Helen Ashman's research while affiliated with University of South Australia and other places

A group trip entails collaborative information behaviour (CIB) of multiple actors seeking, sharing, and using travel-related information. However, there is a lack of investigation on how people choose to assume or be appointed different CIB roles during such leisure projects. Thus, limited information support is provided to travellers involved in group trips. This article investigates role adoption to show how group travellers involved in CIB through different actions. A naturalistic inquiry on CIB was conducted with 20 travel groups from mainland China to Australia. Of these, 36 real tourists participated in the study through initial demographic questionnaires, pre- and post-trip interviews, and self-reported diaries during the travel. Data were analysed using iterative coding guided by the constructivist grounded theory. Results suggested the complexity of CIB among group travellers. Besides searching together as equal peers, most group travellers voluntarily assume different CIB roles which are often implicit. Six distinct CIB roles were identified, including team player, all-rounder, influencer, authoritarian, supporter, and follower. Furthermore, the distribution of such roles in a travel group was examined and classified into five patterns. The findings also contribute to information seeking research in tourism discipline. Practical implications are provided regarding system support for collaborative work and tourism information provision.

Introduction. Most university students depend significantly, sometimes exclusively, on the Google search engine for their academic information needs. User satisfaction leads to users’ deeper engagement with an information system that is shown to improve learning in an educational setting. This paper evaluates students’ satisfaction with results from personalised Web search against non-personalised Web search. Method. During semi-structured study sessions, twenty-eight participants (university students) were required to complete a series of search tasks using both personalised and non-personalised Web search. Analysis. Evaluation was based on participants’ explicit feedback as well as their implicit behaviour including search time, number of queries and clicked result links per task, finding the answer and relevance of the search results. Results. There was no apparent significant increase in the participants’ overall level of satisfaction with personalised search results compared to non-personalised results. However, it was found that personalised search reduced the time spent to finish a task and reduced the number of clicks required to arrive at the selected outcome. Conclusions. Personalisation of search results does not increase students' satisfaction with their search results. However, it does reduce the time spent by students in locating information they judged to be satisfactory answers to their questions.

In an era of information overload, people often work together on information‐intensive projects. Group holidaying is such an example where people plan and conduct trips together. In this poster paper we present preliminary findings from an ongoing investigation of collaborative information behaviour of group holidaymakers. Through a grounded‐theory approach, preliminary findings show that not all members of the travel group engage equally in the information search. A role labelled “active followers” is identified and the role‐taker's contribution to the group's information seeking and decision‐making is discussed. This paper calls for attention to heterogeneity within collaborating groups and invites further discussion of research into this topic in information science community.

This paper reports work in progress from an ongoing investigation of young Chinese tourists' collaborative information behaviour (CIB). Much existing research around CIB focuses on information seeking episodes while the circumstances where CIB occurs remain unclear. This study addresses this gap by investigating motivations to engage in CIB, paving the way towards a holistic perspective of CIB process. Following a grounded theory approach, data was collected from seven groups of young Chinese independent tourists travelling to Australia via interviews and self-kept diaries. Preliminary results revealed group holidaymakers' broad and complex information needs falling into three categories, with properties being evolving and dynamic. Five dimensions of motivations to engage in CIB were identified, including gathering rich information, shaping specific information needs, sharing information seeking workload, accommodating each member's preferences and opinions, and sense of participation. We present these emerging results, provide design implications on tourist-centred information systems, and propose further research directions.

Profiling and identifying individual users is an approach for intrusion detection in a computer system. User profiles are important in many applications since they record highly user-specific information - profiles are basically built to record information about users or for users to share experiences with each other. This research extends previous research on re-authenticating users with their user profiles. This research focuses on the potential to add psychometric user characteristics into the user model so as to be able to detect unauthorized users who may be masquerading as a genuine user. There are five participants involved in the investigation for formal language user identification. Additionally, we analyze the natural language of two famous writers, Jane Austen & William Shakespeare, in their written works to determine if the same principles can be applied to natural language use. This research used the n-gram analysis method for characterizing user’s style, and can potentially provide accurate user identification. As a result, n-gram analysis of a user's typed inputs offers another method for intrusion detection as it may be able to both positively and negatively identify users. The contribution of this research is to assess the use of a user’s writing styles in both formal language and natural language as a user profile characteristic that could enable intrusion detection where intruders masquerade as real users.

In this paper, a digital investigation of electronic (e)-banking services on the Windows Phone platform of nine Indonesian banks is undertaken. In the experiments, banking transactions (balance check, funds transfer and phone credit purchase) are performed using a Nokia Lumia 625. The digital evidence resulting from these transactions is acquired and analyzed using mobile forensic tools from Cellebrite and Micro Systemation AB. In order to reconstruct the transaction events, evidence objects are identified and related events are sequenced. Specifically, the findings relating to mobile banking activities identify eight digital evidence objects (SMS, email, call log, contact, media file, network packets, location and installed apps), and a physical object (account book - obtained from a physical investigation). Investigation questions of who, what, when and how are answered from the acquired evidence and the event sequence diagrams. The findings contribute to a better understanding of available mobile banking evidence on Windows Phone devices.

This study examines the usage of multimedia presentations with a particular focus on the presentation phase within a trial context. The aim is to understand the extent to which multimedia presentations increase a lay person’s understanding of technical terms and concepts in digital forensics. A questionnaire-based survey was conducted in Japan with 25 participants attending the United Nations Asia and Far East Institute for the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders (UNAFEI) 160th international training course entitled “Contemporary Digital Forensic Investigations”. Multimedia presentations in the form of videos were played with the aim of explaining three concepts: cloud computing, botnet and forensic file recovery. The findings of our survey showed that 84% of the participants had a better understanding after watching the videos. These results both support and extend findings from our previous research studies. The discussion on material classification, background culture and language issues, video material, and other tools that would facilitate understanding and the needs of an expert provide guidance for the practical implementation of multimedia presentations for their usage in a courtroom setting.

Advances in technologies including development of smartphone features have contributed to the growth of mobile applications, including dating apps. However, online dating services can be misused. To support law enforcement investigations, a forensic taxonomy that provides a systematic classification of forensic artifacts from Windows Phone 8 (WP8) dating apps is presented in this study. The taxonomy has three categories, namely: Apps Categories, Artifacts Categories, and Data Partition Categories. This taxonomy is built based on the findings from a case study of 28 mobile dating apps, using mobile forensic tools. The dating app taxonomy can be used to inform future studies of dating and related apps, such as those from Android and iOS platforms.

Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) are emerging technologies that acquire and translate neural data, applying that data to the control of other systems. Privacy has been identified as an ethical issue possibly arising from the use of BCIs. The research reported in this paper seeks to identify whether BCIs change privacy and if so, how and why. Interim findings are presented before outlining future research opportunities.