Matching Items (4)
Filtering by
- All Subjects: User-centered system design
- Creators: Walker, Erin
- Status: Published
Description
Study in user experience design states that there is a considerable gap between users and designers. Collaborative design and empathetic design methods attempt to make a strong relationship between these two. In participatory design activities, projective `make tools' are required for users to show their thoughts. This research is designed to apply an empathetic way of using `make tools' in user experience design for websites clients, users, and designers.
A magnetic wireframe tool has been used as a `make tool', and a sample project has been defined in order to see how the tool can create empathy among stakeholders. In this study fourth year graphic design students at Arizona State University (ASU), USA, are participating as users, faculty members have the role of clients, and Forty, Inc., a design firm in the Phoenix area, is the design team for the study. All of these three groups are cooperating on re-designing the homepage of the Design School in Herberger Institute for Design and Art (HIDA) at ASU.
A method for applying the magnetic tool was designed and used for each group. Results of users and clients' activities were shared with the design team, and they designed a final prototype for the wireframe of the sample project. Observation and interviews were done to see how participants work with the tool. Also, follow up questionnaires were used in order to evaluate all groups' experiences with the magnetic wireframe. Lastly, as a part of questionnaires, a sentence completion method has been used in order to collect the participants' exact thoughts about the magnetic tool.
Observations and results of data analysis in this research show that the tool was a helpful `make tool' for users and clients. They could talk about their ideas and also designers could learn more about people. The entire series of activities caused an empathetic relationship among stakeholders of the sample project. This method of using `make tools' in user experience design for web sites can be useful for collaborative UX design activities and further research in user experience design with empathy.
A magnetic wireframe tool has been used as a `make tool', and a sample project has been defined in order to see how the tool can create empathy among stakeholders. In this study fourth year graphic design students at Arizona State University (ASU), USA, are participating as users, faculty members have the role of clients, and Forty, Inc., a design firm in the Phoenix area, is the design team for the study. All of these three groups are cooperating on re-designing the homepage of the Design School in Herberger Institute for Design and Art (HIDA) at ASU.
A method for applying the magnetic tool was designed and used for each group. Results of users and clients' activities were shared with the design team, and they designed a final prototype for the wireframe of the sample project. Observation and interviews were done to see how participants work with the tool. Also, follow up questionnaires were used in order to evaluate all groups' experiences with the magnetic wireframe. Lastly, as a part of questionnaires, a sentence completion method has been used in order to collect the participants' exact thoughts about the magnetic tool.
Observations and results of data analysis in this research show that the tool was a helpful `make tool' for users and clients. They could talk about their ideas and also designers could learn more about people. The entire series of activities caused an empathetic relationship among stakeholders of the sample project. This method of using `make tools' in user experience design for web sites can be useful for collaborative UX design activities and further research in user experience design with empathy.
ContributorsEslamifar, Ali (Author) / Heywood, William (Thesis advisor) / Walker, Erin (Committee member) / Takamura, John (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
As people age, the desire to grow old independently and in place becomes larger and takes greater importance in their lives. Successful aging involves the physical, mental and social well-being of an individual. To enable successful aging of older adults, it is necessary for them to perform both activities of daily living (ADL) and instrumental activities of daily living (IADL). Embedded assessment has made it possible to assess an individual's functional ability in-place, however the success of any technology depends largely on the user than the technology itself. Previous researches in in-situ functional assessment systems have heavily focused on the technology rather than on the user. This dissertation takes a user-centric approach to this problem by trying to identify the design and technical challenges of deploying and using a functional assessment system in the real world.
To investigate this line of research, a case study was conducted with 4 older adults in their homes, interviews were conducted with 8 caregivers and a controlled lab experiment was conducted with 8 young healthy adults at ASU, to test the sensors. This methodology provides a significant opportunity to advance the scientific field by expanding the present focus on IADL task performance to an integrated assessment of ADL and IADL task performance. Doing so would not only be more effective in identifying functional decline but could also provide a more comprehensive assessment of individuals' functional abilities with independence and also providing the caregivers with much needed respite.
The controlled lab study tested the sensors embedded into daily objects and found them to be reliable, and efficient. Short term exploratory case studies with healthy older adults revealed the challenges associated with design and technical aspects of the current system, while inductive analysis performed on interviews with caregivers helped to generate central themes on which future functional assessment systems need to be designed and built. The key central themes were a) focus on design / user experience, b) consider user's characteristics, personality, behavior and functional ability, c) provide support for independence, and d) adapt to individual user's needs.
To investigate this line of research, a case study was conducted with 4 older adults in their homes, interviews were conducted with 8 caregivers and a controlled lab experiment was conducted with 8 young healthy adults at ASU, to test the sensors. This methodology provides a significant opportunity to advance the scientific field by expanding the present focus on IADL task performance to an integrated assessment of ADL and IADL task performance. Doing so would not only be more effective in identifying functional decline but could also provide a more comprehensive assessment of individuals' functional abilities with independence and also providing the caregivers with much needed respite.
