User-designer collaboration during the early stage of the product development process

As an understanding of users' tacit knowledge and latent needs embedded in user experience has played a critical role in product development, users’ direct involvement in design has become a necessary part of the design process. Various ways of accessing users' tacit knowledge and latent needs have been explored in the field of user-centred design, participatory design, and design for experiencing. User-designer collaboration has been used unconsciously by traditional designers to facilitate the transfer of users' tacit knowledge and to elicit new knowledge. However, what makes user-designer collaboration an effective strategy has rarely been reported on or explored. Therefore, interaction patterns between the users and the designers in three industry-supported user involvement cases were studied. In order to develop a coding system, collaboration was defined as a set of coordinated and joint problem solving activities, measured by the elicitation of new knowledge from collaboration. The analysis of interaction patterns in the user involvement cases revealed that allowing users to challenge or modify their contextual experiences facilitates the transfer of knowledge and new knowledge generation. It was concluded that users can be more effectively integrated into the product development process by employing collaboration strategies to intensify the depth of user involvement.

The quality of interface design for educational courseware development in Malaysian educational context

Interactive educational courseware has been adopted in diverse education sectors such as primary, secondary, tertiary education, vocational and professional training. In Malaysian educational context, the ministry of education has implemented Smart School Project that aims to increase high level of academic achievement in primary and secondary schools by using interactive educational courseware. However, many researchers have reported that many coursewares fail to accommodate the learner and teacher needs. In particular, the interface design is not appropriately designed in terms of quality of learning. This paper reviews educational courseware development process in terms of defining quality of interface design and suggests a conceptual model of interface design through the integration of design components and interactive learning experience into the development process. As a result, it defines the concept of interactive learning experience in a more practical approach in order to implement each stage of the development process in a seamless and integrated way.

The Quality of Interface Design for Educational Courseware Development in Malaysian Educational Context

Interactive educational courseware has been adopted in diverse education sectors such as primary, secondary, tertiary education, vocational and professional training. In Malaysian educational context, the ministry of education has implemented Smart School Project that aims to increase high level of academic achievement in primary and secondary schools by using interactive educational courseware. However, many researchers have reported that many coursewares fail to accommodate the learner and teacher needs. In particular, the interface design is not appropriately designed in terms of quality of learning. This paper reviews educational courseware development process in terms of defining quality of interface design and suggests a conceptual model of interface design through the integration of design components and interactive learning experience into the development process. As a result, it defines the concept of interactive learning experience in a more practical approach in order to implement each stage of the development process in a seamless and integrated way.

Interface design in interactive science courseware for the Malaysian Smart School Project

With the goal of improving the academic performance of primary and secondary students in Malaysia by 2020, the Malaysian Ministry of Education has made a significant investment in developing a Smart School Project. The aim of this project is to introduce interactive courseware into primary and secondary schools across Malaysia. As has been the case around the world, interactive courseware is regarded as a tool to motivate students to learn meaningfully and enhance learning experiences. Through an initial pilot phase, the Malaysian government has commissioned the development of interactive courseware by a number of developers and has rolled this courseware out to selected schools over the past 12 years. However, Ministry reports and several independent researchers have concluded that its uptake has been limited, and that much of the courseware has not been used effectively in schools. This has been attributed to weaknesses in the interface design of the courseware, which, it has been argued, fails to accommodate the needs of students and teachers. Taking the Smart School Project's science courseware as a sample, this research project has investigated the extent, nature, and reasons for the problems that have arisen. In particular, it has focused on examining the quality and effectivity of the interface design in facilitating interaction and supporting learning experiences. The analysis has been conducted empirically, by first comparing the interface design principles, characteristics and components of the existing courseware against best practice, as described in the international literature, as well as against the government guidelines provided to the developers. An ethnographic study was then undertaken to observe how the courseware is used and received in the classroom, and to investigate the stakeholders' (school principal, teachers and students') perceptions of its usability and effectivity. Finally, to understand how issues may have arisen, a review of the development process has been undertaken and it has been compared to development methods recommended in the literature, as well as the guidelines provided to the developers. The outcomes of the project include an empirical evaluation of the quality of the interface design of the Smart School Project's science courseware; the identification of other issues that have affected its uptake; an evaluation of the development process and, out of this, an extended set of principles to guide the design and development of future Smart School Project courseware to ensure that it accommodates the various stakeholders' needs.

Anticipated user experience in the early stages of product development

This research investigates users' anticipation of their future experiences with interactive products to support design for experience in the early stages of product development. This research generates new knowledge of anticipated user experience (AUX), which reveals users' tendency to perceive the pragmatic quality of products as the main determinant of their positive future experiences. The AUX Framework has been an important outcome of this study. The exploration of the components of this framework allows a better prediction and understanding of users' underlying needs and potential usage contexts valuable for the early design phases.

