The Methodology of Participatory Design

At the time of publication C. Spinuzzi was at the University of Texas at Austin.Provides the historical and methodological grounding for understanding participatory design as a methodology. Describes its research designs, methods, criteria, and limitations. Provides guidance for applying it to technical communication research.Writin

Mixed-fidelity prototyping of user interfaces

This research presents a new technique for user interface prototyping, called mixed-fidelity prototyping. Mixed-fidelity prototyping combines low-, medium-, and high-fidelity interface elements within a single prototype in a lightweight manner, supporting independent refinement of individual elements. The approach allows designers to investigate alternate designs, including more innovative designs, and elicit feedback from stakeholders without having to commit too early in the process. As well, the approach encourages collaboration among a diverse group of stakeholders throughout the design process. For example, individuals who specialize in specific fidelities, such as high-fidelity components, are able to become involved earlier on in the process. We developed a conceptual model called the Region Model and implemented a proof-of-concept system called ProtoMixer. We demonstrated the mixed-fidelity approach by using ProtoMixer to design an example application. ProtoMixer has several benefits over other existing prototyping tools. With ProtoMixer, prototypes can be composed of multiple fidelities, and elements are easily refined and transitioned between different fidelities. Individual elements can be tied into data and functionality, and can be executed inside prototypes. As well, traditional informal practices such as sketching and storyboarding are supported. Furthermore, ProtoMixer is designed for collaborative use on a high-resolution, large display workspace

ALEX®: a mobile Adult Literacy Experiential Learning application

An alarmingly high number of adults in the world's most developed countries are linguistically functionally illiterate. The research presented in this paper describes ALEX©, an ongoing attempt to successfully develop an innovative assistive, mobile, experiential language-learning application to support the daily literacy education and needs of such adults, anywhere, anytime. We introduce a set of guidelines we have collated to inform the design of mobile assistive technologies, introduce our application and describe the design activities to date that have led to the development of our current application. We present this overview in the hope that it is useful to others working in the fledgling domains of mobile assistive technology design and/or mobile experiential language-learning technologies

Engaging older adults with age-related macular degeneration in the design and evaluation of mobile assistive technologies

Ongoing advances in technology are undoubtedly increasing the scope for enhancing and supporting older adults’ daily living. The digital divide between older and younger adults, however, raises concerns about the suitability of technological solutions for older adults, especially for those with impairments. Taking older adults with Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD) – a progressive and degenerative disease of the eye – as a case study, the research reported in this dissertation considers how best to engage older adults in the design and evaluation of mobile assistive technologies to achieve sympathetic design of such technologies. Recognising the importance of good nutrition and the challenges involved in designing for people with AMD, this research followed a participatory and user-centred design (UCD) approach to develop a proof–of–concept diet diary application for people with AMD. Findings from initial knowledge elicitation activities contribute to the growing debate surrounding the issues on how older adults’ participation is initiated, planned and managed. Reflections on the application of the participatory design method highlighted a number of key strategies that can be applied to maintain empathic participatory design rapport with older adults and, subsequently, lead to the formulation of participatory design guidelines for effectively engaging older adults in design activities. Taking a novel approach, the final evaluation study contributed to the gap in the knowledge on how to bring closure to the participatory process in as positive a way as possible, cognisant of the potential negative effect that withdrawal of the participatory process may have on individuals. Based on the results of this study, we ascertain that (a) sympathetic design of technology with older adults will maximise technology acceptance and shows strong indicators for affecting behaviour change; and (b) being involved in the design and development of such technologies has the capacity to significantly improve the quality of life of older adults (with AMD)

Participatory Instructional Design: a contradiction in terms?

This dissertation is an inquiry into the apparent absence of participatory approaches in instructional design (ID). It explores the question what happens when ID becomes participatory? with the help of three articles. The first article proposes a new approach in ID called Participatory ID, which incorporates principles and techniques of participatory design (PD), a software design approach that calls for genuine user involvement in the design, development, implementation, and maintenance of educational technology. Article 2 explores the feasibility of such an approach in higher education by studying an authentic case of participatory design and development of an electronic portfolio system by its users, namely, by Ph.D. students and faculty members. The design team consisted of 8 Ph.D. students, 1 faculty member, and 1 systems analyst at a large Midwestern US university. The study used qualitative methods to identify activities and processes invented by the design team members to satisfactorily complete their design task. The study also explored ways in which these activities reflected PD principles. Findings indicated five key factors that characterized the design process: (1) maintaining transparency of work processes, (2) continued invoking of the design ethos, (3) maintaining a sense of community, (4) embedding design in user context, and (5) recursive design. Article 3 presents a microanalysis of the participatory ID process described in article 2. It studies the use of language in user-designer conversation during design work. The goal of this article was to understand how design team members used language to negotiate power differences that typically arise when multiple stakeholders participate in a design project. The study used Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (Fairclough, 1995), a research approach from sociolinguistics and influenced by critical theory, to examine user-designer conversation from the first year of the electronic portfolio design project. Analysis indicated a strong use of modality (words such as would, could, need to ), cohesion ( and, therefore, then ), and intertextuality (repeating or revoicing other people\u27s utterances), which seems to have helped create a non-threatening atmosphere and support a critical, democratic, and constructive environment for creative design work