The controlled lab study tested the sensors embedded into daily objects and found them to be reliable, and efficient. Short term exploratory case studies with healthy older adults revealed the challenges associated with design and technical aspects of the current system, while inductive analysis performed on interviews with caregivers helped to generate central themes on which future functional assessment systems need to be designed and built. The key central themes were a) focus on design / user experience, b) consider user's characteristics, personality, behavior and functional ability, c) provide support for independence, and d) adapt to individual user's needs.
ContributorsRavishankar, Vijay Kumar (Author) / Burleson, Winslow (Thesis advisor) / Coon, David (Committee member) / Mahoney, Diane (Committee member) / Walker, Erin (Committee member) / Li, Baoxin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
Desirable outcomes such as health and wellbeing are tightly linked to people’s behaviors, thus inspiring research on technologies that support productively changing those behaviors. Many behavior change technologies are designed by Human-Computer Interaction experts, but this approach makes it difficult to personalize support to each user’s unique goals and needs. As an alternative to the provision of expert-developed pre-fabricated behavior change solutions, the present study aims to empower users’ self-experimentation for behavior change. To this end, two levels of supports were explored. First, the provision of interactive digital materials to support users’ creation of behavioral plans was developed. In the initial step, a tutorial for self-experimentation for behavior change that was fully scripted with images in succession was created. The tutorial focuses on facilitating users’ learning and applying behavior change techniques. Second, users were equipped with a tool to support their implementation of context-aware just-in-time interventions. This tool enables prototyping of sensor-based responsive systems for home environments, integrating simple sensors (two-state magnetic sensors, etc.) and media event components (wireless sound, etc.).
To evaluate the effectiveness of these two approaches, a between-subject trial comparing the approaches to a sleep education control was conducted with 27 participants over 7 weeks. Although results did not reveal significant difference in sleep quality improvement between the conditions, trends indicating greater effectiveness in the two treatment groups were observed. Analysis of the plans participants created and their revision performance also indicated that the two treatment groups developed more specific and personalized plans compared with the control group.
To evaluate the effectiveness of these two approaches, a between-subject trial comparing the approaches to a sleep education control was conducted with 27 participants over 7 weeks. Although results did not reveal significant difference in sleep quality improvement between the conditions, trends indicating greater effectiveness in the two treatment groups were observed. Analysis of the plans participants created and their revision performance also indicated that the two treatment groups developed more specific and personalized plans compared with the control group.
ContributorsLee, Jisoo (Author) / Burleson, Winslow (Thesis advisor) / Hekler, Eric B. (Committee member) / Tinapple, David (Committee member) / Walker, Erin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
Online learning communities have changed the way users learn due to the technological affordances web 2.0 has offered. This shift has produced different kinds of learning communities like massive open online courses (MOOCs), learning management systems (LMS) and question and answer based learning communities. Question and answer based communities are an important part of social information seeking. Thousands of users participate in question and answer based communities on the web like Stack Overflow, Yahoo Answers and Wiki Answers. Research in user participation in different online communities identifies a universal phenomenon that a few users are responsible for answering a high percentage of questions and thus promoting the sustenance of a learning community. This principle implies two major categories of user participation, people who ask questions and those who answer questions. In this research, I try to look beyond this traditional view, identify multiple subtler user participation categories. Identification of multiple categories of users helps to provide specific support by treating each of these groups of users separately, in order to maintain the sustenance of the community.
In this thesis, participation behavior of users in an open and learning based question and answer community called OpenStudy has been analyzed. Initially, users were grouped into different categories based on the number of questions they have answered like non participators, sample participators, low, medium and high participators. In further steps, users were compared across several features which reflect temporal, content and question/thread specific dimensions of user participation including those suggestive of learning in OpenStudy.
The goal of this thesis is to analyze user participation in three steps:
a. Inter group participation analysis: compare pre assumed user groups across the participation features extracted from OpenStudy data.
b. Intra group participation analysis: Identify sub groups in each category and examine how participation differs within each group with help of unsupervised learning techniques.
c. With these grouping insights, suggest what interventions might support the categories of users for the benefit of users and community.
This thesis presents new insights into participation because of the broad range of
features extracted and their significance in understanding the behavior of users in this learning community.
In this thesis, participation behavior of users in an open and learning based question and answer community called OpenStudy has been analyzed. Initially, users were grouped into different categories based on the number of questions they have answered like non participators, sample participators, low, medium and high participators. In further steps, users were compared across several features which reflect temporal, content and question/thread specific dimensions of user participation including those suggestive of learning in OpenStudy.
The goal of this thesis is to analyze user participation in three steps:
a. Inter group participation analysis: compare pre assumed user groups across the participation features extracted from OpenStudy data.
b. Intra group participation analysis: Identify sub groups in each category and examine how participation differs within each group with help of unsupervised learning techniques.
c. With these grouping insights, suggest what interventions might support the categories of users for the benefit of users and community.
This thesis presents new insights into participation because of the broad range of
features extracted and their significance in understanding the behavior of users in this learning community.
ContributorsSamala, Ritesh Reddy (Author) / Walker, Erin (Thesis advisor) / VanLehn, Kurt (Committee member) / Hsieh, Gary (Committee member) / Wetzel, Jon (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015