Design, User Experience, and Usability: Theory and Practice

This study researched the next-generation human computer interactions. In particular, brainwave computer interaction (BCI) is emphasized. To investigate BCI, two stages are included: interface development to develop a BCI game, and interface evaluation with a series of user experiments to test user experience. For both stages, participatory design is adopted as the essential principle to involve potential users to provide their expectations and insights on possible application scenarios of BCI in daily life, help define the requirements, assist in concept screening and user experience investigation. In particular, a prototype with hardware (including brainwave computer chipsets and Bluetooth module) and software (i.e., a PC Tetris game developed by Labview) was developed. The physical part is to collect users’ neural signals, and such signals will be used to control the game. A group of participants were involved to play the game, and interviews based on game experience questionnaire was constructed to identify participants’ experience on BCI and also other traditional interfaces. Through results analysis, it can be concluded that BCI shows obvious strength which is more immersive, attractive and enjoyable. Therefore, BCI could be promising to enhance user experience and bring more fun to task completion.

This paper contributes to the discussion about relationships between spatial and service design and how these two disciplines can interact and influence each other to achieve more complexity, capability and synergy in in a specific case such as university dormitories. Dormitories, university campuses, and schools, can be considered as urban community hubs through which synergistic relations between the institution and the surrounding neighborhood take place. The paper investigates how dormitories can, starting with the contribution of the students, perform strategic actions in the socio-cultural and civil regeneration of urban contexts. The aim is to delineate the various interactions and effective synergies, especially in relation to the most vulnerable and marginalized facets of the community, looking at the students’ dorm as places of social cohesion. The methodology is related to community-centered design using for example co-design tools to present relationships between spatial and service design particularly through the context of a collaborative design studio and the technical department of Politecnico di Milano.

The development of human computer interfaces is a complex, multifaceted process with many soft influencing factors and boundary conditions. In addition to other approaches, the user-centered design has proved to be a meaningful and suitable model to support the development of interactive systems. Also, in design theory and methodology, a research field that investigates similar processes for the area of mechanical engineering, a large number of models have been investigated. This paper applies the Characteristics-Properties Modelling/Property-Driven Development (CPM/PDD) to User Centered Design (UCD). It explores the mapping of the two models to obtain support and insights for the selection of techniques and metrics for the development of interactive systems. For this purpose, this paper first describes CPM/PDD and discusses why it is particularly suitable for the considerations made here. After a short description of the UCD, the paper explores touch points and maps the two models to each other. A small case study shows the possible application and offers a starting point for further research.

Virtual reality (VR) presents new usability, human-computer interaction, and playability challenges for developers, user-experience researchers, and designers. In addition to facing the traditional challenges, developers and researchers of VR games and VR experiences must contend with issues of physicality (including physical activity and physical discomfort), spatiality, and new or intensified physiological, psychological, and social considerations. However, many existing resources intended to help designers and game-user researchers work through usability and playability issues do not address these VR-specific challenges. This paper introduces the Virtual Reality PLAY (VR PLAY) guidelines, a set of guidelines intended to help developers, designers, and user researchers create more usable and playable VR games and experiences by optimizing the user and player experience for virtual reality.

Taken into consideration people’s demand for access to information in nowadays society, the paper carries a systematic analysis and a detailed study of designing human-computer interaction interface by theoretical analysis and integration thereof combined with practical experience. The paper puts forward reasonable and practical design strategies, establishes relatively complete and systematic software interface design models, and makes rewarding suggestions on the future of software interface design.First, the paper delves into the subject of the interactive process, human, namely users, and sets up the model of user analysis. The essay studies and analyzes relevant design strategies based on the users’ perceptive, cognitive, emotional ability towards information and the characteristics of the user experience in the process of human-computer interaction, proposes design strategies of human-computer interaction interface based on users’ perception, cognition, emotion of information and the characteristics of the user experience. Also, user-centeredness is established as the fundamental research ideology. Then, characteristics of information identification in software interaction interfaces are summarized. Principles of interface design for information representation and recognition is proposed, and the subject of the design of software interaction interface is determined. Further, the paper presents specific methods in which designs can be implemented. It develops a systematic model of the integral design of the software interface, summarizes principles of software interface design based on the characteristics of interface. The integral design model mainly comprises of the following phases: demand analysis, implementation, testing and evaluation. It puts forward the demand of “iteration” throughout the designing process. What is more, the optimization theory of “three transformation and fusion” of software interaction interface design is proposed. Last but not the least, the paper puts forward the goals of future software interface design, that is, “generalization”, “intelligentization” and “actualization” and raises relevant opinions and suggestions thereof. The research provides a practical and valuable reference for software interaction interface design in the future.

Modern design methods include computer-aided design, optimization design, reliability design, etc., and are with solid theory foundation. Modern design methods can be applied to solve some practical problems encountered in projects, and can improve product design and quality, thus promoting design development.With the rapid development of Internet technology, the whole process of design activities are added with new features in terms of expression, communication and spreading means, embodying the concept of modernism, while existing design system has been unable to meet the demands of the new era. The main purpose of this paper is to build a new design system to serve the world view of the Internet era by putting forward the concept of the Dimensional -Design, and analysing real cases.

