The Art Traveler: Building a user experience system to discover art

With the increasing popularity of mobile devices and their apps, mobile technologies have changed the nature of travel significantly. With numerous travel apps available today, many tourists can become confused with which one to select and use. Another important factor is that a majority of travel applications are designed for everyone traveling everywhere, not specifically for one kind of tourist and one subject matter. The goal of this thesis is to create an effective and efficient user experience system. The project is a travel planner for people to pursue an art tour of their own interest. It focuses on designing an effective user navigation system to guide tourists making their travel plans, and provides comprehensive tours to help people appreciate and learn more about art. To achieve this project, this thesis focuses on interaction design, information design, multimedia technology, as well as user experience design. Considering the independent choice of different tourists, this design provides various ways for them to make their own travel plans and discover art they are interested in. The final design is presented as an interactive prototype which demonstrates the functionality of the user interface and experience and is used for usability testing

DZone: An interactive platform for designers seeking and sharing ideas.

The principle of design is to create something both beautiful and effective. However, not all designs are created equal. There are plenty of inefficient designs in existence. The reason is not because of bad designers, but because of the lacking platforms for designers to communicate and test their designs. There are many tools available, both application and website, for designers to express their ideas. However, the majority of these resources are focused on sharing project on the social media and treat it like an element of personal portfolio. Platforms for designers to actually test their project, gathering critical product-developing feedback is limited. A common need designers have is a place to seek feedback and share inspiration for their projects. This thesis project is an app that will fulfill that need. At the beginning of a new project, users could use the application to seek inspiration through others designs, local events or locations. During the process, users could post their ideas to gather feedback to improve the project. Upon finishing the design, users could share their project where other users can also share their opinions and ideas. DZone creates a simple and efficient way for designers to share and find ideas. It combines graphic, interaction and user experience design. The user interface and interactivity will be prototyped for an iOS device. The thesis will focus on the usability test of several groups of people in different ages and genders

PROTOTIPE PERANCANGAN MOBILE APP “LECIS” (LECTURE INFORMATION SYSTEM) UNTUK MAHASISWA

Seiring perkembangan TIK dan beragamnya sarana penyampaian informasi kegiatan perkuliahan, berpengaruh pada kecepatan dan ketepatan informasi yang seharusnya segera diterima dan direspon oleh mahasiswa. Untuk itu diperlukan penerapan teknologi dalam sistem informasi yang tepat atau dimanfaatkan secara maksimal.oleh pemakai sistem. Tidak adanya sarana yang representatif, terpadu, dan terorganisir untuk mengakomodir penyampaian informasi kegiatan perkuliahan dapat berdampak terhadap kesulitan mahasiswa dalam memperoleh informasi yang seharusnya segera diterima. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk membuat sebuah rancangan mobile app untuk smartphone yang informatif dan terpadu dalam membantu kelancaran proses kegiatan perkuliahan yang lebih efektif dan efisien. Metode penelitian yang digunakan adalah metode penelitian kualitatif, yaitu penelitian yang bersifat deskriptif dengan teknik pengumpulan data melalui observasi dan studi literatur, selanjutnya data yang diperoleh dianalisis dengan menggunakan metode 5W+1H. Dari hasil penelitian dan dengan menggunakan metode perancangan design thinking diperoleh sebuah rancangan mobile app untuk smartphone mengenai sistem informasi kegiatan perkuliahan untuk mahasiswa yang dipresentasikan dengan prototipe. Prototipe Mobile App ini bernama “Lecis”, akronim dari Lecture Information System (Sistem Informasi Perkuliahan) untuk mahasiswa. Lecis memuat konten tentang informasi kegiatan perkuliahan, seperti adanya perubahan jadwal kuliah, jadwal tugas, ujian, dan informasi lainnya yang berpengaruh dalam pencapain prestasi belajar dan kesinambungan studi mahasiswa. Kata Kunci: prototipe, mobile app, informasi, perkuliahan, mahasisw

User-oriented intuitive web interface for SanTour

The purpose of this research is to create an intuitive user-interface for a hiking application while considering the needs of people with physical and mental limitations. SanTour is a hiking application designed for people with physical or mental limitations. These limitations can for example be the fear of heights or reduced mobility in the knees. The latest version of SanTour at the time of writing was developed in 2017 as the first prototype of the application. The visual aspects of the prototype were not the focus in the development and as a result, the application was not very visually pleasing. To improve the user experience of SanTour, I used the UX lifecycle described in the book “The UX Book” by Rex Hartson & Pardha S. Pyla (2012) as my guideline

Understanding the importance of animation in human-computer interfaces and its relation to user experience

Animation is increasingly used in multimedia user interfaces (UI). Ever more applications are including animation to improve their UI and user experience (UX). Animation seems to play a key role to develop user-friendly, easy-to-use and easy-to-understand apps that achieve a satisfactory UX. This work attempts to explain animation performance in multimedia UI and how this affects the UX. We found that: (1) animation is a key element of multimedia UI that strongly affects UX and can improve it, if applied correctly; (2) animation enhances: reduced perceived waiting time, explanatory and cognitive support, efficient feedback and increased user attention; (3) animation's major properties lie in adapting its intensity, function, time and aesthetics to the context of action. Additionally, we identified two categories of animation aspects in multimedia UI: internal aspects and external features. Furthermore, this study demonstrates that the design of animated multimedia interfaces does not have a standardised methodology. Animation is incorporated ad-hoc, under the individual empirical experience of the creators, and without any a priori guarantee of usefulness or success. Therefore, our future work aims to generate an integral model where the variables related to animation in multimedia UI that modulate UX are analysed, and thus improve human-computer interfaces

