A requirements engineering framework for integrated systems development for the construction industry

Computer Integrated Construction (CIC) systems are computer environments through which collaborative working can be undertaken. Although many CIC systems have been developed to demonstrate the communication and collaboration within the construction projects, the uptake of CICs by the industry is still inadequate. This is mainly due to the fact that research methodologies of the CIC development projects are incomplete to bridge the technology transfer gap. Therefore, defining comprehensive methodologies for the development of these systems and their effective implementation on real construction projects is vital. Requirements Engineering (RE) can contribute to the effective uptake of these systems because it drives the systems development for the targeted audience. This paper proposes a requirements engineering approach for industry driven CIC systems development. While some CIC systems are investigated to build a broad and deep contextual knowledge in the area, the EU funded research project, DIVERCITY (Distributed Virtual Workspace for Enhancing Communication within the Construction Industry), is analysed as the main case study project because its requirements engineering approach has the potential to determine a framework for the adaptation of requirements engineering in order to contribute towards the uptake of CIC systems

The elderly and the digital inclusion: A brief reference to the initiatives of the European union and Portugal

Background: The world and Europe, in particular, are aging very fast, and in the same vein, digitization is moving very quickly into citizens’ routines. Given the fact that the elderly are the largest group of citizens who are info-excluded, this reality is worrying because it will quickly make them socially excluded. This article briefly presents the main initiatives of the European Union and Portugal to promote greater and faster digital inclusion of the elderly people. In the final section, there is a critical reflection on technology acceptance Model, the concept of universal design and usability in order to propose clues and strategies that can and/or may facilitate the use and access of technologies and digital resources by the elderly.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Testing a gravity-based accessibility instrument to engage stakeholders into integrated LUT planning

The paper starts from the concern that while there is a large body of literature focusing on the theoretical definitions and measurements of accessibility, the extent to which such measures are used in planning practice is less clear. Previous reviews of accessibility instruments have in fact identified a gap between the clear theoretical assumptions and the infrequent applications of accessibility instruments in spatial and transport planning. In this paper we present the results of a structured-workshop involving private and public stakeholders to test usability of gravity-based accessibility measures (GraBaM) to assess integrated land-use and transport policies. The research is part of the COST Action TU1002 “Accessibility Instruments for Planning Practice” during which different accessibility instruments where tested for different case studies. Here we report on the empirical case study of Rome

Testing a gravity-based accessibility instrument to engage stakeholders into integrated LUT planning

The paper starts from the concern that while there is a large body of literature focusing on the theoretical definitions and measurements of accessibility, the extent to which such measures are used in planning practice is less clear. Previous reviews of accessibility instruments have in fact identified a gap between the clear theoretical assumptions and the infrequent applications of accessibility instruments in spatial and transport planning. In this paper we present the results of a structured-workshop involving private and public stakeholders to test usability of gravity-based accessibility measures (GraBaM) to assess integrated land-use and transport policies. The research is part of the COST Action TU1002 “Accessibility Instruments for Planning Practice” during which different accessibility instruments where tested for different case studies. Here we report on the empirical case study of Rome

Bridging the Gap: An Exploration of Visual Design Criteria Found in the "Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005" (AODA)

Information and communication technology such as World Wide Web have gradually become implanted in every aspect of individuals life such as education and training, employment, government, health care, and more. Web provides valuable resources and information for web users including people with disabilities and help them tackle several tasks that would otherwise need much more effort to be done. Accordingly, web accessibility creates a guideline with the aim of making the content of each web page available for a wider range of people with disability, has reached a new level of importance. For this importance, the government of Ontario passed a law titled the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA), 2005, in which all internet and digital services must comply with accessibility guideline by 2025. Several researchers show a gap between professional design work and technically driven accessibility design guidelines. One of the reasons for this gap is an absence of concern for visual design during the process of implementing accessibility guidelines. The aim of this paper is to bridge the existing gap between accessibility and visual design to improve the overall usability and functionality of the system. In order to achieve this, I first identify and explain the visual design related criteria of AODA guidelines, their requirements and their impact on accessibility design. Then I demonstrate my experiment with utilizing visual design elements through the implementation of visual design principles on two selected websites to create an accessible web page that is not only usable but also has an aesthetically appealing interface

Practical Strategies for Integrating a Conversation Analyst in an Iterative Design Process

We present a case study of an iterative design process that includes a conversation analyst. We discuss potential benefits of conversation analysis for design, and we describe our strategies for integrating the conversation analyst in the design process. Since the analyst on our team had no previous exposure to design or engineering, and none of the other members of our team had any experience with conversation analysis, we needed to build a foundation for our interaction. One of our key strategies was to pair the conversation analyst with a designer in a highly interactive collaboration. Our tactics have been effective on our project, leading to valuable results that we believe we could not have obtained using another method. We hope that this paper can serve as a practical guide to those interested in establishing a productive and efficient working relationship between a conversation analyst and the other members of a design team.Comment: 11 page

