This dissertation documents a journey into the design of Ummeli with a community of semi-­‐literate job seekers in Khayelitsha, Cape Town whose primary access to the internet was through their mobile phones. Working closely with this community over many months, we developed Ummeli, a suite of tools that allow the user to build their CVs; browse and apply for employment and training opportunities; recommend and post jobs; get employment tips and connect to other job seekers. To design Ummeli, Ethnographic Action Research (EAR) was embraced, not as a methodology, but as a research approach, a foundation from which to incorporate participatory approaches to designing Information communication technologies for development (ICT4D). User Centered Design (UCD) was incorporated as a design approach. Ummeli was built by a combination of insights drawn from a lived-­‐in experience, and employing UCD informed methods of participatory design (PD). Here we employed Human Access Point (HAP) a form of PD that allows for a member of the community to be a proxy for the design process. Learn to Earn, an NGO based in Khayelitsha became the HAP, and took the critical role in that they, highlighted, translated, evaluated and represented what was most crucial for the community; their input allowed Ummeli to match the community’s need. In the process, we came across concepts such as Umqweno, which represents yearnings and desires, replacing our own perception systems requirements. Siyazenzela, representing a communal participatory approach to doing life; and Ubuntu, which captures the spirit behind Africa’s communal identity, which were all adopted into the original EAR framework. In this document we set out to demonstrate what it means to be a “reflective practitioner” as we adopted appropriated and reconfigured aspects of participatory UCD methods to fit culturally relevant contexts. The process allowed for constant reflections leading to “aha” moments. In the end, we had created Ummeli, with over 80,000 users, and developed Mediated Design, a culturally indoctrinated xii participatory approach to designing interactive system with and for semi-­‐literate people.

Relative infrequency of communication initiation, particularly initiations that involve attention-sharing or other social purposes, appears to negatively impact the later-life outcomes of children with autism. Strategies to improve or encourage initiation skills in autism are hampered by the need for the behaviour to be spontaneous (i.e. unprompted by a partner). One potential approach that addresses the spontaneity issue is to extrinsically motivate initiations by changing aspects of the child’s environment such that they merit, or even demand, initiating a communication. Detecting subjectively inconsistent (i.e. discrepant) aspects in game-like virtual contexts appears to be something that inherently interests young children with autism, and can motivate them to initiate spontaneous, positive communications. Initial evidence for discrepancy as a communicative motivator came from a study which re-analysed video data from an existing autism and technology project (ECHOES), illustrating that a heterogeneous group of children all reacted frequently and socially to naturally occurring (i.e. unintentional, non-designed) discrepant aspects within ECHOES. A set of high-level design principles was developed in order to capture “lessons learned” from ECHOES that might facilitate re-creation of a similar pattern of spontaneous, positive initiation around discrepancy. A second, proof-of-concept study implemented these design principles in a set of three new touch-screen games (Andy’s Garden) that sought to establish, and then deliberately violate, child expectations (i.e. provide discrepancy-detection opportunities: DDOs). Children reacted socially and positively to the new games and DDOs. The results of this study allow us to answer its overall questions affirmatively: it is possible to motivate children’s communication–specifically, their initiation–by including deliberately-designed DDOs in a set of games. These findings are the first step towards determining whether discrepancy-detection opportunities may form a component of a future technology-based communication skills intervention, capable of changing children’s initiation behaviour outside of a game context.

Evaluating User Experiences early in a development process can save both time and money by pro-actively mapping out user needs and behavior patterns. However, since most well-known UX-evaluation methods applies during or after user interaction, due to the “second-order” design problem of experiences being a byproduct of interaction, there is a desire within HCI for more early-stage UX-evaluation methods that could be applied to concept stages as well. This paper investigates the experiential evaluation of a storyboard and narrative through the Anticipated eXperience Method (AxE) and discusses how it compares to a re-iterated high-fidelity prototype created in Figma. The process of this study is described out of the context it has been executed in, which is together with the company Scania AB at their cabin production facility in Oskarshamn, Sweden. The study explores what insights can be found from evaluating anticipated user experiences in early concept development and how these insights can apply towards further development of a touchpad user Interface. The underlying foundation of this study has followed the approach of a design-inclusive UX-research project, which heavily incorporates design activities into the process of conducting research. Thus, the storyboard, narrative and interactive Figma prototype have been created along the process and takes center stage in the investigation of experiential evaluation at early stages of interactive product development.

