Human-centered Systems Research Articles

Design Innovation Methodology Handbook – Embedding Design in Organizations

The Design Innovation Methodology handbook represents a contribution to our design journey. This handbook was developed by a number of contributors from the United States and Singapore. Through a co-creation effort and common interests to innovate together, the intent is to make a difference for all persons in our communities and society. Readers are provided with a meaningful and practical guide, reference booklet, and living document in which to engage Design Innovation at the apex of Design Thinking and Systems Thinking, and beyond. We sincerely hope that this guide will inspire and embolden all readers and partners to push the the boundaries of human-centered systems innovation across one's entire portfolio and strategic plan. In doing so, the future will be bright, and we will have an impact beyond anything we can imagine or foresee. We wish you the very best as you embrace your personal Design Innovation journey. To Design Innovation, and Beyond!!

Shifting the global maritime training paradigm toward human centric systems (HCS) focus: Identifying the self-infected bioweapon delivery system

Shifting the global maritime training paradigm toward human centric systems (HCS) focus: Identifying the self-infected bioweapon delivery system

Interactive and revisable decision-support: doing more harm than good?

ABSTRACT While human-centered system design has actively sought to reduce cognitive biases in decision-making, a gap exists on the distinct role of media features in decision-support systems (DSS). Intuitively, we may presume that DSS interactivity and revisability remedy such biases. Yet, experiments reported herein reveal that combining the two features may conversely aggravate such bias. These features have been studied as distinct factors moderating bias in decision-criteria rating tasks in two experiments (sample sizes: n1 =96 for first; for second with criteria vividness controlled, n2=429). Such study emanates from a novel view of DSS as persuasive communication media. Thus, a unique adaptation of Media Synchronicity Theory to a computer–human communication context ensues. This promotes the isolated study of interactivity and revisability, alongside their interaction. Hence, the study finds statistically significant bias reductions for revisability treatments without interactive feedback. Such real-time automatic feedback, surprisingly, makes no impact in the majority of cases. Vividness controlled, it is still revisability-only cases indicating any reduction in possible order effects bias (despite extra effort required). Thus, a fresh case is made to evaluate interactivity and revisability separately in DSS media, with empirical evidence that – together – they could be ‘doing more harm than good’.

Face and Gesture Analysis for Health Informatics.

The goal of Face and Gesture Analysis for Health Informatics's workshop is to share and discuss the achievements as well as the challenges in using computer vision and machine learning for automatic human behavior analysis and modeling for clinical research and healthcare applications. The workshop aims to promote current research and support growth of multidisciplinary collaborations to advance this groundbreaking research. The meeting gathers scientists working in related areas of computer vision and machine learning, multi-modal signal processing and fusion, human centered computing, behavioral sensing, assistive technologies, and medical tutoring systems for healthcare applications and medicine.

Interval-Based Least Squares for Uncertainty-Aware Learning in Human-Centric Multimedia Systems.

Machine learning (ML) methods are popular in several application areas of multimedia signal processing. However, most existing solutions in the said area, including the popular least squares, rely on penalizing predictions that deviate from the target ground-truth values. In other words, uncertainty in the ground-truth data is simply ignored. As a result, optimization and validation overemphasize a single-target value when, in fact, human subjects themselves did not unanimously agree to it. This leads to an unreasonable scenario where the trained model is not allowed the benefit of the doubt in terms of prediction accuracy. The problem becomes even more significant in the context of more recent human-centric and immersive multimedia systems where user feedback and interaction are influenced by higher degrees of freedom (leading to higher levels of uncertainty in the ground truth). To ameliorate this drawback, we propose an uncertainty aware loss function (referred to as [Formula: see text]) that explicitly accounts for data uncertainty and is useful for both optimization (training) and validation. As examples, we demonstrate the utility of the proposed method for blind estimation of perceptual quality of audiovisual signals, panoramic images, and images affected by camera-induced distortions. The experimental results support the theoretical ideas in terms of reducing prediction errors. The proposed method is also relevant in the context of more recent paradigms, such as crowdsourcing, where larger uncertainty in ground truth is expected.