Emotion-centred design : a human factors approach in affective web design : a thesis for fulfilment of a Master of Philosophy degree, College of Design, Fine Arts and Music

This thesis hypothesised that a major factor in the failure of many e-Commerce ventures was the lack of emotion imparted into the design, with trust barriers still being to the fore, and a lack of affective human factors like fun, pleasure and joy in the user experience. The human brain often acts emotionally before rationally and this affects initial reactions to experiences and the propensity to purchase online. A key to understanding human-computer communication is that form should follow emotion (as well as function). A wide range of design concepts and theories are analysed for linkages to human emotion due to the exploratory nature of this thesis. Aspects of New Media design such as video, sound, images, colour and virtual reality are covered along with previous research into affective human factors; transferability of emotional elements from other products; and the importance of trust and prevention of negative emotions. Case examples are provided throughout via screenshots and commentary, including a special section on the way that the Nike site has met many emotional design criteria. Research into the opinions of designers and users is undertaken via questionnaires to verify literary findings and measure views on emotional appeal within Websites. It was found that there are misunderstandings of human-computer communication - with designers not meeting user expectations in some areas, even though many designers agree that emotional design is important. In particular, there needs to be a better understanding of how to integrate fun, social contact, colour, trust and sound into designs. Emotion is core to human function, and evolution has seen the emotional parts of the brain grow long before rational areas arose. Given the importance of emotion it is only natural that an emphasis should be placed on it in design philosophies. Whilst some designers are realising the importance of this in consumer products this concept needs to be further emphasised in the world of e-Commerce. Designers surveyed in this thesis were nearly all following a form follows function or a subjective/intuitive design philosophy. However, it was found that there was a good level of support (70%) for emotional design. A gap was established from this fact because only 45% believe they are currently using a high level of emotional design in practice. Chi-square tests showed that there were a number of significant relationships between the level of education and other questionnaire variables such as the importance of colour and recontextualising from car and game design. Establishing trust helps to overcome the core human emotion of fear. Branding, seals of approval and high quality navigation are amongst the elements that can assist in bridging human-computer distrust. Predispositions and previous experiences can also affect initial trust values. Questionnaire results found that designers still believe that lack of trust is a major psychological barrier to purchasing online. Major trust dimensions from previous empirical research were all deemed important. It was also found that users and designers rated trust near the top of emotional themes to concentrate on in Web design. Negative emotions (anger and frustration) can also arise if the design is not inherently usable. Usability was the top-rating design theme amongst designers. There has to be a good balance between the rational and emotional sides. Further negative emotions can be evoked if the site is slow or if there are delays. Speed of loading was amongst the top emotional design elements for both users and designers. It is a difficult line for designers to tread - on one hand using speed to prevent negative emotions, but on the other hand balancing the need for other design elements that generate positive emotions through fun and pleasure characteristics (that might slow things down). Designers involved in this study were very much in agreement with the importance of choosing colours to match the emotions they wanted to evoke in visitors (based on understandings of colour-emotion stereotypes and 'temperatures'). Colour can achieve harmonious interactions or cause rejection by the human brain depending on its application. The survey of users revealed that almost half of the respondents counted colour in their top 5 emotional themes, whereas designers did not think, it was as important as other emotive dimensions. Different cultures may respond differently to metaphorical images, colours, and dimensions such as power-distance and masculinity. Nearly all designers believed that empathising with target users (a part of emotional intelligence) was very important, as was involving users in the design process (usercentred design). Only 50% of users felt that designers were respecting their demographies and culture, so there is still a large number of people who feel they could be more satisfied in this sense. It is proposed that more user testing be carried out in conjunction with frameworks that rate cultural dimensions based on target audiences. The use of video and streaming media was portrayed to be a proposition requiring careful consideration and application by previous non-empirical references. Streaming video can connect with people on an emotional level, bringing in a degree of surprise and variation, and fully highlight the appealing characteristics of the product(s) trying to be sold online. Other New Media technologies such as virtual reality (VR) and 3D have been around for quite awhile (in computer games and scientific applications) but are yet to achieve widespread usage in Website e-Commerce. Some literature is against the use of VR and 3D on the Web but several companies have been receiving accolades in this area because of the ability to bridge an emotional gap between brands and consumers. Questionnaire results showed that most design respondents did not think streaming media, 3D and VR were important in order to gain emotional connections. However, higher bandwidth speeds that will facilitate more use of streaming media and 3D are deemed favourable by designers in terms of increasing emotional appeal. The need for social contact, familiarity and recognition of expressions and gestures led to the proposition of using virtual shop assistants and agents. Contact in the form of live text chat can also fulfil some social needs and plays a big part in portraying trustworthiness since a real person is being interacted with. Designers surveyed in this study were reasonably evenly distributed amongst those in favour, unsure and in disagreement with the use of agents. Surprisingly, given that users would not have had much exposure to virtual agents and characters online, they actually deemed them amongst the highest rating emotional design elements - creating a gap between user expectations and designer actions. Resources revealed that sound can account for a large part of an overall experience. Sound creates mood and atmosphere, and is present in the physical retail environment. Although literature stresses the importance of sound to Web design, designers in this study were of quite the opposite view. Sound was not deemed to be an important experience (near the bottom of ranked emotional dimensions). Users, however, rated sound amongst the middle group of emotional elements. More use of sound is an opportunity for the future. Two broad product ranges - automobiles and computer games - were investigated to see what made them such emotion-centred items. Cars and games evoke feelings of pleasure, fun, flow and fantasy because of their design. Designers favoured interactivity, colour use and fun as gaming elements best applied to Web design. More than half of designer respondents believed that the design of cars and games can be recontextualised into Web design, and most users were definitely in favour of seeing emotional elements they like about cars and games placed into Websites. Dimensions and potential mechanisms for measuring or assessing the emotional intelligence of Websites are proposed, and these include the use of semantic maps to position and compare Websites based on their performance against dimensions such as fun, warmth, trustworthiness, use of colour and the ability to engage users on a social level. The capability of building emotion into a Website is then balanced with the need for high-quality navigation, functionality and usability - as poor efforts in these 'rational' areas can lead to negative emotions and distrust. The design also has to keep in line with the demands of the company wanting the Website built. This study was exploratory - with the aim of bringing out into the open some aspects of New Media e-Commerce design that could he better utilised in order to match the emotions and feelings of customers - potentially leading to higher degrees of sales success. This thesis is therefore hoped to be a catalyst for further study in this area.<

