Considering the User in the Wireless World

The near future promises significant advances in communication capabilities, but one of the keys to success is the capability understanding of the people with regards to its value and usage. In considering the role of the user in the wireless world of the future, the Human Perspective Working Group (WG1) of the Wireless World Research Forum has gathered input and developed positions in four important areas: methods, processes, and best practices for user-centered research and design; reference frameworks for modeling user needs within the context of wireless systems; user scenario creation and analysis; and user interaction technologies. This article provides an overview of WG1's work in these areas that are critical to ensuring that the future wireless world meets and exceeds the expectations of people in the coming decades

Dynamics of Affordances and Implications for Design

Affordance is an important concept in HCI. There are various interpretations of affordances but it has been difficult to use this concept for design purposes. Often the treatment of affordances in the current HCI literature has been as a one-to-one relationship between a user and an artefact. According to our views, affordance is a dynamic, always emerging relationship between a human and his environment. We believe that the social and cultural contexts within which an artefact is situated affect the way in which the artefact is used. Using a Structuration Theory approach, we argue that affordances need also be treated at a much broader level, encompassing social and cultural aspects. We suggest that affordances should be seen at three levels: single user, organizational (or work group) and societal. Focusing on the organizational level affordances, we provide details of several important factors that affect the emergence of affordances

Android-Based Claim System for Electricity Network Customers of PLN Padang Branch

The Padang branch of the State Electricity Company (PLN) is a BUMN responsible for the electricity aspect. Complaints about various electricity problems are difficult for customers, so it is necessary to have a system that can be used as a place for protests and increase PLN's loyalty to customers. The Android-based Claim System is a new application developed to be used by customers as a forum for complaints about electrical problems to the Padang branch of PLN. The Claim System is made into two parts: a Website-based System for PLN and an Android-based Claim Application for customers. Application development using the OOP concept uses UML (Unified Modeling Language) diagrams with the PHP MySql and Android programming languages. The test results were carried out using black box testing with the relevant results. The data of 35 respondents from the assessment questionnaire on the claims system obtained results with an Excellent rating of 78%, a Good rating of 21%, and a Bad rating of 2%. From the analysis results, the Claim System supported by this Android-based Client application can help customers complain about electrical problems quickly and easily.The Padang branch of the State Electricity Company (PLN) is a BUMN responsible for the electricity aspect. Complaints about various electricity problems are difficult for customers, so it is necessary to have a system that can be used as a place for protests and increase PLN's loyalty to customers. The Android-based Claim System is a new application developed to be used by customers as a forum for complaints about electrical problems to the Padang branch of PLN. The Claim System is made into two parts: a Website-based System for PLN and an Android-based Claim Application for customers. Application development using the OOP concept uses UML (Unified Modeling Language) diagrams with the PHP MySql and Android programming languages. The test results were carried out using black box testing with the relevant results. The data of 35 respondents from the assessment questionnaire on the claims system obtained results with an Excellent rating of 78%, a Good rating of 21%, and a Bad rating of 2%. From the analysis results, the Claim System supported by this Android-based Client application can help customers complain about electrical problems quickly and easily

A diversity-based approach to requirements tracing in new product development.

Production models emerged in recent times have stressed the need to face complex production contexts, characterized in particular by the rise in internal and environmental variability. In this work, a stylization of some elements concerning analysis and design of new products is given, and in particular those that involve definition and transfer phases in the development of innovative goods, where change and variability in requirements along development process are often high. This analysis has a twofold goal: first, to supply a conceptual frame for the close examination of some dynamics of requirement's integration into an artifact's design, in order to give account of their variability along development cycle; on the other side, to propose an approach based on simple similarity metrics, to be applied to linguistic descriptions of artifacts in the early phases of development process, in order to identify components in an artifact that undergo larger variability and therefore are to be paid more attention in the subsequent phases of life cycle.

Design and Applications of Additive Manufacturing and 3D Printing

Additive manufacturing (AM), more commonly known as 3D printing, has grown trememdously in recent years. It has shown its potential uses in the medical, automotive, aerospace, and spare part sectors. Personal manufacturing, complex and optimized parts, short series manufacturing, and local on-demand manufacturing are just some of its current benefits. The development of new materials and equipment has opened up new application possibilities, and equipment is quicker and cheaper to use when utilizing the new materials launched by vendors and material developers. AM has become more critical for the industry but also for academics. Since AM offers more design freedom than any other manufacturing process, it provides designers with the challenge of designing better and more efficient products

Requirements Engineering for Pervasive Services

Developing pervasive mobile services for a mass market of end customers entails large up-front investments and therefore a good understanding of customer requirements is of paramount importance. This paper presents an approach for developing requirements engineering method that takes distinguishing features of pervasive services into account and that is based on fundamental insights in design methodology

