Technology Culture of Mobile Maintenance Men

Technology plays a major role in our life and the role is increasing as a result of fast technological development occurring all the time. Technology’s impact on our everyday life sets new challenges also to designers. In order to design products which are usable. We need to understand technologies and devices we are developing, users of our designed products, and the relationships our users have with different kinds of technologies. User-centred design (UCD) has emerged as a counter part for traditional technology centred product development. UCD emphasizes the role of the users in every phase of product design and development. However, it seems that the users’ relationships with technologies is underestimated and sometimes even forgotten also in UCD. The users’ current tools and technological environment is seen as just surroundings and task related tools instead of as an important factor that affects to users’ actions and opinions. This article presents a case study where mobile IT maintenance men where studied with traditional UCD methods and in addition the user research was deepened with focusing on users’ relationships with technology. The results show that UCD’s methods can miss some critical phenomena relating to users’ relationships with technology and affecting to usability and quality of the developed products. Understanding how users comprehend the technologies they use, i.e. understanding what kind of technology culture the users are a part of, enables designers to better evaluate how well the developed product will fit in the lives of it’s users and what sorts of changes are possibly going to happen or required to happen in order the new product to be included in the users’ technology culture. These kinds of evaluations help the designers to design better products and the companies to better estimate business risks relating to for example technology acceptance. Keywords: Technology Culture, User-Centred Design, User Research, Distributed and Mobile Work</p

The role of user requirements research in medical device development

Aims and Objectives: This research aims to suggest a concise framework to help in the better conceptualisation and integration of users in the medical device development (MDD) process. The current economic, political and social climate concerning the matter of healthcare delivery has resulted in the emergence of numerous users and user groups for whom the healthcare system has not previously catered for. These users have created ambiguity for the designers and manufacturers of medical devices as the boundaries between their needs and requirements have blurred, outdating current methods of MDD to meet consumer needs. Research Design and Methodology: The research methodology begins primarily with conducting a literature search on the theories relating to user requirements and medical device development. The paper outlines these findings through initially describing users and user involvement and relating them to medical devices. The cross-disciplinary nature of healthcare influenced the investigation into multiple disciplines including; IT, Ergonomics – particularly participatory research, Psychology and Design. These disciplines expose various methods and processes, which are useful to user requirements research. These methods were analysed for their compatibility, and then used to construct a conceptual framework for user involvement in MDD. Results: The research insinuates the true significance of user involvement and hence resulted in the formation of a conceptual framework to aid user involvement in the MDD process. The framework is produced by the amalgamation of relevant methods examined across the disciplines, in a complimentary fashion. Conclusion: The originality of this research lies in its use of a multidisciplinary approach. Previous research claiming multi-methods has dealt with combining two disciplines or methods at a time i.e. Computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) with participatory research (Scandurra et al, 2008) for the needs analysis of healthcare professionals only. Collaboration across disciplines has also been investigated (Johnson et al, 2005), but this was for the purpose of redesign rather than initial designs. This framework can help medical device designers to fully access all user requirements through more extensive collaboration right at the start. It reduces the risk of high costs involved in device rejection, usually associated with belated recognition of user needs in the design cycle

User-centred design of flexible hypermedia for a mobile guide: Reflections on the hyperaudio experience

A user-centred design approach involves end-users from the very beginning. Considering users at the early stages compels designers to think in terms of utility and usability and helps develop the system on what is actually needed. This paper discusses the case of HyperAudio, a context-sensitive adaptive and mobile guide to museums developed in the late 90s. User requirements were collected via a survey to understand visitors’ profiles and visit styles in Natural Science museums. The knowledge acquired supported the specification of system requirements, helping defining user model, data structure and adaptive behaviour of the system. User requirements guided the design decisions on what could be implemented by using simple adaptable triggers and what instead needed more sophisticated adaptive techniques, a fundamental choice when all the computation must be done on a PDA. Graphical and interactive environments for developing and testing complex adaptive systems are discussed as a further step towards an iterative design that considers the user interaction a central point. The paper discusses how such an environment allows designers and developers to experiment with different system’s behaviours and to widely test it under realistic conditions by simulation of the actual context evolving over time. The understanding gained in HyperAudio is then considered in the perspective of the developments that followed that first experience: our findings seem still valid despite the passed time

A Critique of Personas as representations of "the other" in Cross-Cultural Technology Design

A literature review on cross-cultural personas reveals both, a trend in projects lacking accomplishment and personas reinforcing previous biases. We first suggest why failures or incompleteness may have ensued, while then we entice a thoughtful alteration of the design process by creating and validating personas together with those that they embody. Personas created in people's own terms support the design of technologies by truly satisfying users' needs and drives. Examining the experiences of those working "out there", and our practises, we conclude persona is a vital designerly artefact to empowering people in representing themselves. A persona-based study on User-Created Persona in Namibia contrasts the current persona status-quo via an ongoing co-design effort with urban and rural non-designers. However we argue persona as a design device must ease its implicit colonial tendency to and impulses in depicting "the other". Instead we endorse serenity, mindfulness and local enabling in design at large and in the African context in particular

Training AAC users in user-centred design

User-centred design (UCD) with a focus on usability provides product developers with a design approach in which users are involved in every stage of the process: when gathering requirements; when evaluating alternative designs; and when evaluating interactive prototypes.The characteristics of people who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) make it difficult to follow a truly UCD approach, which in part may contribute to the high rejection of AAC devices. Training workshops have been delivered to introduce users and AAC professionals to the UCD process.Initial feedback indicates that they feel more empowered to evaluate systems and to engage in the design of new systems after attending the workshop