Mobile applications development has brought the new opportunities for businesses to market their brands and products through a new channel. Such a channel encourages an increasing number of users engaging in mobile applications. However, the challenge of designing “useful” mobile applications still remains. To date, only few studies have been done on the identification of user experience features on mobile applications design. To this end, this study aims to provide a systematic review of mobile applications analysis and design, exploring main design features from a user experience perspective. Three design dimensions, namely usability, functionality and aesthetic design have been focused on in the study. The results imply that current mobile applications design needs to be further improved to meet users’ experience. The major contribution is to propose a systematic analysis of mobile applications for business managers and designers.

Base on the features of smart cities planning, the principles of the application of human – computer interaction has been discussed. This paper also present the details of the application of HCI on the multiple aspects of smart cities planning as well as the development prospect of human-computer interaction technology in urban planning.

Gamification is an efficient design strategy to enhance user experiences. ‘Design’ is based on the actual needs, ‘Game’ creates virtual experiences, ‘Gamification’ is a program that takes the real needs as the goal and the game system as the framework. The program builds a real and virtual mixed product service system. This paper presents a user experience driven three-level design method on gamification system, which corresponds user experiences in three levels of nature, process, and interface. In this paper, some examples are presented to verify the applicability of the design method on gamification system. It is foreseeable that gamification will be an important means of creating the full user experience combined the virtual and real world.

In human-technology interaction display properties are an integral part of a successful achievement of user goals. To assess display properties different approaches have been taken. Besides design and visualization research, displays also play a central role in Human Factors and Ergonomics, as well as in Usability and User Experience research. In Human Factors and Ergonomics research, Display Clutter is usually associated with the abundance of irrelevant information on a screen. Depending on the definition of clutter, poor display organization, or performance and attentional costs of the user are considered as clutter as well. In User Experience research display properties are divided into instrumental (e.g., usability, utility) and non-instrumental (e.g., visual aesthetics) qualities. The present paper puts the Display Clutter and the User Experience concept in relation. It becomes obvious that the two approaches pursue a similar goal, thus an optimal user-interaction with a technical system. From a theoretical point of view, however, there are clear differences. Also, from a methodological perspective, some measurement techniques, which include the computational quantification of the screen, are unique to Display Clutter. Nevertheless, user performance measures and user ratings are employed in both Display Clutter as well as in User Experience research. It is discussed how display clutter can influence users’ experience on several levels: Instrumental (i.e., pragmatic) and non-instrumental (i.e., hedonic), from an objective system property perspective as well as subjectively perceived user perspective.

Value has been one of the topics in HCI and design field with various definitions from perspectives. Values are in essence related to experience because they are personal perception and assessment on objects, products, or services. Hence, it makes sense to involve values in user experience design and make values as one of the design goals. However, values are usually easy to take for granted but hard to work with in design practices. This paper proposed a storytelling-value approach with the aim to improve awareness of values in user experience design. It was based on storytelling methodology that emphasizes scenario-based envisioning and the results from a focus group which involved user experience designer in to discuss values in UX design. A co-design workshop was conducted as a support for improvement of the approach. It is promising to optimize this storytelling-value approach in the future since most of the participants showed their positive attitudes not only to the necessity in methods development but also to the acceptance of this approach.

LGBT people struggle with challenges and risks provoked by prejudice. We approached this issue with a critical socially-aware methodology, where interested parties engaged in participatory activities to conceive a mobile application aiming to empower this group. To conceive a product to act on such a complex issue as oppressions is challenging and demands sensible decisions from ideation to design. In this paper, we discuss how Maeda’s laws of simplicity underlined such decisions throughout the construction process and present an evaluation of simplicity by HCI experts. The evaluation suggests our product meet the simplicity framework and also provides guidelines for future redesigns.

This article presents a study on design models for Educational Digital Games, taking into account learning theories, game design models, game elements and user experience. Through a theoretical framework the research seeks to understand the different perspectives involved in these models, considering the interdisciplinary character of the developer teams and their target users. The aim of the research is to identify similarities, differences, and gaps between the models investigated. Thus, a literature review was conducted and four models for analysis were identified. As a method, both a comparative and a qualitative analysis of these models were used, based on a data analysis spiral combined with an analysis protocol. The analysis sought to identify pedagogical approaches, instructional design aspects and other elements involved in the design process. Game elements and user experience were also considered relevant for the analysis. As a result, this research presents a hybrid model which complements the analyzed models, using the investigated framework as a structural basis to assist developers and content specialists when designing educational digital games for teachers and students, according to the learning objectives and the theme addressed in the game. Finally, this article presents a brief analysis of the results obtained and considers how the present study may contribute to future investigations.

