| Research Project Proposal | Tablet PC becomes Common Uses in Our Present Life |

Table of Content

Introduction 2 Critique of Journal Articles 3 Journal Article One (Tablet Computing) 3 Journal Article Two (Tablet PCs in school) 4 Overview of the research project 5 Research Questions 5 Research Method 5 Pilot Test Run 6 References List 8

Introduction

This Research Project is to help me gain real appreciation for research through my experience. It is designed to let student to select an interested topic for a research project. The topic I am chosen is “Tablet PC becomes Common Uses in Our Present Life”.

In now days compare tablet pc to ordinary computers, tablets by design are comparatively lightweight and relatively easy to carry around. Many of them may still be too heavy to hold in one hand, but they're great in your lap or on a surface. Tablet PC is become more and more useful in many areas, such as school, business, organization, government etc. Using tablet to browse the Web is much easier than getting up, going to your desk, and booting up your computer. Even laptops, which are supposed to be mobile devices, can take a while to start, and they often get hot after a short period of use. There are many advantages by using tablet PC. For example firstly, the ability to capture and store personalized input such as diagrams, mathematical and scientific equations and similar forms of input. Secondly, Faster and effortless navigation via touch screen, by using finger touch than keyboard or mouse. Finally, the flat form factor of a tablet PC makes it easier for users to work on any surface and display presentations. It also increases interaction with other people in the work environment.

In this research project, the purpose is to find out the primary information and advantages about people using tablet PC and why people like it. The devices which I will use in this research project are iPad and Samsung Galaxy Tab. These two devices have the best usability according to the statics. The devices are both using touch screen for controlling purpose and with multi features.

I am very interesting in this topic, because I think tablet PC is an amazing product and growing technology. It is a technology that continuing improving in current world, I really want to research and know more about tablet PC, I want to find out how different people feel about using tablet PC, how tablet PC has enhanced for us, why people like to use tablet PC and why not. The reason for why this topic is relevant and interesting to others is because I think tablet PC will take over laptop in the future. I think people will use tablet PC rather than take laptop to work and study every day.

Critique of Journal Articles
Journal Article One (Tablet Computing)

This journal article was written by Anita Bhattacharya & Beeba Mary Thomas. This article is basically about the primary information of tablet PC and different types of table and advantages of tablet PC compare with Laptops. From this journal article I have gained more knowledge about tablet PC, and these knowledge can be very useful for me to achieve this research project.

According to the article, the primary advantage of the tablet PC is that it is lighter than most laptops. They are also smaller in size, which means we can take them quite easily put under your arm from one place to another. In now days, tablet PC has becoming used in many fields, such as school classroom, business conference and design. There are many different types of tablet PC on the market, according to the article author has defined three of them. There are Convertible Tablet PC, Slate Tablet PC and Hybrid Tablet PC. Firstly Convertible tablet PC is similar to conventional laptops except the display screen is attached to the base of the computer at a signal junction. Secondly, he mentioned that Slate tablet PCs are similar in appearance to a writing slate and do not have keyboards attached with them. Users will input data through handwriting recognition, stylus and finger touch. Thirdly, Hybrid tablet PCs incorporates the functionality of a slate and convertible tablet PC. They do so by using a removable keyboard thus providing the functionality of a slate tablet PC. This three types of tablets is covered most of the tablets in the market based on industry and consumer requirements.

This article is more focus on the current design of the tablet PC, but I think the author should also focus on the future of the tablet PC. From my opinion I think tablet PC will take over laptop computer in the future because it has significantly advantages than laptops. Overall this article is saying tablet PC is more competitive and has multi-purpose to achieve the demand of the user requirements.

Journal Article Two (Tablet PCs in school)

This journal article is basically provides an analysis of twelve case studies involving schools in England that were using Tablet PCs. According to the article, all the schools found that Tablet PCs had a significant positive impact on motivation and most of the schools felt that the Tablet PCs had enhanced learning. It is more easily for student access to and the range and diversity of resources and also the variety in the lessons, which often making lessons more interactive more collaborative work. As the result showing the student are improving their grade after being using the tablet PC to study. Which means the school, students and parent are all agree the new way to help student study and the differentiation of work to meet the full range of needs of learners. Also this article is showing that teachers and students had encouragement and time to experiment and be innovative in the ways they used the Tablet PCs.

