Interface Design Process Research Articles

Towards a Framework for Integration of User-Centered Design and Agile Methodology

ABSTRACTAgile practices are release planning, sprint planning, and standup meetings. The Agile provides the requisite time and space for teams, enabling them, to collaborate with each other and build relationship among them. Frequent short meetings are being held daily by Agile teams to identify potential collaboration opportunities to be followed. User Centered Design (UCD) is a user interface design process which lays great emphasis on the usability objectives, user features, environmental circumstances, tasks and work input/flow in the design/model of an interface. However, some challenges occurred when the UCD joins the Agile process such as usability issues, collaboration problems, usability testing etc. The proposed model not only embraces the relevant issues but it resolves the same to a great extent. The evaluation of said model is done through a case study.

Qualitative or Quantitative Data for Nuclear Control Room Usability Studies? A Pragmatic Approach to Data Collection and Presentation

Qualitative and quantitative approaches provide alternative, but often incompatible means to answer design questions during the early formative and later summative evaluation phases of the human-system interface design process. Human factors practitioners and researchers should identify which approach best addresses their particular research needs. Nuclear control room studies, particularly those conducted for control room modernization efforts, pose unique challenges. Due to the challenge of sampling large numbers of operators, the interface improvement goals of a usability evaluation, and the limited resources available for study analyses, a traditional quantitative approach is often not feasible or reasonable. Qualitative data provides a more pragmatic means to address design questions early on during the formative stage of the evaluation. Quantitative data can also be useful to bolster the qualitative data by presenting the data in a simple and intuitive graphic to provide evidence for design choices. An example case study using this approach during a formative evaluation study of a turbine control system human-system interface is described in this paper.

The Application of Augmented Reality Visual Communication in Network Teaching

In order to improve the effectiveness of online teaching, visual communica-tion of augmented reality technology was applied. Network teaching was an auxiliary teaching form that used the network as a medium to carry out teaching information transmission. It was an extension of classroom teaching and an organic integration of information and technology and art. The visual effect of the online teaching interface directly affected the quality of teach-ing information delivery. Based on augmented reality technology, the re-search, analysis and analysis of interactive interface design content, process-es and principles were carried out in terms of human-computer interaction, user experience, and visual communication. Augmented reality based visual interaction interface design methods were summarized. The results showed that visual communication based on augmented reality could provide a new form of teaching demonstration and enrich the content of classroom teach-ing. To sum up, this method improves the students’ participation and enthu-siasm, and enhances the teaching effect.

Understanding the role of user interface design in fostering students’ learning process in a multimedia courseware learning environment: insights from a Malaysian case study

With the increased availability and use of information and communication tools in education, multimedia courseware design has gained the attention of instructors and multimedia developers in a bid to foster student learning. However, there is still scanty literature with regard to how user interface design of multimedia course environments fosters student learning process. The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions students at a Higher learning institution in Malaysia on how user interface design fosters their learning process in multimedia courseware. This study adopted a qualitative design with semi-structured interviews as the data collection tool. Two postgraduate students participated in the in-depth interviews after learning from a multimedia module on how to use Excel software. Thematic analysis was used to derive meaning from students’ experiences with the learning courseware. From the interviews, it was found that the nature and usability of the interface design of multimedia courseware influences learning motivation, interactivity and cognitive load. The participants however identified software and hardware issues as the key challenges in using the multimedia courseware. Suggestions on how to improve future multimedia courseware were also noted. This research contributes to the area of E-learning by highlighting the need to design multimedia courseware interfaces that enhance student learning motivation, manage cognitive load and foster interactivity. It is thus recommended that further studies be carried on larger samples, using other research approaches and designs to allow for generalisability of the research findings on user interface design and learning process in multimedia courseware environment.

