[AISWorld] Volume 8 Issue 1 of AIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction

[Galletta, Dennis]

Dear AIS Community:

At the start of our 8th year with AIS Transactions on HCI (THCI), we have some bittersweet as well as good news to provide our community.

Joe Valacich has completed three terrific years as my co-editor, and is now moving on to work on an intense commercialization project he describes in his "retirement" message below, besides his duties at Arizona. He has been a valuable asset to THCI and we will miss him. It was a great day when he replied to my invitation and said "yes" to my invitation as a co-editor; I was thrilled when he decided to make time for us in his very busy schedule. Joe will be added to the Advisory Board of the journal starting April 1 (tomorrow), so he will be available to help from time to time when we need advice on critical issues in the future.

Also, Jeff Jenkins, our managing editor, is also moving on. As bad luck (for us) would have it, Jeff is also working on the same project as Joe. Jeff has been the warm, guiding hand that has helped authors, reviewers, SEs, and editors (even the co-editors in chief) with any questions on submission, review, and publication processes. I was thrilled when he also said "yes" to our invitation to be the managing editor, given that he is a highly accomplished and recognized researcher who did not need the managing editor position to gain visibility. He was dedicated to providing excellent service to the AIS SIG-HCI community. And he has become a co-author with me on some in-process work, so I've benefited personally from our interaction as well. Jeff has agreed to co-manage the June issue as we bring in our new co-editor and managing editor. Read on!

I'm excited to announce two very recent and thrilling "yes" events:


-          My new co-editor will be Paul Benjamin Lowry of City University of Hong Kong, where he is a full professor of information systems. Like Joe, he earned his PhD in MIS at the University of Arizona and studied under Jay Nunamaker, Jr. For those keeping score, he has published an impressive 161 articles in 14 years since his PhD. I counted about 30 of these papers in AIS basket journals, many of which have acceptance rates below 10%. He has published multiple times in the top four journals in our field: Information Systems Research, the MIS Quarterly (5 times) the Journal of MIS (11 times), and the Journal of the AIS (6 times). Many of the top schools require 10 papers in top journals to achieve a chaired position, and Paul has double such a threshold. Further, my experience co-authoring several papers with him leads me to predict with confidence that many of his conference papers are on the road to more of the same. He is thorough, thoughtful, and visionary in his approach. I'm excited to work with him until my own (unscheduled so far) "retirement."



-          Our new incoming managing editor is Greg Moody. Greg was a former PhD student of mine here at the University of Pittsburgh until his graduation in 2011. So why am I not protecting an untenured graduate of mine, only 4.5 years since his graduation, from a service burden? His AIS Early Career Award four months ago tells the story: he needs no such protection. The AIS award is described at https://aisnet.org/general/custom.asp?page=EarlyCareerAward, and states that it "recognizes individuals in the early stages of their careers who have already made outstanding research, teaching, and/or service contributions to the field of information systems." It includes those who have received their doctorates "no more than 7 years prior to nomination." How does an awardee who has only been out for 4.5 years hope to receive such an award? Just publish 14 journal articles in that time frame and make sure 9 are in AIS Basket journals. Oh, and also publish 16 conference papers as well. Greg has done that. I'm not sure how Greg has done it, but I'm happy to be his frequent co-author. And back at my home institution, when we recruit new doctoral students, we often ask the question: "Can this person become another Greg Moody?"

We can assure you that you will continue to be in good hands with your submissions to AIS THCI.

Personal message from Joe Valacich:

"This is the last issue that I will be the co-Editor-in-Chief at THCI, and moving onto the journal's Advisory Board. As many of you may know, I have been focusing on commercializing some research that Jeff Jenkins and I have been working on over the past few years. At this time, I want to focus all of my "extra" cycles on this exciting activity. It is also a great opportunity to allow others to lead this fine journal. I want to thank Ping Zhang and Dennis Galletta for providing me with the opportunity to serve. Over the past three years, I have been fortunate to share the EIC duties with Dennis. Dennis, you are a pleasure to work with! Not to mention, you are very efficient and have equally high standards. Your quick and sharp wit has made working with you a joy. I also want to thank Jeff Jenkins, our Managing Editor, for his dedication, hard work, and high standards (and he always made sure we hit our deadlines). I would also like to thank the THCI Advisory, SE and Editorial Boards for their advice, hard work, and dedication to THCI as well as the broader AIS Community. And, of course, I would like to thank all the authors who entrusted their research in our hands. Finally, and one of the great things about stepping down, is that someone new gets to take the wheel. Thus, I want to especially thank Paul Lowry for agreeing to take on the role of EIC. Good luck Paul! The journal is in good hands."

Enough about the staffing! Now let's move on to the newest issue.


THCI is one of the journals in the AIS (Association for Information Systems) e-library at http://aisel.aisnet.org/thci. To increase awareness and readership, THCI is still freely available to everyone during its initial years of publishing. You can find information related to all aspects of THCI at its website (http://aisel.aisnet.org/), including how to submit. We would like to thank AIS <http://home.aisnet.org/> Council for its continued support of the journal. And, as always, we are happy to announce that we have published the journal on time for all 29 issues.


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  In this issue

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We have two excellent papers this issue. The first explores an area that has not received very much attention in our literature. As we all face our own aging, we eventually discover the importance of this topic! The second, involving 12 authors spanning five states, explores digital training. The paper investigates how to maintain engagement in the face of a context that often must use failure as a way to help people learn. The abstracts follow.

