Impactful contributions of usability practitioners to open source software projects:a multiple case study

Abstract. Open source software (OSS) has been described as being designed by and for technically advanced users. As OSS has been gaining popularity among non-technical users, concern about its usability has been raised, as it is difficult for technically-minded developers to design for average users. Hiring usability experts to represent the needs of average users has been used in commercial software development as an effective solution for improving usability. It has been also suggested as a way of addressing the usability issues of OSS, but it has been observed that it is often difficult for usability experts to contribute to OSS so that their work has a major impact on the usability of the software. In this thesis, a multiple case study of four usability interventions was conducted. The cases were a part of a larger research program called UKKOSS, which aims to test ways how usability experts can meaningfully contribute to OSS by conducting usability interventions, where student teams act as usability practitioners who enter OSS projects and carry out usability work on them. This study examined how OSS developers reacted to four of those usability interventions by examining the data gathered during those interventions. The analysed data included documents, such as summary reports, communication logs, project plans, and reports on the conducted usability activities. The larger goal of studying these cases was to gather information on how usability practitioners can conduct impactful usability work on OSS projects. The outcomes of the cases were examined through the lens of prior research, and the factors that may have contributed to the success of the cases were examined through cross-case analysis. The developers welcomed the usability work of the usability teams in generally all of the four cases, but the actual impacts the interventions had varied from none of the suggested usability changes being implemented to most of them being implemented to the software. The outcomes of the most successful cases suggest that an approach where usability practitioners implement their suggested changes themselves after discussing about them with the core developers, establishing trust with the developers by contacting them via voice call or video conferencing instead of using only asynchronous communication, and making usability reports as persuasive as possible by including user testing metrics which strengthen the validity of the issues, should be studied further to evaluate if they can have a positive effect on the impact of the work of usability practitioners. The main contributions of this research were supporting the prior research on the obstacles faced by usability experts entering OSS projects by supporting it with empirical evidence and proposing new areas of research on the subject based on the outcomes of the cases

Lasten potilaskokemuksen mittaaminen digitaalisen palvelun avulla - tapaustutkimus toimenpideklovnerian vaikuttavuudesta potilaskokemukseen

Healthcare organisations have recently recognised patient experience as an important part of their quality care. By measuring and improving the patient experience, healthcare organisations can affect multiple parts of the care. However, children's patient experience has yet been understudied although it has been recognised that adults cannot provide as accurate views of children's experiences as children. This thesis focused on studying how digital services can be used to measure patient experiences. A digital service was designed and developed for measuring children's patient experience. Then, the digital service was used and evaluated in a case study, where the effects of preoperative medical clowning to patient experience were studied. The patient experience was studied from three different point of views; the child patients, their parents and the nurses. The case study was conducted at HUS Children's Hospital in Helsinki. This thesis was part of the LAPSUS research project. Based on the results of this study, a digital service can be used to measure patient experience. Children as young as 4 can report their experiences with child-friendly digital services. Findings of the case study indicate that preoperative medical clowning affects the patient experience of child patients and their parents in a really positive way. The study did not find differences in the cannula insertion procedure regarding the presence of the preoperative medical clown from the nurses' point of view. This study provides insights on patient experience and ways to measure it with a digital service. Also, this thesis was the first study about the effects of the preoperative medical clowns to patient experience in Finland. The recommendations of the study are to support both patient experience measurement with a digital service and preoperative medical clowns more in children's hospitals.Potilaskokemus on viime aikoina todettu tärkeäksi osaksi terveydenhuoltoalan palveluiden laatua. Mittaamalla ja parantamalla potilaskokemusta terveydenhuollon organisaatiot voivat vaikuttaa moniin hoidon alueisiin. Lasten potilaskokemusta on kuitenkin vielä tutkittu vähän, vaikka on todettu etteivät aikuiset pysty kertomaan lasten kokemuksista yhtä tarkasti ja kattavasti kuin lapset itse. Tässä diplomityössä tutkittiin, miten digitaalisilla palveluilla voidaan mitata potilaskokemusta. Tutkimuksessa suunniteltiin ja kehitettiin digitaalinen palvelu mittaamaan lasten potilaskokemusta. Tätä digitaalista palvelua käytettiin tapaustutimuksessa, jossa tutkittiin toimenpideklovnerian vaikuttavuutta potilaskokemukseen. Potilaskokemusta tutkittiin kolmesta eri näkökulmasta; lapsipotilaan, hänen vanhempansa sekä hoitajien näkökulmasta. Tapaustutkimus toteutettiin HUS Lastenklinikalla. Tutkimus oli osa LAPSUS-tutkimusprojektia. Tutkimuksen tulokset osoittavat, että digitaalisia palveluita voidaan käyttää mittaamaan potilaskokemusta. Jopa 4 vuotiaat lapset pystyivät itse kertomaan kokemuksistaan lapsiystävällisen digitaalisen palvelun avulla. Tapaustutkimuksen tulokset osoittavat, että toimenpideklovnerialla on erittäin positiivinen vaikutus lapsipotilaiden ja heidän vanhempiensa potilaskokemukseen. Tutkimuksessa ei havaittu toimenpideklovnin läsnäololla olevan vaikutusta kanyylin laitto toimenpiteeseen sairaanhoitajien näkökulmasta. Tutkimus tarjoaa tietoa potilaskokemuksen digitaalisesta mittaamisesta, sekä lasten potilaskokemuksesta. Tutkimus oli ensimmäinen toimenpideklovnerian vaikuttavuutta potilaskokemukseen tutkiva tutkimus Suomessa. Tutkimuksen suosituksena on tukea enemmän sekä potilaskokemuksen mittaamista digitaalisten palveluiden avulla, sekä toimenpideklovneriaa lastensairaaloissa