Emergency services usually prepare for the most frequent or predictable types of disasters, such as fires. However, preparation for complex, unpredictable disaster scenarios is infrequent, probably because of high resource demand and difficulty of covering dynamic training needs of multiple stakeholders. The use of serious game techniques as the core of simulated or virtual training tools opens for new ways of training and learning in emergency and crisis scenarios. However, the number of virtual training tools customized to specific disaster or crisis scenario that address needs of diverse user groups is limited. Existing tools are often tailored with a particular geographical setting and local threats, requiring an extensive adaptation outside the pre-defined settings. This paper describes the co-design process aimed at the creation of an emergency and disaster virtual training tool prototype linked to a Norwegian context. Two co-design workshops were run involving local emergency management actors. The general setting included an extreme weather scenario because of its high probability of occurrence and societal impact. The first workshop was used to gather end-user requirements for the training tool, explore the current gaps in the training practices, information needs and elements to improve training on decision making. In the second workshop, we focused on scrutinizing the detailed design, user interface, training use-case and learning points. Finally, we ran a small-scale usability testing of the initial prototype using SeGUE (Serious Game Usability Evaluator) instrument. The results of the prototype activities and the testing are reported in this paper.

When user experience (UX) issues in information and communication technology are investigated, the application context is usually determined by situations where people use and interact with software systems. In this position paper, we address the specific application context where users are also in the role of customers, although they might not be the one who “bought” the product or service. Customer is here defined in the more general term as the key stakeholder. The paper explores the relationship between the notion of “user-centric” design and the notion of “Customer Centricity”, a concept that has been around in marketing and business already in the so called pre-digital era. Companies agree that the customer should be in the focus of their business. But they do not really follow the core idea of Customer Centricity. This results in the Customer Centricity Paradox: The more data about the individual customer are available at the touch of a button, the more he (In this paper, the term ‘he’ is used for simplifying reasons, but it refers to all genders.) is reduced to a set of data points and serves only as a means to an end. He is not in the focus, he is the product. For this reason, Customer Centricity needs to be rethought and redefined. We introduce and propose the Activity-oriented Customer Centricity (ACC) approach. If companies do not want to turn the Customer Centricity approach against their customers, then they must follow the ACC approach as in the concept of Humane Customer Centricity.

This article presents a Roadmap for user interface designing based on a triad of patterns (data, interaction, and presentation) that comprehends the principles and guidelines from MBUID, HCI, and DCU with the purpose of promoting usability on the final interface. The roadmap is supported by a method, a tool, and languages that allow interface designing. This study is focused on the method only, and it presents the activities and artifacts in detail through its application in a case study in the educational context.

Since the 1960s artists have been experimenting with the multiple dimensions of electronic art. Their art can inform other disciplines, including interaction design. Digital art has led to new semantic structures that can be applied to human-computer interface design. This paper presents an analysis of the semiotics of the digital image and interaction design, and the new semantic structures that are defined by digital art research and praxis, kinesthetic design, cognitive mapping, and cross-modal perception. The paper also proposes the development of new software tools for designing and visualizing the information architecture, navigation, and cognitive and sensory relationships in a virtual information space. These tools can facilitate the exploration of the unique semantic dimensions that define these interactive environments.

The focus of design has recently extended from user and product service systems to public and social service systems. There is a lack of practical studies on what exactly takes place when designing in the public sphere. Whether and how co-design can make a difference when design in public realm? To untangle these problems this paper conducted a comparative study from the knowledge conversion perspective. The first case is design for China village service system without co-design involved while the second case is design for a traditional handicraft service system with co-design approaches included. To get a better understanding, a dynamic model which combined the SECI framework elements with journey mapping format was developed. The analysis and comparison of the two cases through this dynamic model revealed two knowledge journeys which shed light on knowledge conversion in co-design and opened a new direction to study the related fieldworks.

The traditional process of interaction design includes several parts, such as background analysis, character modeling, scenario analysis, concept stage, and evaluation stage. With the application of context awareness model to design process, more context factors could be considered and the system could actively respond to certain action based on user activity model. In this way, the gap between system behavior and user cognition can largely reduce. This study based on the theory of context awareness, aiming at understanding and describing user context awareness mechanism, providing a reference for the establishment of the corresponding model of context aware systems, meeting user context awareness requirement in the process of the cognitive model. Through user’s context aware mechanism modeling, build context perception interaction design model, and explore context aware approach of interaction design.

Computer interfaces have been diversifying: from mobile and wearable technologies to the human body as an interface. Moreover, new sensing possibilities have allowed input to interfaces to go beyond the traditional mouse- and keyboard. This has resulted in a shift from manifest to latent interactions, where interactions between the human and the computer are becoming less visible. Currently, there is no framework available that fully captures the complexity of the multidimensional, multimodal, often latent interactions with these constantly shifting interfaces. In this manuscript, the Human-Computer-Context Interaction (HCCI) framework is proposed. This framework defines 5 relevant interaction levels to be considered during user research in all stages of the new product development process in order to optimize user experience. More specifically, the interaction context is defined in terms of user-object, user-user, user-content, user-platform and user-context interactions. The HCCI framework serves as a concrete tool to use in a new product development process by HCI researchers, designers, and developers and aims to be technology independent and future-proof. This framework is a preliminary suggestion to be matched against other innovation development projects and needs to be further validated.

When the immersive filmwork is experienced by the audiences with head-mounted display,the interactive experience of immersive images lies in that the audiences (users) need to be part of the story in terms of the visual perception experience and the story emotional experience. Construction of interactive narration and the free perspective of panoramic view creates a new mode of narrative experience. The immersive interactive film provide the audiences with a free moving perspective to observe and experience the story in a natural way. The scene narrative has been main moth of immersive film storytelling. The audio-visual sense and the boundless perspective realize the immersion of sense organs, and achieves the realistic experience of a higher level. And the experience relation among audience, image media and image content are be changed.

