Design, User Experience, and Usability: Theory, Methodology, and Management

While technology has improved the speed, accuracy, and efficiency of work, its prolonged use also weakens users’ cognitive abilities over time. By creating usable, efficient, emotive, and engaging experiences, HCI researchers and practitioners have inadvertently led users to offload their innate capabilities onto their devices. How should technology be (re)designed so as to reduce the negative effects of on users’ cognitive abilities when used over time? In this paper, we discuss a set of design principles intended to help designers consider how long-term use of their artefacts could maintain and even improve users’ unassisted abilities and reduce negative impacts of over-reliance on technology. We illustrate the design principles by redesigning commonly-used applications, and report the findings from a workshop conducted with digital natives to obtain feedback on these redesigned applications.

It is necessary to accept new users, retain old users, keep users active, promote user consumption, and restore the loss of users, after all websites and products are released online. User operations are almost the core work of the development of each site or product. So what is the core content of user operation? The answer is opening source (to pull new users), throttling (to prevent loss of users), promoting activity (to enhance user activity), Promoting payment (to stimulate the user to pay conversion). In fact, none of the above contents is easy to achieve. So we must apply the basic knowledge of the user operations, combined with the user experience knowledge, to create the operational design thinking. The operational design thinking can help the sites or products to obtain a good user experience.

With the breakthrough of the confinements of materials by Screen Technology, it has ushered in another kind of expression mode, which is detached from the sense of distance featured by technology and is fused with the realistic world. The appearance of the screen media which surpasses the definition of papers but has costs lower than paper would once again subvert the human visual experience and life habits. As a kind of new means of visual language, since the 1960s, interface design has brought the world brand new design concepts and design norms. The human beings’ entry into the intelligent era has been much more rapid than expected, and this has brought design tremendous impacts and challenges, but has also brought the designers boundless possibilities. Under the influence of visual language for interface designs, designers wonder how to conduct designs and in reverse it would aid such an era to a certain place. The Author proposes that in the visual language for interface designs there exists a developmental trend from “fear to be unseen” to “fear to be seen”; meanwhile it is also proposed that the visual language for interface designs features profound effects and behavior planning on the conventional graphic design. This Paper holds that there would be no development of interface design without the screen, and the development map of the interface designs would put forward new requirements on the development process of the screen. It can be said that the screen has shaped the temperament of the modern technological society featuring constant fusion and merging. The appearance of the screen established a boundary, but this boundary possesses boundless integration and merging ability, and this is not only manifested in the externalized substance, but is more manifested in people’s hearts. The boundary between substances is disappearing.

This paper describes an approach to analyzing interpretation of a kind of dynamic, metaphorical interface, which shows contingent changes over time provoking imagination and reflection, so named “lively”. Grounded in the concept of animacy, blending theory, and embodied interaction, the approach integrates interpretive analyses with empirical studies. It includes a protocol of cognitive processes in two stages of use facilitating researchers to speculate the user experience of a lively artifact, to craft interview questions inviting participants to retrospectively express their thoughts and feelings during use, and finally to summarize possible interpretations constituting verisimilar design narratives. To demonstrate, three exemplary lively artifacts are examined in the laboratory.

The era we are facing today, pushing design to the process of paradigm shift, the transformation of thinking is particularly important, so mindset shifting become an inevitable problem. In order to study the shifting of mindset, this research launched a “fair-themed” extending over 2 days’ workshop. Four teams solving a service design problem in workshop have been studied, which providing us with the empirical observation of how teams change their mindset from industrial thinking to service thinking. Firstly, we find the trigger point and push point of mindset shifting, and then we examine the factors work on (spur, accelerate or delay) this process. Multiple, coordinated research methods, including spot observations, structured interviews, oral analysis were used. we would like to provide a reference for cultivating the interdisciplinary talents in the information era.

In a globalized world, collaboration within geographically dispersed team members is becoming more important due to the possibilities given by information systems and the increase in productivity of knowledge workers. Design Thinking is a creative innovation method that is originally performed to enable participants to collaborate successfully in analog workshops. By referring to this initial situation, we hypothesize that a virtual Design Thinking platform can be at least as effective for generating creative innovations as an analog one, if the platform and the underlying processes are designed in an adequate way that enables collaboration and communication. The key question in this research is, consequently, how a virtual Design Thinking platform should be designed to enable effective real-time communication and collaboration like in regular face-to-face Design Thinking workshops.As the guiding approach for our methodology, we apply a Design Science Research approach. In the first section of this paper, we introduce the problem statement as well as a detailed motivation of our research project. Following, we present latest research on telework, virtual collaboration, and Design Thinking as the underlying foundation for our propositions. In section three, we introduce our methodological research approach, introducing our artifact – a virtual Design Thinking platform – and finally presenting our case study and survey results. Subsequently, we discuss the findings vis-à-vis recent research findings and draw conclusions. We can reveal that our virtual Design Thinking platform is applicable for virtual collaboration and team members can produce a valuable, creative and innovative solution in less time than working face-to-face.

Technologies increasingly inhabit ever more mundane and personal settings, a fact that has caused some designers to reflect upon the emergent, inaccessible nature of context. Recently, processless design has been proposed as an important alternative to existing design thinking. Processless design argues that by intentionally leaving out processes, or minimally embedding processes in system design, designers might be able to come up with systems that are more open to different interactional possibilities. In this paper, we extend the processless design idea, and propose customizable processes and appropriable opportunities as two key design ramifications of the original processlessness concept. We argue that processless design supports the ability of users to construct more spontaneous, opportunistic and meaningful experiences in situ., and that processlessness is the key in designing educational technologies for increasing student learning, and in making it possible to account for promoting teacher adoption during the design time.