A Haptic Study to Inclusively Aid Teaching and Learning in the Discipline of Design

Designers are known to use a blend of manual and virtual processes to produce design prototype solutions. For modern designers, computer-aided design (CAD) tools are an essential requirement to begin to develop design concept solutions. CAD, together with augmented reality (AR) systems have altered the face of design practice, as witnessed by the way a designer can now change a 3D concept shape, form, color, pattern, and texture of a product by the click of a button in minutes, rather than the classic approach to labor on a physical model in the studio for hours. However, often CAD can limit a designer’s experience of being ‘hands-on’ with materials and processes. The rise of machine haptic1 (MH) tools have afforded a great potential for designers to feel more ‘hands-on’ with the virtual modeling processes. Through the use of MH, product designers are able to control, virtually sculpt, and manipulate virtual 3D objects on-screen. Design practitioners are well placed to make use of haptics, to augment 3D concept creation which is traditionally a highly tactile process. For similar reasoning, it could also be said that, non-sighted and visually impaired (NS, VI) communities could also benefit from using MH tools to increase touch-based interactions, thereby creating better access for NS, VI designers. In spite of this the use of MH within the design industry (specifically product design), or for use by the non-sighted community is still in its infancy. Therefore the full benefit of haptics to aid non-sighted designers has not yet been fully realised. This thesis empirically investigates the use of multimodal MH as a step closer to improving the virtual hands-on process, for the benefit of NS, VI and fully sighted (FS) Designer-Makers. This thesis comprises four experiments, embedded within four case studies (CS1-4). Case study 1and2 worked with self-employed NS, VI Art Makers at Henshaws College for the Blind and Visual Impaired. The study examined the effects of haptics on NS, VI users, evaluations of experience. Case study 3 and4, featuring experiments 3 and4, have been designed to examine the effects of haptics on distance learning design students at the Open University. The empirical results from all four case studies showed that NS, VI users were able to navigate and perceive virtual objects via the force from the haptically rendered objects on-screen. Moreover, they were assisted by the whole multimodal MH assistance, which in CS2 appeared to offer better assistance to NS versus FS participants. In CS3 and 4 MH and multimodal assistance afforded equal assistance to NS, VI, and FS, but haptics were not as successful in bettering the time results recorded in manual (M) haptic conditions. However, the collision data between M and MH showed little statistical difference. The thesis showed that multimodal MH systems, specifically used in kinesthetic mode have enabled human (non-disabled and disabled) to credibly judge objects within the virtual realm. It also shows that multimodal augmented tooling can improve the interaction and afford better access to the graphical user interface for a wider body of users

Relieving the cognitive load of constructing molecular biological ontology based queries by means of visual aids.

Thesis (M.Comp.Sc.)-Universty of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2007.The domain of molecular biology is complex and vast. Bio-ontologies and information visualisation have arisen in recent years as means to assist biologists in making sense of this information. Ontologies can enable the construction of conceptual queries, but existing systems to do this are too technical for most biologists. OntoDas, the software developed as part of this thesis work, demonstrates how the application of techniques from information visualisation and human computer interaction can result in software which enables biologists to construct conceptual queries

User-developer cooperation in software development: building common ground and usable systems

PhDThe topic of this research is direct user participation in the task based development of interactive software systems. Building usable software demands understanding and supporting users and their tasks. Users are a primary source of usability requirements and knowledge, since users can be expected to have intimate and extensive knowledge of themselves, their tasks and their working environment. Task analysis approaches to software development encourage a focus on supporting users and their tasks while participatory design approaches encourage users' direct, active contributions to software development work. However, participatory design approaches often concentrate their efforts on design activities rather than on wider system development activities, while task analysis approaches generally lack active user participation beyond initial data gathering. This research attempts an integration of the strengths of task analysis and user participation within an overall software development process. This thesis also presents detailed empirical and theoretical analyses of what it is for users and developers to cooperate, of the nature of user-developer interaction in participatory settings. Furthennore, it operationalises and assesses the effectiveness of user participation in development and the impact of user-developer cooperation on the resulting software product. The research addressed these issues through the development and application of an approach to task based participatory development in two real world development projects. In this integrated approach, the respective strengths of task analysis and participatory design methods complemented each other's weaker aspects. The participatory design features encouraged active user participation in the development work while the task analysis features extended this participation upstream from software design activities to include analysis of the users' current work situation and design of an envisioned work situation. An inductive analysis of user-developer interaction in the software development projects was combined with a theoretical analysis drawing upon work on common ground in communication. This research generated an account of user-developer interaction in terms of the joint construction of two distinct fonns of common ground between user and developer: common ground about their present joint development activities and common ground about the objects of those joint activities, work situations and software systems. The thesis further extended the concept of common ground, assessing user participation in terms of contributions to common ground developed through the user-developer discourse. The thesis then went on to operationalise and to assess the effectiveness of user participation in tenns of the assimilation of users' contributions into the artefacts of the development work. Finally, the thesis assessed the value of user participation in tenns of the impact of user contributions to the development activities on the usability of the software produced.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Harlequin Software Grou