Experience categories are a methodology designed to understand existing and create new positive experiences. They describe aspects of positive experiences within a given context, for example work. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, it is intended as a proof-of-concept – we show that experience categories can be applied to new contexts. Second, we describe a design process that focuses on the use of experience categories. Here we explore present positive experiences in kitchens, and how smart kitchens can help us to create and support these. Using Experience Interviews, participants described 94 positive experiences they had around kitchen activities. The analysis yielded 17 experience categories for cooking related activities. Based on these categories, we generated concepts to facilitate new positive experiences in the kitchen before, during, and after cooking. We describe this process as well as five concepts including the generation of rituals, trying new things, and supporting each other.

Currently, there has been an increase in the use of Internet Banking, but also cyber-attacks. For this reason, banks invest in physical security mechanisms and provide information to users of their use, since these applications can be accessed by clients with different profiles in experience of using security mechanisms.So that a banking application does not die in its use, it should be usable and, in addition, safe. Although there are studies that indicate that these concepts are opposed, it is observed that there is a need to balance them in the design of Internet Banking interfaces. To measure the usability of a Web interface design, there are several methods of usability evaluation, but the inspection method is the most used, specifically the heuristic evaluation technique. Nielsen Heuristics are the most used, but according to studies, these heuristics are not complete for the various Web software domains that exist in the market and that does not cover security aspects either.Given that there are few studies and lack of a formal guide related to the usability and security of Web design of Internet Banking, it is that this paper proposes a set of heuristics for Web sites Internet Banking, based on proposed heuristics in the literature and applied in a case study. Obtaining as a result, Nielsen’s heuristics serve as the basis for a usable and safe Web interface design, but there is a need for other heuristics oriented more towards Security, Satisfaction, Personalization and Navigability.

Eye tracking hardware and software can be used to analyze and improve websites. If conducting an eye tracking study is too costly, examining mouse movement data can also provide similar insights into user behavior as eye gaze data. Prior research has shown eye gaze and mouse cursor position can strongly correlate. The strength of the correlation, however, depends on the design of the website. It is important to determine if mouse tracking is a reliable substitute for eye tracking as new design patterns emerge. Today, there are low-cost eye tracking solutions available, enabling a wider audience to conduct their own eye-mouse correlation studies. In this paper, we use The Eye Tribe Eye Tracker and the analysis software, EyeProof, to find the relationship between eye gaze and mouse position on the Florida Institute of Technology Human-Centered Design Institute website. The results indicate that mouse tracking data may be a suitable substitute for eye tracking data on the studied website and it may be feasible to use consumer-grade eye tracking products to conduct similar assessments.

The System Usability Scale (SUS) is widely used as a quick method for measuring usability; however, past research showed there is only a weak relationship between SUS scores and one behavioral usability measure, and alternatively, SUS corresponds more strongly with user preference. This suggests that the underlying constructs of the SUS may not be well understood. In this study, participants were asked to think aloud while completing a usability test and filling out the SUS. Correlations showed no relationship between behavioral performance and SUS scores. Instead, a relationship was observed between SUS scores and perceived success. Furthermore, participants described a variety of reasons for selecting their SUS responses that were unrelated to the usability of the system, which we have termed rationalizations. This suggests that the SUS is constructed of a combination of experiential components, including attitudinal perceptions. Consequently, SUS scores may be more helpful as a tool for comparison (between competitors, iterations, etc.,) or when used in conjunction with formative usability testing methods to provide a holistic view of real and perceived user experience.

User experience (UX) evaluation and design have become important components of the product development process. The UX describes the users’ subjective perceptions, responses and emotional reactions while interacting with products or services, considering users’ emotions and cognitive activities as the basic elements of the experience. The emotions encompass physiological, affective, behavioral, and cognitive components; the cognitive activities generate and exploit the mental models that govern the human behavior. The literature offers several methods to evaluate the UX; one of them, the irMMs-based method, considers both users’ emotions and mental models to evaluate the quality of the UX. Nevertheless, its current release misses the contribution of users who already know the product under evaluation. This research aims at improving the irMMs-based method by considering also users familiar with those products. The expected benefits of this improvement refer to the completeness of the evaluation results and to the definition of relationships between these results and the evaluation activities that allow them to be discovered. All of this can be useful for both researchers and designers who are willing to increase their knowledge about the generation and exploitation of mental models and to select the most suitable evaluation activities to perform time by time depending on the characteristics of the results they are interested in and on the resources available.

Usability is one of the factors that determines the success of a software system. Aiming to improve it’s usability, it is necessary to evaluate the interfaces using scientific evaluation methods, like questionnaires. Often the results of these evaluations are different when performed by different interface designers, indicating lack of sistematicity of evaluation results. Questionnaires can be automated to support usability evaluation, facilitating the collection and summarization of data. This paper analyzes the automating possibility of a standardized usability questionnaire for further automation. A bibliographical research was carried out about Human-Computer Interaction concepts, usability, usability evaluation methods (including questionnaires) and automation. A systematic review was conducted to identify automated usability questionnaires. The Post-Study Systems Usability Questionnaire (PSSUQ) was chosen to be automated because it is small, free and highly reliable. Analysis of the users and specification of the system requirements and architecture were made.