Documents are closely related to our daily life, from morning papers to various corporate reports, and even to site maps issued by tourist attractions. Before the advent of the Internet in the 1970s, documents were certain physical objects on which significant text and graphic symbols were drawn, written, printed or shown in a way to be visible. With the emergence of the Internet, the presentation of documents has become diversified. Traditional physical documents are gradually replaced by digital documents and those changes have altered how we communicate to each other. Although documents are so important, many documents attract less attention from users due to the lackluster content and to many perplexing problems in information structure, graphic symbols, layout. Document design has accumulated considerable practical experience and design methods nowadays. The design category has also been widening. Digitization can bring freer presentation and wider communication to documents; paper documents also have advantages in reading habits, execution efficiency and convenience. No matter how the information is presented, being easy to understand, being easy to use and creating a pleasant reading atmosphere are still the common goals of all the document designs. On this basis, it is essential to pay great attention on the various of document for different requirement. The accuracy and appropriateness of the collected data will affect not only the designers’ judgment on users’ needs but also the result of design thinking. Design thinking is the methodology of the whole idea and design. It means seeking different possible solutions to different design themes and thinking differently. Design thinking in document design provides the possibilities of document innovation and reconstruction for designers. In the process of design thinking, it is necessary to explore the core needs of users from a large number of research data. Classifying existing documents can help designers clearly know their design objects and better target them during the data collection to obtain valuable design suggestions. In order to categorize document for better design and further research, this study aims to (1) extensively collect existing document samples and classify them, and (2) analyze the spatial coordinate distribution and illustrate design features of these documents.There were 153 document samples collected and screened. The original samples were filtered by excluding with highly similar content and forms. It turned out that 54 representative samples were selected and were analyzed with the KJ Method. Five document types were concluded, including (1) Indicative document: introduce the use of a product or guide users to complete a task. (2) Retrieving document: users seek the information they need from a complex set of information according to visual cues in the document. (3) Dialogical document: there are repeated interactions between users and documents. The document here can be seen as an intermediary; through the document, users talk with the man or the computer at the other end. (4) Feedback Document: Users provide a direct and prompt one-way information on the feedback sheet. (5) Expository document: The document only informs users of the relevant information, without any further interactions with users. The results show that clustering existed in the spatial distribution of these documents in the process of chart making, with which the pattern of readability and interactivity of those sample documents are shown on the distributed plot. The next phase of this project is to further investigate design rules of thumb in document categories. Further research will be continued to perceive useful instruments for executing design practices. Design cases and practical techniques will be extensively inquired for design consultation together with the hidden relationships discovered from this project.

The first step in the design of Internet products is “product strategy” design. “Product strategy” is the core features of the product design. This article tells how to design a scientific product strategy, how to use the “product strategy” to produce “product features”, how to design a “graphical interface” based on the “product strategy”, how to choose “operation” and “delivery channel” based on “product strategy” through the Chinese Internet well-known cases that the author personally experienced. All aspects are evaluated around the “product strategy”. The success or failure of the product is the success or failure of the “product strategy”.

This paper addresses the main findings of a research project on Generation Y interactions, including reflection on the research questions, the conceptual framework, the research framework and designing for interaction qualities. The perspective of this research underwent two big changes through understanding and designing Generation Y interactions. First, we started with demographics, which changed to styles of interaction. Secondly, we worked with interaction qualities instead of function qualities, developed a way to specify them for office situations, and used and evaluated them in design.

The DEED (design-based evidence collecting and evidence-based design thinking) model offers a structure in which designers and scientists can effectively support one another in the development of both design and knowledge. The model offers one possible implementation of the applied and basic combined strategy to research [1]. DEED offers a design strategy that(1)immediately - supports design; in the(2)short term - supports organizational/collective improvements; and in the(3)long term - adds to general knowledge to support society as a whole(4)all while ensuring that researchers do not interrupt the design process, and(5)scales well for small and large organizations.This paper introduces the DEED model, its stages, and explores the distinction between design thinking and the design thinking process. The DEED model is an example of the latter, and is a strategy to gain deep knowledge by building on contemporary design strategies. The DEED model anticipates potential points of concern between designers and scientists working in collaboration and offers a structure to support risk-taking and innovation in a manner that may not be typical of a design process with researcher involvement. DEED offers a robust strategy to incrementally increase general knowledge, and to pointedly improve design.

Designers draw on a significant volume and range of information throughout the design process. This could include information on people, materials, markets, processes, etc. However, not all this information is effectively communicated to and used by designers. In order to provide designers with information that is useful, useable and engaging for them, it is important to understand why designers use information, what information they use and when and how they use it. This will be collectively referred to as ‘information behaviour’ in this paper.

In a time when fake news has captured the attention of the broader public, and claims of algorithmic manipulation make us question everyday sources of information, it is essential that we unpack the ways our thinking and perception interacts with search engine results. Cognitive biases can be created from the common heuristics a person applies to process new information about a topic. These biases can contribute to difficulties in inferential thinking. In this paper, we focus on four potential sources of bias rooted in cognitive psychology that relate to information presentation in search, and unpack how they may affect the way people express their nascent understanding of a topic. Our study used a population-based experiment with 60 undergraduates at a large research university. Our findings suggest that the design of a search interface may cause a user to misapply heuristics, which can be linked to these cognitive biases. We conclude with recommendations for interface designers as well as those who mediate search practices in educational settings.

User experience (UX), with practical roots in Renaissance and theoretical beginnings in Modernism, is a contemporary design practice concerned with how users are impacted by their interaction with a product or a service. As design thinking has shifted from form based arts and crafts toward user-centered and user-serving profession, so have its methods locked in on user-centric research and validation tactics. Yet, something crucial seems to have been lost in the process – that of direct first hand experiences as triggers of user empathy that reveals their latent desires for speculative innovation. As such, UX is facing a philosophical conundrum: while it seeks to serve the experiential needs of others, it has come to reject experiences as its primary source of insight and inspiration. This article discusses the experience-centric design process of Black Flame, a novel induction cooktop product interaction. The case serves as a philosophical call to self-reflection and action to the HCI, Design and Information Systems communities to embrace empathy, speculation and design activism as avenues via which to advance human-technology interactions and the increasingly ubiquitous forms of experience.

