User-centered Design Methodology Research Articles

User-sensing as Part of a Wayfinding Design Process

User-centered design is a wide term on describing end-users influence on the shaping of a particular design process. Wayfinding is one of the design projects where user-centered design methodologies are necessary and applied. There is a need in defining the circulation axes and the specific areas of a determined environment and this requires a survey of who are those who will use that specific space or building and how they perceive it. A more specific evaluation is needed when projecting a wayfinding system for a hospital, and even more for an ophthalmological hospital. Concerning this last one, a varied group of users will use that particular space, from the person with normal vision until the visual impaired and specifically older people. In this case a evaluation of visual and of other senses perception is needed in order to create an organizational distribution system to be interpreted by all users specifically those with vision difficulties. Visual impaired persons are mainly the elderly and most of the pathologies observed are related with aging and the loss of vision capacities. Common to these eye pathologies, such as the loss of the visual field, are the cornea opacity resulting in a blurred vision and the yellowing of the cornea that alters color perception. The use of user-sensing evaluation process will help us in the definition of the senses that more efficiently promote the interpretation and usage of a particular space. For that purpose a participatory design methodology will be required through interviews and tests done to the potential users in order to create the necessary data that will define the guidelines for the wayfinding project development. This user-sensing design evaluation, waysensing, will focus on color and background contrast color definition for the written material and also on floor stripes; on the legibility and readability, by evaluating the most efficient typefaces, text sizes and letter spacing and on the haptic evaluation of foot touch and its relation with dexterity and balance. A well-designed wayfinding system can reduce hospital patients’ stress levels, aid efficient business practice, and ensure safe crowd management [2].

User-centred design for collaborative 4D modelling

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to clarify the CSCW in collaborative 4D modelling and its user interface (UI)/interaction designs for prototyping. Four-dimensional (4D) modelling technology has potentials to integrate geographically dispersed planners to achieve collaborative construction planning. However, applying this technology in teamwork remains a challenge in computer-supported collaborative work (CSCW). Design/methodology/approach – The research adopted user-centred design (UCD) methodology to investigate a usable 4D collaboration prototype through analysis, design and usability testing. By applying CSCW theories, it first clarified the meaning of 4D CSCW to formulate design propositions as design target. By leveraging UCD theories, subsequently, the first-stage research sought an optimal standalone 4D modelling prototype following a parallel design approach. At the second stage, it further investigated into a collaborative 4D modelling prototype using an iterative design. It adopted collaborative task analysis into the UI/interaction design extension for a collaborative prototype based on results obtained from the first stage. The final usability testing was performed on the collaborative prototype to evaluate the designed CSCW and UI in a controlled geographically dispersed teamwork situation. Findings – The test results and user feedback verified their usability. It also disclosed design weaknesses in collaborators’ awareness and smooth tasks’ transitions for further enhancement. Originality/value – The combination of CSCW and UCD theories is practical for designing collaborative 4D modelling. It can also benefit designs for collaborative modelling in other dimensions like cost analysis, sustainable design, facility management, etc. in building information modelling.

Design, development and deployment of a hand/wrist exoskeleton for home-based rehabilitation after stroke - SCRIPT project

SUMMARYChanges in world-wide population trends have provided new demands for new technologies in areas such as care and rehabilitation. Recent developments in the the field of robotics for neurorehabilitation have shown a range of evidence regarding usefulness of these technologies as a tool to augment traditional physiotherapy. Part of the appeal for these technologies is the possibility to place a rehabilitative tool in one's home, providing a chance for more frequent and accessible technologies for empowering individuals to be in charge of their therapy.Objective:this manuscript introduces the Supervised Care and Rehabilitation Involving Personal Tele-robotics (SCRIPT) project. The main goal is to demonstrate design and development steps involved in a complex intervention, while examining feasibility of using an instrumented orthotic device for home-based rehabilitation after stroke.Methods:the project uses a user-centred design methodology to develop a hand/wrist rehabilitation device for home-based therapy after stroke. The patient benefits from a dedicated user interface that allows them to receive feedback on exercise as well as communicating with the health-care professional. The health-care professional is able to use a dedicated interface to send/receive communications and remote-manage patient's exercise routine using provided performance benchmarks. Patients were involved in a feasibility study (n=23) and were instructed to use the device and its interactive games for 180 min per week, around 30 min per day, for a period of 6 weeks, with a 2-months follow up. At the time of this study, only 12 of these patients have finished their 6 weeks trial plus 2 months follow up evaluation.Results:with the “use feasibility” as objective, our results indicate 2 patients dropping out due to technical difficulty or lack of personal interests to continue. Our frequency of use results indicate that on average, patients used the SCRIPT1 device around 14 min of self-administered therapy a day. The group average for the system usability scale was around 69% supporting system usability.Conclusions:based on the preliminary results, it is evident that stroke patients were able to use the system in their homes. An average of 14 min a day engagement mediated via three interactive games is promising, given the chronic stage of stroke. During the 2nd year of the project, 6 additional games with more functional relevance in their interaction have been designed to allow for a more variant context for interaction with the system, thus hoping to positively influence the exercise duration. The system usability was tested and provided supporting evidence for this parameter. Additional improvements to the system are planned based on formative feedback throughout the project and during the evaluations. These include a new orthosis that allows a more active control of the amount of assistance and resistance provided, thus aiming to provide a more challenging interaction.