The work presented here is born of the huge interest in usability, to be more precise, from the interest in evaluating this aspect in user interfaces. And, to be even more precise, from a substantial experience using one of the most used usability evaluation techniques, the Heuristic Evaluation.After reasoning about the use of this technique, a substantial improvement is on development and here first stage is presented. In this work we will see a new list of principles for evaluating user interfaces of any interactive system. The reader will see how the list has been achieved and also a set of specific questions to be answered when analyzing every principle.

Virtual reality games/films/applications bring new challenges to conventional film grammar and design principles, due to more spatial freedom available to users in 6-DOF Head-Mounted Display (HMD). This paper introduces a simple model of viewers’ visual attention in environment of virtual reality while watching randomly generated moving objects. The model is based on a dataset collected from 10 users in a 50-seconds-long virtual reality experience on HTC Vive. In this paper, we considered three factors as major parameters affecting audiences’ attention: the distance between object and the viewer, the speed of objects movement, and the direction of object towards. We hope the research result is useful to immersive film directors and VR game designers in the future.

In the development and use of applications, the User Interface (UI) and User experience (UX) has become essential. The well-adjusted UI and UX are the key features to assess the completeness of the application. As the importance of the UI and UX increases, formal representation of the UI and UX become essential. This paper proposes a formal representation method for ICT application. The method models an ICT application using the discrete event formalism. By utilizing the hierarchically and modular features of the discrete event formalism, a developer or UX researcher may utilize the modeling method to represent and assess the UI and UX of the ICT application. As a case study, this research illustrates how to model a website by proposed modeling method. The case study shows the modeling method can capture the essential behavior of the ICT application.

This study compared the effectiveness and efficiency of two usability testing methods, user testing and heuristic evaluation. Thirty two participants took part in the study, sixteen for each of the two methods. Four measures were used to compare their performance: number of problems identified, severity of problems, type of problems and time taken to find problems. It was found that heuristic evaluation found nearly 5 times more individual problems than user testing, so could be seen as more effective. However, user testing found on average slightly more severe problems and took less time to complete than heuristic evaluation. Heuristic evaluation had a faster problem identification rate (number of seconds per problem found), so could also be seen as more efficient. While each method had advantages in the test both methods are seen as complementary to each other in practice.

Using questionnaires for eliciting data from respondents has a long term history. The present paper focuses on subjects’ preferences towards specific self-administered questionnaire designs and circumstances in which these experiments are carried out. The paper examines three factors, that is, the assistant presence (yes, no), survey form (paper or electronic), and scale type (visual analogue or Likert). A pairwise comparison technique was employed to obtain participants’ opinions. Calculations of the relative preferences were performed according to the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) methodology. The conjoint methodology employed in this study provided partial utilities of the examined factor levels and relative importances for the effects. Apart from verifying the statistical significance of the investigated factors, the analysis of variance revealed also possible interactions between them.

Five requirements can be considered as basic for a standardized and lean measurement of user experience (UX): Comprehensiveness of the assessment, efficiency of execution, intelligibility of items and scales, psychometric quality as well as adaptability to different research contexts and types of applications. meCUE is a questionnaire in German and English that was developed to meet these requirements. It is theoretically based on the CUE model (Components of User Experience) and consists of 34 items which cover the components of the model and their sub-constructs: product perceptions (usefulness, usability, visual aesthetics, status, commitment), user emotions (positive, negative), consequences of use (intention to use, product loyalty), and overall evaluation. Items are grouped into four modules which correspond to these components. The modules were separately validated in a series of studies and meCUE has been used in several surveys to assess UX. Insights from this practical use pointed out that items for instrumental product qualities (usefulness, usability) and those for non-instrumental qualities (visual aesthetics, status, commitment) should not be grouped together into the same module. The new version meCUE 2.0 fulfills this demand by splitting up the module for product perceptions into two sub-modules, one for instrumental and one for non-instrumental product qualities. To ensure that this structural change does not impair the psychometric quality of the questionnaire, two data sets were re-analyzed that had formerly been used to validate the German and English version. The results of the analyses confirm that the psychometric quality of both versions remains intact. Due to the modified structure of meCUE 2.0, investigators are no longer obliged to incorporate items for both, instrumental and non-instrumental product qualities into their studies. Hence, the new version of the questionnaire significantly increases efficiency and adaptability and offers more degrees of freedom for combining its modules.

Given the relevance that is taking the usability evaluation of software systems and especially web-based systems, the present work seeks to provide new evidence in the results obtained by applying combined techniques in usability evaluations. In this work, the process to schedule shipments using a web application was evaluated. First, a heuristic evaluation was performed and then a usability test with user. However, for this specific purpose, both tests will be applied independently to evaluate the results obtained. The evaluations were developed in an academic context.

