due to the enormous investment of governments on delivering e-government services, and to the considerable pace of growing in the e-government field. However, despite the importance of the evaluation of e-government services, literature shows that e-government evaluation is still an immature area in terms of development and management. This work is part of a research effort that aims to develop a holistic evaluation framework for e-government systems. The main aim of this paper is to investigate the citizen’ perspective in evaluating e-government services, and present a set of evaluating factors that influence citizens’ utilization of e-government services. These evaluation factors can serve as part of an e-government evaluation framework. Moreover, the evaluation factors can also be used as means of providing valuable feedback for the planning of future egovernment initiatives.

FACULTY OF ENGINEERING, SCIENCES AND MATHEMATICS SCHOOL OF ELECTRONICS AND COMPUTER SCIENCE Doctor of Philosophy A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR SERIOUS GAMES AND ITS VALIDATION

Research on the effectiveness of gamification has proliferated over the last few years, but the underlying motivational mechanisms have only recently become object of empirical research. It has been suggested that when perceived as informational, gamification elements, such as points, levels and leaderboards, may afford feelings of competence and hence enhance intrinsic motivation and promote performance gains. We conducted a 2 4 online experiment that systematically examined how points, leaderboards and levels, as well as participants' goal causality orientation influence intrinsic motivation, competence and performance (tag quantity and quality) in an image annotation task. Compared to a control condition, game elements did not significantly affect competence or intrinsic motivation, irrespective of participants' causality orientation. However, participants' performance did not mirror their intrinsic motivation, as points, and especially levels and leaderboard led to a significantly higher amount of tags generated compared to the control group. These findings suggest that in this particular study context, points, levels and leaderboards functioned as extrinsic incentives, effective only for promoting perfor-


Question: The influence of website quality and playfulness on user acceptance in online retailing.

This paper explores the significance of marketing within hypermedia computer-mediated environments (CMEs), focusing on large-scale networked environments, with the World Wide Web on the Internet as the current global manifestation. The authors aim to introduce marketers to this groundbreaking medium and propose two structural models to explain consumer behavior within a CME. They then analyze the set of testable research hypotheses and marketing implications that emerge from these models. The paper begins by discussing how firms traditionally communicate with customers through passive one-to-many media, where marketing efforts allow limited customer feedback. The advent of the Internet, however, is transforming this conventional perspective, offering a distributed computing model that supports interactive multimedia many-to-many communication. The Internet facilitates discussion groups, multiplayer games, file transfer, email, and information access systems like the World Wide Web. The authors argue that the Internet's democratizing influence is already reshaping business dynamics, and they focus on the marketing implications of commercializing hypermedia CMEs, particularly the World Wide Web. They define a hypermedia CME as a distributed computer network for accessing and providing hypermedia content, connected through hypertext links. While acknowledging the relevance of other CMEs, the paper centers on marketing activities within hypermedia CMEs accessible via the Web. The Internet is a crucial area of focus for marketers due to the significant commercial activity occurring on the platform, with over 21,700 commercial Internet addresses and a growing number of Web services. The authors contend that hypermedia CMEs, including the World Wide Web, necessitate the development and application of new marketing concepts and models due to their unique characteristics, such as machine-interactivity, telepresence, hypermedia, and network navigation, which differentiate them from traditional media and some interactive multimedia.

In our research on Commonsense reasoning, we have found that an especially important kind of knowledge is knowledge about human goals. Especially when applying Commonsense reasoning to interface agents, we need to recognize goals from user actions (plan recognition), and generate sequences of actions that implement goals (planning). We also often need to answer more general questions about the situations in which goals occur, such as when and where a particular goal might be likely, or how long it is likely to take to achieve. In past work on Commonsense knowledge acquisition, users have been directly asked for such information. Recently, however, another approach has emerged—to entice users into playing games where supplying the knowledge is the means to scoring well in the game, thus motivating the players. This approach has been pioneered by Luis von Ahn and his colleagues, who refer to it as Human Computation. Common Consensus is a fun, self-sustaining web-based game, that both collects and validates Commonsense knowledge about everyday goals. It is based on the structure of the TV game show Family Feud1. A small user study showed that users find the game fun, knowledge quality is very good, and the rate of knowledge collection is rapid. ACM Classification: H.3.3 [INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL]: Information Search and Retrieval; I.2.6 [ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE]: Learning

How can designers of programming interfaces, interactive tools, and rich social environments enable more people to be more creative more often?

