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A variety of brain pathologies can result in difficulties performing complex behavioural sequences. Assistive technology for cognition (ATC) attempts support of complex sequences with the aim of reducing disability. Traditional ATCs are cognitively demanding to use and thus have had poor uptake. A more intuitive interface may allow ATCs to reach their potential. Insights from psychological science may be useful to technologists in this area. We propose that an auditory‐verbal interface is more intuitive than a visual interface and reduces cognitive demands on users. Two experiments demonstrate a novel ATC, the General User Interface for Disorders of Execution (GUIDE). GUIDE is novel because it simulates normal conversational prompting to support task performance. GUIDE provides verbal prompts and questions and voice recognition allows the user to interact with the GUIDE. Research with non‐cognitively impaired participants and a single participant experiment involving a person with vascular dementia provide support for using interactive auditory‐verbal interfaces. Suggestions for the future development of auditory‐verbal interfaces are discussed.

The purpose of this empirical study was to address two important concerns of Web usability: how user-intuitive interface signs affect Web usability and how applying semiotics (i.e. the doctrine of signs) in user interface (UI) design and evaluation helps to improve usability.

An empirical research approach is followed here to conduct three user tests. These tests were conducted on a Web application with 17 test participants. Data were gathered through laboratory-based think-aloud usability test, questionnaires and interviews. Following an empirical research approach, statistics and user behavior analysis were used to analyze the data.

This study explores two important concerns of UI design and evaluation. First, users’ interpretation accuracy of interface signs impact on Web usability. The study found that users’ interpretation of signs might be accurate, moderate, conflicting, erroneous or incapable; user-intuitive interface signs led participants to interpret signs’ meaning accurately; and users’ inaccurate interpretation of one or a few task-related interface sign(s) led users to usability problems, resulting in participants performing tasks with lower task-completion performance. Second, considering semiotics perception in UI design and evaluation is important to improve Web usability. This study showed that interface signs, when re-designed considering the semiotics guidelines, have increased the end-users’ interpretation accuracy and the interface signs’ intuitiveness. This study also provides a small set of semiotics guidelines for sign design and evaluation.

This study empirically demonstrated that signs’ intuitiveness impact on Web usability and that considering the semiotics perception in sign design and evaluation is important to improve Web usability. These outcomes are valuable in a number of ways to HCI researchers and practitioners: the results provide awareness of the importance of user-intuitive interface signs in UI design; practitioners can easily adopt the concept of interpretation accuracy classification to conduct a sign test to obtain an “overall impression of interface signs’ intuitiveness”; practitioners can easily adopt the methodological approach followed in this study to conduct usability test without additional resources; and the results raised important fundamental questions for future research such as “what does a practitioner need to be aware of when designing or evaluating interface signs?”

The purpose of this paper is to test the efficacy of an interactive verbal prompting technology (Guide) on supporting the morning routine. Data have already established the efficacy of such prompting during procedural tasks, but the efficacy of such prompting in tasks with procedural and motivational elements remains unexamined. Such tasks, such as getting out of bed in the morning and engaging in personal care, are often the focus of rehabilitation goals.

A single‐n study with a male (age 61) who had severe cognitive impairment and was having trouble completing the morning routine. An A−B−A′−B′−A″−B″ design was used, with the intervention phase occurring both in an in‐patient unit (B, B′) and in the participant's own home (B″).

Interactive verbal prompting technology (Guide) significantly reduced support worker prompting and number of errors in the in‐patient setting and in the participant's own home.

The results suggest that interactive verbal prompting can be used to support motivational tasks such as getting out of bed and the morning routine. This study used a single subject experimental design and the results need to be confirmed in a larger sample.

This is the first report of use of interactive verbal prompting technology to support rehabilitation of a motivational task. It is also the first study to evaluate Guide in a domestic context.

The purpose of this essay is to illustrate how project management “pull” and AI or analytics technology “push” are likely to result in incremental and disruptive evolution of project management capabilities and practices.

This paper is written as a critical essay reflecting the experience and reflections of the author with many ideas drawn from and extending selected items from project management, artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics literatures.

Neither AI nor sophisticated analytics is likely to elicit hands on attention from project managers, other than those producing AI or analytics-based artifacts or using these tools to create their products and services. However, through the conduit of packaged software support for project management, new tools and approaches can be expected to more effectively support current activities, to streamline or eliminate activities that can be automated, to extend current capabilities with the availability of increased data, computing capacity and mathematically based algorithms and to suggest ways to reconceive how projects are done and whether they are needed.

This essay includes projections of possible, some likely and some unlikely, events and states that have not yet occurred. Although the hope and purpose are to alert readers to the possibilities of what may occur as logical extensions of current states, it is improbable that all such projections will come to pass at all or in the way described. Nonetheless, consideration of the future ranging from current trends, the interplay among intersecting trends and scenarios of future states can sharpen awareness of the effects of current choices regarding actions, decisions and plans improving the probability that the authors can move toward desired rather than undesired future states.

Project managers not involved personally with creating AI or analytics products can avoid mastering detailed skill sets in AI and analytics, but should scan for new software features and affordances that they can use enable new levels of productivity, net benefit creation and ability to sleep well at night.

This essay brings together AI, analytics and project management to imagine and anticipate possible directions for the evolution of the project management domain.