User-centered design and evaluation of overview components for semantic data exploration

Purpose – The growing volumes of semantic data available in the web result in the need for handling the information overload phenomenon. The potential of this amount of data is enormous but in most cases it is very difficult for users to visualize, explore and use this data, especially for lay-users without experience with Semantic Web technologies. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – The Visual Information-Seeking Mantra “Overview first, zoom and filter, then details-on-demand” proposed by Shneiderman describes how data should be presented in different stages to achieve an effective exploration. The overview is the first user task when dealing with a data set. The objective is that the user is capable of getting an idea about the overall structure of the data set. Different information architecture (IA) components supporting the overview tasks have been developed, so they are automatically generated from semantic data, and evaluated with end-users. Findings – The chosen IA components are well known to web users, as they are present in most web pages: navigation bars, site maps and site indexes. The authors complement them with Treemaps, a visualization technique for displaying hierarchical data. These components have been developed following an iterative User-Centered Design methodology. Evaluations with end-users have shown that they get easily used to them despite the fact that they are generated automatically from structured data, without requiring knowledge about the underlying semantic technologies, and that the different overview components complement each other as they focus on different information search needs. Originality/value – Obtaining semantic data sets overviews cannot be easily done with the current semantic web browsers. Overviews become difficult to achieve with large heterogeneous data sets, which is typical in the Semantic Web, because traditional IA techniques do not easily scale to large data sets. There is little or no support to obtain overview information quickly and easily at the beginning of the exploration of a new data set. This can be a serious limitation when exploring a data set for the first time, especially for lay-users. The proposal is to reuse and adapt existing IA components to provide this overview to users and show that they can be generated automatically from the thesaurus and ontologies that structure semantic data while providing a comparable user experience to traditional web sites.

Experiences of multidisciplinary development team members during user-centered design of telecare products and services: a qualitative study.

BackgroundUser-centered design (UCD) methodologies can help take the needs and requirements of potential end-users into account during the development of innovative telecare products and services. Understanding how members of multidisciplinary development teams experience the UCD process might help to gain insight into factors that members with different backgrounds consider critical during the development of telecare products and services.ObjectiveThe primary objective of this study was to explore how members of multidisciplinary development teams experienced the UCD process of telecare products and services. The secondary objective was to identify differences and similarities in the barriers and facilitators they experienced.MethodsTwenty-five members of multidisciplinary development teams of four Research and Development (R&D) projects participated in this study. The R&D projects aimed to develop telecare products and services that can support self-management in elderly people or patients with chronic conditions. Seven participants were representatives of end-users (elderly persons or patients with chronic conditions), three were professional end-users (geriatrician and nurses), five were engineers, four were managers (of R&D companies or engineering teams), and six were researchers. All participants were interviewed by a researcher who was not part of their own development team. The following topics were discussed during the interviews: (1) aim of the project, (2) role of the participant, (3) experiences during the development process, (4) points of improvement, and (5) what the project meant to the participant.ResultsExperiences of participants related to the following themes: (1) creating a development team, (2) expectations regarding responsibilities and roles, (3) translating user requirements into technical requirements, (4) technical challenges, (5) evaluation of developed products and services, and (6) valorization. Multidisciplinary team members from different backgrounds often reported similar experienced barriers (eg, different members of the development team speak a “different language”) and facilitators (eg, team members should voice expectations at the start of the project to prevent miscommunication at a later stage). However, some experienced barriers and facilitators were reported only by certain groups of participants. For example, only managers reported the experience that having different ideas about what a good business case is within one development team was a barrier, whereas only end-users emphasized the facilitating role of project management in end-user participation and the importance of continuous feedback from researchers on input of end-users.ConclusionsMany similarities seem to exist between the experienced barriers and facilitators of members of multidisciplinary development teams during UCD of telecare products and services. However, differences in experiences between team members from various backgrounds exist as well. Insights into these similarities and differences can improve understanding between team members from different backgrounds, which can optimize collaboration during the development of telecare products and services.