Augmented reality (AR) technologies could enhance learning in several ways. The quality of an AR-based educational platform is a combination of key features that manifests in usability, usefulness, and enjoyment for the learner. In this paper, we present a multidimensional model to measure the quality of an AR-based application as perceived by students. The model is specified by a second-order factor (perceived quality) and three dimensions: ergonomic quality, learning quality, and hedonic quality. The purpose of this model is to embody previous research into a coherent framework for the evaluation of AR-based educational platforms and to provide guidance for researchers and practitioners. The model was empirically validated on a Chemistry learning scenario and the results confirm the importance of both the learning and hedonic quality. ARTICLE HISTORY Received 23 July 2014 Revised 2 December 2015 Accepted 9 December 2015

The use of educational games in learning environments is an increasingly relevant trend. The motivational and immersive traits of game-based learning have been deeply studied in the literature, but the systematic design and implementation of educational games remain an elusive topic. In this study some relevant requirements for the design of educational games in online education are analyzed, and a general game design method that includes adaptation and assessment features is proposed. Finally, a particular implementation of that design is described in light of its applicability to other implementations and environments. 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The use of personalization and persuasion has been shown to optimize customers’ shopping experience in e-commerce. This study aims to identify the personalization methods and persuasive principles that make an ecommerce company successful. Using Amazon as a case study, we evaluated the personalization methods implemented using an existing process framework. We also applied the PSD model to Amazon to evaluate the persuasive principles it uses. Our results show that all the principles of the PSD model were implemented in Amazon. This study can serve as a guide to e-commerce businesses and software developers for building or improving existing e-commerce platforms.

In this paper, we present the findings of a qualitative analysis of 15,750 comments left by 2,041 participants in a Reconcile web credibility evaluation study. While assessing the credibility of the presented pages, respondents of the Reconcile studies were also asked to justify their ratings in writing. This work attempts to give an insight into the factors that affected the credibility assessment. To the best of our knowledge, the presented study is the most-recent large-scale study of its kind carried out since 2003, when the Fogg et al. śHow do users evaluate the credibility of Web sites? A study with over 2,500 participants’ paper was published. The performed analysis shows that the findings made a decade ago are still mostly valid today despite the passage of time and the advancement of Internet technologies. However we report a weaker impact of webpage appearance. A much bigger dataset (as compared to Fogg’s studies) allowed respondents to reveal additional features, which influenced the credibility evaluations.

The tourism sector has found virtual reality technology to be a good way to market travel destinations for consumers. In this paper, we describe two user studies with three web-based 3D virtual travel destination marketing portals. These three portals were developed to support and attract wintertime tourism into the region by offering a possibility to experience in advance, a virtual snowy scenery with different activities, for example downhill skiing. In both user studies with 21 subjects the focus was on user experience with the 3D virtual travel destination marketing portals. In the second study also the visual design aspects within these portals were studied. Our studies indicate that 3D virtual travel destination marketing portals can enhance 2D web pages, if they offer the possibility to explore the location freely and through different kinds of virtual activities. Also our studies support prior findings of the efficiency of glow effect for indicating interactive 3D elements within a 3D virtual environment.

Digital games have caught the attention of scholars across a variety of disciplines. Today, scholars from fields as diverse as media design, literature, computer science, education, and theatre studies have together contributed to the understanding of this emergent medium and its phenomenon as a learning tool The unsatisfying experience of directly adopting game formats into educational contexts has motivated researchers to study successful (commercial) digital games, in particular to examine the play activities of digital games and the principles underlying the design of digital games in order to develop concepts and strategies for rich virtual learning contexts. In this review, provided is a brief account of academic arguments regarding digital games and learning.

This compendium constitutes a comprehensive overview of presence measures described in the literature so far. It contains both subjective and objective approaches to presence measurement. The theoretical basis of measures is described, along with research in which they have been applied, and other relevant literature. Authors: Joy van Baren and Wijnand IJsselsteijn Project funded by the European Community under the "Information Society Technologies" Programme

In the era of social commerce, users often connect from e-commerce websites to social networking venues such as Facebook and Twitter. However, there have been few efforts on understanding the correlations between users' social media profiles and their e-commerce behaviors. This paper presents a system for predicting a user's purchase behaviors on e-commerce websites from the user's social media profile. We specifically aim at understanding if the user's profile information in a social network (for example Facebook) can be leveraged to predict what categories of products the user will buy from (for example eBay Electronics). The paper provides an extensive analysis on how users' Facebook profile information correlates to purchases on eBay, and analyzes the performance of different feature sets and learning algorithms on the task of purchase behavior prediction.