The situation and importance of game interface design education in Turkey and a lesson proposal

Digital gaming industry has been an entertainment area that, since the mid 20th century, has come into prominence and distinguished itself in the game industry. Digital games have come a long way and reached large numbers of users since the time they got into the market. As for the digital game industry, the education of game design, along with the game production, is given high importance especially in USA and Europe. In these countries, game interface design with regards to programming and aesthetically designing is given place in the bachelor and master’s degree education. It can be said that, in Turkey, the number of researches in this field, lessons and game companies has been increasing in recent years. However, it’s clear that as a country, we have to come into prominence more in the international game field. As the necessity of developing more appealing, qualified and unique game interfaces is known, game companies are to act responsibly during the game interface design process. In terms of the creation of scenes, characters, environments, animations and the usage of the game engines, more professional tools and techniques are used and more original game designs are pursued nowadays. With regard to this, it’s clear that the need for qualified graphic designers to design aesthetically successful game interfaces has been increasing and will continue to. It’s seen that game design lessons have started to be given at bachelor and master’s degree programs at Universities in Turkey. Yet, the lessons are mostly on game programming at departments such as computer engineering. Game interface design lessons, on the other hand, are given at certain universities. In this study, the proposal of a game interface design lesson that can take place in the curriculum of Visual Communication Design or Graphic Departments of Fine Arts Faculties at Universities in Turkey is examined.
 Keywords: Game interface design education, graphic design education, game design, curricula.

Keeping the Lights On Across the Continent

Operators need new visualizations to help them monitor increasingly complex power grids at wider geographical scopes. We developed a work domain analysis of power grid operations from interviews, focus groups, and observations. The work domain analysis helped determine information requirements for a wide-area monitoring design concept that follows ecological interface design principles. We validated the design concept in a usability evaluation, achieving an above-benchmark System Usability Scale score of 77 out of 90. This work domain analysis and ecological interface design process will equally apply to the design of other power grid monitoring displays.

Iterative User Interface Design for Automated Sequential Organ Failure Assessment Score Calculator in Sepsis Detection.

BackgroundThe new sepsis definition has increased the need for frequent sequential organ failure assessment (SOFA) score recalculation and the clerical burden of information retrieval makes this score ideal for automated calculation.ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to (1) estimate the clerical workload of manual SOFA score calculation through a time-motion analysis and (2) describe a user-centered design process for an electronic medical record (EMR) integrated, automated SOFA score calculator with subsequent usability evaluation study.MethodsFirst, we performed a time-motion analysis by recording time-to-task-completion for the manual calculation of 35 baseline and 35 current SOFA scores by 14 internal medicine residents over a 2-month period. Next, we used an agile development process to create a user interface for a previously developed automated SOFA score calculator. The final user interface usability was evaluated by clinician end users with the Computer Systems Usability Questionnaire.ResultsThe overall mean (standard deviation, SD) time-to-complete manual SOFA score calculation time was 61.6 s (33). Among the 24% (12/50) usability survey respondents, our user-centered user interface design process resulted in >75% favorability of survey items in the domains of system usability, information quality, and interface quality.ConclusionsEarly stakeholder engagement in our agile design process resulted in a user interface for an automated SOFA score calculator that reduced clinician workload and met clinicians’ needs at the point of care. Emerging interoperable platforms may facilitate dissemination of similarly useful clinical score calculators and decision support algorithms as “apps.” A user-centered design process and usability evaluation should be considered during creation of these tools.

Statistical modeling for visualization evaluation through data fusion

There is a high demand of data visualization providing insights to users in various applications. However, a consistent, online visualization evaluation method to quantify mental workload or user preference is lacking, which leads to an inefficient visualization and user interface design process. Recently, the advancement of interactive and sensing technologies makes the electroencephalogram (EEG) signals, eye movements as well as visualization logs available in user-centered evaluation. This paper proposes a data fusion model and the application procedure for quantitative and online visualization evaluation. 15 participants joined the study based on three different visualization designs. The results provide a regularized regression model which can accurately predict the user's evaluation of task complexity, and indicate the significance of all three types of sensing data sets for visualization evaluation. This model can be widely applied to data visualization evaluation, and other user-centered designs evaluation and data analysis in human factors and ergonomics.

Cultural Marker Identification for Web Application Design Targeted for Malaysian Multicultural Users

The rapid growth of technology result in two contradictory phenomenon, the global world becomes smaller while the internet users increase drastically. This diversity of users becomes the main attention toward the study of human computer interaction due to the influential of users’ background toward the usability of web application whereby combination of color strongly determine user’s preference and engagement level. Hence, determination of color based cultural marker is crucial to the interface design process in order to fulfill the need of diverse users. Most of the empirical study so far has been carried in western contextual. As a result, suggested marker are not applicable in eastern perspective, particularly Malaysia which consist of multicultural society. This article provides content analysis of the website application targeted to multicultural audience to determine the prominent color based cultural markers. More importantly, identifications of the markers could assist the interface designers towards creating web based application that reflected the multicultural audience preferences.