User participatory design is considered to be one of the best methods for understanding the needs of a target audience and creating high quality, well designed solutions to meet their needs. For many design students, the principles of participatory design in the creation of new user experiences are part of their curriculum. However, the involvement of disabled persons into the user experience design (UXD) process can be difficult in an educational setting. Often persons with autism and cognitive disabilities are excluded from user experience data collection due to their lack of sufficient cognitive ability and language skills to participate in these research methods in meaningful ways. Further, educators may shy away from involving this group due to institutional regulations and ethical concerns. This paper presents a case study introducing design students to inclusive UXD strategies and observing autistic children, using an approach called the “Connectivity Model”. The model avoids the requirement for complex ethical clearance by facilitating observations via recorded videos. We present outcomes and evaluate the model against the most pertinent needs of these children.

Design thinking is a phase of thinking fast with high-intensity, and cognition phase is also a very complicated process, in which the perspective of observing and pondering on design matters often directly affects the process and results of design. Some distinguished scholars have provided different perspectives for us to understand the world around us, such as E. H. Gombrich’s “Reflections on Main Project”, Rudolf Arnheim’s “Vision is Thinking”, Michel Foucault’s “The Eyes of Power”, and Heinrich Wolfflin’s “Reflections on Form”, among others.In the long-term design practice and research, from the “Complementary Perspective”, the author finds that the cognitive intention is rooted in the Chinese traditional thoughts and culture, and perceives the objective world with a unique way. As Lao Tzu said, “Distinguishing the right from the wrong is the basic rule of life”. From the opposite side, we should observe, analyze, and understand the design matters in a thinking mode of “tackling both extremes” to break through the limitation of one-way thinking. In the dynamic activities of opposition and complementation, noting the rheology between the opposite and the complementary relationship behind enables us to “sense” the “phenomenon” that others analyzing architecture failed to sense, which can help the design cognition become more comprehensive and the innovation deeper.“Complementary Perspective” aims at broadening design thinking, constructing, organizing and creating a more comprehensive cognitive pattern based on the diversity, unity, and integration of design, contingency of decision, and varieties of possibilities in problem solving. Specifically, Complementary Perspectives include positive perspective, and opposite perspective; common-seeking perspective, and difference-seeking perspective; ego perspective, and non-ego perspective; ordered perspective, and disordered perspective; and traditional perspective, and prospective perspective, and among others.

Background. Understanding the relations between user perception and aesthetics is crucial for web design. But it is frequent in today’s graphic and media design that rules, established by practitioners even before the advent of Internet and still untested empirically, are taught at design schools and widely used for online interface design. So far, there is no well-established linkage between the in-class recommendations and our empirical knowledge on usability, for which design plays a role just as crucial as web projecting. Will webpages that are better from the designers’ viewpoint perform better in terms of usability? And can one have a list of recommendations tested empirically?This is especially important for large-scale organizational web spaces where design plays a huge role in brand recognition and visual unity. Large web spaces need complex ergonomic assessment both on the level of selected nodes and on that of architecture/navigation. Of many large web spaces, university portals suit best for elaboration and pre-testing of such a methodology, as they serve various publics, contain sub-domains, and often face criticism for their user-unfriendly design and messy structure.Objectives. We aim at creating a two-level usability expert test for a large web space that would be based on design recommendations tested empirically, thus eliminating the necessity of tech-based assessment of newcoming products. In this paper, we elaborate the node-level methodology. For this, basing on leading design literature, we create a page usability index (U-index) for ‘good’ design that provides quantitative measurement for traditional design decisions on the micro- and macro-level of a web page. Then, we test by eye tracking whether ‘better’ design (corresponding to higher U-index values) favors a particular pattern of content consumption – not ‘random search’ but more efficient ‘reading’.Research design. To check whether web design measured qualitatively correlates with perception of web pages as tested by eye tracking, we first define target nodes by collecting the hyperlink structure and constructing web graphs for three web spaces of the biggest universities in the USA and Russia (Harvard University, Moscow State University, St. Petersburg State University). For this, we combine web crawling and web analytics. Second, we construct the U-index with the maximum value of 22. Third, to assess user perception of the target web pages, we create a series of tasks on information search and measure three test parameters (number of eye fixations, duration of fixations, and saccade length) and their derivatives, as well as heat maps. To avoid bias in quantitative measurement, we use two eye trackers (one head-fixed, one stationary) to test the results in parallel. Fourth, for finding correlations between U-index and eye-tracking results, descriptive statistics (Spearman’s rho and Cramer’s V) is used.Results. First of all, our results suggest that various types of eye tracking hardware produce very different test results; this implies that eye tracking research always needs pre-testing. Second, we see that heat maps may be very suitable in express assessment of the web design quality, which speaks in favor of preserving some eye tracking tests in the final methodology. Third, we see substantial difference between Russian universities and Harvard: the latter, indeed, shows that features of web design correlate with eye tracking experience of the assessors, while for the Russian university websites, even after their repeated attempts of redesign, it remains unclear whether web design contributes to better user experience. For Harvard, the web pages with a higher usability index tend to facilitate ‘reading’ instead of ‘search’. Fourth, micro-level elements of the layout seem to contribute more to the general index and, thus, may deserve bigger attention of web designers.

Infographics become viral on the internet and social media, offering people visual information in an easy way to consume and share. The design, story, and data all play an important role in infographic. However, the latter two were less explored than the first one. Hence, this study conducted an association analysis between the two variables, “content topic” and “appeal type” from the infographics which received more than 10000 page views on Visual.ly. The study comprised the two phrases. Phase 1 aimed to classify the categories for both the two variables by card sorting and cluster analysis. Next, association analyses were performed in phase 2 to discover the connections between the two important factors of infographics. The results were as follows. (1) The content type was divided into the four categories: “statistical data”, “original insight”, “life issues” and “development progress”. (2) Web infographics adopting “rational appeal” were more than those adopting “emotional appeal”. (3) A significant association did exist between content type and appeal type. Rational appeal was usually used with the contents of statistical data, and emotional appeal was usually applied in the topics of development progress and life issues. Overall, the findings could serve as a foundation for further studies in infographic, and enable designers to enhance users’ experience in visual communication.