An adversarial learning approach for discovering social relations in human-centered information networks

The analytics on graph-structured data in cyber spaces has advanced many human-centered computing technologies. However, if only utilizing the structural properties, we might be prohibited from unraveling unknown social relations of nodes especially in the structureless networked systems. Up-to-date ways to unfold latent relationships from graph-structured data are network representation learning (NRL) techniques, but it is difficult for most existing ones to deal with the network-structureless situations due to the fact that they largely depend on the observed connections. With the ever-broader spectrum of human-centered networked systems, large quantities of textual information have been generated and collected from social and physical spaces, which may provide the clues of hidden social relations. In order to discover latent social relations from the accompanied text resources, this paper attempts to bridge the gap between text data and graph-structured data so that the textual information can be encoded to substitute for those incomplete structural information. Generative adversarial networks (GANs) are employed in the cross-modal framework to make the transformed data indistinguishable in graph-domain space and also capable of depicting structure-aware relationships with network homophily. Experiments conducted on three text-based network benchmarks demonstrate that our approach can reveal more realistic social relations from text-domain information compared against the state-of-the-art baselines.

Unified 3-D Interactive Human-Centered System for Online Experimentation: Current Deployment and Future Perspectives

Online experimentation systems that support remote and/or virtual experiments in an Internet-based environment play an important role in skill-enhanced online learning, especially in the field of engineering. This article explores a human-centered online system with a unified architecture that covers the entire process of control engineering experimentation. The control and security-oriented design are presented and the human-centered design including the HTML5-based web application and the configurable graphical user interface is also introduced. Interactive features such as tuning parameters and 3-D animations and interactions are integrated into the system. Enhanced 3-D effects such as anaglyph 3-D and parallax 3-D are also provided. Thus, users can experience different types of 3-D effects on experiment equipment or in a 3-D virtual world while conducting experiments. Details of an application example with a dual tank system are also explored to verify the performance of the proposed system.

Exploring the Application of the FOX Model to Foster Pro-Environmental Behaviours in Smart Environments.

The heterogeneity and dynamism of people make addressing user diversity and its categorisation critical factors, which should be carefully considered when developing pro-environmental strategies and interventions. Nevertheless, the complexities of individuals complicates the creation of modelling and classification systems. The aforementioned issue opens a research opportunity, which should be tackled to improve the development of human-centric systems and processes. Throughout the present piece of research, our objective is to bridge that gap by extracting knowledge and insights relating to how to address user diversity when designing technologies considering sustainable behaviour. For this, we explore the possibilities of the FOX model—an early meta-model to approach the diversity of individuals when addressing pro-environmental behaviour—to classify and understand individuals while taking their heterogeneity into account. After introducing the model, a qualitative survey of eight experts is conducted. From this study, relevant findings are analysed and exposed. Taking into account the gathered knowledge, three user profiles are developed, based on the dimensions proposed by the model. Furthermore, scenarios are created for each profile, presenting three case studies where different application modes of the model are described (personalised interventions, prediction and forecasting, and individual and collective interventions). Finally, the extracted findings are analysed, discussing the main issues related to the development of pro-environmental technologies and systems.

The Effect of Correctional Officers’ Emotional Labor on Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment

교정공무원들은 교정조직이 추구하는 목적달성에 중추적인 역할을 담당하며 이러한 역할수행은 사회구성원의 편안한 질서 유지에도 영향을 미치고 있다. 하지만 교정공무원에 관련한 연구는 아직도 미흡한 실정이고, 교정공무원들의 행위들이 감정노동이라는 맥락에서 이해되고 있지 못한 것이 연구현실이다. 따라서 본 연구에서는 수용자의 인권을 강조하고, 인간중심적인 교화체계로 변화하고 있는 현시점에서 감정노동-직무스트레스-직무만족 및 조직몰입의 관계를 살펴보고자 한다. 연구대상은 경북지역 6개 교정기관에 소속된 교정공무원을 대상으로 조사를 실시하여 전체 500부를 배포하여 465부(93%)의 설문지가 회수되었다. 그러나 무응답과 불성실하게 응답한 설문지 28부를 제외한 437부를 최종 분석에 사용하였다본 연구의 주요 분석결과는 다음과 같다. 첫째, 교정공무원의 감정노동이 많을수록 직무만족이 낮아지는 것으로 나타났다. 둘째, 교정공무원의 감정노동과 직무만족, 조직몰입 간의 관계에서 직무스트레스의 조직체계, 관계갈등, 직무환경, 조직문화 매개효과가 있는 것으로 검증되었다. 조직체계와 조직문화로 인한 직무스트레스는 부정적인 매개역할을 하였고, 관계갈등과 직무환경은 긍정적인 매개역할을 한다는 것을 알 수 있다.Corrections officers play a pivotal role in achieving the goals pursued by correctional organizations, and this role play also affects the comfortable maintenance of order for members in society. However, research on correctional officials is still insufficient, and in the reality of research, it is true that the actions of these correctional officers are not understood in the context of emotional labor. Therefore, at the present time, emphasizing the human rights of prisoners and changing to a human-centered system of edification, this study attempts to examine the relationship between emotional labor, job stress, job satisfaction and organizational commitment. This study aims to identify the direct effect of correctional officers emotional labor on job satisfaction and organizational commitment, and the indirect effect relationships where job stress, which has been affected by emotional labor and has been studied to affect job satisfaction and organizational commitment, that mediate the relationship between emotional labor, job satisfaction and organizational commitment. As for the subjects of the study, a survey was conducted for correctional officials belonging to six correctional institutions in Gyeongbuk province, and 465 copies (93%) of questionnaires were collected. However, 437 copies were used for the final analysis, except 28 questionnaires that responded unresponsively and unfaithfully. The main analysis results of this study are as follows. First, it is found that job satisfaction decreases as there is more emotional labor of correctional officers. Second, the mediating effect of job stress on organizational system, relationship conflict, job environment, organizational culture was verified in the relationship between emotional labor, job satisfaction and organizational commitment of correctional officials, and in the relationship between emotional labor, job satisfaction and organizational commitment, it can be seen that job stress due to organizational system, organizational culture plays a negative role as a mediator. job environment, relationship conflict, is found to play a positive mediating role.