Question: A methodology for detecting Android malware utilizing deep learning with weight adjustment.

This paper presents a novel malware detection strategy for Android devices, employing a weight-adjusted deep learning model. Inspired by the advancements in neural network architecture, our approach fine-tunes the weights of connections within a network of neuron-like units through a process akin to back-propagation. This method iteratively refines the weights to minimize the discrepancy between the network's actual output and the desired outcome, thereby enhancing the model's accuracy in identifying malicious software. In doing so, the hidden units within the network, not directly involved in input or output, learn to represent critical characteristics of the malware landscape. The interactions among these hidden units capture the underlying patterns and anomalies associated with Android malware, setting our weight-adjusted deep learning model apart from conventional detection techniques. This innovative approach to malware detection leverages the power of deep learning to create useful features that are crucial for recognizing and combating the ever-evolving threats in the Android ecosystem.

Mobile devices are used more and more in everyday life. They are our cameras, wallets, and keys. Basically, they embed most of our private information in our pocket. For this and other reasons, mobile devices, and in particular the software that runs on them, are considered first-class citizens in the software-vulnerabilities landscape. Several studies investigated the software-vulnerabilities phenomenon in the context of mobile apps and, more in general, mobile devices. Most of these studies focused on vulnerabilities that could affect mobile apps, while just few investigated vulnerabilities affecting the underlying platform on which mobile apps run: the Operating System (OS). Also, these studies have been run on a very limited set of vulnerabilities. In this paper we present the largest study at date investigating Android-related vulnerabilities, with a specific focus on the ones affecting the Android OS. In particular, we (i) define a detailed taxonomy of the types of Android-related vulnerability, (ii) investigate the layers and subsystems from the Android OS affected by vulnerabilities, and (iii) study the survivability of vulnerabilities (i.e., the number of days between the vulnerability introduction and its fixing). Our findings could help OS and apps developers in focusing their verification & validation activities, and researchers in building vulnerability detection tools tailored for the mobile world.

Malware for current smartphone platforms is becoming increasingly sophisticated. The presence of advanced networking and sensing functions in the device is giving rise to a new generation of targeted malware characterized by a more situational awareness, in which decisions are made on the basis of factors such as the device location, the user profile, or the presence of other apps. This complicates behavioral detection, as the analyst must reproduce very specific activation conditions in order to trigger malicious payloads. In this paper, we propose a system that addresses this problem by relying on stochastic models of usage and context events derived from real user traces. By incorporating the behavioral particularities of a given user, our scheme provides a solution for detecting malware targeting such a specific user. Our results show that the properties of these models follow a power-law distribution: a fact that facilitates an efficient generation of automatic testing patterns tailored for individual users, when done in conjunction with a cloud infrastructure supporting device cloning and parallel testing. We report empirical results with various representative case studies, demonstrating the effectiveness of this approach to detect complex activation patterns.

We analyze the problem of designing pattern recognition systems in adversarial settings, under an engineering viewpoint, motivated by their increasing exploitation in security-sensitive applications like spam and malware detection, despite their vulnerability to potential attacks has not yet been deeply understood. We first review previous work and report examples of how a complex system may be evaded either by leveraging on trivial vulnerabilities of its untrained components, e.g., parsing errors in the pre-processing steps, or by exploiting more subtle vulnerabilities of learning algorithms. We then discuss the need of exploiting both reactive and proactive security paradigms complementarily to improve the security by design. Our ultimate goal is to provide some useful guidelines for improving the security of pattern recognition in adversarial settings, and to suggest related open issues to foster research in this area.

This work investigated two different machine learning techniques: Cascade Learning and Deep Learning, to find out which algorithm performs better to detect the number plate of vehicles registered in Bangladesh. To do this, we created a dataset of about 1000 images collected from a security camera of Independent University, Bangladesh. Each image in the dataset were then labelled manually by selecting the Region of Interest (ROI). In the Cascade Learning approach, a sliding window technique was used to detect objects. Then a cascade classifier was employed to determine if the window contained object of interest or not. In the Deep Learning approach, CIFAR-10 dataset was used to pre-train a 15-layer Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). Using this pretrained CNN, a Regions with CNN (R-CNN) was then trained using our dataset. We found that the Deep Learning approach (maximum accuracy 99.60% using 566 training images) outperforms the detector constructed using Cascade classifiers (maximum accuracy 59.52% using 566 positive and 1022 negative training images) for 252 test images.

