Theory, practice and policy: An inquiry into the uptake of HCI practices in the software industry of a developing country

With almost four decades of existence as a community, human–computer interaction (HCI) practice has yet to diffuse into a large range of software industries globally. A review of existing literature suggests that the diffusion of HCI practices in software organizations lacks theoretical guidance. Although many studies have tried to facilitate HCI uptake by the software industry, there are scarce studies that consider HCI practices as innovations that software organizations could or should adopt. Furthermore, there appears to be a lack of structure in the facilitation of HCI methodological development within the specialized emerging regions field such as Sub-Saharan Africa. In order to address this gap, an exploratory investigation regarding the state of uptake of HCI practices in Nigeria is conducted. The aim of this article is to improve our understanding regarding the state of HCI uptake in developing countries and the challenges prevailing. The findings show that HCI practice still remains within its infancy stage in most software companies. Universities are also lacking the required knowledge transfer of HCI to the students, and in effect themselves contributing to the lack of HCI skills in industry. Furthermore, government policies are in need of refinement and end-users’ involvement in software development is not prioritized

Usability Testing With Teens: Adapting Human-Centered Design and UX Methods

Teens are a unique population with needs and communication styles that differ from adults and children. Methods in humancentered design were initially conceptualized with adults in mind, but these methods should be reexamined to include the needs of teens. In this experience report, we reflect on a project introducing teens to human-centered design and methods. As part of the project, our team created a website and series of videos. We conducted a usability evaluation on the videos and an accompanying website with teens to understand what worked well and how to make improvements. In this report, we discuss how we modified traditional usability methods and tailored them for a teen audience. We share takeaways including keep methods and tools lightweight and facilitation styles engaging and casual. We assert that modifying methods is a key consideration for conducting usability testing with any unique group of users

Research on potential features to enhance on-line course materials for student revision

Providing online course materials on the course website has become standard practice in most institutions. These materials are intended to support students’ study after class and especially revision before an examination. Most students download and print out these online materials uploaded by teacher, which reduces the advantages of being online. Besides which, students sometimes suffer from the stress of revising a large amount of material. Maximising the potential of these online materials as an alternative method of revision is a challenge in the area of technology enhanced learning. To address this issue and overcome the challenge, we have developed the self-revision electronic course materials framework (SRECMATs) that features direct access to specific materials through keyword browsing and keyword searching, allowing users to gain a quick overview of extracted keywords along with easy access to related materials. This feature restructures the uploaded materials and delivers intelligent online materials for students. The first prototype was developed and launched for a Design of Information Structures module in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Warwick. This paper evaluates the proposed framework in order to assess student satisfaction, understand students’ perceptions of using the system prototype, and understand whether or not the developed features are appropriate for practical use