Toward Image-to-Tactile Cross-Modal Perception for Visually Impaired People

It is still a great challenge for the visually impaired people to perceive their surroundings from a global perspective, which makes it difficult for them to interact with unfamiliar environments. The reason is that these conventional assisting devices only address the obstacle avoidance problem. They do not provide visually impaired people with a global perception of the surrounding environment. In this article, a new generative adversarial network (GAN) model is developed to effectively transform the ground images into the tactile signal, which can be displayed by an off-the-shelf vibration device. The algorithm module and the hardware are integrated into a portable device, which provides visually impaired people with effective surrounding perception capability. In addition, a visual-tactile cross-modal data set is constructed to train the proposed deep-learning architecture. Experimental results show that the proposed system can help visually impaired people sense the ground and bring a better traveling experience for them. Note to Practitioners-This article presents a portable device that provides tactile recognition assistance for visually impaired people. Such a technology can be extensively used in tactile mouse and white cane. The developed technology can be extensively used for various industrial applications, such as surrounding monitoring and manipulation. The proposed work demonstrates the promising ability of artificial intelligence in healthcare applications. The generated tactile signals are expected to be used in many human-centered systems, and we believe that our contribution is an important step toward the development of a more comprehensive assisting technology for visually impaired people.

Applying ergonomics within the multi-modelling paradigm with an example from multiple UAV control

This article presents a position statement on using ergonomics in conjunction with the multi-modelling paradigm. Multi-modelling is a computational approach to combine models of systems and components for design and simulation of cyber physical systems and systems of systems. Despite potentially significant benefits in terms of more human-centric system modelling, there is limited evidence of the application of ergonomics within multi-modelling. This article presents the case for applying ergonomics within multi-modelling. We open with an introduction to multi-modelling and benefits, applications and gaps for ergonomics in multi-modelling, and of potentially useful models from ergonomics. We then describe a proof-of-concept implementation of ergonomics within a multi-model of UAV control. This demonstrates that as well as user-centred modelling, this approach supports ergonomics in how we can access rich systems models, and the collaborative value of applying ergonomics theory in systems design. Practitioner Summary: Examines multi-modelling, a computational approach for complex modelling, and the contribution of ergonomics. An autonomous UAV test implementation demonstrates the application of ergonomics knowledge for improving design and evaluation processes, and how multi-modelling can give ergonomics access to rich systems models. Abbreviations: ACT-R: adaptive control of thought—rational; API: application programming interface; CFD: computational fluid dynamics; COTS: commerical off the shelf; CPS: cyber-physical system; CT: continuous time; DE: discrete event; DSE: design space exploration; FME: finite element modeling; FMI: functional mock-up interface; FMU: functional mock-up unit; GOMS: goals, operators, methods, selections; HCI: human-computer interaction; IMPRINT: improved performance research integration tool; INTO-CPS: integrated toolchain for cyber-physical system modeling; KLM: keystroke level model; MPC: model-predictive control; SysML: system markup language; SoS: system of system; UAV: unmanned aerial vehicle

Proposal and testing goals-guided interaction for occasional users

The latest shifts in technology have brought about new kinds of users who occasionally access unfamiliar systems in new scenarios. This way of use should not request any learning curve. There have been many attempts to help this kind of users: agents, floating help, tooltips, direct video demonstrations, etc., elements that support the appealing direct manipulation style (DM), but add indeed an extra layer of supporting material over it. In this paper, we describe an analyse goals-guided Interaction, GGI, as the basis for a different approach. We do not expect the user to understand or use a metaphor but guide them throughout the whole interaction process. This help system is integrated in the interface. The user will be closely guided on the “what to do” and on the “how to do,” always according to their current goal. This no-previous-knowledge-required way of interaction shortens significantly the learning curve. In order to support this proposal, a complete study based on user testing is performed. The results show that, for non-expert occasional users, GGI is more efficient in time and less error prone than the classic Direct Manipulation. Participants also showed a strong preference for GGI. This research offers an alternative way of interaction for designers and developers of human-centric interactive systems who have occasional users as their main target users.