A method traditionally used to measure the usability level of software products is the well-known usability testing. In this method, people are employed as participants and usability experts commonly use usability metrics to be able to evaluate participants as they interact with the software product from which they want to measure their level of usability. On the one hand, there is a very wide variety of metrics from the ISO/IEC 9126 standard used to measure software quality. On the other hand, the Emocards allow us to obtain user experience metrics. The traditional usability testing, the metrics of the ISO/IEC 9126 standard and the Emocards can be used together to obtain better results. However, the results of five interviews with usability experts from different contexts and nationalities, who have been part of usability testing teams, allowed identifying a series of problems that arise when performing these methods in a traditional way. Therefore, this paper aims to show the tools called UTWebSystem and UTMobileApp, which pretend to be tools of frequent use to support the usability testing process based on usability metrics and Emocards. It is proposed that these tools solve the problems detected in this research. The collaboration of 30 participants and 6 usability experts was requested in order to carry out experiments and validate the importance of these tools. The results of this study have allowed obtaining promising results that encourage considering the use of these tools.

Usability has become in an essential aspect for the success of E-Commerce applications, especially in the current context in which there is high competitiveness because of a large number of websites that are available on the Internet. However, there is little evidence in the literature about the existence of methods that allow specialists to measure the level of usability of the system interfaces through a quantitative approach. The advantage of obtaining a numeric value about the ease of use is the possibility to perform comparisons between different design proposals and determine the best alternative for a specific scenario. Likewise, a quantifying process of the level of usability provide companies with the necessary mechanism to establish the degree in which their web applications are more usable regarding other accessible websites in a highly competitive market. In this paper, we present the results of applying a variant to the traditional heuristic evaluation process to determine the usability degree of two web applications. This case study is intended to serve as a framework for specialists in this field that are interested in retrieving quantitative data in addition to the traditional usability issues that are identified.

User Experience research mainly makes use of self-reported measures to assess the user’s experience when using a technical product, especially regarding hedonic product qualities. Our study investigates whether pragmatic and hedonic qualities can be distinguished using two types of implicit measure: behavioural and neurophysiological. Participants interacted with two different software tools designed to emphasize hedonic and pragmatic qualities, respectively. Their implicit evaluations of the two prototypes were examined with the Approach Avoidance Task (AAT) and simultaneous electroencephalographic recordings (EEG), using snapshots from the interaction scenarios. While the AAT showed no differences, the analysis of event-related EEG potentials revealed differences around 300 ms after stimulus presentation. Significant higher cortical activity in the frontal cortex was found for approach tendencies towards snapshots taken from the hedonic prototype interaction. Higher potentials in the parietal (motor) cortex were found for avoidance tendencies towards the pragmatic prototype. The findings show that hedonic and pragmatic user experience qualities can be distinguished based on neuroelectrical data.

An important pragmatic aspect of user experience is intuitive interaction. Intuitive interaction is defined as the extent to which a product can be used by subconsciously applying prior knowledge, resulting in an effective and satisfying interaction using a minimum of cognitive resources. Despite earlier attempts, it is far from clear how to measure intuitive use on the level of single interactions. This paper reports on the development of CHAI: coding heuristics for assessing intuitive interactions based on observational analysis. An empirical study investigated the validity of the coding scheme in relation to other measures of intuitive use on the task and system levels. The results demonstrate that intuitive interaction assessed with CHAI is significantly related to reduced mental effort and higher perceived subjective consequences of intuitive use. The implications of this finding and plans for future research are discussed.

Background: The concept of user experience (UX) involves many aspects and different perspectives, making it difficult to evaluate the whole set of what UX represents. Despite existing standards, a clear definition of the UX evaluation concerning the identification of the different aspects to be evaluated according to the perspectives forming the UX (user and system), taking into account a given context of use is missing. Objective: Propose a conceptual framework for identifying differences between the UX evaluation perspectives and their measurable aspects. Methods: We followed a qualitative method for building conceptual frameworks. Results: The proposed conceptual framework identifies and associates the main UX concepts, from the user and system perspectives. The obtained plane of concepts provides a better overview of the phenomenon studied. The built framework led to the definition of an objective UX evaluation method: physiological signals are the convergence point between the physical state of the user and the measurement of emotions. Conclusion: The evaluation of UX is particularly important in ICT solutions for health since users/patients must maintain the motivation to continue using technology, in order to guarantee adherence to their treatments or interventions. The obtained framework and method are the first step towards finding suitable and according-to-context UX evaluation processes allowing an improved interaction between user and system.

In this paper, we present an integrated approach to model-based evaluations of interactive prototypes. By combining a state-of-the-art cognitive architecture, Act-R, with an elaborated prototyping tool, Antetype, we enable UX designers without modeling experience to derive quantitative performance predictions for interactive tasks. Using Antetype-Pm, an interface designer creates an interactive prototype and demonstrates the action sequences to complete relevant application scenarios using the monitoring and/or instruction mode of Antetype-Pm. The system learns the interaction paths and predicts the interaction times over trials using Act-R’s symbolic and subsymbolic (i.e. statistical) learning mechanisms. To illustrate the working of Antetype-Pm, an example is provided and contrasted with empirical data.