The role of object in service design

For successful service design, how to utilize users’ insight, knowledge and experiences are core factor to consider. How to facilitate the users’ value creation by providing and delivering resources and processes through interactions between service and user is also another key factor. Designers focus on designing the interactions- touchpoints/evidences- as important part of their work. Through the service design processes of exploration and creation, the designers design a physical-, visual- or virtual- object to facilitate users’ service experience. However, the research of the designed object is limited only on their importance or a certain case. This study seeks different roles of the designed object in service design through case studies, which collected from three years of TOUCHPOINT- service design journals. Thematic analysis and affinity diagram tool were conducted to analyze collected data and categorize found different roles. The study addresses five roles of the object: Empowering, Emotion, Enriching, Education, Enhanc-ing. Designed objects empower users and their rights, deliver certain emotion or solve emotional problems, enrich users’ lives by providing opportunities for users to interact others, deliver knowledge and share information and provide communication channels, and finally enhance service performance. Furthermore an object sometimes takes multiples roles or changes its role to another. Designers bodily know how to utilize unique feature of the object in designing services. Some of objects enable co-creation and on-going service changes. The object and service element supports each other. The study suggests that understanding the role of object in service design reinforces ser-vice designers’ competence in shaping users’ service experience

Some Findings Concerning Requirements in Agile Methodologies

gile methods have appeared as an attractive alternative to conventional methodologies. These methods try to reduce the time to market and, indirectly, the cost of the product through flexible development and deep customer involvement. The processes related to requirements have been extensively studied in literature, in most cases in the frame of conventional methods. However, conclusions of conventional methodologies could not be necessarily valid for Agile; in some issues, conventional and Agile processes are radically different. As recent surveys report, inadequate project requirements is one of the most conflictive issues in agile approaches and better understanding about this is needed. This paper describes some findings concerning requirements activities in a project developed under an agile methodology. The project intended to evolve an existing product and, therefore, some background information was available. The major difficulties encountered were related to non-functional needs and management of requirements dependencies

Agile Development and User-Centered Design - a case study at Sony Mobile Communications AB

Syftet med detta examensarbete var att undersöka hur agil utveckling och användarcentrerad design kan kombineras i en utvecklingsprocess. Undersökningen baseras sig på den utvecklingsprocess med Scrum som används på en sektion vid avdelningen Applikationer och Service på Sony Mobile Communications AB i Lund, Sverige. Det första målet med examensarbetet var att förse sektionen med ett antal förslag på hur de kan förbättra sin utvecklingsprocess för att ytterligare kombinera agil utveckling och användarcentrerad design. Eftersom sektionen nyligen har startat ett projekt angående användbarhetstester med LTH (Lunds Tekniska Högskola) och kombinerar detta med deras utvecklingsprocess, var det angeläget att undersöka om det ger någon nytta tillbaka till utvecklingsprocessen. Därför var detta det andra målet med examensarbetet. För att kunna uppnå syftet och målen med examensarbetet genomfördes en casestudie där den nuvarande utvecklingsprocessen undersöktes, evaluerades och analyserades. Den metod som användes i studien var etnografisk och teammedlemmarna i utvecklingsteamen på sektionen användes som referensmaterial. För att undersöka användbarhetstesterna användes både teammedlemmarna och de testpersoner som deltog i testerna som referensmaterial. Resultatet av studien visar att användbarhetstesterna som utförs på sektionen ger något tillbaka och speciellt i ökad medvetenhet gällande användarupplevelsefrågor och användbarhetsfrågor. Denna medvetenhetsökning berör speciellt utvecklarna och produktägarna. När det kommer till undersökningen, evalueringen och analysen av den nuvarande utvecklingsprocess som används på sektionen resulterade det i fem stycken rekommendationer av hur processen ytterligare kan ta hänsyn till användarcentrerad design. Det sammanlagda utlåtandet av rekommendationerna är att den nuvarande processen måste i ett tidigare skedde kombinera användarcentrerad design genom att använda sig av fler användbarhetsmetoder och slutanvändare.The main purpose of this master´s thesis was to investigate how agile development and user-centered design can be combined in a development process. The target development process for this investigation was a development process at a section in the department Application and Service at Sony Mobile Communications AB in Lund, Sweden. The first goal of the thesis was to provide the section with a set of recommendations, concerning how they further can combine agile development and user-centered design in their development process. Furthermore, the section had started a pilot project concerning usability testing with LTH (The Faculty of Engineering at Lund University), and therefore it was interesting to know whether this gives something back in return on investment to the development process. Consequently, this was the second goal of the thesis. In order to fulfill the purpose and goals of the thesis a case study was performed. The performance resulted in an examination, evaluation and analysis regarding the current development process. The method used in the case study was ethnographical and the development teams at the section were used as reference material. Moreover, to be able to investigate the potential return on investment for the usability tests both development teams and test persons attending the test sessions were used as reference material. The result of the case study revealed a return on investment for the started usability tests and this investment the development teams most benefits from. The benefit of the development teams, especially the developers and product owners, is the increase of awareness towards user experience questions and usability questions. Furthermore, the examination, evaluation and analysis of the current development process resulted in five recommendations of how the development process at the section further can combine agile development and user-centered design. The outcome of these recommendations is that the current development process needs to combine user-centered design by more involvement of usability evaluation methods and end-users at an earlier stage