Taking a User Centred Design Approach for Designing a System to Teach Sign Language

User Centred Design (UCD) is today a widely accepted philosophy in systems development. UCD stresses the importance of involving and consulting users throughout the design and development of a system; it puts users and their tasks at the centre of the process. The phases of UCD are not universal and there any many interpretations of how UCD might be applied. Despite the wide acceptance of UCD and its recognised value in terms of designing systems which better meet users’ needs, there is little reported research on the application of UCD in actual development contexts. We describe how we employed UCD to develop a system for teaching sign language. We report on how users were involved and contributed to the design of the system at each of the UCD phases. Finally we reflect on what was learned and propose a model for others wishing to take a UCD approac

Patient-Centred Design

Patient-centred design is a relatively new term, but a long standing concept in clinical practice.  This discussion looks at patient-centred design and explores the relationships of patient-centred design to universal design, user-centered design and the newer human-centred design.  It also explores why interdisciplinary approaches are needed for patient-centred design and how interdisciplinary collaboration works to address the challenges of patient-centred design. Successful patient-centred solutions can grow from collaborations which include shared visions, understanding of both the nature and degree of variation in the patient, materials, and the designed solution, clear regular communication among all parties with careful definition of terms, and respect for the inherent cultures of all disciplines involved.

Implications of an Ethic of Privacy for Human-Centred Systems Engineering

Privacy remains an intractable ethical issue for the information society. Given its complicity, there is a moral obligation to redress privacy issues in systems engineering practice itself. This paper investigates the role the concept of privacy plays in contemporary systems engineering practice. Ontologically a nominalist human concept, privacy is considered from an appropriate engineering perspective: human-centred design. Two human-centred design standards are selected as exemplars of best practice, and are analysed using an existing multi-dimensional privacy model. The findings indicate that the human-centred standards are currently inadequate in dealing with privacy issues. Some implications for future practice are subsequently highlighted

Design concept towards a human-centered learning factory

Learning factories play an important role when studying multi-disciplinary problems. Such a problem is to support operators in multi-variant assembly. Multi-variants cause problems with product quality, production time as well as cognitive load and therefore it is important to find ways to support operators in this context. To assess the effects of multi variants, a design concept were developed in a learning factory environment (SIILab, CPPS-testbed). The concept was constructed at a conveyer belt with three assembly stations using Casat software for instruction presentations. The following aspects were included in the human-centered learning factory: studying the introduction of advanced automation, managing product variety, supporting operators in finding information and supporting existing human-automation interactions

User data spectrum theory: Collecting, interpreting, and implementing user data in organizations

Organizations interested in increasing their user experience (UX) capacity lack the tools they need to know how to do so. This dissertation addresses this challenge via three major research efforts: 1) the creation of User Data Spectrum theory and a User Data Spectrum survey for helping organizations better invest resources to grow their UX capacity, 2) a new UX method and model for organizations that want to capitalize on spoken words from end users called Rapid Meaningful Scenarios (RMS), and 3) a recommendation for UX education in response to the current ACM SIGCHI education Living Curriculum initiative. The User Data Spectrum work is based on 30 interviews and 110 survey responses from UX stakeholders across 120 companies. These data informed the theory as well as a factor analysis performed to identify the most relevant items in the User Data Spectrum survey. The Rapid Meaningful Scenarios methodology was developed based on iterative UX experience with a real-world organization and refined to aid UX professionals in creating structured results based on end users\u27 words. The UX education recommendation integrates experience with the HCI curriculum at Iowa State University and curriculum discussions within the SIGCHI community over the past 5 years. The overall contribution of this research is a set of tools that will enable UX professionals and organizations to better strategize how to increase their UX capacity

Introducing design in the development of effective climate services

Seasonal to decadal climate predictions have the potential to inform different sectors in adapting their short to medium term practices and plans to climate variability and change. The data these predictions generate, however, is still not readily usable, nor widely used in decision-making. This paper addresses two key challenges: a domain challenge pertaining to an emerging climate services market, where users, tasks and data may be unknown; and an informational challenge pertaining to the interpretation, use and adoption of novel and complex scientific data.The paper provides insights into the contributions design can offer to the development of climate services. We illustrate the key steps and share the main lessons learnt from our experience in the creation of Project Ukko (http://project-ukko.net), a fully working climate services prototype developed within the European project EUPORIAS. To address the domain challenge in climate services, extensive engagement with science and industry stakeholders was required. To address the informational challenge, we applied visualisation techniques that can help users to interpret and utilise the information as simply and quickly as possible. Fostering interdisciplinary teams of design researchers, climate scientists and communication specialists brought a wide range of expertise and competences in all stages of climate services development. Specifically, the project recognised the role of users in co-designing the product. This helped to improve the usability of climate predictions, tailor climate information to answer actual needs of users, better communicate uncertainty, and bridge the gap between state-of-the-art climate predictions and users’ readiness to apply this novel information. Keywords: Visualisation, Human-centred design, User engagement, Wind energy, Climate predictions, Prototyp

A flexible object orientated design approach for the realisation of assistive technology

This thesis contributes to a growing body of research conducted by the Interactive Systems Research Group (ISRG) at Nottingham Trent University within the fields of accessibility and accessible technologies. Core to this research is the exploration of how interactive technologies can be developed and applied as platforms for education, rehabilitation and social inclusion. To this end the group has been actively evolving the User Sensitive and Inclusive Design (USID) methodology for the design, development and evaluation of accessible software and related technologies. This thesis contributes to the further development of the USID method with a focus on its application for the design of assistive technology

Assistive Technology in Occupational Therapy

In this chapter, occupational therapists from leading specialists exploring ways they can collaborate with assistive technology (AT) users to help them get the most out of these devices. By gratefully acknowledging the advances in technology of the last century, people with disabilities can live independent lives, contribute to their communities, attend regular schools, and work in a career. This technological development means medically switching to a social model of technology presentation, where users are as much focused on social reintegration as their physical abilities. This change means that field workers will not be able to focus on delivering technology on their own but will have to go one step further and partner with consumers and communities to ensure that the aids are used in the best possible way

Interpreting maps through the eyes of expert and novice users

The experiments described in this article combine response time measurements and eye movement data to gain insight into the users' cognitive processes while working with dynamic and interactive maps. Experts and novices participated in a user study with a 'between user' design. Twenty screen maps were presented in a random order to each participant, on which he had to execute a visual search. The combined information of the button actions and eye tracker reveals that both user groups showed a similar pattern in the time intervals needed to locate the subsequent names. From this pattern, information about the users' cognitive load could be derived: use of working memory, learning effect and so on. Moreover, the response times also showed that experts were significantly faster in finding the names in the map image. This is further explained by the eye movement metrics: experts had significantly shorter fixations and more fixations per second meaning that they could interpret a larger part of the map in the same amount of time. As a consequence, they could locate objects in the map image more efficiently and thus faster