Genetic susceptibility to environmental toxicants : the interface between human and experimental studies in the development of new toxicological concepts

The growing knowledge of the genetic polymorphisms of enzymes metabolising xenobiotics in humans and their connections with individual susceptibility towards toxicants has created new and important interfaces between human epidemiology and experimental toxicology. The results of molecular epidemiological studies may provide new hypotheses and concepts, which call for experimental verification, and experimental concepts may obtain further proof by molecular epidemiological studies. If applied diligently, these possibilities may be combined to lead to new strategies of human-oriented toxicological research. This overview will present some outstanding examples for such strategies taken from the practically very important field of occupational toxicology. The main focus is placed on the effects of enzyme polymorphisms of the xenobiotic metabolism in association with the induction of bladder cancer and renal cell cancer after exposure to occupational chemicals. Also, smoking and induction of head and neck squamous cell cancer are considered.

Mini-Orb : A personal indoor climate preference feedback interface

The control of environmental factors in open-office environments, such as lighting and temperature is becoming increasingly automated. This development means that office inhabitants are losing the ability to manually adjust environmental conditions according to their needs. In this paper we describe the design, use and evaluation of MiniOrb, a system that employs ambient and tangible interaction mechanisms to allow inhabitants of office environments to maintain awareness of environmental factors, report on their own subjectively perceived office comfort levels and see how these compare to group average preferences. The system is complemented by a mobile application, which enables users to see and set the same sensor values and preferences, but using a screen-based interface. We give an account of the system’s design and outline the results of an in-situ trial and user study. Our results show that devices that combine ambient and tangible interaction approaches are well suited to the task of recording indoor climate preferences and afford a rich set of possible interactions that can complement those enabled by more conventional screen-based interfaces.

Social networking sites and participatory reluctance: A case study of Gaydar, user resistance and interface rejection

This article conceptualises ‘participatory reluctance’ as a particular orientation to social media that problematises binarised notions of connection and disconnection in social networking sites. It qualitatively examines how the concept has functioned within gay men’s social networking service, Gaydar, among 18- to 28-year-old users of the site in Brisbane, Australia. Participatory reluctance is shown to be a central aspect of the culture of this space, fostered among the studied demographic by the convergence of the growing global push for marriage equality and increasing normalisation of the kinds of gay male identities commonly adopted among this group, with three key factors rooted primarily in Gaydar’s design: (1) young users’ perceptions of the site as a space for procuring casual sex; (2) their perceptions of the imagined user as embodying existing stereotypes of gay masculinity, and; (3) a lack of genuine alternatives in terms of niche digital spaces for gay men’s social networking.

User centred engineering in automotive design: A shift from technology-driven product development

The research assessed how best to transition engineering-based automotive firms towards more customer-orientated design and development approaches, whilst identifying the main barriers and concerns facing such a shift. The research investigates the ability of a firm to empower individual engineers with user centred design tools traditionally used by designers, whilst understanding the company-wide needs to facilitate their implementation.

A new data source for fisheries resource assessment: genetic estimates of the effective number of spawners. Final Report to the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation.

