Browsing by Author "Yang, Tao"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    Brand and usability in content-intensive websites
    (2014-07-11) Yang, Tao; Bolchini, Davide; Pfaff, Mark; MacDorman, Karl F.; Cox, Anthony D.
    Our connections to the digital world are invoked by brands, but the intersection of branding and interaction design is still an under-investigated area. Particularly, current websites are designed not only to support essential user tasks, but also to communicate an institution's intended brand values and traits. What we do not yet know, however, is which design factors affect which aspect of a brand. To demystify this issue, three sub-projects were conducted. The first project developed a systematic approach for evaluating the branding effectiveness of content-intensive websites (BREW). BREW gauges users' brand perceptions on four well-known branding constructs: brand as product, brand as organization, user image, and brand as person. It also provides rich guidelines for eBranding researchers in regard to planning and executing a user study and making improvement recommendations based on the study results. The second project offered a standardized perceived usability questionnaire entitled DEEP (design-oriented evaluation of perceived web usability). DEEP captures the perceived website usability on five design-oriented dimensions: content, information architecture, navigation, layout consistency, and visual guidance. While existing questionnaires assess more holistic concepts, such as ease-of-use and learnability, DEEP can more transparently reveal where the problem actually lies. Moreover, DEEP suggests that the two most critical and reliable usability dimensions are interface consistency and visual guidance. Capitalizing on the BREW approach and the findings from DEEP, a controlled experiment (N=261) was conducted by manipulating interface consistency and visual guidance of an anonymized university website to see how these variables may affect the university's image. Unexpectedly, consistency did not significantly predict brand image, while the effect of visual guidance on brand perception showed a remarkable gender difference. When visual guidance was significantly worsened, females became much less satisfied with the university in terms of brand as product (e.g., teaching and research quality) and user image (e.g., students' characteristics). In contrast, males' perceptions of the university's brand image stayed the same in most circumstances. The reason for this gender difference was revealed through a further path analysis and a follow-up interview, which inspired new research directions to unpack even more the nexus between branding and interaction design.
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    Cardiac engraftment of genetically-selected parthenogenetic stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes
    (Public Library of Science, 2015) Yang, Tao; Rubart, Michael; Soonpaa, Mark H.; Didié, Michael; Christalla, Peter; Zimmermann, Wolfram-Hubertus; Field, Loren J.; Department of Pediatrics, IU School of Medicine
    Parthenogenetic stem cells (PSCs) are a promising candidate donor for cell therapy applications. Similar to embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), PSCs exhibit self-renewing capacity and clonogenic proliferation in vitro. PSCs exhibit largely haploidentical genotype, and as such may constitute an attractive population for allogenic applications. In this study, PSCs isolated from transgenic mice carrying a cardiomyocyte-restricted reporter transgene to permit tracking of donor cells were genetically modified to carry a cardiomyocyte-restricted aminoglycoside phosphotransferase expression cassette (MHC-neor/pGK-hygror) to permit the generation of highly enriched cardiomyocyte cultures from spontaneously differentiating PSCs by simple selection with the neomycin analogue G148. Following engraftment into isogenic recipient hearts, the selected cardiomyocytes formed a functional syncytium with the host myocardium as evidenced by the presence of entrained intracellular calcium transients. These cells thus constitute a potential source of therapeutic donor cells.
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    Generation and Characterization of Mouse Models for Skeletal Disease
    (SpringerLink, 2021) Foxa, Gabrielle E.; Turner, Lisa M.; Robling, Alexander G.; Yang, Tao; Williams, Bart O.; Anatomy and Cell Biology, School of Medicine
    Our laboratories have used genetically engineered mouse models (GEMMs) to assess genetic contributions to skeletal diseases such as osteoporosis and osteoarthritis. Studies on the genetic contributions to OA are often done by assessing how GEMMs respond to surgical methods that induce symptoms modeling OA. Here, we will describe protocols outlining the induction of experimental OA in mice as well as detailed descriptions of methods for analyzing skeletal phenotypes using micro-computerized tomography and skeletal histomorphometry.
