Remote Design of a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit Dashboard in Time of Pandemics

To support the pediatric intensive care unit with the COVID-19 pandemic, we followed a user-centered design process to create a dashboard in a context where direct access to users was impossible. To this end, we applied contextual inquiry, user interview, requirement definition, iterative design with user validation and usability testing in a remote fashion. Being unable to be physically present at the hospital limited our understanding of the context of use, extended the duration of the study and limited the number of interviews and testing sessions. However, we were able to benefit from the experience of our team members, adopt an efficient decision-making method to select appropriate requirements and use remote moderated usability testing to conform our design process to an aggressive timeline

Enhancing User Experience and Usability in Enterprise Software: A User-Centered Design Approach

In recent years, correlated with the rise in remote work, there has been a significant surge in the use of corporate software technologies. These technologies are the software tools users employ to perform their work. Their diversity and complexity are undeniably extensive. The term 'Enterprise User Experience' pertains to the user experience designed for enterprise software. In this master's thesis, grounded in a redesign project of the enterprise financial software by Quantyx, I explore the application of the User-Centered Design (UCD) approach to such systems. Firstly, I introduce a Systematic Literature Review to comprehend the prevailing state of the art concerning using the User-Centered Design (UCD) approach in enterprise software. Based on its findings, a UCD process is subsequently proposed for the tangible enhancement of user experience in enterprise software applications. The process outlined is applied to real-world software, QuantyxRM, which serves as a case study. This software is redesigned using user-centric studies. Specifically, a new Information Architecture and User Interfaces are established. This transformation is facilitated by a tool that allows for the comprehensive representation of both components. The results are subsequently tested, and an answer to the primary research question of the thesis is provided, confirming the applicability of the UCD approach to enterprise software and to what extent

A Chatbot Solution for eGLU-Box Pro: The Usability Evaluation Platform for Italian Public Administrations

This paper shows a chatbot solution for eGLU-box Pro, a usability testing platform for Italian Public Administration (PA). eGLU-box Pro is a web-based tool designed to help PA practitioners in creating remote usability tests and analyzing participants’ answers and interaction data after they complete the usability tasks. The impact of the chatbot solution on users’ experience was assessed by bio-behavioral evaluation methods such as eye tracking, electroencephalography, and facial expression recognition. This work describes the platform and its integrated chatbot solution and shows the results of a preliminary laboratory study involving 20 end-users. The study is part of an ongoing design and development project based on a user-centered approach

“Implementing the Student-Centered Creative Writing Workshop Model in Remote Learning Classroom Environments”

This presentation shares my experiences as an instructor implementing student-centered creative writing workshop practices in a face-to-face nonfiction workshop that turned into a remote learning class in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Building on my previous presentation at the CWSO Mini Conference in San Antonio, “On Inclusive Creative Writing Workshop Practices: The Student-Centered Model,” I have developed additional pedagogical strategies for facilitating the student-centered model in online and remote classroom settings. These methods account for the novel and timely concerns of students in the age of the coronavirus—such as privacy, accessibility, personal anxiety/upheaval, etc.—in order to help instructors best serve both the needs of individual students and the classroom community as a whole in this new era of teaching and learning. The ethos of the student-centered workshop is based upon teacherless peer-review methods in composition studies wherein students shape the conversation during a workshop session (Elbow). The student-centered approach to the creative writing workshop is a collaborative process between instructor and student-writers that includes: critique of existing workshop practices, engagement in whole class discussion, designing a new workshop model, and ample opportunities for feedback from students. In a remote learning environment, the student-centered workshop model shares commonalities with user-centered design pedagogies, which consider a given course’s relationship to accessibility, interface, individual student accommodation, among other concerns (Borgman). Many existing online creative writing workshops replicate the conditions and experience of traditional face-to-face workshops, often basing classroom pedagogy on the much-derided “Iowa” workshop model (Myers). The student-centered model, by contrast, serves as an actionable solution to the systemic and immediate problems inherent to the traditional workshop model by affording student-writers the opportunity to collaborate with the instructor on a new model specific to both the needs of individual students and the classroom community as a whole. Working from my experiences moving a face-to-face workshop course to an online format, I examine existing remote learning workshop pedagogies and argue for the viability of the student-centered workshop model in online environments. The efficacy of this model is supported with examples and student feedback from the workshop I led at Ohio University in the Spring 2020 semester (IRB 20-E-36)

Designing a gamified social platform for people living with dementia and their live-in family caregivers

In the current paper, a social gamified platform for people living with dementia and their live-in family caregivers, integrating a broader diagnostic approach and interactive interventions is presented. The CAREGIVERSPRO-MMD (C-MMD) platform constitutes a support tool for the patient and the informal caregiver - also referred to as the dyad - that strengthens self-care, and builds community capacity and engagement at the point of care. The platform is implemented to improve social collaboration, adherence to treatment guidelines through gamification, recognition of progress indicators and measures to guide management of patients with dementia, and strategies and tools to improve treatment interventions and medication adherence. Moreover, particular attention was provided on guidelines, considerations and user requirements for the design of a User-Centered Design (UCD) platform. The design of the platform has been based on a deep understanding of users, tasks and contexts in order to improve platform usability, and provide adaptive and intuitive User Interfaces with high accessibility. In this paper, the architecture and services of the C-MMD platform are presented, and specifically the gamification aspects. © 2018 Association for Computing Machinery.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Canine-centered interface design: supporting the work of diabetes alert dogs