The development of innovative methods of stock assessment is a priority for State and Commonwealth fisheries agencies. It is driven by the need to facilitate sustainable exploitation of naturally occurring fisheries resources for the current and future economic, social and environmental well being of Australia. This project was initiated in this context and took advantage of considerable recent achievements in genomics that are shaping our comprehension of the DNA of humans and animals. The basic idea behind this project was that genetic estimates of effective population size, which can be made from empirical measurements of genetic drift, were equivalent to estimates of the successful number of spawners that is an important parameter in process of fisheries stock assessment. The broad objectives of this study were to 1. Critically evaluate a variety of mathematical methods of calculating effective spawner numbers (Ne) by a. conducting comprehensive computer simulations, and by b. analysis of empirical data collected from the Moreton Bay population of tiger prawns (P. esculentus). 2. Lay the groundwork for the application of the technology in the northern prawn fishery (NPF). 3. Produce software for the calculation of Ne, and to make it widely available. The project pulled together a range of mathematical models for estimating current effective population size from diverse sources. Some of them had been recently implemented with the latest statistical methods (eg. Bayesian framework Berthier, Beaumont et al. 2002), while others had lower profiles (eg. Pudovkin, Zaykin et al. 1996; Rousset and Raymond 1995). Computer code and later software with a user-friendly interface (NeEstimator) was produced to implement the methods. This was used as a basis for simulation experiments to evaluate the performance of the methods with an individual-based model of a prawn population. Following the guidelines suggested by computer simulations, the tiger prawn population in Moreton Bay (south-east Queensland) was sampled for genetic analysis with eight microsatellite loci in three successive spring spawning seasons in 2001, 2002 and 2003. As predicted by the simulations, the estimates had non-infinite upper confidence limits, which is a major achievement for the application of the method to a naturally-occurring, short generation, highly fecund invertebrate species. The genetic estimate of the number of successful spawners was around 1000 individuals in two consecutive years. This contrasts with about 500,000 prawns participating in spawning. It is not possible to distinguish successful from non-successful spawners so we suggest a high level of protection for the entire spawning population. We interpret the difference in numbers between successful and non-successful spawners as a large variation in the number of offspring per family that survive – a large number of families have no surviving offspring, while a few have a large number. We explored various ways in which Ne can be useful in fisheries management. It can be a surrogate for spawning population size, assuming the ratio between Ne and spawning population size has been previously calculated for that species. Alternatively, it can be a surrogate for recruitment, again assuming that the ratio between Ne and recruitment has been previously determined. The number of species that can be analysed in this way, however, is likely to be small because of species-specific life history requirements that need to be satisfied for accuracy. The most universal approach would be to integrate Ne with spawning stock-recruitment models, so that these models are more accurate when applied to fisheries populations. A pathway to achieve this was established in this project, which we predict will significantly improve fisheries sustainability in the future. Regardless of the success of integrating Ne into spawning stock-recruitment models, Ne could be used as a fisheries monitoring tool. Declines in spawning stock size or increases in natural or harvest mortality would be reflected by a decline in Ne. This would be good for data-poor fisheries and provides fishery independent information, however, we suggest a species-by-species approach. Some species may be too numerous or experiencing too much migration for the method to work. During the project two important theoretical studies of the simultaneous estimation of effective population size and migration were published (Vitalis and Couvet 2001b; Wang and Whitlock 2003). These methods, combined with collection of preliminary genetic data from the tiger prawn population in southern Gulf of Carpentaria population and a computer simulation study that evaluated the effect of differing reproductive strategies on genetic estimates, suggest that this technology could make an important contribution to the stock assessment process in the northern prawn fishery (NPF). Advances in the genomics world are rapid and already a cheaper, more reliable substitute for microsatellite loci in this technology is available. Digital data from single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are likely to super cede ‘analogue’ microsatellite data, making it cheaper and easier to apply the method to species with large population sizes.

Open Personalization: Involving Third Parties in Improving the User Experience of Websites

Traditional software development captures the user needs during the requirement analysis. The Web makes this endeavour even harder due to the difficulty to determine who these users are. In an attempt to tackle the heterogeneity of the user base, Web Personalization techniques are proposed to guide the users’ experience. In addition, Open Innovation allows organisations to look beyond their internal resources to develop new products or improve existing processes. This thesis sits in between by introducing Open Personalization as a means to incorporate actors other than webmasters in the personalization of web applications. The aim is to provide the technological basis that builds up a trusty environment for webmasters and companion actors to collaborate, i.e. "an architecture of participation". Such architecture very much depends on these actors’ profile. This work tackles three profiles (i.e. software partners, hobby programmers and end users), and proposes three "architectures of participation" tuned for each profile. Each architecture rests on different technologies: a .NET annotation library based on Inversion of Control for software partners, a Modding Interface in JavaScript for hobby programmers, and finally, a domain specific language for end-users. Proof-of-concept implementations are available for the three cases while a quantitative evaluation is conducted for the domain specific language.

Design for all: designing for the motion-impaired user

Designing for all requires the adaptation and modification of current design best practices to encompass a broader range of user capabilities. This is particularly the case in the design of the human-product interface. Product interfaces exist everywhere and when designing them, there is a very strong temptation to jump to prescribing a solution with only a cursory attempt to understand the nature of the problem. This is particularly the case when attempting to adapt existing designs, optimised for able-bodied users, for use by disabled users. However, such approaches have led to numerous products that are neither usable nor commercially successful. In order to develop a successful design approach it is necessary consider the fundamental structure of the design process being applied. A three stage design process development strategy which includes problem definition, solution development and solution evaluation, should be adopted. This paper describes the development of a new design approach based on the application of usability heuristics to the design of interfaces. This is illustrated by reference to a particular case study of the re-design of a computer interface for controlling an assistive device.

Development of teaching resources for physical modelling community

Physical modelling of interesting geotechnical problems has helped clarify behaviours and failure mechanisms of many civil engineering systems. Interesting visual information from physical modelling can also be used in teaching to foster interest in geotechnical engineering and recruit young researchers to our field. With this intention, the Teaching Committee of TC2 developed a web-based teaching resources centre. In this paper, the development and organisation of the resource centre using Wordpress. Wordpress is an open-source content management system which allows user content to be edited and site administration to be controlled remotely via a built-in interface. Example data from a centrifuge test on shallow foundations which could be used for undergraduate or graduate level courses is presented and its use illustrated. A discussion on the development of wiki-style addition to the resource centre for commonly used physical model terms is also presented. © 2010 Taylor & Francis Group, London.