The Designing Web Based Media “Active, Creative, Innovative, and Fun” Learning Process

In Government Regulation No.19 year 2005, it is stated that “ Learning process in an educational institution has to be conducted in interactive, inspirational, fun, challenging way, able to motivate the learners to participate actively, and give enough space for initiative, creativity, and independence based on the learners’ aptitude, interest, and physical development”. This development research tried to implement a learning process which fits the Government Regulation No.19 year 2005 web based media. This application is designed by using Joomla and has been visited by more than 19,000 visitors

Use Cases for Design Personas : A Systematic Review and New Frontiers

Personas represent the needs of users in diverse populations and impact design by endearing empathy and improving communication. While personas have been lauded for their benefits, we could locate no prior review of persona use cases in design, prompting the question: how are personas actually used to achieve these benefits? To address this question, we review 95 articles containing persona application across multiple domains, and identify software development, healthcare, and higher education as the top domains that employ personas. We then present a three-stage design hierarchy of persona usage to describe how personas are used in design tasks. Finally, we assess the increasing trend of persona initiatives aimed towards social good rather than solely commercial interests. Our findings establish a roadmap of best practices for how practitioners can innovatively employ personas to increase the value of designs and highlight avenues of using personas for socially impactful purposes.© 2022 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM. ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-9157-3/22/04. https://doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3517589fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

The Magazine Industry: How the Internet Has Changed It All

The goal of this thesis is to understand the changes the magazine industry has seen through the emergence of digital technology. This project can help us further understand the role of online magazines, and how their reading experience differs from reading the traditional print magazines. This project can help consumers and producers understand what magazine readers are looking for in their magazine experience and what factors make them choose to read magazines from one platform to another. This is important for producers and publishers because it helps decide what content is worth creating based on the wants of consumers

UX research: uma proposta baseada no desenvolvimento do portal da UA

As a process inherent to the HCI area, UX Research can be seen as a strategy that supports the development of digital products, namely when usability and accessibility guidelines are used to drive the approach adopted. Practices and strategies based on user experience can facilitate understanding the generation of inputs to drive the digital products development as well as support requirements. In this context, this research is focused on the observation of the UX Research process in the development of the new web portal of the University of Aveiro aiming to investigate how UX Research practice can support the methodological approach used, regarding requirements support, identification of typology interface problems, and collection of information towards the continuous improvement of the development of the University of Aveiro (UA) New Portal. For this purpose, a Mixed Methodology was used based on the Grounded Theory framework, by the inductive process of data observation, delimited to the observation of the new News area of the web portal. Data saturation allowed us to know which UX Research sources had more capacity to raise data from the end-users, support requirements, identify types of interface problems, and supply the development of product solutions. As a consequence of the data processing, this research presents a UXR flow proposal to support data collection and engage stakeholders with the end-user needs and interests.Como um processo inerente à área de Interação Humano-Computador (HCI), a Investigação em Experiência do Utilizador (UX Research) pode ser vista como uma estratégia de apoio ao desenvolvimento de produtos digitais quando princípios de usabilidade e acessibilidade são utilizados para impulsionar a abordagem adoptada. Práticas e estratégias baseadas na coleta de dados relativos à experiência do utilizador podem facilitar a geração de inputs para impulsionar desenvolvimento de produtos digitais bem como suportar a defesa de requisitos. Neste contexto, esta investigação está centrada na observação do processo de UX Research no desenvolvimento do novo portal web da Universidade de Aveiro com o objetivo de compreender como a prática da Investigação em UX pode apoiar a abordagem metodológica utilizada, no que diz respeito ao suporte de requisitos, identificação de tipologias de problemas da interface, e recolha de informação para a melhoria contínua do desenvolvimento do Novo Portal da Universidade de Aveiro (UA). Para este fim, foi utilizada uma Metodologia Mista, Qualiquantitativa fundamentada na estrutura de Grounded Theory, em que parte-se do processo indutivo da observação dos dados, delimitado à observação da nova Área de Notícias do portal web. O tratamento estatístico permitiu saber quais as fontes da UX Research com maior capacidade para levantar dados dos utilizadores finais, qual delas mais dá suporte aos requisitos, ajuda na identificação de tipos de problemas da interface, e apoia o desenvolvimento de soluções de produto. Como consequência do processamento de dados, esta investigação apresenta uma proposta de fluxo de Investigação em UX para apoiar a recolha de dados e motivar os envolvidos no processo para atender as necessidades e interesses dos utilizadores finais.Mestrado em Comunicação Multimédi