As other interactive technologies, the promising virtual reality (VR) applications and their success highly depend on the quality of the user’s experience. The present study gives first insights into relations between general and VR specific aspects of user experience by: (1) Analyzing the evaluation requirements for a large-scale multi-user use case; (2) relating evaluation concepts from the fields of (2D) user experience (UX) and (3D) VR experiences; (3) testing these relations by incorporating measurements from different research fields, and (4) discussing implications for a holistic evaluation framework. During and after experiencing a multi-user adventure on the Immersive Deck of Illusion Walk, participants rated their experience with respect to various components of general UX as well as other components specific to VR experiences. The results revealed positive correlations of presence and social presence with most of the employed post-experience UX measures. The relations between the post- and in-experience measurements showed some inconsistencies. Overall, the experience was positively appraised. The results encourage further investigations into integrating measurements from different lines of research in order to explore the evaluation space of VR experiences.

In this work it is proposed an approach based on user experience design for the agile development of web-based software, using the language metamodel. The main motivation was the observation of evidences, in market studies and papers from other researchers, of proportional differences between the usage of agile methods versus methods based on user experience design. This research proposes an approach for the development of web applications using SCRUM, based on UX design, offering the metamodel as a tool to tackle communication problems during this process. The experiments were done in academic and industrial contexts in order to validate and check viability/applicability of the proposed approach: In the academic context, workshops were made for the practical application of the developed approach and information regarding the experiment was collected by means of questionnaires. It was demonstrated that the proposed approach may be viable and may be applied in contexts where it is possible to adopt all stablished recommendations and principles so that the integration between SCRUM and UX happens. It was also used as a facilitating tool, for the integration process, the linguistic metamodel to permeate all existing communication processes, reducing communicational noise related to omission, generalization and distortion of information.

Privacy patterns are design solutions to common privacy problems—a way to translate “privacy-by-design” into practical advice for software engineering. This paper aims to provide a collection of privacy patterns proposed by previous work through a systematic review. The review identifies 19 research papers on privacy patterns and they were retrieved for full-text analysis based on the type of the privacy pattern, the context, design problem, and the proposed solution. We provide a classification of the privacy patterns by applying a mapping process to the ISO 29100 privacy Framework and the Privacy Enhancing Techniques. We found that the currently available patterns barely reference to privacy legislation or laws. They mostly cover the security-network perspective but not the user interface perspective. This paper presents the results of a systematic, comprehensive review that aims at aiding future IT designers with a collection of privacy patterns to match design contexts and benefit from the proposed privacy design solutions.

This paper presents a case study of a web application development project, in which user-centered design (UCD) was successfully integrated in an environment with strong historical and cultural roots in traditional engineering. The case study details the key factors that led to the success of the project in a deeply traditional risk-averse engineering culture, and how the lessons learned apply beyond its scope. Key factors included a design team with experience in the worlds of both design and engineering, a careful selection of UCD methods, and finally a management structure that embraced cultural change.

This work presents an experience report using the technique of Designer Thinking applied in the modernization of two real systems. We used software development in this modernization. In addition, it describes a the participation of a Designer throughout the development process and what the perceptions of project participants are in relation to the benefits of this professional’s involvement in the whole development process cycle. The evaluation of the perception of those involved was carried out through a survey in the form of a questionnaire to analyze the results. The Project has 29 participants and of these 24 responded to the questionnaire. 75% of the participants stated that the prototypes proposed by the Designer were important for carrying out their activities in the project and 92% consider the experience of using prototypes to support the system development functionalities positive.

Cyberinfrastructures have reached their production level as far as their capability to serve researchers and connect big data is concerned. However, users face difficulties while they perform complex operations via cyberinfrastructures by using their user interfaces (UIs), for big data analysis and research. Using these infrastructures users perform operations such as data access, data visualization to complete their research activities. Unfortunately, there are not enough studies and projects conducted so far that provides guidelines to developers to design and develop interfaces that meet user requirements in cyberinfrastructures. These infrastructures are also known as e-infrastructures, big data infrastructures, open data infrastructures, virtual research environments. In this work, guidelines are recommended so that user requirements can directly be incorporated into the design and development of cyberinfrastructure applications serving a particular target audience. In this paper, an example of a cyberinfrastructure is given, using which users can be involved in its design and the development. These techniques can then also be transferred to the designers and developers of other cyberinfrastructures to improve the user experience as well as usability of UIs and associated services. Furthermore, these techniques can be enhanced even further and generalized to meet the requirements of users of applications other than cyberinfrastructures.

Pursuit of innovation projects with the absent of a methodology to follow hampers the development of the software product as its complexity grows since the freedom of its own advancement is confused with the lack of order on it. Traditional and agile methodologies do not adapt to this kind of projects therefore, in this paper we aim to design a model that incorporates characteristics of both of them to get a solution of a need found in society. In this study, we focus on the construction of a mobile application that answer to the lack of a system that integrates pharmaceutical products from different establishment through the appliance of usability concept with the UCD (User centered design) approach. In this case we only detail about four of the seven stages proposed in the model developed with its techniques, tools and activities conducted. Results obtained show that the model proposed achieve the expectative and its use is not limited to just mobile applications but to any kind of software project.