Graphic designers utilize colors or various combinations of colors to express information effectively. However, the information expressed by colors may be lost when viewers are color blind. This paper presents a system for the color blind which can minimize information loss by automatic information loss detection and color compensation. The proposed system is operated in a mobile device, and for hardware and software independency, it periodically takes a screenshot. To test possible information loss, the system generates the simulated model of the screenshot and applies the equivalent segmentation algorithm to the screenshot and the simulated model. The possible information loss is then estimated by measuring the ratio between the number of groups in the original design and that in the simulated model. When possible information loss is detected, color compensation is applied to the screenshot. For inexpensive computation, a color compensation algorithm which does not require color space transformation is utilized. Simulation results show that the proposed application enables color vision deficiencies to receive information expressed by colors.

Except for the basic function to replace walk, current customers also desire mini car can reflect the trends of the time. So it has been an important consideration for enterprises to meet customers’ emotional needs. The research will understand the preference for mini car production among different age groups of consumers in depth by Miryoku engineering theory. Evaluation Grid method provides a way to analyze attractive factors of the products among related researches on Miryoku engineering, which extracts the median original evaluation (customers’ demands), the lower specific reason (product details) and the upper abstract reason (users’ emotions) by deep interviews to experts and thus sorts out the structure network map of the evaluation of the products from respondents. At last, the quantification theory I establishes a functional relationship between the abstract upper emotions and the specific design details in the kansei data, and analyzes the influence weight among the attractive factors. Four attractive factors related to mini car were concluded. Among such attractive factors as “fashionable”, “delicate” and “elegant”, red car color maximally stimulates the consumer’s positive emotions while the thick car body has the greatest negative correlation with the “light” attractive factor. The innovation method proposed by this research can rapidly obtain user’s needs, shorten the overall operation steps and improve the development efficiency. Meanwhile, the method can be effectively used in other industrial product designs.

The purpose of this study was to explore university students’ web browsing experience, including usability preference, aesthetics and perceived value. The experimental samples were a set of four web pages with 45% and 55% of white space and from narrow to wide spacing. Thirty-five participants aged between 18 and 24 years were recruited by purposeful sampling to conduct the operational evaluation. It was interesting to note that even though the samples were centered around 50% of white space as previous studies suggested, three questions revealed significant differences: “I found the web page unnecessarily complex,” “the layout appears too dense,” “this web page would help me to feel acceptable.” The result also indicated that most participants preferred more white space, which could help designers to design web pages more accurately in accordance with user preferences.

Visual conventions are perceptually efficient graphic agreements with common-sense like referents and are commonly used in what we interact with in daily life. It becomes a studying-worthy issue on whether such conventions can enhance performances and reduce cognitive load when we perceive and reason about new knowledge. Furthermore, whether the visual conventions can affect experts, who have prior knowledge and design experience about different visual encoding principles the same degree as novice who have no background knowledge in this area, is another research focus in this study. Our research is carried out according to action features when we read visualizations. Four task features are extracted, based on which behavioral and eye-tracking measurement were conducted, that is data localization, simple and complex data comparison, and knowledge inference. Both expert and novice participants were enrolled in our experiment. The result indicates that conventional elements in visualizations can hugely improve performances in more complex tasks involving higher-level cognition, like making comparisons and reasoning about new knowledge. The performance improvement can be seen from shorter response time on achieving conclusions and higher accuracy rates. Meanwhile, cognitive load, which can be measured from shorter total fixation duration and fewer fixation counts in AOIs, is reduced through applying visually conventional features. No statistically significant difference is found in comparing perceptual and inferential outputs of expert and novice group. We draw conclusions that visual conventions in visualizations can better performance in relatively complex activities, and it can be equally perceived and acquired regardless of the user’s knowledge background is. What we conclude in this study can be extended to areas of dynamic data visualization and layout design in the digital interface domain.

To further study on the relationship between users’ perception of style image and product shape features, a research method of product feature image based on the NURBS curve was proposed. The experimental study was conducted with the example of goblet. Firstly, the key control points impacting the shape features were extracted and a plurality of products 3D models were constructed. Secondly, five representative products and three key images were selected by the methods of hierarchical clustering and factor analysis. Then, the Kansei Engineering evaluation system of goblet was established, with which the subjects conducted Semantic Differential experiment for a thirty-three products with different shapes, and the data were analyzed by multiple regression analysis as well. Finally, the mapping model between the control points and Kansei images was constructed and its reliability was verified. This mapping model accurately reflected the relationship between the various control points and different style images, this research method can be applied to the modelling design of other products, which can help the designers grasp the product style accurately. This paper would play an important guiding role on product development and creative design.

In the Chinese aesthetic experience, Daqi is an important and representative emotional experience. However, it is not easy to express the Daqi in appropriate words. As the concept of complexity, how to measure and what is the concrete composition of Daqi are the focus of this paper. Based on cognitive integration of Daqi, this paper puts forward the quantitative research method of human emotional experience. This method first uses the text analysis to extract the representative vocabularies as the Daqi measurement indicators. Then Professional researchers grade the stimulants of the Daqi of multiple dimensions, calculate the proportion of Daqi indicators by SPSS factor analysis, and get a formula of Daqi. Finally, this formula is tested and refined by large-scale stimulus experiments. Cognitive quantitative method of emotional experience of Daqi is different from the previous emotional behavior analysis method and more conducive to analyze the deep causes and stimulating factors of emotion, enriching the depth and breadth of the emotional experience experiment. While the quantitative formula established by the research can be applied to product and visual design, sociology research and other specific areas, playing a guiding and testing role.

A usability evaluation technique, Cooperative Usability Testing with Questions of Understanding (CUT with QU) intended to illuminate users’ ability to understand the content information of an application is proposed. In complex application domains as for instance the eHealth domain, this issue of users’ content understanding is sometimes crucial, and thus should be carefully evaluated. Unfortunately, conventional usability evaluation techniques do not address challenges of content understanding.In a case study within eHealth, specifically the setting of a rehabilitation clinic involving the participation of four physiotherapists and four clients in a period of 3.5 months, it was demonstrated how CUT with QU can complement conventional usability testing and provide insight into users’ challenges with understanding of a new complex eHealth application. More experiments in other complex application domains involving different kinds of users and evaluators are needed before we can tell whether CUT with QU is an effective usability testing technique of wider applicability.Performing CUT with QU is very demanding by drawing heavily on the evaluators’ ability to respond effectively to openings and potential shortcomings in the users’ content understanding. Evaluators need to train this interview/examination process in order to be able to reach a proper insight of the user’s content understanding.If CUT with QU after more research shows to be inadequate, the motivating research question behind this experimental study remains important: How can “content understanding” effectively be brought into usability testing in complex application domains?