Designing Academic Writing Analytics for Civil Law Student Self-Assessment

Research into the teaching and assessment of student writing shows that many students find academic writing a challenge to learn, with legal writing no exception. Improving the availability and quality of timely formative feedback is an important aim. However, the time-consuming nature of assessing writing makes it impractical for instructors to provide rapid, detailed feedback on hundreds of draft texts which might be improved prior to submission. This paper describes the design of a natural language processing (NLP) tool to provide such support. We report progress in the development of a web application called AWA (Academic Writing Analytics), which has been piloted in a Civil Law degree. We describe: the underlying NLP platform and the participatory design process through which the law academic and analytics team tested and refined an existing rhetorical parser for the discipline; the user interface design and evaluation process; and feedback from students, which was broadly positive, but also identifies important issues to address. We discuss how our approach is positioned in relation to concerns regarding automated essay grading, and ways in which AWA might provide more actionable feedback to students. We conclude by considering how this design process addresses the challenge of making explicit to learners and educators the underlying mode of action in analytic devices such as our rhetorical parser, which we term algorithmic accountability.

How does GIScience support spatio-temporal information search in the humanities?

Recent text digitization efforts make it possible to extract implicit and explicit spatio-temporal information with automated methods. We propose a GIScience approach to information search and access to visually explore digital text archives typically employed in the humanities. We detail how to extract and reorganize spatio-temporal information buried in text documents about Swiss history, based on established GIScience methods, and how to present this information to target users in an empirically evaluated visual analytics interface. Early involvement of users in this user-centered interface design process significantly improved initial design ideas. With this interdisciplinary approach to spatio-temporal information exploration and search, we hope to provide the digital humanities community novel ways to access and explore large text archives containing spatio-temporal information.

Developing User Interface Design Application for Children with Autism

The usage of touchscreen-assistive technology in the 21st century seems very promising. There has been a rapid rise in interest regarding the use of touchscreen assistive technology as an intervention and interdisciplinary research field for children with autism. Inventing and designing a touchscreen-assistive application for children with autism is a delicate process as designing technologies for groups of individual with profiles other than one's own is always challenging where the life worlds and lived experience are far removed from the experience of typical individual. Participatory design process that has been conducted with children with autism earlier in the study has led towards the invention of touchscreen-assistive learning numeracy apps (TaLNA). The application is focusing on basic numeracy and calculation to support teaching and learning. User interface design has been used as a baseline in establishing the TaLNA apps. It is a complement from the traditional approaches such as call cards and cue cards which being applied at the touchscreen devices. The TaLNA apps is believe assist parents, teachers, and instructors to train and educate the children with autism while growing their engagement and interest in learning. It is a hope with the establishment of this application, they will be able to learn, memorize and recognize the numbers through the animated and interactive learning application. Thus, this research paper discusses the user interface design process of forming TaLNA in assisting the teaching of basic calculations to children with autism.

Evaluasi Human Machine Interface Menggunakan Kriteria Usability Pada Sistem E-learning Perguruan Tinggi

Integration HMI with usability in user interface design process is a standart of the success of a website. The design process is done through the approach to the end user to find a problem solution of human machine interface phenomena. It can also generate the maximum level of satisfaction and success of implementation of the website. The purpose of this research is to evaluate HMI using usabilitycriteria to know the application of HMI concept in e-learning and provide proposals for improvements to the HMI. Questionnaire Data were processed using a descriptive analysis and methods of CFA to know the variables that are weakest and which indicators have an important role in shaping the research variables. Evaluation results indicate the application concept of HMI in the e-learning had been done but not the maximum. Data analysis of the results obtained that the main problem lies in the accessibility criteria in the meantime indicator latent variables from forming error prevention, learnability, memorability, visibility and accessibility of influential factor loading values indicated significantly (unidimensionalitas) in shaping the criteria of latent variables in first-order CFA. The end result of this research is the proposal of improvement as a HMI solution in the form of principles and technicsuser interface design. This solution is focused on the development of standards for the quality of the interface in e-learning systems and not on the digital learning content presented on the e-learning system. Keyword s : Descriptive analisis; Human machine interface; Usability; Confirmatory factor analisys; Elearning

