Use of Qualitative Research in Architectural Design and Evaluation of the Built Environment

AbstractErgonomics is everywhere design. Aim of each architect should be the optimization and efficiency of the proposed design solutions, the correct diagnosis and meet the needs of users, the implementation of priority investment objectives as a business, future thinking in terms of sensitivity to changes in object and to anticipate all the consequences of their decisions. In today's world, the basis of all activities is knowledge. Development of the Internet led easy access and transfer of knowledge. At the same time excess and information overload can cause confusion. It is essential to proper diagnosis, which knowledge is valuable and useful. The built environment and its users are a direct source of knowledge for design. In order to acquire this knowledge be used qualitative research (quality: technical, functional, organizational, behavioral, economic), observation, surveys, interviews, way-finding, participations, etc. On the basis of 15 years of experience in the field of qualitative research conducted in many places, their own projects and in the classroom with students of architecture, the authors have developed their own methods of knowledge acquisition from the built environment. These methods are mainly based on a simplified POE (Post Occupancy Evaluation) adapted to Polish conditions. The paper presents selected research projects in the field of architecture conducted at the Faculty of Architecture at the Silesian University of Technology. The Faculty has been involved in quality analyses of the built environment since the nineties of the twentieth century

Learning HCI Across Institutions, Disciplines and Countries: A Field Study of Cognitive Styles in Analytical and Creative Tasks

Human-computer interaction (HCI) is increasingly becoming a subject taught in universities around the world. However, little is known of the interactions of the HCI curriculum with students in different types of institutions and disciplines internationally. In order to explore these interactions, we studied the performance of HCI students in design, technology and business faculties in universities in UK, India, Namibia, Mexico and China who participated in a common set of design and evaluation tasks. We obtained participants’ cognitive style profiles based on Allinson and Hayes scale in order to gain further insights into their learning styles and explore any relation between these and performance. We found participants’ cognitive style preferences to be predominantly in the adaptive range, i.e. with combined analytical and intuitive traits, compared to normative data for software engineering, psychology and design professionals. We further identified significant relations between students’ cognitive styles and performance in analytical and creative tasks of a HCI professional individual. We discuss the findings in the context of the distinct backgrounds of the students and universities that participated in this study and the value of research that explores and promotes diversity in HCI education

Método para la evaluación de usabilidad de sitios web transaccionales basado en el proceso de inspección heurística

La usabilidad es considerada uno de los factores más importantes en el desarrollo de productos de software. Este atributo de calidad está referido al grado en que, usuarios específicos de un determinado aplicativo, pueden fácilmente hacer uso del software para lograr su propósito. Dada la importancia de este aspecto en el éxito de las aplicaciones informáticas, múltiples métodos de evaluación han surgido como instrumentos de medición que permiten determinar si la propuesta de diseño de la interfaz de un sistema de software es entendible, fácil de usar, atractiva y agradable al usuario. El método de evaluación heurística es uno de los métodos más utilizados en el área de Interacción Humano-Computador (HCI) para este propósito debido al bajo costo de su ejecución en comparación otras técnicas existentes. Sin embargo, a pesar de su amplio uso extensivo durante los últimos años, no existe un procedimiento formal para llevar a cabo este proceso de evaluación. Jakob Nielsen, el autor de esta técnica de inspección, ofrece únicamente lineamientos generales que, según la investigación realizada, tienden a ser interpretados de diferentes maneras por los especialistas. Por tal motivo, se ha desarrollado el presente proyecto de investigación que tiene como objetivo establecer un proceso sistemático, estructurado, organizado y formal para llevar a cabo evaluaciones heurísticas a productos de software. En base a un análisis exhaustivo realizado a aquellos estudios que reportan en la literatura el uso del método de evaluación heurística como parte del proceso de desarrollo de software, se ha formulado un nuevo método de evaluación basado en cinco fases: (1) planificación, (2) entrenamiento, (3) evaluación, (4) discusión y (5) reporte. Cada una de las fases propuestas que componen el protocolo de inspección contiene un conjunto de actividades bien definidas a ser realizadas por el equipo de evaluación como parte del proceso de inspección. Asimismo, se han establecido ciertos roles que deberán desempeñar los integrantes del equipo de inspectores para asegurar la calidad de los resultados y un apropiado desarrollo de la evaluación heurística. La nueva propuesta ha sido validada en dos escenarios académicos distintos (en Colombia, en una universidad pública, y en Perú, en dos universidades tanto en una pública como en una privada) demostrando en todos casos que es posible identificar más problemas de usabilidad altamente severos y críticos cuando un proceso estructurado de inspección es adoptado por los evaluadores. Otro aspecto favorable que muestran los resultados es que los evaluadores tienden a cometer menos errores de asociación (entre heurística que es incumplida y problemas de usabilidad identificados) y que la propuesta es percibida como fácil de usar y útil. Al validarse la nueva propuesta desarrollada por el autor de este estudio se consolida un nuevo conocimiento que aporta al bagaje cultural de la ciencia.Tesi