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    Navigating the Aural Web: Augmenting User Experience for Visually Impaired and Mobile Users
    (Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2013-04-05) Bolchini, Davide; Yang, Tao; Gadde, Prathik; Ghahari, Romisa Rohani
    The current web navigation paradigm structures interaction around vision and thus hampers users in two eyes-free scenarios: mobile computing and information access for the visually impaired. Users in both scenarios are unable to navigate complex information architectures efficiently because of the strictly linear perceptual bandwidth of the aural channel. To combat this problem, we are conducting a long-term research program aimed at establishing novel design strategies that can augment the aural navigation while users browse complex information architectures typical of the web. A pervasive problem in designing for web accessibility (especially for screen reader users) is to provide efficient access to a large collection of contents, which is manifested in long lists indexing the underlying contents. Cognitively managing the interaction with long lists is cumbersome in the aural paradigm because users need to listen attentively to each list item to make a decision about what link to follow and then select a link. For every non relevant page selected, screen reader users need to go back to the list to select another page. Our most recent study studies compared the performance of index-based web navigation to guided-tour navigation (navigation without lists) for screen-reader users. Guided-tour navigation allows users to move directly back and forth across the content pages of a collection, bypassing lists. An experiment (N=10), conducted at the Indiana School for the Blind and Visually Impaired (ISBVI), examined these web navigation strategies during fact-finding tasks. Guided-tour significantly reduced time on task, number of pages visited, number of keystrokes, and perceived cognitive effort while enhancing the navigational experience. By augmenting existing navigational methods for screen-reader users, our research offers design strategies to web designers to improve web accessibility without costly site redesign. This research material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant #1018054.
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    Th17 Cell Response in SOD1G93A Mice following Motor Nerve Injury
    (Hindawi, 2016) Ni, Allen; Yang, Tao; Mesnard-Hoaglin, Nicole A.; Gutierrez, Rafael; Stubbs Jr., Evan B.; McGuire, Susan O.; Sanders, Virginia M.; Jones, Kathryn J.; Foecking, Eileen M.; Xin, Junping; Department of Anatomy & Cell Biology, IU School of Medicine
    An increased risk of ALS has been reported for veterans, varsity athletes, and professional football players. The mechanism underlying the increased risk in these populations has not been identified; however, it has been proposed that motor nerve injury may trigger immune responses which, in turn, can accelerate the progression of ALS. Accumulating evidence indicates that abnormal immune reactions and inflammation are involved in the pathogenesis of ALS, but the specific immune cells involved have not been clearly defined. To understand how nerve injury and immune responses may contribute to ALS development, we investigated responses of CD4(+) T cell after facial motor nerve axotomy (FNA) at a presymptomatic stage in a transgenic mouse model of ALS (B6SJL SOD1(G93A)). SOD1(G93A) mice, compared with WT mice, displayed an increase in the basal activation state of CD4(+) T cells and higher frequency of Th17 cells, which were further enhanced by FNA. In conclusion, SOD1(G93A) mice exhibit abnormal CD4(+) T cell activation with increased levels of Th17 cells prior to the onset of neurological symptoms. Motor nerve injury exacerbates Th17 cell responses and may contribute to the development of ALS, especially in those who carry genetic susceptibility to this disease.
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    Tools for Performance Assessment of OLSR Protocol
    (Hindawi, 2009-04-29) Ikeda, Makoto; Barolli, Leonard; De Marco, Giuseppe; Yang, Tao; Durresi, Arjan; Xhafa, Fatos; Computer and Information Science, School of Science
    In this paper, we evaluate the performance of Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR) protocol by experimental and simulation results. The experiments are carried out by using our implemented testbed and the simulations by using ns-2 simulator. We also designed and implemented a new interface for the ad-hoc network testbed in order to make more easier the experiments. The comparison between experimental and simulation results shows that for the same parameters set, in the simulation we did not notice any packet loss. On the other hand, in the experiments we experienced packet loss because of the environment effects and traffic interference.