Human-centred design methods : developing scenarios for robot assisted play informed by user panels and field trials

Original article can be found at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/ Copyright ElsevierThis article describes the user-centred development of play scenarios for robot assisted play, as part of the multidisciplinary IROMEC1 project that develops a novel robotic toy for children with special needs. The project investigates how robotic toys can become social mediators, encouraging children with special needs to discover a range of play styles, from solitary to collaborative play (with peers, carers/teachers, parents, etc.). This article explains the developmental process of constructing relevant play scenarios for children with different special needs. Results are presented from consultation with panel of experts (therapists, teachers, parents) who advised on the play needs for the various target user groups and who helped investigate how robotic toys could be used as a play tool to assist in the children’s development. Examples from experimental investigations are provided which have informed the development of scenarios throughout the design process. We conclude by pointing out the potential benefit of this work to a variety of research projects and applications involving human–robot interactions.Peer reviewe

Reconceptualising Personas Across Cultures: Archetypes, Stereotypes & Collective Personas in Pastoral Namibia

The paucity of projects where persona is the research foci and a lack of consensus on this artefact keep many reticent about its purpose and value. Besides crafting personas is expected to differ across cultures, which contrasts the advancements in Western theory with studies and progress in other sites. We postulate User-Created Personas reveal specific characteristics of situated contexts by allowing laypeople to design persona artefacts in their own terms. Hence analysing four persona sessions with an ethnic group in pastoral Namibia –ovaHerero– brought up a set of fundamental questions around the persona artefact regarding stereotypes, archetypes, and collective persona representations: (1) to what extent user depictions are stereotypical or archetypal? If stereotypes prime (2) to what degree are current personas a useful method to represent end-users in technology design? And, (3) how can we ultimately read accounts not conforming to mainstream individual persona descriptions but to collectives

Include 2011 : The role of inclusive design in making social innovation happen.

Include is the biennial conference held at the RCA and hosted by the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design. The event is directed by Jo-Anne Bichard and attracts an international delegation

Human-Centred Design: sustainable ideas and scenarios for the development of projects and products based on knowledge and human abilities

Human-Centred Design is defined as the discipline relating to products and services that, in different ways, takes into account the psycho-physical wellness of human beings, and is formulated according to an approach based on User-Centred Design (UCD). The User-Centred Design approach considers the relationships and the interactions users have with products while using them, and is developed within disciplines not properly belonging to the field of design. At the beginning of last century, with studies in psychology (1899) and semiotics (1913-16) the way was opened for the analysis of everyday objects from a systemic point of view. Within the production scenario, modern industry transforms any materials into working and functional objects, but later on, having crossed the absorption threshold, and with production surpluses, the trend will be to reconsider the objects, endowing them with deeper psychological meaning. Together with the psychological there is the semiotic analysis, which, with de Saussure, establishes the existence of a link between words and things, in such a way that human activities are structured like languages and the analysis sees the Linguistics as the basis of a general science of signs, whose purpose is to deepen the social use and the functionality of the objects. The semiotic theorization of Barthes and then Baudrillard, relating to the analysis of objects, follows Saussure’s lead in thinking of the object as a sign or message. Within this area of semiotic analysis, divergent positions from different thought’ schools follow one after the other. Among these, we find Jean Baudrillard’s (1968) and Charles Sanders Pierce’s (2001); both, however, agree on various points: on the determination of the systemic and therefore relational character of the objects, and on the understanding of the mechanisms which are the basis of perceptive judgments, as well as the related elaborations which structure our consciousness (C.S. Pierce), and which come together as a frame of reference in the User-Centred Design approach. Psychology has recently found in Donald A. Norman - the director of the Cognitive Science Society at the University of California, a psychologist with an international reputation for his studies on “short term memory” and contemporary cognitive psychology - a supporter of the analysis of the learning processes. Moreover, his research on memory has a particular bearing on the creation and function of artificial intelligence, highlighted in a theory on the processes of elaboration of data by the brain known as “human information processing”. He orients his studies within the area of “cognitive science” and hypothesizes on the errors due to the appearance incompatibility conditions between man and the environment. In addition to this, cognitive psychology, which has dealt with this subject for more than fifty years, has contributed decisively to the current ergonomic study on the man-machine relationship in terms of User-Centred Design.Peer Reviewe

Agile Requirements Engineering: A systematic literature review

Nowadays, Agile Software Development (ASD) is used to cope with increasing complexity in system development. Hybrid development models, with the integration of User-Centered Design (UCD), are applied with the aim to deliver competitive products with a suitable User Experience (UX). Therefore, stakeholder and user involvement during Requirements Engineering (RE) are essential in order to establish a collaborative environment with constant feedback loops. The aim of this study is to capture the current state of the art of the literature related to Agile RE with focus on stakeholder and user involvement. In particular, we investigate what approaches exist to involve stakeholder in the process, which methodologies are commonly used to present the user perspective and how requirements management is been carried out. We conduct a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) with an extensive quality assessment of the included studies. We identified 27 relevant papers. After analyzing them in detail, we derive deep insights to the following aspects of Agile RE: stakeholder and user involvement, data gathering, user perspective, integrated methodologies, shared understanding, artifacts, documentation and Non-Functional Requirements (NFR). Agile RE is a complex research field with cross-functional influences. This study will contribute to the software development body of knowledge by assessing the involvement of stakeholder and user in Agile RE, providing methodologies that make ASD more human-centric and giving an overview of requirements management in ASD.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2013-46928-C3-3-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2015-71938-RED