Understanding user experience (UX) during e-commerce has been a relatively important research area especially in the last decade. The use of conventional methods in UX such as task-observation, in-depth interviews and questionnaires has already contributed for the measurement of the efficiency and effectiveness. This empirical study has aimed to make use of both conventional and neuroscientific methods simultaneously to provide a richer analysis framework for understanding the product search experience of the first-time buyers. The current work provides insights for the results from the combined use of conventional and neuroscientific-biometric methods in a UX study. Although this has been an exploratory study within a limited literature, the obtained results indicate a potential use of these methods for UX research, which may contribute to improve the relevant experience in various digital platforms.

The characteristics of mobile devices and their applications have led to changes in the way these systems are developed and tested. Usability tests are stages of development that are under constant modifications, since it is being taken into account that traditional techniques may not be sufficient to accomplish the testing activity for mobile devices. For example, the User Observation and Filming/Verbalization techniques involve the use of secondary devices to record the data. This may be a problem as the testing activity can become more complex and less comfortable for the users/evaluators. Aiming to present a strategy to minimize this issue, we are presenting the ErgoMobile environment that was developed with the main objective of avoiding the use of secondary devices since it can be installed directly in the mobile device and can collect images from the camera, sounds from the microphone and store interface snapshots. Initial tests presented that this tool behaves well when working in conjunction with other mobile applications, collecting good amounts of data and working in the background and practically had not created any disturbances to the participant or to the evaluator.

Diverse heuristic sets were proposed in order to evolve Heuristic Evaluation for new contexts, as contexts related to the elderly and mobile devices. However, heuristics for evaluation of mobile usability regarding elderly users still need aditional validations. For this reason, our study aimed to enhance the validation of a heuristic set proposed by Al-Razgan et al. for evaluation of mobile usability regarding elderly users. Results showed that the major part of heuristics proposed by Al-Razgan et al. matches with traditional heuristics of Nielsen, while a few remain valuable for evaluations in this context. Also, after validations, we found evidences that the heuristics of Al-Razgan et al. have a great coverage of usability problems of mobile applications used by the elderly, as detected from test with users.

After having produced many criteria to improve accessibility, ease of use, emotions linked to interactions, persuasive design, cultural values attached to systems, socio-organizational contexts, the domain of HCI must conduct a reflection on the structuring of these criteria. The aim of this paper is to advance research in the field of user experience criteria by understanding how UX professionals organize their cognitions around the criteria set. For this, we conducted a study of its classification with 17 experts. The set of 58 cards was presented by explaining that each card represents a criterion. The experts were asked to do an open card sort, to name the groups of cards and, upon completion, to explain the logic they had based their sorting on. On the basis of several statistical analyzes, the results show a categorization into 8 main classes: (1) Utility (task-system suitability, achieving the goal, efficacy) and Pragmatism (ergonomic criteria, efficiency); (2) Hedonism, Pleasure, Emotions; (3) Persuasion, Incitement, Pervasive design; (4) Emotional & Cognitive Stimulation for self-development; (5) Marketing strategy/Customer Relationship Management; (6) Security/Reliability-User’s protection; (7) Organizational factors; and (8) Social, moral and/or cultural factors. This article proposes a multifactorial approach to UX which is based on these 8 dimensions that combine and coordinate with one another.

Context-of-use is a vital consideration when evaluating the usability of mobile applications. Thus, when defining sets of heuristics for the usability evaluation of mobile applications, a common practice has been to include one or more heuristics that consider context-of-use. Yet, most evaluations are conducted within usability labs. Consequently, the aim of this research is to question the utility of attempting to include inherently complex areas of context-of-use within limited sets of mobile application usability heuristics. To address this, a mapping study uncovered six sets of heuristics that can be applied to mobile application usability evaluations. A within-subjects empirical test with six Human-Computer Interaction practitioners evaluated a well-known travel mobile application using three sets of the mapped heuristics. The study found that the common practice of including context-of-use within mobile application usability heuristics is an ineffective approach.

User Centered Design (UCD) Process facilitate the approaching to people in order to determine use and design requirements throughout applying diverse techniques for obtaining qualitative and quantitative information, including social, emotional physical and cognitive user’s characteristics, as long as system interface requirements. User Interface Design (UI), Interaction Design (IxD), Design of Experiences of Use (UX), and the Ergonomic approaches aid design teams clearly define objectives to be met, knowing the level of development they have got in an specific stage of the design process, and ensure during the process goals do not change but instead, evolve according to emerging information that arises from Users interaction. Iterative processes along design enable implementation of formative and summative assessments through the use of prototypes in order to evaluate interactions and allowing the process feedback. As a systemic approach UCD has recursive characteristics which in some stages of its process, like Inquiry and Evaluation, are of paramount importance to adequately accomplish tasks of problematisation and assessment, by diagnosing whole system in which Users are immerse. By giving Users voice during the design process, being either novice or expert Users, Inquiry and Evaluations stages of the UCD process, aids accurately reflecting detailed characteristics the Interface must have, and at which degree Design goals have been reached out.

The usability assessment of software systems is becoming more relevant, especially when it comes to web-based systems. A well-built and user-friendly website is capable of capturing a potential customer. There are different methods to evaluate usability, including heuristic evaluation and usability testing with users. In the present work, the critical functionalities of an airline’s website were evaluated, such as the purchase of tickets, flight reservations, among others. First, a heuristic evaluation was performed and then a usability test with users. The evaluations were developed in an academic context and the participants were postgraduate students of a university. The problems detected in the first evaluation served to define specific tasks in the usability test with users. In this way, the results of the evaluations were complemented.

