Abstract-Older adults are the fastest growing segment of the population worldwide. This paper presents a evaluation of the user experience of two online web-banking sites from an older user's point of view. We therefore conducted a usability testing employing 12 older participants, in order to analyze the needs and issues faced by this user group when performing real-world tasks. The study involved six tasks which users were required to complete within a specific time. Most of the participants were interested in learning to use online banking. Our results show that older persons do not find web-banking sites easy or user-friendly. Our qualitative findings revealed that both of the web-banking sites we examined presented problems. Implications for the future include the need to redesign bank websites so as to include guidelines and other suggestions made in this study.

The recent economic crisis has forced many universities to cut down expenses by packing students into large lecture groups. The problem with large auditoria is that they discourage dialogue between students and faculty and they burden participation. Adding to this, students in computer science courses usually find the field to be full of theoretical and technical concepts. Lack of understanding leads them to lose interest and / or motivation. Classroom experience shows that the lecturer could employ alternative teaching methods, especially for early-year undergraduate students, in order to grasp their interest and introduce basic concepts. This paper describes some of the approaches that may be used to keep students interested and make them feel comfortable as they comprehend basic concepts in computer networks. The lecturing procedure was enriched with games, magic tricks and dramatic representations. This approach was used experimentally for two semesters and the results were more than encouraging.

IEEE 802.11e constitutes the "state of the art" standard for providing QoS to multimedia traffic in Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs). However, it has been proven inadequate in certain network conditions (high load). Several mechanisms improving its performance have been proposed in the past years. Most of them focused on altering the static nature of resource allocation specified in IEEE 802.11e. Nevertheless, it is of high importance to consider the traffic characteristics before doing so. In this paper, a new, centralized and simple algorithm is proposed that considers multimedia traffic characteristics and adequately copes with high load situations in wireless infrastructure networks. The proposed algorithm is evaluated and its effectiveness is proven by means of simulation.

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Abstract. This paper explores the effectiveness, efficiency and ease of use of two alternative interface interactions in a mobile tablet application. More specifically, the study employs a navigation task which novice users were required to complete by means of two types of main menu button, one utilizing text and the other utilizing a visual metaphor. Furthermore, little evidence exists on the effect of the use of metaphor on users of various ages and levels of computer experience. Our results show that young users prefer buttons that display a visual metaphor in the form of an icon, in contrast to older participants, who preferred the button that employed text. They also show that the users' performance is dependent upon age.