The Gamification of Crowdsourcing Systems: Empirical Investigations and Design

Recent developments in modern information and communication technologies have spawned two rising phenomena, gamification and crowdsourcing, which are increasingly being combined into gamified crowdsourcing systems. While a growing number of organizations employ crowdsourcing as a way to outsource tasks related to the inventing, producing, funding, or distributing of their products and services to the crowd – a large group of people reachable via the internet – crowdsourcing initiatives become enriched with design features from games to motivate the crowd to participate in these efforts. From a practical perspective, this combination seems intuitively appealing, since using gamification in crowdsourcing systems promises to increase motivations, participation and output quality, as well as to replace traditionally used financial incentives. However, people in large groups all have individual interests and motivations, which makes it complex to design gamification approaches for crowds. Further, crowdsourcing systems exist in various forms and are used for various tasks and problems, thus requiring different incentive mechanisms for different crowdsourcing types. The lack of a coherent understanding of the different facets of gamified crowdsourcing systems and the lack of knowledge about the motivational and behavioral effects of applying various types of gamification features in different crowdsourcing systems inhibit us from designing solutions that harness gamification’s full potential. Further, previous research canonically uses competitive gamification, although crowdsourcing systems often strive to produce cooperative outcomes. However, the potentially relevant field of cooperative gamification has to date barely been explored. With a specific focus on these shortcomings, this dissertation presents several studies to advance the understanding of using gamification in crowdsourcing systems

Linked Data Entity Summarization

On the Web, the amount of structured and Linked Data about entities is constantly growing. Descriptions of single entities often include thousands of statements and it becomes difficult to comprehend the data, unless a selection of the most relevant facts is provided. This doctoral thesis addresses the problem of Linked Data entity summarization. The contributions involve two entity summarization approaches, a common API for entity summarization, and an approach for entity data fusion

Conjunto de heurísticas de usabilidade para avaliação de aplicações móveis em smartphones