Sustainable cultures

Purpose – This paper aims to describe a design research project which looked at how to support facility managers engage employees in behaviour change to create more environmentally sustainable workplaces and work styles. Design/methodology/approach – The multi-disciplinary research team used ethnographic and user-centred design methodologies to get employees’ perspectives on environmental sustainability in the workplace. This involved in-depth interviews and workplace observations to understand employees’ views on sustainability in their organisation; workshops to explore attitudes towards sustainability; and design provocations to explore how employees might be motivated to act more sustainably. Findings – The research demonstrated the different understandings people have of what sustainability in the workplace should mean and whose responsibility they think it should be. The results were developed into a model of four different sustainability cultures, pragmatist, libertarian, housekeeper and campaigner, based upon people’s perception of the cost of sustainability to both company and employees. This model can be used to provide insight into the predominant sustainability culture of an organisation as well as the attitudes of individual employees. Originality/value – The research has been compiled into a toolkit, “The Sustainable Cultures Engagement Toolkit”, aimed at FM and workplace managers, which uses this model as the basis to provide information about how best to communicate with employees about environmental sustainability in the workplace and how to motivate behavioral change. This research demonstrates a user-centred design approach to address these challenges.

A novel multimodal tool for telemonitoring patients with COPD

Introduction: Among factors that underlie high rates of non-participation reported in telehealth interventions are the low older users’ acceptance of information technologies and the low levels of non-compliance with therapy of chronic patients. Therefore, inclusion of potential users into design stages of assistive technologies is challenging. In this paper, the design, implementation and evaluation of a multimodal mobile application for telemonitoring chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is presented. The goal of the study was to assess the usability and feasibility of the designed tool.Methods: An iterative user-centered design methodology was applied to implement a prototype that satisfied users’ requirements. Feasibility (compliance, COPD knowledge and satisfaction) of the application was assessed in a 6-month field trial with COPD patients.Results: A usable, effective and efficient prototype was released after the development process. A high compliance (86.1%) and an increasing in COPD knowledge were achieved in the field trial.Conclusions: The findings reveal the importance of integrating usability in the design development processes to improve adherence to routine tasks and to reduce the high rates of non-participation reported in recent evaluation studies of telehealth interventions. The presented tool can help to recognize early symptoms of deterioration and to support patients in COPD self-management.

Extending web-based educational systems with personalised support through User Centred Designed recommendations along the e-learning life cycle

In this paper we address an open key issue during the development of web-based educational systems. In particular, we provide an educational-oriented approach for building personalised e-learning environments that focuses on putting the learners' needs in the centre of the development process. Our approach proposes user centred design methodologies involving interdisciplinary teams of software developers and domain experts. It is illustrated in an adaptive e-learning system, where a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) was taken by nearly 400 learners. In particular, we report where user centred design methods can be applied along the e-learning life cycle to designing and evaluating personalisation support through recommendations in learning management systems.

Developing a personalised self-management system for post stroke rehabilitation; utilising a user-centred design methodology

Purpose: To develop and evaluate an information and communication technology (ICT) solution for a post-stroke Personalised Self-Managed Rehabilitation System (PSMrS). The PSMrS translates current models of stroke rehabilitation and theories underpinning self-management and self-efficacy into an ICT-based system for home-based post-stroke rehabilitation. Methods: The interdisciplinary research team applied a hybrid of health and social sciences research methods and user-centred design methods. This included a series of home visits, focus groups, in-depth interviews, cultural probes and technology biographies. Results: The iterative development of both the content of the PSMrS and the interactive interfaces between the system and the user incorporates current models of post-stroke rehabilitation and addresses the factors that promote self-managed behaviour and self-efficacy such as mastery, verbal persuasion and physiological feedback. Conclusion: The methodological approach has ensured that the interactive technology has been driven by the needs of the stroke survivors and their carers in the context of their journey to both recovery and adaptation. Underpinned by theories of motor relearning, neuroplasticity, self-management and behaviour change, the PSMrS developed in this study has resulted in a personalised system for self-managed rehabilitation, which has the potential to change motor behaviour and promote the achievement of life goals for stroke survivors.Implications for RehabilitationRadical innovation and the adoption of a self-management paradigm need to be considered as a way of delivering home-based post-stroke rehabilitation.A hybrid of health and social sciences research and user-centred design methods are required to ensure that technology for post-stroke rehabilitation has been driven by the needs of the stroke survivors and their carers.Personalised technology systems for self-managed post-stroke rehabilitation have the potential to change motor behaviour and promote the achievement of life goals for stroke survivors.

