User kansei modeling and eco-design

The use of day-to-day life artifacts is a key phase in the lifecycle of products. Indeed it has a great impact on our environment. User centered methods are not yet taken into account in eco-design approaches. These methods are being developed in two ways, by building new user models encompassing complex dimensions such as Kansei and experience, including values and moods, and by integrating the user himself in the design process. This paper deals with setting-up a new theoretical framework associating user-centered design advanced approaches such as experience design, Kansei studies, or participative design and eco-design methods. The final goal is to support product design by providing some guidelines according to environmental issues linked to the users and their abilities

Integrating Essential Elements of Person-Centered Transition Planning Practices Into the Development of the Individualized Education Program With All Students with Disabilities

This is the second of two white papers that were developed to look at the potential for integrating a person-centered approach into the design and implementation of transition planning with individuals with disabilities in high school across nine demonstration sites in New York State. While the first paper, Infusing a Person-Centered Approach into Transition Planning for Students with Developmental Disabilities, 2001, looked at the barriers present within and between systems of support, this paper provides a deeper view of the strategies, methods and approaches that proved to be effective in supporting and/or sustaining person-centered practices within the Individualized Education Program (IEP) process. Through an emphasis on the need to utilize post-school outcomes as a basis for transition planning, a real example is provided to highlight the contrast between the use of person-centered practices in the development of an IEP and the use of typical special education programming. A model that overlays person-centered practices into the existing IEP process is suggested along with several suggestions proven effective in leading to seamless transition across the school experience. The paper concludes with a review of the data across the project life (1998-2000) identifying the accomplishments and challenges experienced by project participants, as well as overall recommendations to the field

The telerobot workstation testbed for the shuttle aft flight deck: A project plan for integrating human factors into system design

The human factors design process in developing a shuttle orbiter aft flight deck workstation testbed is described. In developing an operator workstation to control various laboratory telerobots, strong elements of human factors engineering and ergonomics are integrated into the design process. The integration of human factors is performed by incorporating user feedback at key stages in the project life-cycle. An operator centered design approach helps insure the system users are working with the system designer in the design and operation of the system. The design methodology is presented along with the results of the design and the solutions regarding human factors design principles

Codesigned Shared Decision-Making Diabetes Management Plan Tool for Adolescents With Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus and Their Parents: Prototype Development and Pilot Test

Background: Adolescents with type 1 diabetes mellitus have difficulty achieving optimal glycemic control, partly due to competing priorities that interfere with diabetes self-care. Often, significant diabetes-related family conflict occurs, and adolescents’ thoughts and feelings about diabetes management may be disregarded. Patient-centered diabetes outcomes may be better when adolescents feel engaged in the decision-making process. Objective: The objective of our study was to codesign a clinic intervention using shared decision making for addressing diabetes self-care with an adolescent patient and parent advisory board. Methods: The patient and parent advisory board consisted of 6 adolescents (teens) between the ages 12 and 18 years with type 1 diabetes mellitus and their parents recruited through our institution’s Pediatric Diabetes Program. Teens and parents provided informed consent and participated in 1 or both of 2 patient and parent advisory board sessions, lasting 3 to 4 hours each. Session 1 topics were (1) patient-centered outcomes related to quality of life, parent-teen shared diabetes management, and shared family experiences; and (2) implementation and acceptability of a patient-centered diabetes care plan intervention where shared decision making was used. We analyzed audio recordings, notes, and other materials to identify and extract ideas relevant to the development of a patient-centered diabetes management plan. These data were visually coded into similar themes. We used the information to develop a prototype for a diabetes management plan tool that we pilot tested during session 2. Results: Session 1 identified 6 principal patient-centered quality-of-life measurement domains: stress, fear and worry, mealtime struggles, assumptions and judgments, feeling abnormal, and conflict. We determined 2 objectives to be principally important for a diabetes management plan intervention: (1) focusing the intervention on diabetes distress and conflict resolution strategies, and (2) working toward a verbalized common goal. In session 2, we created the diabetes management plan tool according to these findings and will use it in a clinical trial with the aim of assisting with patient-centered goal setting. Conclusions: Patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus can be effectively engaged and involved in patient-centered research design. Teens with type 1 diabetes mellitus prioritize reducing family conflict and fitting into their social milieu over health outcomes at this time in their lives. It is important to acknowledge this when designing interventions to improve health outcomes in teens with type 1 diabetes mellitus