Dissertação (mestrado)—Universidade de Brasília, Instituto de Ciências Exatas, Departamento de Ciência da Computação, 2019.As inovações propostas pelo mercado de telefonia celular têm crescido constantemente nos últimos anos, juntamente com a crescente complexidade do hardware, dos sistemas operacionais e dos aplicativos disponíveis nesse mercado. Essas mudanças trazem novos desafios relacionados à usabilidade que precisam ser considerados durante o processo de desenvolvimento de aplicativos, uma vez que as novas formas de interação, entre usuários e aplicativo, exigem cada vez mais a adaptação de comportamentos. Nessa situação, a usabilidade é uma questão importante, que depende de fatores de usabilidade como o Usuário, suas características e habilidades, a Tarefa que pretende alcançar e também o Contexto de Uso em que usuário e a aplicação estão inseridos. Esta dissertação apre- senta uma revisão sistemática de literatura com o objetivo de identificar as heurísticas de usabilidade utilizadas na academia e/ou na indústria, dentro do contexto de aplicações móveis. Com base nos resultados de pesquisa, essa dissertação apresenta uma contribuição de nova proposta de um conjunto de heurísticas de usabilidade focadas em aplicativos móveis em smartphones, de maneira que leva em consideração o “Usuário”, “Tarefa” a ser desempenhada e principalmente o “Contexto de uso” no qual se inserem, como fatores de usabilidade, o Cognitive Load, como um importante atributo de usabilidade e as sub- heurísticas de usabilidade, que objetivam facilitar a compreensão das diretrizes propostas e são parte dos principais diferenciais apresentados. Os componentes desse conjunto são detalhados em um modelo que foi avaliado por meio de duas avaliações heurísticas, que permitiram incorporar melhorias à proposta. Isto posto, foi proposto um conjunto de 13 heurísticas de usabilidade e 183 sub-heurísticas, que por meio das avaliações heurís- ticas, resultados melhores foram evidenciados. A proposta possibilitou aos especialistas encontrar uma maior quantidade de problemas de usabilidade, em sua maioria de maior gravidade, se comparado a proposta de Inostroza et al.. Como possíveis trabalhos futuros, outras avaliações podem ser realizadas para avaliar a proposta, de modo a incluir uma quantidade maior de especialistas da área, além de utilizar o conjunto de heurísticas em um número maior de aplicações de diferentes categorias.The innovations proposed by the mobile phone market have grown steadily in recent years, along with the increasing complexity of the hardware, operating systems and ap- plications available in this market. These changes bring new usability-related challenges that need to be considered during the application development process, as new forms of user-application interaction increasingly require behavioral adaptation. In this situation, usability is an important issue, which depends on usability factors such as the User, their characteristics and skills, the Task he intend to achieve and also the Context of Use in which the user and the application are inserted. This dissertation presents a system- atic literature review aiming to identify the usability heuristics used in academia and/or industry, within the context of mobile applications. Based on the research results, this dissertation presents a new proposal contribution of a set of usability heuristics focused on mobile applications on smartphones, so that it takes into account the “User”, “Task” to be performed and maunly the “Context of Use” in which they fit, as usability factors, the Cognitive Load, as an important usability attribute and usability sub-heuristics, which aim to facilitate the understanding of the proposed guidelines and are part of the main differentials presented. The components of this set are detailed in a model that was eval- uated through two heuristic evaluations, which allowed to incorporate improvements to the proposal. Thus, a set of 13 usability heuristics and 183 sub-heuristics were proposed, which, through heuristic evaluations, better results were evidenced. The proposal makes it easier for experts to find a greater number of usability problems, mostly of greater severity, compared to the proposal of Inostroza et al.. As possible future work, further evaluations may be carried out to evaluate the proposal to include more experts in the field, as well as to use the set of heuristics in a larger number of applications of different categories

Review of substitutive assistive tools and technologies for people with visual impairments: recent advancements and prospects

YesThe development of many tools and technologies for people with visual impairment has become a major priority in the field of assistive technology research. However, many of these technology advancements have limitations in terms of the human aspects of the user experience (e.g., usability, learnability, and time to user adaptation) as well as difficulties in translating research prototypes into production. Also, there was no clear distinction between the assistive aids of adults and children, as well as between “partial impairment” and “total blindness”. As a result of these limitations, the produced aids have not gained much popularity and the intended users are still hesitant to utilise them. This paper presents a comprehensive review of substitutive interventions that aid in adapting to vision loss, centred on laboratory research studies to assess user-system interaction and system validation. Depending on the primary cueing feedback signal offered to the user, these technology aids are categorized as visual, haptics, or auditory-based aids. The context of use, cueing feedback signals, and participation of visually impaired people in the evaluation are all considered while discussing these aids. Based on the findings, a set of recommendations is suggested to assist the scientific community in addressing persisting challenges and restrictions faced by both the totally blind and partially sighted people

A Systematic Review on Fostering Appropriate Trust in Human-AI Interaction

Appropriate Trust in Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems has rapidly become an important area of focus for both researchers and practitioners. Various approaches have been used to achieve it, such as confidence scores, explanations, trustworthiness cues, or uncertainty communication. However, a comprehensive understanding of the field is lacking due to the diversity of perspectives arising from various backgrounds that influence it and the lack of a single definition for appropriate trust. To investigate this topic, this paper presents a systematic review to identify current practices in building appropriate trust, different ways to measure it, types of tasks used, and potential challenges associated with it. We also propose a Belief, Intentions, and Actions (BIA) mapping to study commonalities and differences in the concepts related to appropriate trust by (a) describing the existing disagreements on defining appropriate trust, and (b) providing an overview of the concepts and definitions related to appropriate trust in AI from the existing literature. Finally, the challenges identified in studying appropriate trust are discussed, and observations are summarized as current trends, potential gaps, and research opportunities for future work. Overall, the paper provides insights into the complex concept of appropriate trust in human-AI interaction and presents research opportunities to advance our understanding on this topic.Comment: 39 Page