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| Author(s): |
Leonelo Dell Anhol Almeida
Total Authors: 1
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| Document type: | Doctoral Thesis |
| Press: | Campinas, SP. |
| Institution: | Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Computação |
| Defense date: | 2011-02-28 |
| Examining board members: |
Maria Cecilia Calani Baranauskas;
Amanda Maincke Melo;
Laura Sánchez Garcia;
Sergio Roberto Pereira da Silva;
José Mário De Martino
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| Advisor: | Maria Cecilia Calani Baranauskas |
| Abstract | |
The potential increase in the Web access by various sectors of the population - determined by socio-economic, cultural, literacy, physical or low skills in Information and Communication Technologies - has significantly changed the way in which the Web is used. One of the main changes is in the purpose of use, previously centered on work, now divides its focus with information sharing, socialization, and entertainment. Also, the audience diversity brings different needs influenced by the aforementioned aspects. In this context, one of the main challenges for the Computer Science is to provide support to awareness about the interlocutors in collaborative situations, which involves the knowledge of actions, objects, presence, identity, context, and other aspects. Awareness in collaborative systems is being investigated since the early 90s, with the proposition of frameworks and software mechanisms. Current approaches in literature to collaborative systems design do not offer support for characterizing the target audience, and usually are focused on syntax and semantics of collaborative systems. This thesis proposes a socio-technical perspective to approach awareness in web-based Inclusive Collaborative Systems (ICS). By ICS we mean computer systems that offer access and maintenance of interaction and communication to the greatest diversity of people without segregating them or making specialized design. For that we proposed the FAware framework to support the design of awareness mechanisms in web-based ICS. The FAware promotes the knowledge of target users, the thinking process about aspects to be taking into account in different types of mechanisms to support awareness, and provides tools for the design and evaluation of web-based ICS. The theoretical and methodological references of this work involved the disciplines of Human-Computer Interaction, Organizational Semiotics, and Collaborative Systems. To evaluate FAware we conducted two case studies with undergraduate and postgraduate students in Computer Science, accessibility experts, and interaction designers. The first study consisted of evaluating a website for electronic government, while the second aimed at redesigning a synchronous communication tool integrated to an inclusive social network. The results were expressive in relation to the module for evaluation of webbased ICS (first case study), in which even the accessibility experts were able to identify 40% more problems beyond those found using semi-automatic evaluation tools. In addition, the participants of the second case study would adopt FAware also in other contexts of use, and the framework guided the redesign and also promoted their knowledge about the theme (AU) | |