Application of Personas in the Design of Augmentative Alternative Communication Devices

Augmentative Alternative Communication (AAC) aids are devices that help individuals with speech impairments communicate. Currently, the design and development of AAC devices does not follow a usercentered design philosophy. This affects the quality of life of individuals who are in need of AAC devices. Individuals with the progressive disease Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) are a population for which AAC is of critical importance. Due to the ALS individuals’ physical capabilities and constraints, there are challenges in involving the user population in a user-centered design process. This paper recommends the application of the methodology of persona development derived from the field of interaction design/usercentered design to solve some of the existing problems in the design of AAC devices for this population. This research demonstrates how current user-centered design methodologies can be adapted to develop personas of individuals with ALS and more generally, how user-centered design should be integrated into the design of AAC devices to enhance the quality of life of individuals with communication impairments.

The impact of solutions for chronic disease prevention and management

We are now living in an era where lower-cost, higherperformance technology has the potential to become truly ubiquitous as it integrates seamlessly within our everyday lives. It could be argued that the realization of these concepts will be most significant towards promoting independent living and increasing the quality of life for the rising numbers of older people and with it, the prevalence of chronic conditions such as cardiovascular disease, cancer and dementia. Such illnesses are placing significant and unsustainable pressure upon health and social care services across the globe. In an effort to help to alleviate some of these pressures, efforts are being made to investigate the potential to embed assistive technology within home environments and beyond. Indeed, studies have shown that older people and those with chronic illnesses often prefer to remain living within their own homes for as long as possible. A challenge in supporting their independent living is to ensure that technology driven health and social care solutions provide an equal quality of care when compared to institutional care facilities. Key to this success is the provision of ‘smart’ homes, which are able to provide automated and personalized levels of support, based on the profiles of each occupant. Realizing a smart home is, however, not a straightforward task. They are typically equipped with a large number of sensors, which are attached to household objects or embedded within appliances hence supporting the ability to track occupant’s locations and their interaction with appliances. These sensors generate a large amount of data, which must then be organized and mined using computation intelligence approaches to extract features that contribute most to the recognition of particular behaviors, environmental changes or to identifying activities of daily living. A large body of research in this area now exists; however, we have not yet witnessed the advent of smart homes on a large scale of deployment. What is needed is a coordinated and collaborative approach to technology development based on a user-centered design methodology with strong industrial and health and social care services support to ensure the large-scale uptake, which is currently lacking. The objectives of this Special Issue were firstly to review the most recent advances in the development of solutions for chronic disease prevention and management from a technology perspective and secondly to consider the impact that such solutions are having on health and social care provision. The consolidation of such an issue aims to provide a collection of work with the opportunity of exchanging new ideas and sharing lessons learnt. The Theme of the Special Issue follows the theme of the 10th International Conference On Smart homes and health Telematics (ICOST) that was held in Italy in 2012. The focus of the conference was related to considering the impact, which health technologies are currently having at a real deployment level in trying to address the issues surrounding long term chronic illnesses. This Special issue includes extended papers from a number of notable authors whose work was well received by delegates attending ICOST 2012. The overarching aim of the Special Issue was to provide interested readers with an insightful overview into state of the art approaches being applied to provide technology support for long-term chronic illness. Specifically, this Special Issue presents the latest research findings from an international body of authors originating from Spain, France, United Kingdom, Canada, M. Donnelly (*) :C. Nugent School of Computing and Mathematics, University of Ulster at Jordanstown, Shore Road, Newtownabbey, Co. Antrim BT37 0QB, UK e-mail: mp.donnelly@ulster.ac.uk

Design and Customization of Telemedicine Systems

In recent years, the advances in information and communication technology (ICT) have resulted in the development of systems and applications aimed at supporting rehabilitation therapy that contributes to enrich patients' life quality. This work is focused on the improvement of the telemedicine systems with the purpose of customizing therapies according to the profile and disability of patients. For doing this, as salient contribution, this work proposes the adoption of user-centered design (UCD) methodology for the design and development of telemedicine systems in order to support the rehabilitation of patients with neurological disorders. Finally, some applications of the UCD methodology in the telemedicine field are presented as a proof of concept.