Research has shown that the perceived usability of a web artifact is influenced by its perceived aesthetics: a high-order construct composed of two lower-order dimensions (classical aesthetics and expressive aesthetics). However, in the mobile domain, where usability is very important in human-computer interaction (HCI) given the relatively small screen size of the mobile device, limited research has investigated: (1) which of the two dimensions of visual aesthetics is the stronger predictor of the perceived usability of a website; (2) how the classical dimension impacts the expressive dimension; and (3) how culture moderates the relationships among the three HCI design constructs. To address these questions, we conducted a study of the perceptions of four systematically manipulated mobile websites and modeled the relationships between perceived usability and the two dimensions of perceived aesthetics. Based on a sample of 233 participants (87 Canadians and 146 Nigerians), our models account for 30% to 80% of the variance of perceived usability. They show that classical aesthetics is stronger than expressive aesthetics in predicting the perceived usability of a mobile website, irrespective of the level of aesthetic treatment of the user interface and culture, with the effect size being larger for the Nigerian group than for the Canadian group. Moreover, the models reveal that classical aesthetics strongly influences expressive aesthetics. Our results suggest that what is classical is expressively beautiful and usable. The significance of our findings is that in mobile web, there is need for designers to pay closer attention to classical aesthetics given the strong influence it has on perceived usability.

This paper presents the results of a case study, in which the Semiotic Inspection Method (SIM) was applied to a transactional Web application of hotel reservations. The purpose of this assessment was to determine the degree in which the designers achieve to communicate the users their design intents through the system interface. This inspection, whose purpose was essentially academic, involved the participation of three students from the undergraduate program in Computer Engineering. The analysis of the different types of signs allowed to conclude that although there are some aspects that need to be improved, the level of communicability of this software is acceptable.

This research presents a set of UX heuristics for cross-channel interaction scenarios. The proposal has its foundation on usability principles evolution derived from gradual technology innovations, new interaction possibilities, as well as, changes in users’ needs and affordances during the last decades. The beginning of the third wave of computing brings a pervasive scenario of ubiquitous ecology systems and cross-channel interactions, where user experiences permeate distinct touch points with a system to create a narrative of experience. A journey in a dinamic ecosystem of interaction.

Information driven websites main goal is to provide updated and relevant content to the user according to business goals. Website’s user experience evaluation differs from transactional web applications such as e-commerce, e-banking or travel because in addition to usability and accessibility; aesthetics, content, trust and persuasion must be considered for project success. However, since user experience is an emergent field with several frameworks and methods, it’s necessary to evaluate which ones have been used previously. This paper presents the results of a systematic review aimed to identify the state of the art in methods, tools and criteria used to evaluate the user experience in information driven websites.

User Experience Design approaches typically rely on the creation of various concrete artifacts that are constructed and refined during the iterative course of an UX project. While the respective details and, correspondingly, the labels to designate resulting artifacts might vary, we often find Personas and Scenarios for consolidating insights in the Research Phase of a project; Scribbles, Wireframes or Mockups for spelling out our ideas in the Design Phase; and the use of (interactive) prototypes in an Evaluation phase, where we document usability findings in Usability Reports. In this paper, we introduce the concept of a UX Metrics Table, a comprehensive artifact that supports UX designers by guiding their project activities and by helping to derive an informed decision about the termination of iteration cycles. To exemplify the use of a UX metrics table and example is presented showing the application of the UX metrics table in a summative evaluation project.

This paper focuses on the information construction of 4D evaluation system of Information interaction design (IID). The paper provides a specific and effective evaluation criterion for complicated procedures of IID including information processing, interactive logic, and behavior perception, and systemizes it by virtue of application verification, with a view to ensuring that the goal of IID can be achieved. The 4D evaluation system of IID is constructed by designing the evaluation system of IID comprehensively in four dimensions, namely “environment”, “user”, “technology” and “product”. Multiple values of IID (e.g. culture, aesthetics, user, ease of use, popularization of science, and dissemination) are unified in the model of the evaluation system. By constructing the 4D evaluation system of IID and the general process that integrates it with information interaction design, it is intended to find the paths that combines design theory and design practice more closely. Meanwhile, based on the application of information technology in information interaction design, a new way of information interaction that is oriented to the future, stands to reason and meets the demand of users will be also envisaged.

Traditional user research methods, while vital to understanding software application users, can be slow to implement and learn from. Even after results are analyzed, behavioral intention, not actual user behavior, tends to be better understood. To complement this approach, big data and behavioral analytics can be used to quickly learn more about actual user behavior, thus converging data with design. This is important within fast-paced agile and continuous delivery environments. At Rapid7, an IT and analytics information security organization, the convergence of data with design has allowed for insights that have informed design decisions, which have met users’ mental models and actual needs. To that end, the software design industry is starting to diverge from the form-follows-function school of design, whereby the conventional approach of the user informing the designer has been reversed.

Nowadays, many Human Computer Interaction(HCI) systems are developed and utilized to the various domains, such as medical field, and entertainment area. To develop an HCI system, a developer should consider developing hardware elements and software elements at the same time. One of the obstacles obstructing the HCI system is that, in the absence of hardware, there is no development environment. This paper proposes a model - based HCI system development environment and development methodology using it. The proposed development environment focuses on the Natural User Interface (NUI) which utilizes HCI’s human movement, and it can replace human and sensor devices by using basic unit model. Also, the developer can test and develop the HCI system by creating a new model by synthesizing the basic unit model to build various patterns of the environment.

Traditional computer use in educational environments does not ensure learning improvement. Consequently, there is a global effort to make and provide more effective and efficient use of new multimedia resources and learning environments. Learning Objects (LOs) are entities, digital or not, which can be used or referenced during teaching. However, multimedia authoring of LOs is still complex and time consuming. In this paper we present a novel process integrating participatory and interaction design which we adopted in the development of an authoring tool involving a multidisciplinary team. As result, this methodology is used in the development of Cacuriá, a multimedia authoring tool for teachers with little or no programming skills to create LOs.

