The design with intent method: A design tool for influencing user behaviour

The official published version can be found at the link below.Using product and system design to influence user behaviour offers potential for improving performance and reducing user error, yet little guidance is available at the concept generation stage for design teams briefed with influencing user behaviour. This article presents the Design with Intent Method, an innovation tool for designers working in this area, illustrated via application to an everyday human–technology interaction problem: reducing the likelihood of a customer leaving his or her card in an automatic teller machine. The example application results in a range of feasible design concepts which are comparable to existing developments in ATM design, demonstrating that the method has potential for development and application as part of a user-centred design process

Influencing interaction: Development of the design with intent method

Persuasive Technology has the potential to influence user behavior for social benefit, e.g. to reduce environmental impact, but designers are lacking guidance choosing among design techniques for influencing interaction. The Design with Intent Method, a ‘suggestion tool’ addressing this problem, is introduced in this paper, and applied to the briefs of reducing unnecessary household lighting use, and improving the efficiency of printing, primarily to evaluate the method’s usability and guide the direction of its development. The trial demonstrates that the DwI Method is quick to apply and leads to a range of relevant design concepts. With development, the DwI Method could be a useful tool for designers working on influencing user behavior

Computer assisted music instructment tutoring applied to violin practice

Master'sMASTER OF SCIENC

Empowering design through non-visual process: The blind add new vision to innovation

Currently, the design of products and services is focused on visual processes that exclude the other senses. The study herein presented explores the flaws of using a fully visual approach in the areas of education, product design and services. This paper also discusses the deficiencies of a first order thinking approach and presents an alternative based on second order thinking that can be used to overcome these weaknesses while at the same time nurturing innovation. Through this narrative Rachel Magario, a blind student in the business and interaction design graduate programs at the University of Kansas, shows how she was able to overcome the mechanical limitations inherent in a visually oriented academic world. Magario explains how a project to design a tactile map taught her to look for solutions through a second order thinking approach complemented by the use of low fidelity prototypes. In this process she was able to create audio and Velcro low fidelity prototypes to fill in the gaps of research for audio and haptic design. All this was achieved through a process of observing, reflecting, imagining and building to validate hypotheses that can be approached through second order thinking, frameworks and methods into the design process. The result is a process anchored in a human and activity centered design that accounts for all senses and can be used to achieve success in different areas of innovation

Facilitating heuristic evaluation for novice evaluators

Heuristic evaluation (HE) is one of the most widely used usability evaluation methods. The reason for its popularity is that it is a discount method, meaning that it does not require substantial time or resources, and it is simple, as evaluators can evaluate a system guided by a set of usability heuristics. Despite its simplicity, a major problem with HE is that there is a significant gap in the quality of results produced by expert and novice evaluators. This gap has made some scholars question the usefulness of the method as they claim that the evaluation results are a product of the evaluator’s experience rather than the method itself. In response, the goal of this thesis is to bridge the gap between expert and novice evaluators. Based on interviews with 15 usability experts, which focused on their experience with the method, the difficulties they faced when they were novices, and how they overcame such difficulties, it presents a comprehensive protocol called Coherent Heuristic Evaluation (CoHE). This step-by-step protocol guides novice evaluators from the moment they decide to conduct an evaluation until the submission of their evaluation report. This protocol was verified by conducting an experiment to observe the difference between novices using the CoHE protocol and novices using Nielsen’s 10 usability heuristics without the guidance. The experiment involved 20 novices performing two sessions; the first was an understanding session where the novices read and understood the heuristics and the second was an inspecting session where they inspected a system. The findings show that, while evaluators take more time to read and evaluate a system using CoHE, they tend to identify more problems. The experiment also demonstrated that CoHE can improve the thoroughness, effectiveness, and f-measure of evaluation. However, the validity of CoHE was comparable to that of HE

How a Diverse Research Ecosystem Has Generated New Rehabilitation Technologies: Review of NIDILRR’s Rehabilitation Engineering Research Centers

Over 50 million United States citizens (1 in 6 people in the US) have a developmental, acquired, or degenerative disability. The average US citizen can expect to live 20% of his or her life with a disability. Rehabilitation technologies play a major role in improving the quality of life for people with a disability, yet widespread and highly challenging needs remain. Within the US, a major effort aimed at the creation and evaluation of rehabilitation technology has been the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Centers (RERCs) sponsored by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research. As envisioned at their conception by a panel of the National Academy of Science in 1970, these centers were intended to take a “total approach to rehabilitation”, combining medicine, engineering, and related science, to improve the quality of life of individuals with a disability. Here, we review the scope, achievements, and ongoing projects of an unbiased sample of 19 currently active or recently terminated RERCs. Specifically, for each center, we briefly explain the needs it targets, summarize key historical advances, identify emerging innovations, and consider future directions. Our assessment from this review is that the RERC program indeed involves a multidisciplinary approach, with 36 professional fields involved, although 70% of research and development staff are in engineering fields, 23% in clinical fields, and only 7% in basic science fields; significantly, 11% of the professional staff have a disability related to their research. We observe that the RERC program has substantially diversified the scope of its work since the 1970’s, addressing more types of disabilities using more technologies, and, in particular, often now focusing on information technologies. RERC work also now often views users as integrated into an interdependent society through technologies that both people with and without disabilities co-use (such as the internet, wireless communication, and architecture). In addition, RERC research has evolved to view users as able at improving outcomes through learning, exercise, and plasticity (rather than being static), which can be optimally timed. We provide examples of rehabilitation technology innovation produced by the RERCs that illustrate this increasingly diversifying scope and evolving perspective. We conclude by discussing growth opportunities and possible future directions of the RERC program

audialText: Improving communication accessibility for the deaf through automatic voice-recognition and wearable smart-technology.

Whether you are ordering food at a restaurant, asking for directions, or receiving a phone call from a family member, it is apparent that human communication is an important part of everyday life. Those who are deaf have limited communication accessibility compared to their hearing counterparts, and by default, obtain less public information and face more obstacles during social interactions. This thesis project will attempt to bridge this communication gap through the exploration of human interactions with user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design. The goal is to design and develop an application concept for wearable smart-technology that will utilize voice-recognition software to improve common communication interactions for the deaf. It will also play a role towards improving incidental learning, literacy, and language comprehension for the deaf. This research will validate the need for increased accessibility, study human interactions, explore existing applications, and visualize potential technological solutions. It will also explore the language and literacy developments of deaf individuals. It will be user-centered in its approach using polls and surveys to help drive certain aspects of the application’s concept, user experience, and features. As a result of the research discoveries, an application concept will be designed strategically, developed conceptually, communicated visually, and finally prototyped through a digital platform in the form of a motion graphic