I think it is important that teachers and student motivation should not be underestimated and it was clear that Tablet PCs had a very positive impact in this regard. We do have the reason to believe that tablet PC will replace laptop on college campuses. Basically from this journal article, I have gained more knowledge about how tablet PC influence our present life. I think for the further research, it could be focus the cost effective of tablet PC with laptop or desktop and interactive whiteboard. In this article it clearly shows how tablet PC change the way of teacher teaching.

Overview of the research project
This project is to find out primary information and advantages about tablet PC. Secondly, is to find out why people like to use it and what particularly fields they used most. The method I will use to find out the answer is by face-to-face interview. I will select different people from different field and ask them some questions. Also I during the interview I will ask them the research questions that I set it up. After that I will collect the information and analysis them.

Research Questions
The research question for this project will be: The usability of tablet PC in current world * The advantages of user experience * The disadvantage of user experience

How do people feel about using Tablet PC? Where are they using frequently? For example, School purpose, Business purpose or personal use.

Research Method
The research method I will use is interview user face to face. To interview users will able to help me to collect useful data and information about the usability of using tablet PC. I will randomly pick up ten people to do the interview survey from my classmate, friends and teachers. It will cover mainly three types of different user from school, business and personal. The interview survey could be taken place in anywhere such as my house, school library or outside place. In this particular survey, questions would be prepared to ask about their knowledge and experiences on tablet PC, all useful data and information will be recorded by me, voice-record may not be used through the survey cycle. After the questioning being done, I will be continue asking any particularly field they felt the pros or cons of using tablet PC also I will ask people what particularly The purpose of this is to collect useful experiences from every user about the effect of using tablet PC. During the question time, I will ask each of the users to use my iPad to show me which particularly function or disadvantages they don’t like. Such as sending email, share pictures, playing games and etc.
Pilot Test Run
Pilot test run by using interview survey

Stage One

Invite teacher, classmate and friends to attend my survey by phone calling, message texting or emailing them, a detailed description of this interview will be introduced to them during the inviting communication. After they agreed to attend this particular survey, I will confirm with them about the time and place for taking the survey.
Stage Two
Once both of us have arrived and ready to start the survey, the first part of the survey is questioning time. First of all, I will introduce to my friend the important details for the survey, after he/she has understood then questioning time start. I will use my laptop to record all answers.

Stage Three
Refer to the experiences of my friend using tablet PC, more questions about user experience will be asking. I will be more focus on which particularly advantage or disadvantage they felt compare with laptops.

Stage Four
The recorded details may not appear in my final Research Project Report; only valuable information will be analyzed to be addressed in the report. After completed interview survey with my friends, classmate and teachers the recorded details from the surveys will be very useful for me to do the analysis in my final research project report.

Table of usability for teacher at school

Tasks | Usability | | Ease of Use | Achievable | Efficiently | Feedback from students | Used Tablet Functionality for Teaching | | | | | Used Tablet Functionality for Learning | | | | | Using the handwriting functionality with Word File to create lecture notes. | | | | | Electronically distributing in-class, tablet-created handouts/lecturenotes to students. | | | | |

Table of usability for common User

Tasks | Usability | | Ease of Use | Achievable | Efficiently | Frequency of Use | Sending Email | | | | | Playing Games | | | | | Use browser go to internet | | | | | Help with learning | | | | |

Table for place that User use most
All usability testing tasks are able to help me to find out the advantages of people using a tablet computer. There are only four evaluation criteria showed in the above table, more criteria will be evaluated when I am running the project. By using the criteria to evaluate each task, it is the easy way to help me on collecting data from people, once they completed each task, I will use the evaluation criteria to log the advantages of usability tablet PC.

References List

MobileDemand. (2004). The Benefits of Standardizing on Rugged Tablet PCs for Retail Mobility.

Rob, R., Weitz, W.,Danielle, M. (2006). The Tablet PC For Faculty: A Pilot Project. America.

Twining, PD., Cook, D.,Ralston, J. (2005). Tablet PCs in schools. The Open University.