Phishing is one of the social engineering attacks and currently hit on mobile devices. Based on security report by Lookout [1], 30% of Lookout users clicking on an unsafe link per year by using mobile device. Few phishing detection techniques have been applied on mobile device. However, review on phishing detection technique on the detection technique redundant is still need. This paper addresses the current trend phishing detection for mobile device and identifies significant criterion to improve phishing detection techniques on mobile device. Thus, existing research on phishing detection technique for computer and mobile device will be compared and analysed. Hence, outcome of the analysis becomes a guideline in proposing generic phishing detection taxonomy for mobile device.

Smartphones bring users lots of convenience by integrating all useful functions people may need. While users are spending more time on their phones, have they ever questioned of being spoofed by the phone they are interacting with? This paper conducts a thorough study of the mobile clickjacking attacks. We first present how the clickjacking attack works and the key points to remain undiscovered. Then, we evaluate its potential threats by exploring the feasibility of launching clickjacking attacks on various UIs, including system app windows, 3rd-party app windows, and other system UIs. Finally, we propose a system-level defense scheme against clickjacking attacks on Android platform, which requires no user or developer effort and is compatible with existing apps. The performance of the countermeasure is evaluated with extensive experiments. The results show that our scheme can effectively prevent clickjacking attacks with only a minor impact to the system.

The phenomenal growth of the Android platform in the past few years has made it a lucrative target of malicious application (app) developers. There are numerous instances of malware apps that send premium rate SMS messages, track users' private data, or apps that, even if not characterized as malware, conduct questionable actions affecting the user's privacy or costing them money. In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of using both the permissions an app requests, the category of the app, and what permissions are requested by other apps in the same category to better inform users whether the risks of installing an app is commensurate with its expected benefit. Existing approaches consider only the risks of the permissions requested by an app and ignore both the benefits and what permissions are requested by other apps, thus having a limited effect. We propose several risk signals that and evaluate them using two datasets, one consists of 158,062 Android apps from the Android Market, and another consists of 121 malicious apps. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposal through extensive data analysis.

Culprits’ identification by the means of suspicious pattern detection techniques from mobile device data is one of the most important aims of the mobile forensic data analysis. When criminal activities are related to entirely automated procedures such as malware propagation, predicting the corresponding behavior is a rather achievable task. However, when human behavior is involved, such as in cases of traditional crimes, prediction and detection become more compelling. This paper introduces a combined criminal profiling and suspicious pattern detection methodology for two criminal activities with moderate to the heavy involvement of mobile devices, cyberbullying and low-level drug dealing. Neural and Neurofuzzy techniques are applied on a hybrid original and simulated dataset. The respective performance results are measured and presented, the optimal technique is selected, and the scenarios are re-run on an actual dataset for additional testing and verification.

Malaria is a blood disease caused by the Plasmodium parasites transmitted through the bite of female Anopheles mosquito. Microscopists commonly examine thick and thin blood smears to diagnose disease and compute parasitemia. However, their accuracy depends on smear quality and expertise in classifying and counting parasitized and uninfected cells. Such an examination could be arduous for large-scale diagnoses resulting in poor quality. State-of-the-art image-analysis based computer-aided diagnosis (CADx) methods using machine learning (ML) techniques, applied to microscopic images of the smears using hand-engineered features demand expertise in analyzing morphological, textural, and positional variations of the region of interest (ROI). In contrast, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), a class of deep learning (DL) models promise highly scalable and superior results with end-to-end feature extraction and classification. Automated malaria screening using DL techniques could, therefore, serve as an effective diagnostic aid. In this study, we evaluate the performance of pre-trained CNN based DL models as feature extractors toward classifying parasitized and uninfected cells to aid in improved disease screening. We experimentally determine the optimal model layers for feature extraction from the underlying data. Statistical validation of the results demonstrates the use of pre-trained CNNs as a promising tool for feature extraction for this purpose.

Deep learning has emerged as a hot topic due to extensive application and high accuracy. In this paper this efficient method is used for vehicle detection and classification. We extract visual features from the activation of a deep convolutional network, large-scale sparse learning and other distinguishing features in order to compare their accuracy. When compared to the leading methods in the challenging ImageNet dataset, our deep learning approach obtains highly competitive results. Through the experiments with in short of training data, the features extracted by deep learning method outperform those generated by traditional approaches.