Global Technical Communication and Content Management: A Study of Multilingual Quality

The field of technical communication (TC) is facing a dilemma. Content management (CM) strategies and technologies that completely reshape writing and translation practices are adopted in an increasing number of TC work groups. One driving factor in CM adoption is the promise of improving quality of multilingual technical texts, all the while reducing time/cost of technical translation and localization. Yet, CM relies on automation and privileges consistency¯an approach that is problematic in global TC with its focus on adapting texts based on the characteristics of end-users. To better understand the interdisciplinary dilemma of multilingual quality in CM, during my dissertation project I conducted a twelve-month long qualitative case study of multilingual quality at a leading manufacturer of medical equipment who had adopted CM strategies and technologies to create technical texts in several languages three years before my study began. In my study, I drew upon an interdisciplinary theoretical base (genre ecology framework, activity theory, actor-network theory, and Skopos theory) to examine the construction of multilingual quality understandings and approaches by global TC stakeholders who are employees and contractors of the company and the role of CM in their practices. Examination of the extensive data I collected through observations, interviews, questionnaires, document collection/content analysis, and software exploration uncovered the staggering disconnects in understandings of and approaches to multilingual quality. These disconnects resulted from the lack communication between stakeholders and were promoted by the different relations to CM technology and the mediating work of the new genre, chunks of content. Inhibited knowledge sharing, risk of expertise invisibility and loss, and constrained new ideas about improving multilingual quality were some of the rhetorical, social, and political implications of these disconnects. As a result of my analysis, I sketched strategies for achieving contextualized multiple-stakeholder approaches to multilingual quality and outlined leadership possibilities for technical communicators in global information development. This analysis provides TC practitioners with strategies for improving multilingual quality in CM contexts; TC educators with ideas for expanding teaching approaches by combining digital and cross-cultural literacies; and TC researchers with opportunities for rhetorical action through critiquing, theorizing, and innovating CM

Process Improvement: assessing the influence of external intervention

This paper presents the findings from a large-scale empirical investigation into the impact of external intervention into business process improvement using a hybrid model of knowledge transfer (KT). Through the utilization of a survey instrument with 696 respondents, the research explores the insights into a phased approached to sustainable external intervention. Analysis of the empirical data indicated that organisations are receptive to external intervention, which can lead to improved levels of knowledge transfer, organisational culture, and business innovation. Furthermore, high impact intervention can contribute to long-term sustainability. The results also indicate that intervention has been more successful through intermitting intervention in terms of specific initiatives such as business process improvement, technology transfer, change management and new product development. The paper contributes to the impact of intervention from the perspective of facilitating the knowing-doing gap, bridging the gap within this research theme