Tutorial: Waiting Times in Quality of Experience for Web Based Services

Tutorial panel: Sebastian Egger, Tobias Hossfeld, Raimund Schatz and Markus Fiedler

Date and Time: Thursday July 5 14:10-16:10, followed by afternoon tea

Abstract
User quality perception in the context of interactive data services is determined by waiting times to a large extent. Time perception principles from psychology are presented and discussed for their applicability towards fundamental relationships between waiting times and resulting QoE. A large share of interactive data services, e.g. file downloads, E-Mail browsing, picture viewing or basic web browsing is characterized by an information request from user side and respective waiting times until the request is fulfilled. In the next part of the tutorial we investigate whether the same relationships can also be used to describe QoE for more complex services such as web browsing. Finally we discuss relevant applications where waiting times determine QoE amongst other factors. For example, the past shift from UDP media streaming to TCP media streaming (e.g. youtube.com) has extended the relevance of waiting times also to the domain of online video services. In general user perceived quality suffers from initial delays when applications are launched. This will be discussed for social networks, video and voice services in the last part of the tutorial.

Target Audience
The two-hour tutorial, held as part of the QoMEX 2012 program, is aimed at researchers interested in the impact of waiting times and delays on QoE, in particular, for web-based applications like web browsing, video streaming, etc. Since the content of the tutorial is on fundamental relationships known from psychology which are applied (in theory and practice) to web-based services, all level of researchers are welcome: PhD students with basic background on QoE as well as experts in QoE.

For more information or if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at qomex2012@gmail.com