The digitization of industrial manufacturing workflows results in an interconnection between employees, between employees and machines as well as between machines. Lots of information and data about past, current or even predicted states of products and machines arise. Workflows as well as work organization will change due to topics such as big data analytics, machine learning, predictive maintenance, or new work concepts. The direct and indirect interaction between digitization and all new processes of work design and work organization is subject of the research area Work 4.0. Digital assistance systems are able to support the employees in gathering, interpretation and communication with data, machines and colleagues.Despite all efforts, todays software products still lack of quality in respect of inadequate functionality and usability. Thus, current software engineering methods seems to be insufficient and software quality models seem to be only focused on technological acceptance instead of human-centered and business-centered acceptance.This paper presents a human-centered acceptance quality model and acceptance criteria for digital assistance systems with a focus on the industrial manufacturing context. The aim is to enrich the communication and integration of human-centered activities in software engineering methods supporting a common language and understanding of quality goals as well as of metrics for the evaluation of improvements due to the use of digital assistance systems.

The marriage of Agile development processes and User-Centered Design (UCD) has been increasingly attracting interest within the field of software development [1]. Integrating the two can identify the benefits of each in terms of efficient work processes to achieve useful and at the same time usable products as results. While the user-centered design process has a defined structure [2], the understanding of user experience and user interface teams vary significantly across organizations [3]. Similarly, design processes are defined differently per organization without a universal model. For certain teams the User eXperience (UX) team means an entity of all user-related and design-related activities, including user research, benchmarking, creating information architecture, projecting user needs into wireframes, creating user interface visual designs and evaluating with usability testings. Other organizations have differentiated User Research specialists (involved in user insights and usability topics) from User eXperience teams (specified on translating user needs into screens) and User Interface (visual representations of tasks) teams. To our knowledge, very little research has been done regarding such intricacies of team structures when discussing user experience teams in the Agile and UCD integration frameworks. Our paper provides a review of different UI/UX team structures in organizations and their implications in the implementation of projects. With our analysis of different team and role structures we hope to contribute to better understanding of UI/UX teams in design agencies and the influence of this understanding on the success of projects incorporating UCD and agile approaches.

This paper presents an explorative prototype-centric interactions design approach, as applied to the processes of designing interactive products for encouraging sustainable occupant behavior in office environments - the “Office Energy Coaches”. In this approach, iterative making and trying out of prototypes is central to the organization of the design process, and no strict time separation is imposed on design activities, whether of analytical, creative or executive type. Instead of being organized by predefining the type of design activity to be performed during a given phase of the project, the design process phases are characterized only by increasing fidelity of created prototypes. The paper discusses projects from two design studios at industrial design faculties in the Netherlands and in China, where the prototype-centric approach was performed. Despite cultural and organizational differences, in both cases the approach proved to be successful. Fast, iterative prototyping involving interactive technology helped in organizing design teamwork, accelerated obtaining in-depth insights, facilitated conceptualization of meaningful interactions and supported development of experiential interactive product concepts. At the same time, some shortcomings of the approach have been observed, including several forms of fixation that designers faced when prototyping, as well as limitations of prototyping tools impacting the overall process performance. Based on discussed cases, we suggest areas for improving the prototype-centric approach, including recommendations for design methods, techniques and tools aimed at interaction design students and professional designers alike.

Cultural heritage is contemplated as one of the essential components of any society, considered beyond personal, social or national attitudes, its conservation must be done in benefit of humanity. The techniques used for dissemination have been changing over the years, making Information and Communication Technologies the main protagonists. The purpose of this study is the implementation of a native mobile application that disseminates information about the cultural heritage using augmented reality through a mobile phone, in such a way as to create a conducive environment to stimulate learning. Usability becomes an important characteristic in the implementation of this tool as it must be massive and intuitive, reason why it was decided to apply a proposed methodology to integrated Agile Methodologies with User-Centered design and show the software development process under these guidelines.

This paper argues that, from the perspective of interactive prototyping and experience, the hardware technology based on open source and thinking, can promote further development of interaction design research. The purpose of this paper is to explore the design methodology considering interactive prototype design process and experiencing process, and provide theoretical and technical support for the design of interactive products, with open source resources as the platform and task method. The results show that the open source code can be obtained in a variety of formats, and can be freely and easily modified to solve the design problems encountered by individuals or teams, to support the design goals. Through open source resources everyone can get electronic components and a variety of materials, as well as infrastructure and standardization of the production process. So that a number of design elements and open source code can be iterated quickly, having everyone maximize using open source resources efficiency. The design of interactive prototype is based on Arduino/Max6/MSP experiment method and emotional experience method. After the initial design and prototyping, the design concept can be realized. A design route combining usability and ease of use could be established which can be used in the field of industrial design engineering.

Recently, sophisticated robotic toys have commercially emerged into our lives. Apart from being only a toy, some of these smart devices are programmable for accomplishing commands given by the end-user. However, usually, end-users are not experts in robotics or programming. In order to explore the usability issues related to the non-programmers’ experience of controlling the robotic toys, we conducted a user study with non-programmers (N = 9) by using Sphero (a robotic toy) and tested its mobile application, called SPRK Lightning Lab for Sphero, which adopted visual programming language with a block-based coding interface. Our procedure consisted of a pre-test and a semi-structured post-test interview as well as an exploring session for the participants and three tasks with a short semi-structured interview at the end of each task. Our findings, which highlighted the usability issues of SPRK Lightning Lab for Sphero application, contribute to the field by providing design suggestions on using a digital medium and a tangible device together, the usability issues of block coding by non-programmers and learnability in a robotic toy application.

Recent developments in the manufacturing industry are linked to the systematical adoption and deployment of cyber-physical systems (CPS) that monitor and synchronize information between the physical factory floor and the cyber-computational space providing advanced information analytics. While it is widely recognized in literature that the related trend of transforming the manufacturing industry, the so-called industry 4.0, leads to distinct interventions in operations of businesses and public organizations, appropriate governance practices still need to be established. This paper uses a detailed overview on changes going along with the emergence of CPS and industry 4.0 to point out requirements for IT governance approaches supporting the adoption of CPS. The observations are illustrated for an example using the COBIT 5 governance of IT framework.