Ecological Interface Design for Knee and Hip Automatic Physiotherapy Assistant and Rehabilitation System

In this paper, we report on a recent interface design and evaluation process for a new knee and hip automatic physiotherapy assistant and rehabilitation system (ARS). Interface design was concurrent with the development of ARS. The ARS has the potential to improve the automation of rehabilitation treatments, by providing quantitative measures of a patient’s motion. However, the complexity of rehabilitation information available to the therapist has increased with this additional information. We applied Ecological Interface Design (EID) to understand the domain of physiotherapy and the role of the automation. Results of a Work Domain Analysis (WDA) revealed new functions and constraints in rehabilitation now accessible through the ARS, and provided the design requirements for interface design. A novel interface was designed which is currently undergoing evaluation to see if it improves the quality and experience of physiotherapy. This study provides an example of the advantages of using EID at the early phase of design, and how to apply EID to a system of increasing automaticity.

Towards visual analytics for digging into human rights violations data

Towards visual analytics for digging into human rights violations data

Automatic Control System of Stone Sawing Machine Based on PLC and Human-Computer Interface

This paper designs a PLC automatic control system in stone cutting. The author elaborated the stone cutting process, the system hardware/software design and the human-machine interface design process. This system is the collection of PLC, sensing detection, frequency converter, configuration control technology and advanced stone cutting process in an organic whole. The author designed optional automatic/manual function and parameters setting screen. The author added limit current protection and position protection, and designed function of automatic detecting cooling water shortage to protect the saw blade from damage. Also the designed equipment can automatic light and bell for alarm. Operation results show that, this system can meet the designed requirement, and can remarkably improve the quality of stone processing. This designed control system has high machining accuracy, high intelligence, full automation, perfect protection, friendly man-machine interface and simple operation.

Applications of Interaction Design on the Website Interface Design

The text explains why the process of website interface design wants to involve the interaction design through the own perspective. It also explains what interaction design exactly is on the easily understand way. It mainly demonstrates the design principles of interface, and how to use them correctly in the process of designing. And mentions lots of problems may happen to the process. Its purpose is clear that according to the design principles of interface element in the website interface design process, standing in a higher level to review the interface design to work for the success of website interface design.

Community-Based Design: The Democratization of Musical Interface Construction

The advent of on-line communities has democratized the process of musical interface design and allowed users to directly participate in the future development of the devices they use. On-line communities, acting as centralized repositories for information pertaining to the development of an interface, allow users to discuss their experiences and ideas as well as providing a framework for managing information pertaining to an interface. This centralized access to information regarding the design, use and development of an interface both focuses and accelerates the developmental process.

Design Considerations for Delivering E-Learning to Surgical Trainees

Challenges remain in leveraging e-health technologies for continuous medical education/professional development. This study examines the interface design and learning process features related to the use of multimedia in providing effective support for the knowledge and practice of surgical skills. Twenty-one surgical trainees evaluated surgical content on a CD-ROM format based on 14 interface design and 11 learning process features using a questionnaire adapted from an established tool created to assess educational multimedia. Significant Spearman’s correlations were found for seven of the 14 interface design features – ‘Navigation’, ‘Learning demands’, ‘Videos’, ‘Media integration’, ‘Level of material’, ‘Information presentation’ and ‘Overall functionality’, explaining ratings of the learning process. The interplay of interface design and learning process features of educational multimedia highlight key design considerations in e-learning. An understanding of these features is relevant to the delivery of surgical training, reflecting the current state of the art in transferring static CD-ROM content to the dynamic web or creating CD/web hybrid models of education.

Behavioral Characteristics Analysis and Structural Design of Conceptual Interface of Mechanical Products

In conceptual mechanical design process, designers sometimes focus their attentions on mapping a sub-function or functional unit to a single mechanism or system, and ignore the interfaces among the structural elements. This paper first summarized the behavioral characteristic of the interfaces in energy, mechanics, kinematics by analyzing the roles, classification and connection styles of such interfaces. Subsequently, it introduced the concepts of function and free surface, and gave the interface design process. Finally, a case study was conducted to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed methodologies.