While technology continues to make a dramatic and profound impact in service industries and radically shapes how services are delivered relatively little is understood about the impact of advancing technology on customers; their expectations, perceptions and behaviours. As banking enters an increasingly digitised world this study reports on the views of 667 e-banking customers with respect to the perceived potential of social media to add value in retail banking relationships. The purpose of this paper is to propose that in order to realise this opportunity requires the case bank to embrace the second-order level changes required within socio-technical theory (STT) in order that such value can be co-created between the relational parties.

Using the lens of STT to interpret the findings drawn from the case bank’s e-banking customer base (n=5,500), it is argued that social media has the potential to fundamentally change customer-bank relationships and to add value to the way in which the parties interact with each other into the future. A survey methodology was adopted.

The findings presented indicate a wide spectrum of customers actively using transactional e-banking solutions in the case bank. The findings showed that those in the 15-30 age group saw “real-time/up-to-date information” as the main gain of their bank being on Facebook while their older colleagues in the 31-60 age group had a desire for different returns (“competitions, events”). That the analysis showed that age was the only significant determinant of Facebook appropriateness for the case bank, and in the context of the age-related preferences outlined above, the issue of segmentation is strongly highlighted.

This study contributes to the academic domain through a rare application of STT in a service context, offers implications for practice and highlights important areas for future research, inter alia; the role for new media in banking relationships, the impacts of new media on bank staff roles, where value now accrues in bank-customer communication, where social media fits in the promotional mix and relational strategies of banks and what are the issues emerging at the social-technical interface between both customers and staff and new technology and media.

Despite research spanning a 20‐year period (from 1950 to 1970), Ray L. Birdwhistell’s work on body language and theory of kinesics has been recorded only in occasional papers. Birdwhistell defined kinesics as “the study of body‐motion as related to the non‐verbal aspects of interpersonal communication”. He believed body‐motion communication to be systemic, a socially learned and communicative behaviour unless proven otherwise. The article extensively collates and analyses Birdwhistell’s work and theories. Birdwhistell was frequently forced to admit that a number of his theories were subject to some dispute. The article concludes that Birdwhistell’s work contains major flaws and the verdict of other researchers who have tried to develop his theories of kinesics has been damning.

This paper examines the impact of communication technology and human-related factors on teacher, student and course performance, in particular on teacher's clarity, perceived value of the course and student learning.

Communication technology factors are analyzed in terms of social media use, while human-related factors are considered through teacher expertise and communication skills, more specifically non-verbal communication (NVC). The research model is tested on a sample of 303 students from two European universities, one in Southwestern and another in Southeastern Europe.

Findings reveal dominance of human factors over technology ones. Culture moderates some of the relationships examined.

Notwithstanding the relatively limited sample of students according to their national culture, this work offers valuable insights into the impact of technology use in classroom and teacher communication skills.

Teacher NVC and expertise override their use of technology-mediated communication in classroom. Findings have raised important questions whether social media applications should actually have place in nowadays education systems. What seems clear from this research is that technology advancements cannot replace teachers, although further research is necessary to re-examine their impact on different student outcomes and in different cultural contexts.

The originality of this paper lies in comparing the impact of technology vs human-related factors on classroom performance. An additional contribution is provided by considering the moderating role of national culture within the proposed research model.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, in order to prevent the spread of disease, the National Library of Indonesia Cataloging Department adopted remote working. There is a need to examine the productivity of remote cataloging as this form of cataloging becomes more prevalent.

The study was conducted using a mixed methods approach. The authors analyzed data to assess cataloging librarians' productivity based on system logs. Then, the authors interviewed librarians to understand librarians' perspectives concerning productivity and remote cataloging, and also to seek insights into factors that may affect productivity while working remotely.

The analysis found higher productivity in terms of quantity of cataloging. Librarians' productivity during remote cataloging is not statistically related to individual factors of age, years of experience, or gender. The in-depth interviews found that other factors may hinder the quality and quantity of the remote cataloging, including the working environment, infrastructure, and lack of policies on remote working.

The findings were based on a study conducted in the National Library of Indonesia, which may not apply to libraries with different infrastructures or existing policies in remote cataloging. However, the authors identified numerous factors that could be related to remote cataloging productivity. More work needs to be done to identify these factors that impact productivity by conducting further surveys.

The research provides evidence showing the productivity of cataloging can be higher in remote working mode. The study provides insights for library managers to decide whether to implement remote cataloging and what additional perspectives could be considered for the better implementation of remote cataloging.

The gap in the literature about remote cataloging and productivity has been bridged.

The purpose of this paper is to address the visibility of luxury wine brands, in particular the Bordeaux first growth brands in social media.

The paper uses data from howsociable.com to portray similar luxury wine brands in multi‐dimensional space. To identify the associations between the brands and the social media visibility indicators, the paper uses correspondence analysis.

The findings of the paper show that some of the brands considered did not, at the time the data were gathered, have a clearly defined social media strategy.

The indication is that there are opportunities for luxury wine brand managers to use social media as a tool in their marketing strategies; also some threats may exist to these brands should they take a laissez faire approach to social media, particularly when social media are becoming as influential, if not more so than conventional media.

Brands can take directions in social media today that would have been unlikely if not impossible five years ago. While brand managers may not fully be able to control the destinies of these brands, this paper suggests that the approaches followed in this particular research will present brand managers with a tool that will assist them in directing conversations that occur around their brands.