Our research explores the possibility of using intelligent agents to automate some of the design activity and evaluate if this kind of tool can perform as good as a human designer would. Thus, we present an app called Design Thinking Canvas Autonomus that supports and automates the creation of design concepts. The justification to do so comes from the context of design activity being executed within agile projects. From the most prominent themes of this conjunction, Little Design Up-Front stands outs as one of the most important. It corresponds to agile projects’ need of defining a clear objective, while avoiding unnecessary waste in the long run. In order to test if Autonomus could help addressing this need, we tested its performance against a human designer. The results showed that there was not a statistically significant difference between Design Thinking Canvas Autonomus and its human counterpart in all considered criteria. Actually, for suitability factor, Autonomus had a statistically proven advantage compared to human designs (p-value of 0.037), according to specialist designers’ evaluation. It establishes a new frame of reference for agile projects, as the cost and effort to execute Autonomus is significantly lower than a human process.

Meaningful and usable digital assistance systems that support the employees in their everyday tasks seems to be a challenge for many organizations in terms of individual and organizational acceptance including usability, UX, or Work 4.0 issues. Existing software engineering methods are insufficient to integrate employees in the design and development, and to discuss solution concepts of such systems at eye level. In this paper, a lightweight canvas method is presented that shall address these challenges. It includes the human, the business as well as the technological perspective in one communication instrument. First evaluations show that participants appreciate the canvas concept and that the method is versatile in different scenarios. Several questions enrich the discussions about new systems and improve the acceptance as well as the mindset at early stages in the design and development process.

Human-computer interaction (HCI) has been challenged in recent years because of advanced technology requiring adoption of new applications and investigations of connection with other disciplines, to enhance its theoretical knowledge. Design thinking (DT), an innovative and creative problem solving process, provides potential answers to the kind of knowledge and techniques designers can bring into HCI. This paper reports a systematic review of comparison between HCI design process and DT process. A total of 72 peer-reviewed research papers were reviewed published between 1972 and 2017 towards answering the following question: How do HCI and DT processes overlap, differ, and can learn from each other? Synthesizing the findings revealed a description and taxonomy of the variations, success factors, and practices between the two problem solving processes. The review highlights shared process phases with different goals in each suggesting that the two domains could complement each other in various ways, for applications in academia and industry.

In this paper, we discussed a case study on the user experience of a new PLM software system run in a Fortune 500 company. We list the common use cases and made guidelines to solve user experience errors of the software. Each guideline explains the context of the problem with title, explanation, and example included with direction for development improvement.

Requirements elicitation plays a vital role in building effective software. Incorrect or incomplete requirements lead to erroneous software and costs a huge amount of rework. Rework costs in terms of money and efforts are usually higher than the early detection of potential flaws in the requirements. This happens because most of the techniques employed to extract requirements fail to understand end user goals. Understanding your users and their goals is important to build a capable, viable and desirable product or software system. This paper attempts to suggest and evaluate an alternative approach to understand your potential users and their goals so that correct and complete requirements can be formulated resulting in a successful software. We introduce the concept of a tool-guided elicitation process, classify elicitation techniques in term of their suitability in such a tool-guided process, and present an initial study of the usability und usefulness of our prototype called Vision Backlog.

This paper presents a technique to simplify the making of mobile interaction interfaces. We often use smartphones while moving, resulting in non-optimal or even unsafe mobile interactions. Better interactions need to be created with locomotion in mind and experienced in context. Consequently interactive behavior of mobile devices cannot be sketched, but must be made to be experienced. Making mobile prototypes is time-consuming and requires programming literacy. It often involves the making of an input artifact; establishing a connection between artifact and mobile phone; and implementing an application on the mobile phone for exploring the interactive behavior. The use of commercial smartphone automation tool eliminates the need for re-implementing available smartphone functionalities, and invites non-programmers into the process of making mobile interaction interfaces. To illustrate the proposed technique I present a case study of a wearable prototype to control music on the mobile phone by tapping one’s fingertips.

The user-centered design allows the creative teams to focus on the real needs avoiding investing effort in features that will not add value to the product to be elaborated, this also reduces the rework that may result from not being clear about the requirements and assuming the that our experience dictates as a truth as to what may be useful to the end user. Within a multidisciplinary development project in which different specialties are part of the creative process and its implementation, the team members’ skills and experience in each of the involved areas are exploited, for the project to be developed will be a result of the sum of all the parts and not individual work. In consequence, the application of a user-centered methodology with agile development is presented in which the point of view of the different team members can contribute to the development of the software product. This paper describes what the Zuku project consists of, the context in which it was developed, methodologies involved, phases of the project and final results of the implementation.

In the era of big data, many of the data that previously seemed hard to collect and use began to be utilized, resulting in an increase of millions of the data to be processed. In order to obtain valuable information, large-scale data can be processed and analyzed using a well-developed deep learning framework. This study introduces the concept of deep learning and three common deep learning models - Multilayer Perceptron, Convolutional Neural Network and Recurrent Neural Network, and analyzes the improvement of the model in dealing with large-scale data and gives the capacity and diversity analysis. Introducing the innovative application of deep learning in various fields under big data. Looking forward to the development of deep learning in the era of big data, the integration of big data and in-depth learning will make breakthroughs in various fields. Through constant innovation, they will gradually create more value for mankind.