New media, new citizens: the terms and conditions of online youth civic engagement.

The increasingly salient role of new media in young people's lives has led to a debate about the potential of the internet as a means of political communication and youth participation. While a growing body of scholarship has engaged 'Nith the issue, there is lack of empirical research linking young people's civic motivations to their internet uses, and in particular to their evaluations, as users, of UK civic websites. This thesis brings together the study of youth civic engagement and the practice of user experience in order to explore the civic factors and website elements that motivate young people to participate via the internet. Employing a large survey and a qualitative study of a purposively sampled community of young citizens and internet users, the research explores youth civic needs and how these translate into specific uses of the web. Furthermore, a comprehensive content analysis of twenty civic websites is juxtaposed with a user experience study, in order to facilitate a dialogue between the online text and the users. The core argument of this study is that young people are willing to engage with public affairs via civic websites as long as a series of "terms and conditions" are met that would make this engagement meaningful to them. These include the existence of visible benefits or outcomes from the participation process and the relevance of the issue to the individual's lifeworld. It is argued that the preconditions set by these young people constitute a coherent paradigm of an essentially consumerist approach to civic engagement; a mode of online political communication that is based around convenience, personalisation and emotional engagement. However, a feeling of civic loneliness was also manifest in the participants' narratives and there were strong indications that any sense of alienation should not be attributed to apathy, but to a fundamental scepticism about the ability of the individual to make a difference at the social level. The evidence suggests that, while technology has a role in providing users with accessible and effective online tools, the root cause of the problem may be in the social structures of the civic culture, and particUlarly in the mechanisms of political socialisation that facilitate civic motivation. Hence, the study reaffirms the importance of the affective, symbolic and political dimensions of participation and argues that these need to be integrated along with traditional (technological and psychological) elements of user experience in order to achieve civic usability

Public Services 2.0: The Impact of Social Computing on Public Services

This report presents the findings of the study on "Public Services 2.0: The Impact of Social Computing on Public Services" conducted by TNO and DTI on behalf of IPTS from 2008 to 2009. The report gives an overview of the main trends of Social Computing, in the wider context of an evolving public sector, and in relation to relevant government trends and normative policy visions on future public services within and across EU Member States. It then provides an exhaustive literature review of research and practice in the area of Social Computing and identifies its key impact areas in the public sector. The report goes on to discuss four case studies of Social Computing-enabled communities in different areas: education (Connexions), health (Doctors.net.uk), inclusion (PatientsLikeMe) and governance (Wikileaks). This is followed by the findings of a scenario-building exercise in which two alternative scenarios were developed and related future opportunities and risks discussed. Additionally, the report presents the results of a cross-case analysis and an ad-hoc online survey which identifies the level of usage, the general characteristics and the key drivers of Social Computing for public services. The report concludes with a summary of research challenges and policy-relevant recommendations. Evidence from the study indicates that Social Computing technologies, applications and values have already been adopted in many areas of government activity. Social Computing affects several aspects of public service, related to both the front office (citizen-government relations) and the back office activities of public administrations. Social Computing is leading to new forms of ICT-enabled participation, capable of enhancing users¿ social awareness and involvement. Social Computing is also transforming relationships and ways of working within and between public sector organisations and opens the way to innovative service delivery mechanisms.JRC.J.4-Information Societ