A Mobile Money Solution for Illiterate Users

Existing mobile money platforms have text based interfaces and target literate people. Illiterate people, without the assistance of literate individuals, cannot use such platforms. Applying user-centered requirements gathered in an Ethiopian context, this paper presents the design and development of a mobile money solution that targets illiterate people. Particular emphasis is given to how illiterate users deal with cash money in their everyday life and how such practices can be mapped into financial technology design. Given the ubiquity of mobile telephony in Africa, our solution is based on the widely available, relatively inexpensive and open source Android mobile web platform. The proposed system enables illiterate individuals to count money bills, while providing the facility to accept and make payments. In so doing, we provide an example of how a pervasive technology such as smartphones can empower a hitherto often neglected user category of illiterate users

User kansei modeling and eco-design

International audienceThe use of day-to-day life artifacts is a key phase in the lifecycle of products. Indeed it has a great impact on our environment. User centered methods are not yet taken into account in eco-design approaches. These methods are being developed in two ways, by building new user models encompassing complex dimensions such as Kansei and experience, including values and moods, and by integrating the user himself in the design process. This paper deals with setting-up a new theoretical framework associating user-centered design advanced approaches such as experience design, Kansei studies, or participative design and eco-design methods. The final goal is to support product design by providing some guidelines according to environmental issues linked to the users and their abilities

Kernel Ellipsoidal Trimming

Ellipsoid estimation is an issue of primary importance in many practical areas such as control, system identification, visual/audio tracking, experimental design, data mining, robust statistics and novelty/outlier detection. This paper presents a new method of kernel information matrix ellipsoid estimation (KIMEE) that finds an ellipsoid in a kernel defined feature space based on a centered information matrix. Although the method is very general and can be applied to many of the aforementioned problems, the main focus in this paper is the problem of novelty or outlier detection associated with fault detection. A simple iterative algorithm based on Titterington's minimum volume ellipsoid method is proposed for practical implementation. The KIMEE method demonstrates very good performance on a set of real-life and simulated datasets compared with support vector machine methods

Mobile Life: A Research Foundation for Mobile Services

The telecom and IT industry is now facing the challenge of a second IT-revolution, where the spread of mobile and ubiquitous services will have an even more profound effect on commercial and social life than the recent Internet revolution. Users will expect services that are unique and fully adapted for the mobile setting, which means that the roles of the operators will change, new business models will be required, and new methods for developing and marketing services have to be found. Most of all, we need technology and services that put people at core. The industry must prepare to design services for a sustainable web of work, leisure and ubiquitous technology we can call the mobile life. In this paper, we describe the main components of a research agenda for mobile services, which is carried out at the Mobile Life Center at Stockholm University. This research program takes a sustainable approach to research and development of mobile and ubiquitous services, by combining a strong theoretical foundation (embodied interaction), a welldefined methodology (user-centered design) and an important domain with large societal importance and commercial potential (mobile life). Eventually the center will create an experimental mobile services ecosystem, which will serve as an open arena where partners from academia and industry can develop our vision an abundant future marketplace for future mobile servíces

Flexible Lyapunov Functions and Applications to Fast Mechatronic Systems

The property that every control system should posses is stability, which translates into safety in real-life applications. A central tool in systems theory for synthesizing control laws that achieve stability are control Lyapunov functions (CLFs). Classically, a CLF enforces that the resulting closed-loop state trajectory is contained within a cone with a fixed, predefined shape, and which is centered at and converges to a desired converging point. However, such a requirement often proves to be overconservative, which is why most of the real-time controllers do not have a stability guarantee. Recently, a novel idea that improves the design of CLFs in terms of flexibility was proposed. The focus of this new approach is on the design of optimization problems that allow certain parameters that define a cone associated with a standard CLF to be decision variables. In this way non-monotonicity of the CLF is explicitly linked with a decision variable that can be optimized on-line. Conservativeness is significantly reduced compared to classical CLFs, which makes \emph{flexible CLFs} more suitable for stabilization of constrained discrete-time nonlinear systems and real-time control. The purpose of this overview is to highlight the potential of flexible CLFs for real-time control of fast mechatronic systems, with sampling periods below one millisecond, which are widely employed in aerospace and automotive applications.Comment: 2 figure