Software engineering (SE) is a discipline that studies process, methods and tools to build a software. The SE applied in scientific experiments tries to insert those process, methods and tools to build an academic research. One relevant aspect when applying the SE in scientific experiments is the evolvement of humans during the experimentation process. The discipline that studies computer domains involving humans is the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). The HCI is a field that collaborates with the ethical processes of SE. This article demonstrates the relationship of the concepts and how HCI collaborates with the evolution of the ethical aspects of the traditional SE, and its application to scientific computing, including the some of the ethics applied in medicine.

In April 2014, the source of drinking water in Flint, Michigan, was changed from Detroit to the Flint River. This resulted in dangerously high levels of lead and a coinciding rise in cases of Legionnaire’s Disease. In response, the Flint Area Community Health & Environment Partnership (FACHEP) is monitoring the amount of Legionella bacteria in home water systems. The complexity and scope of the water sampling is daunting: nearly 200 Flint area homes were tested in 2016 alone; each home has three sampling locations with a distinct set (or kit) of collection components and procedures to ensure accurate analysis; and individuals with different levels of sampling experience are assembling and using the kits. Managing the large volume of water samples and materials requires careful preparation and training; the FACHEP Water Sampling Kit Assembly Guidebook was developed to address this need. This paper describes the context and decisions that framed the design of the Guidebook, a user-centered training tool enabling individuals with a wide range of scientific background to accurately and efficiently assemble sampling kits.

Recent advances in mobile technology have seen a sharp increase in the number of mobile applications across various application domains. The challenge remains that many software development teams may lack appropriate competences to design usable and human-centred interactive systems. This can negatively affect the usability and the user experience. In this article, we present how to learn the human-centred design process using an authentic learning approach. Students need to investigate, discuss, construct new knowledge and apply theoretical concepts to address real world problems. The main purpose of authentic learning as a pedagogical approach is to position the subject of study into a realistic context. That gives life to learning content from a theoretical, abstract level into a more professional, real-world context. Our study considers a post-graduate level course. The learning experience includes flipped classroom and problem based learning through a design project. Learners define a real-world problem to be addressed by a design solution. One of the intended learning outcomes is the learner’s ability to use prototyping techniques for mastering HCD process. Learners use prototyping tools in the same way as professionals in the field. At the end of the course, students demonstrated mastery of key methods and techniques as well as the psychology foundations, and tools used in interaction design. Summative assessment results confirmed that authentic learning approach leads to deep learning of key concepts and development of a skills set necessary for designing usable interactive systems for human use.

Several methods are available to converge ideas, choosing concepts more suitable for the problem to be solved. Relations between concepts and combination of ideas are limited to time constraints and designers’ cognition during decision-making meetings, let some possible choices not available for discussion. Understanding those constraints, is paramount to propose approaches that take advantage of current technology advances. Nowadays, computers can storage high amount of data and computational algorithms may infer combinations not considered before by humans. Taking this perspective, this text investigates the computational generative design as a tool to evaluate patterns emerged in the ideation phase of a design team creation. Designers can benefit of our approach in the ideation phases of the design process to have insights, unusual and disrupted ideas facilitated by technology.

Today’s students on programs covering interaction design will most likely contribute to the development of products that we will use in the future. The roles they will play in this regard will of course depend on various factors. Regardless of this, their educational background is a vital component, along with their motivation, personality, knowledge, and ideas. The present study reports on an online questionnaire (n = 82) given to students on interaction design programs. Additionally, eight qualitative interviews were performed to gain more insight. The findings show that, in general, the students of today perceive themselves to be in great shape for the development of future products. However, the majority of the respondents have also considered other study areas that might be relevant to them, grounded in shared backgrounds and interests. They also enjoy working individually with design ideas and prototypes, and they generally prefer working with digital solutions over working with print and physical products. User testing is found to be a vital element within the design process, although the analysis of such data is found to be somewhat difficult. Concerning industrial needs, the students struggle to clearly define the role of an interaction designer and the tasks they are expected to perform when taking on a job within the design industry. This paper ends with concluding remarks and suggestions for upcoming research contributions.

The aim of this study is to discuss creativity in designing digital media products. It especially looks at the differences between creativity in digital design and in print-based design. It also presents a brief description of the main characteristics and aspects of both creativity in design and creativity in digital design. Some definitions and methods in these areas are also reviewed. The impact that the differences in digital design and in print-based design can have on the designer’s creativity while designing projects is discussed, focusing on three differences: user-centred design approach, design guidelines, and designers’ knowledge of digital technology. This discussion raises three research questions related to creativity in digital design, which are briefly answered and suggested as subjects of further research.

Many methods have illustrated to demonstrate how the user experience (UX) influenced on our lives. The notion of UX is much more complicated since it has combined psychologists, social and physiological concepts. However, only a few universities and institutions in China have established the discipline that combined UX and psychology. This paper presents a different perspective of promoting combination of user experience and applied psychology. Based on the talents cultivation of User Experience, Master of Applied Psychology of the Faculty of Psychology at Beijing Normal University is the successful program from the psychological perspective. An additional reason of establishing this program is to cultivate professional talents who have great capability on psychological experiments and analytical methods in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and User Experience (UX) field.

Within the online education community, the rate of the course completion is relatively low. To improve learners’ satisfaction, there is a growing interest in designing the course contents as well as the way of their presentations online. In this paper, in order to promote user experience for online education, the design of knowledge graph is applied as an effective way to organize the diverse course contents with well-designed structures. The knowledge graph is designed to scaffold learners having a clear framework of the contents, and to push learners to acquire knowledge with accessible and explorable ways in the online learning scenario. Also their learning continuity is expected to be extended through the way of knowledge graph. Three particular implementations of this design from online UX design education projects are demonstrated to illustrate the design process of knowledge graph and its effectiveness in promoting user experience for online education. In addition, specific issues emerging from the design of knowledge graph are discussed. Considerations for its further application to other online education fields are also put forward.