Visualizing the data flow in virtual reality for training developers

The visual aids are powerful tools in learning, understanding, and retaining data, especially in the industrial sector. However, visualizing data for complex systems is an essential challenge as they need to address a discrete and large amount of data. When novice programmers develop these complex systems, they typically require further training on the data flow in order to understand the hidden meaningful patterns. The visualization of invisible data in virtual reality (VR) helps to explore these patterns and direct new avenues to develop a system in the real world. Thus, the presentation of complex data in a 3D visual form is crucial and effective. To accomplish this, this research study considers a case scenario of Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) system based on Internet of Things (IoT). By definition, IoT is a multifarious connection of devices and data over the internet and thus, needs visualization. A better understanding of how visualization in 3D space can assist programmers to learn IoT concepts. In turn, this poses profound questions in the areas of virtual reality and human-computer interaction. Consequently, the aim of this study was to visualize IoT sensor data in a virtual environment and produce guidelines for programmers in order to help them better comprehend the data flow. Subsequent to this, the level of immersion required for an effective VR experience was also investigated. Overall, this study involved background research and an empirical study. The semi-structured interviews were conducted with the programmers and were handled as empirical evidence. This evidence was further analyzed qualitatively. As a result, the static visuals of IoT sensor data values helped the users to understand its flow. The visual clues both from abstract and skeuomorphic designs furthered the users understanding of the concepts. Accompanied by the text, necessary information about the concept was revealed to the end user. The analysis clearly highlights that visualizing in virtual reality enhances the experience by improving user awareness and user engagement level. In addition, this provides a more intuitive understanding of data flow and better recall of the observed relationships

Software as an art. The aesthetic influence in software development

This thesis uses literature and quantitative interviews to look closer at how aesthetics and software development is connected. The thesis springs of from Warren Sacks claim, in “The Software Arts”, that at the centre of computing is the liberal arts. In this book Sack only focused on language and programming something that this thesis found lacking. Since aesthetics is a large part of humanities and the liberal arts, it can therefore be argued that aesthetics is also a part of the centre of computing. Because of this this thesis is investigating not just at programming but software management and software design as well, to see where aesthetics can be seen and how it has affected software development. The thesis therefore gives definition and explanation to what aesthetics is in the three topics just mentioned, programming, software management and software design. Before using these definitions to create a fourth definition around the aesthetics of software development. The thesis is trying to show the aesthetic beauty of software development and argues that there are more to software development then coding and mathematics. It also takes a closer look at outside forces that has helped change what developers have found aesthetic through the last few decades. The method this thesis used allowed the arguments to build on scientific articles and check these up towards what developers in businesses thought about aesthetics. The findings were that the developers in the businesses showed a great interest in some aesthetic attributes, specifically working to create a good product for the user gave them positive feelings.Denne master oppgava bruker litteratur og intervjuer til å se nærmere på hvordan estetikk og system utvikling hengersammen og påvirker hverandre. Oppgava tar utgangspunkt i Warren Sack sin bok "The Software Arts". Sack argumentere i denne boka at de liberal arts er kjerna i databehandling. Måten Sack argumentere for dette er ved å se på historie og språk (programmering). Denne oppgava argumentere at de liberal arts er et for stort tema til å kunne argumentere imot og at man må se nærmere på hver enkel bit innad i det. Derfor omhandler denne oppgava estetikk i systemutvikling, systemhåndtering, programmering og programvare design. Målet er å finne ut hva de som jobber med dette tenker og føler for å kunne se hvordan de påvirker produktet som blir lagd. Oppgava gir også overblikk over hvordan dette har endret seg i tritt med samfunnet, fra et produktfokus mot et brukerfokus, på rundt 2000 tallet. Oppgava viser til at det finnes noe estetisk vakkert med systemutvikling og emnene funnet i det. Det blir også argumentert for at det er mer til systemutvikling enn programmering, noe som gjør at andre utdanninger som ikke er innenfor data har en plass i utviklingen av programvare. Metodene som oppgava brukte, gjorde at argumenter kunne begrunnes seg i forsker artikler med kommentarer ifra utviklere rundt hva de mente er estetisk med systemutvikling. Funnene som ble gjort viser at det er estetiske attributter med systemutvikling. Ett eksempel er utvikleres positive følelser rundt å lage et produkt som brukarene trenger og får nytte av.Mastergradsoppgave i digital kulturDIKULT350MAHF-DIKU

A new model of information seeking stopping behavior

textWeb search engines play an important role in peoples daily life. Widespread usage of search engine poses continuous challenges for designing information search systems that can bring people best user experience. To address this challenges, it is particularly important to understand how people seek information. In spite of a large number of studies on human information seeking, the reasons of when and why users terminate information seeking are uncertain and many proposed theories have a limited capability for predicting this type of behavior. In our study, we conducted lab-based experiments, where participants performed assigned information search tasks on Wikipedia pages. Inspired by theories and methods from cognitive science, we captured participants information search behavior such as query usage, search engine result page visits, Wikipedia page visits, and task duration. Additionally, we used eye-tracking techniques to examine the number of people's eye fixations. Using exploratory factor analysis (EFA), we have confirmed exploratory and validation processes can be distinguished based on different types of costs associated with each of them. Based on the findings of the regression tree model, evaluating the cost and gain in the validation process provide important feedback to people for controlling and monitoring their information search.Informatio