Study of Human Thermal Comfort for Cyber-Physical Human Centric System in Smart Homes.

An environmental thermal comfort model has previously been quantified based on the predicted mean vote (PMV) and the physical sensors parameters, such as temperature, relative humidity, and air speed in the indoor environment. However, first, the relationship between environmental factors and physiology parameters of the model is not well investigated in the smart home domain. Second, the model that is not mainly for an individual human model leads to the failure of the thermal comfort system to fulfill the human’s comfort preference. In this paper, a cyber–physical human centric system (CPHCS) framework is proposed to take advantage of individual human thermal comfort to improve the human’s thermal comfort level while optimizing the energy consumption at the same time. Besides that, the physiology parameter from the heart rate is well-studied, and its correlation with the environmental factors, i.e., PMV, air speed, temperature, and relative humidity are deeply investigated to reveal the human thermal comfort level of the existing energy efficient thermal comfort control (EETCC) system in the smart home environment. Experimental results reveal that there is a tight correlation between the environmental factors and the physiology parameter (i.e., heart rate) in the aspect of system operational and human perception. Furthermore, this paper also concludes that the current EETCC system is unable to provide the precise need for thermal comfort to the human’s preference.

Social Responsibility, Human Centred Systems and Engineering Ethics:

Abstract Praxis is defined in the Cambridge English Dictionary as “the process of using a theory or knowledge in a practical way. Michael Cooley was one of the founding members of the Human Centered Systems(HCS) movement where human tacit knowledge is valorized and the human is empowered with technology and automation at the service of, and controlled by, the human. This paper proposes a set of ethical guidelines, in the form of a Manifesto, for a systems engineering design praxis. The rationale is to detach from “the one best way” that the Agile Software Development process has become, to value tacit knowledge by giving the client the right to reject, to rebalance power from the designer to the client and to slow down or depressurize the development process. This Manifesto emerges from the ongoing work on the digitization of the Cooley Collection by the interdisciplinary team members of the Insyte-Cooley Research Lab in the Luke Wadding Library of Waterford Institute of Technology. Work on this manifesto has raised serious questions – is the systems design process that involves interdisciplinary teams, responsible design and development of non commercial but socially beneficial systems, a very different and emergent model? Is it compatible with, a very different design approach? An ideology is presented, from which, as the lab progresses a supporting methodology specific to complex digital cultural heritage systems is evolving.

The ENRICHER Method for Human Machine Symbiotics & Smart Data

Abstract The systems development community is in need of a new culture, embodied in methodologies which assert human knowledge and dignity in technology development effort, especially where automation shapes working-life. Recent research, though limited, provides initial evidence to suggest industry 4.0 factory environments can satisfy the goals of human dignity and improved productivity amongst knowledge workers by developing human-centred systems. This paper looks at the unique differences between human and machine intelligences and introduces human-machine symbiotic, evolutionary development approaches. It extends the work of human centred systems in industry 4.0 settings into a very different knowledge work context: archiving cultural heritage, which has received little attention to date in IFAC. The Insyte-Cooley Research Lab (I-CRL) using action research have sown the seeds of a new culture embodied in a systems development process called “ENRICHER” which valorises human knowledge with positive results. Extensible machine-readable knowledge models are co-evolved by both technologists and users which support digitisation.

Real-Time Assembly Operation Recognition with Fog Computing and Transfer Learning for Human-Centered Intelligent Manufacturing

In a human-centered intelligent manufacturing system, every element is to assist the operator in achieving the optimal operational performance. The primary task of developing such a human-centered system is to accurately understand human behavior. In this paper, we propose a fog computing framework for assembly operation recognition, which brings computing power close to the data source in order to achieve real-time recognition. For data collection, the operator's activity is captured using visual cameras from different perspectives. For operation recognition, instead of directly building and training a deep learning model from scratch, which needs a huge amount of data, transfer learning is applied to transfer the learning abilities to our application. A worker assembly operation dataset is established, which at present contains 10 sequential operations in an assembly task of installing a desktop CNC machine. The developed transfer learning model is evaluated on this dataset and achieves a recognition accuracy of 95% in the testing experiments.