A study of developing a User Centered design methodology with application of the Yin-Yang and Five Elements Theory - Centered on the modernize the Feng Shui for residential sites -

A study of developing a User Centered design methodology with application of the Yin-Yang and Five Elements Theory - Centered on the modernize the Feng Shui for residential sites -

User Centred Design Approach to Situation Awareness

Situation awareness is a variety of cognitive processes employed by operators in a complex and dynamic environment to understand the current state of the environment in order to know its future state. Information systems designed on the principle of situation awareness adopt the technique of user-centred design (UCD) methodology. A UCD approach involves users in system development process to make the system meet end-users requirements. Such user-friendly systems result in better decision making and optimal performance. In this paper, we model situation awareness with agile user-centred development method for predicting hydrate formation during crude oil drilling. The design is implemented with Case-Based Reasoning, an experiential machine learning paradigm, to expand the scope of the decision-making module.

Understanding the Student Experience through the Use of Personas

This paper reports on work conducted by the Computer Science Usability Group at the University of Hertfordshire in which a User-Centred Design methodology was applied to gain a deeper understanding...

‘Of Mice and Men’: The Role of Interactive Exhibitions as Research Tools for Inclusive Design

ABSTRACTThe Exhibition is embedded within the culture of Art and Design and has a long history as a form of ‘gathering’ to prompt academic discourse. This paper explores the role of the exhibition as a theatre for conversation that has parallels with the salon gatherings that emerged in mid-seventeenth-century France.This paper will describe ‘The Future Bathroom’ – a project that contributes to the development of methods and tools to support an inclusive design agenda. The bathroom provides a number of challenges to user-centred design methodology because of the highly personal, sensitive and intimate nature of the activities that take place there. Various methods were adopted during the course of the enquiry and here we focus on the role of the interactive exhibition as a research tool to gather data and further our understanding within the context of the research objectives.As part of the interdisciplinary research network ‘Engineering for Life’ (supported through the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Bridging the Gap Programme), researchers within the Art and Design Research Centre (ADRC) at Sheffield Hallam University explored the potential of a ‘field lab’ exhibition based on the ‘future bathroom’ research to both gather and disseminate knowledge.

The importance of User Centered Design methods applied to the design of a new workstation: a case study

This paper presents a case study of the application of user centered design methodologies in the product development for a line of ergonomic office furniture. The study aimed to analyze the experience of using a workstation from the perspective of two groups of users, installers and end users. The observation of users in their natural context of use not only allowed the development team to identify key needs and strategies of the users, transforming them into design solutions, but mainly it warned them of the importance and impact of user involvement in the product development cycle.

Semantic Interfaces for Personal and Social Knowledge Work

A large number of tools has recently emerged supporting information management for individuals in their work context. Semantic technologies play an important role in the development of such tools as they facilitate advanced organization, annotation, navigation, and search capabilities. This study contributes to the design of such tools by outlining how a user-centred design methodology can be applied to develop usable and effective user interfaces. SPONGE, the resulting system, encapsulates core functionalities that are needed for managing personal information and for seamlessly sharing personal information within knowledge networks.

Exploiting User Centered Design Approach and Interactivity in Web Based Software Developing

Human computer interaction (HCI) and software engineering approaches are always taken into the account together in order to make the well-organized software. Interactive design is the significant part of new media which has been proposed to the world for the past decades, and it is a very proficient technique. Interactive maps add more dimensions of information; they become a more and more helpful tools and resources. This research clarifies the idea of how we can smooth the progress of presenting and communicating the essential information using interactive manner. The interactive map of Bangkok underground train and sky train navigation routes map was developed as the case study using user-centered design (UCD) methodology as the fundamental developing processes. The main objective of the work is to develop the friendly and usable web based software that reduce the confusion and help users save times. The software developing processes in this work tend to focus on the users. And also the essential idea of the research is to take the uses and gratification communication theory of the users into account with the intention of providing what user requires by finding the real users’ requirements. This means the user can control software according to their needs and software act or response according to user’s requests. The paper mentions the role of communication theory, human computer interaction, and user-centered design software developing.

WORKPAD

In complex emergency/disaster scenarios, persons from teams from various emergency-response organizations collaborate to achieve a common goal. In these scenarios, the use of smart mobile devices and applications can improve the collaboration dynamically. The lack of basic interaction principles can be dangerous, as it could increase the level of disaster or can make the efforts ineffective. This paper examines the main results of the project WORKPAD finished in December 2009. WORKPAD worked on a two-level architecture to support rescue operators during emergency management. The use of a user-centered design methodology during the entire development cycle has guaranteed that the architecture and resulting system meet end-user requirements. The feasibility of its use in real emergencies is also proven by a demonstration showcased with real operators. The paper includes qualitative and quantitative results and presents guidelines that can be useful in developing emergency-management systems.