Designing Interfaces for Older Users: Effects of Icon Detail and Semantic Distance<http://aisel.aisnet.org/thci/vol8/iss1/1>
by
Netta Ganor and Dov Te'eni

Abstract: Older users are increasingly using digital means (especially the Internet and mobile devices) for work and leisure. Yet, until recently, researchers have not paid sufficient attention to how one can adapt the human-computer interface to older users. In this paper, we propose an approach to adapting interfaces to older users that is based on the knowledge of design and knowledge of age-related capabilities and needs. We concentrate on icons, which are perhaps the most common means of controlling human-computer interaction. First, we determined age-related cognitive impairments that might affect icon identification and selected two icon attributes that we could adapt to overcome performance degradation. We then conducted an experiment to test the hypothesized differences between young and old adults in terms of the impact of icon design on user performance. The two attributes of icon design were level of detail in the icon (i.e., the number of elements that constitute the icon) and its semantic distance (i.e., the distance between the meaning of the icon and function it represents). We found that both attributes affected the performance of older users more strongly than they did young users except for an extreme case in which the negative impact on young users when adapting for older users was devastating. We believe that these results demonstrate that adaptation of icons for older users is desirable and feasible but must be done with caution. We need more research to determine the nuances and limitations of adaptation to understand the adaptation of other design attributes by going beyond the cognitive aspects to the physical, affective, and social aspects of human computer interaction.

Exploring Failure and Engagement in a Complex Digital Training Game: A Multi-method Examination<http://aisel.aisnet.org/thci/vol8/iss1/2>
Matthew L. Jensen, Yu-Hao Lee, Cameron W. Piercy, Norah E. Dunbar, Javier Elizondo, Elena Bessarabova, Nathan W. Twyman, Judee K. Burgoon, Joseph S. Valacich, Bradley Adame, Claude Miller, and Scott Wilson

Abstract: Digital games are ideal for training complex decision making skills because they allow players to experience decision making processes and consequences. However, training complex skills often results in failure, which may undermine learning engagement. Traditional training methods employing observational learning (e.g., training videos) do not cause learners to fail but forfeit experiential learning that makes training games so engaging. Our exploratory work addresses the trade-off between experiencing and observing failure and explores their effect on the level of training engagement. Building on past engagement research, we argue that learning engagement contains both cognitive and affective facets and that these facets may diverge, especially when individuals experience failure. To test these ideas, we conducted an experiment (N = 156) comparing engagement in game-based training, in which participants experienced failure, and video-based training, in which participants observed failure. We collected cognitive and affective indicators of engagement using physiological and self-report measures. We found game-based experiential learning increased such indicators of engagement as attention and temporal disassociation even though players widely failed to meet game objectives. Players also experienced elevated arousal and decreased positive affect. In addition, we compared physiological measures of engagement with self-reported measures and discuss their merits and limitations.


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     Call for Papers

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THCI is a high-quality peer-reviewed international scholarly journal on Human-Computer Interaction. As an AIS journal, THCI is oriented to the Information Systems community, emphasizing applications in business, managerial, organizational, and cultural contexts. However, it is open to all related communities that share intellectual interests in HCI phenomena and issues. The editorial objective is to enhance and communicate knowledge about the interplay among humans, information, technologies, and tasks in order to guide the development and use of human-centered Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and services for individuals, groups, organizations, and communities.



Topics of interest to THCI include but are not limited to the following:



*   The behavioral, cognitive, motivational and affective aspects of human and technology interaction



*   User task analysis and modeling; fit between representations and task types



*   Digital documents/genres; human information seeking and web navigation behaviors; human information interaction; information visualization



*   Social media; social computing; virtual communities



*   Behavioral information security and information assurance; privacy and trust in human technology interaction



*   User interface design and evaluation for various applications in business, managerial, organizational, educational, social, cultural, non-work, and other domains



*   Integrated and/or innovative approaches, guidelines, and standards or metrics for human centered analysis, design, construction, evaluation, and use of interactive devices and information systems



*   Information systems usability engineering; universal usability



*   The impact of interfaces/information technology on people's attitude, behavior, performance, perception, and productivity



*   Implications and consequences of technological change on individuals, groups, society, and socio-technical units



*   Software learning and training issues such as perceptual, cognitive, and motivational aspects of learning



*   Gender and information technology



*   The elderly, the young, and special needs populations for new applications, modalities, and multimedia interaction



*   Issues in HCI education



The language for the journal is English. The audience includes international scholars and practitioners who conduct research on issues related to the objectives of the journal. The publication frequency is quarterly: 4 issues per year to be published in March, June, September, and December. The AIS Special Interest Group on Human-Computer Interaction (SIGHCI, http://sigs.aisnet.org/SIGHCI/) is the official sponsor of THCI.



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Please visit the links above or the links from our AIS THCI page (http://aisel.aisnet.org/thci/) for details on any current or emerging special issue calls that will be announced in the future. Please keep checking our home page to see what is brewing! If you have an idea for a special issue, please drop us a line any time.



Sincerely,



Dennis Galletta and Joe Valacich, co-Editors in Chief

Jeff Jenkins, Managing Editor

DG

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Dennis F. Galletta                      Professor of Business Administration
University of Pittsburgh                 and Director, Katz Doctoral Program
282a Mervis Hall                            Katz Graduate School of Business
Phone +1 412-648-1699                                  Pittsburgh, PA  15260
E-mail: galletta @                                       Fax +1 412-624-3633
        katz.pitt.edu                       homepage: www.pitt.edu/~galletta<http://www.pitt.edu/~galletta>
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