A Human-Centred Systems Theory of e-Agriculture Automation and Control Systems Adoption: An Empirical Study of the Social Effects of Digital Control and Automation Systems in Agricultural Communities

Abstract Climate change, biodiversity crises and other challenges impinge upon agricultural communities who must adapt to these pressures. However, in many countries agriculture lags behind other sectors in its uptake of digital automation and control systems on the farm. In spite of decades of research into technological innovation adoption factors we still do not have a good understanding as to why this sector is slower than others to adopt these new systems. This paper is based on a qualitative study of farmers in the south-east of Ireland which explored social effects in technology adoption. It draws out key themes associated with Irish farming as communities of knowledge networks, learning and innovation dynamics and cultural features, as well as tensions in relationships between farmers and institutions. From this analysis new theoretical “RooT” model is offered to reorient control and automation technology adoption theories and better support agricultural technology innovation.

Creating Human-Centered Systems to Address Racial Disparity in Schools

This article explores how school leaders can strategically organize to create humanist systems within their schools to effectively counter the racial bigotry and systemic oppression that has existed since the founding of this country but has gained more attention in the current political climate. Many school leaders are trained to operate as a superhero—where one person makes the right decision and saves the day. Racial equity challenges us to think beyond an individualistic approach and operate in a collaborative way that recognizes and supports all the individuals within that school community including staff, families, and students.

Optimized SVM-Driven Multi-Class Approach by Improved ABC to Estimating Ship Systems State

In the intelligent ship field, with the upgrading of ship maintenance mode, the human-centered system maintenance will be gradually replaced by the artificial intelligence decision methods. To improve the training speed and testing accuracy of the state estimation model, an optimized Support Vector Machine (SVM) driven approach by Improved Artificial Bee Colony (IABC) was proposed to solve the global parameters optimization problem. First, the IABC method was achieved from three aspects: nectar source initializing, employed bee global neighborhood searching, and scouts mutation neighborhood searching. Second, the multi-class SVM with one-against-one classifiers was selected, and the best global parameters were achieved by the IABC. Third, the optimized SVM model was adopted in the testing to verify the effectiveness of state estimation. Finally, the elaborated methodology was applied to two actual ship systems to get the analysis results. The effectiveness was verified by using two examples. The results show the following: the IABC optimized SVM can obtain the global optimal parameters at a faster speed than the traditional ABC optimized method; the IABC optimized method can help the training start with better initial parameters, and get a higher classification accuracy rate than the traditional ABC optimized method. Based on the comparative analysis results, the IABC optimized SVM shows an obvious advantage of parameter optimization in the training process, and it can also significantly improve the model training efficiency and achieve a higher state estimation accuracy. The optimized SVM by IABC is an effective state estimation method in ship systems.

Enhancing cyber security behavior: an internal social marketing approach

PurposeUnderstanding the behavioral change process of system users to adopt safe security practices is important to the success of an organization’s cybersecurity program. This study aims to explore how the 7Ps (product, price, promotion, place, physical evidence, process and people) marketing mix, as part of an internal social marketing approach, can be used to gain an understanding of employees’ interactions within an organization’s cybersecurity environment. This understanding could inform the design of servicescapes and behavioral infrastructure to promote and maintain cybersecurity compliance.Design/methodology/approachThis study adopted an inductive qualitative approach using in-depth interviews with employees in several Vietnamese organizations. Discussions were centered on employee experiences and their perceptions of cybersecurity initiatives, as well as the impact of initiatives on compliance behavior. Responses were then categorized under the 7Ps marketing mix framework.FindingsThe study shows that assessing a cybersecurity program using the 7P mix enables the systematic capture of users’ security compliance and acceptance of IT systems. Additionally, understanding the interactions between system elements permits the design of behavioral infrastructure to enhance security efforts. Results also show that user engagement is essential in developing secure systems. User engagement requires developing shared objectives, localized communications, co-designing of efficient processes and understanding the “pain points” of security compliance. The knowledge developed from this research provides a framework for those managing cybersecurity systems and enables the design human-centered systems conducive to compliance.Originality/valueThe study is one of the first to use a cross-disciplinary social marketing approach to examine how employees experience and comply with security initiatives. Previous studies have mostly focused on determinants of compliance behavior without providing a clear platform for management action. Internal social marketing using 7Ps provides a simple but innovative approach to reexamine existing compliance approaches. Findings from the study could leverage proven successful marketing techniques to promote security compliance.