Many people with Diabetes live with the continuous threat of hypoglycaemic attacks and the danger of going into coma. Diabetic Alert Dogs are trained to detect the onset of an attack before the human handler they are paired with deteriorates, giving them time to take action. We investigated requirements for designing an alert system allowing dogs to remotely call for help when their human falls unconscious before being able to react to an alert. Through a multispecies ethnographic approach we focus on teasing out the requirements for a physical canine user interface, involving both dogs, their handlers and trainers in the design. We discuss tensions between the requirements for the canine and the human users, argue the need for increased sensitivity towards the needs of individual dogs that goes beyond breed specific physical characteristics and reflect on how we can move from designing for dogs to designing with dogs

Living Innovation Laboratory Model Design and Implementation

Living Innovation Laboratory (LIL) is an open and recyclable way for multidisciplinary researchers to remote control resources and co-develop user centered projects. In the past few years, there were several papers about LIL published and trying to discuss and define the model and architecture of LIL. People all acknowledge about the three characteristics of LIL: user centered, co-creation, and context aware, which make it distinguished from test platform and other innovation approaches. Its existing model consists of five phases: initialization, preparation, formation, development, and evaluation. Goal Net is a goal-oriented methodology to formularize a progress. In this thesis, Goal Net is adopted to subtract a detailed and systemic methodology for LIL. LIL Goal Net Model breaks the five phases of LIL into more detailed steps. Big data, crowd sourcing, crowd funding and crowd testing take place in suitable steps to realize UUI, MCC and PCA throughout the innovation process in LIL 2.0. It would become a guideline for any company or organization to develop a project in the form of an LIL 2.0 project. To prove the feasibility of LIL Goal Net Model, it was applied to two real cases. One project is a Kinect game and the other one is an Internet product. They were both transformed to LIL 2.0 successfully, based on LIL goal net based methodology. The two projects were evaluated by phenomenography, which was a qualitative research method to study human experiences and their relations in hope of finding the better way to improve human experiences. Through phenomenographic study, the positive evaluation results showed that the new generation of LIL had more advantages in terms of effectiveness and efficiency.Comment: This is a book draf

Design an engaging interactive experience for people with dementia

The population of the world is increasing resulting in a higher number of people dealing with dementia–whether being diagnosed with it or taking care of someone that is diagnosed with it. This master thesis aims to investigate which types of multi-media technology-based experiences can improve the quality of life for people with dementia. To reach the goal of the thesis–investigation will be done through different iterations of a design method; divergence, transformation and convergence. These iterations will include observations, interviews and using personas as a tool to design. The results from the methods were used to create a high fidelity prototype which was evaluated by an expert in the field of dementia

Adaptive guidance and control for future remote sensing systems

A unique approach to onboard processing was developed that is capable of acquiring high quality image data for users in near real time. The approach is divided into two steps: the development of an onboard cloud detection system; and the development of a landmark tracker. The results of these two developments are outlined and the requirements of an operational guidance and control system capable of providing continuous estimation of the sensor boresight position are summarized

In-home and remote use of robotic body surrogates by people with profound motor deficits

By controlling robots comparable to the human body, people with profound motor deficits could potentially perform a variety of physical tasks for themselves, improving their quality of life. The extent to which this is achievable has been unclear due to the lack of suitable interfaces by which to control robotic body surrogates and a dearth of studies involving substantial numbers of people with profound motor deficits. We developed a novel, web-based augmented reality interface that enables people with profound motor deficits to remotely control a PR2 mobile manipulator from Willow Garage, which is a human-scale, wheeled robot with two arms. We then conducted two studies to investigate the use of robotic body surrogates. In the first study, 15 novice users with profound motor deficits from across the United States controlled a PR2 in Atlanta, GA to perform a modified Action Research Arm Test (ARAT) and a simulated self-care task. Participants achieved clinically meaningful improvements on the ARAT and 12 of 15 participants (80%) successfully completed the simulated self-care task. Participants agreed that the robotic system was easy to use, was useful, and would provide a meaningful improvement in their lives. In the second study, one expert user with profound motor deficits had free use of a PR2 in his home for seven days. He performed a variety of self-care and household tasks, and also used the robot in novel ways. Taking both studies together, our results suggest that people with profound motor deficits can improve their quality of life using robotic body surrogates, and that they can gain benefit with only low-level robot autonomy and without invasive interfaces. However, methods to reduce the rate of errors and increase operational speed merit further investigation.Comment: 43 Pages, 13 Figure