The main aim of this thesis project is to select and redesign a website which was originally designed without using the HCI design principles. The website “Atari best electronics” (https://www.best-electronics-ca.com/) was chosen and evaluated using usability heuristics. After finding the flaws in the website, it is redesigned using the HCI design principles using Google sites. The redesigned website is then surveyed using the System Usability Scale (SUS). The results of the survey are presented in the report. Background: The UI/UX of any website increases drastically if the website is designed with the HCI principles in mind. Most of the websites do not follow the design principles. This affects the reach and usage of the website. The users using these websites are very quick to quit. The websites can be designed/redesigned using the HCI designed principles and increase the user experience.  Objectives: The objective of this project is to evaluate the chosen website and redesign it by using HCI design principles and conduct survey to understand the user’s perspective on the redesigned website. Methods: This project uses two methods in order to get results and solution of the proposed research questions. The heuristic evaluation method helps us find the flaws in the website and lets us redesign the website using HCI design principles. The survey evaluation method helps us understand the user’s perspective on the redesigned website. Results: The website is redesigned using the HCI design principles and a survey questionnaire is shared, and the responses are collected, and the results are represented in the form of bar graphs. Based on the results of the survey, we find out whether or not the users liked using the redesigned website. Conclusion: Using HCI principles in designing/redesigning a website increases the usability of the website. After analyzing the survey, we understand that the user experience is greatly affected when a website is designed using HCI design principles.

[pt] O desenvolvimento de sistemas interativos envolve profissionais de várias áreas, dentre as quais interação humano-computador (IHC) e engenharia de software (ESw), cada qual com o seu foco e objetivo. IHC se concentra, de modo geral, em entender as características, necessidades e objetivos dos usuários da aplicação, o seu ambiente de trabalho e as tarefas que eles precisam ou desejam realizar através do sistema. A partir deste entendimento, IHC projeta a interface e interação, tendo como atividade constante a avaliação dos artefatos produzidos. Já a ESw tem como principal objetivo a especificação, implementação e testes das funcionalidades e arquitetura do sistema interativo. Essas duas áreas possuem um objetivo comum: a criação de um sistema interativo que atenda bem as necessidades dos usuários da aplicação. Para alcançar esse objetivo, este trabalho supõe que a comunicação entre os profissionais dessas áreas durante o processo de desenvolvimento é necessária para que se possa criar um entendimento compartilhado do problema e do que deve ser construído e, conseqüentemente, para que a camada de aplicação desenvolvida seja compatível com a camada de interação, mantendo-se a consistência do que será apresentado para o usuário final. Então, para apoiar a comunicação e negociação sobre o projeto da interação entre as áreas de IHC e ESw, esta pesquisa propõe uma ferramenta de comunicação fundamentada na engenharia semiótica, a ComunIHC-ES. Essa ferramenta contém informações sobre o domínio em questão, seus usuários, as tarefas envolvidas e o contexto de uso; uma linguagem para se projetar a interação; e elementos para apoiar a explicação deste projeto para os engenheiros de software. A ComunIHC-ES foi utilizada em um estudo de caso envolvendo profissionais dessas duas áreas e, após a análise dos resultados, obteve-se indícios de sua utilidade no apoio à comunicação e ao trabalho dos engenheiros de software. / [en] Developing interactive systems involves professionals from many areas of expertise, including HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) and Software Engineering (SE), each one with specific focus and goals. HCI focuses, generally, on understanding the users` characteristics, needs and objectives, their work environment and the tasks they need or want to perform using the system. Based on this understanding, HCI designs interface and interaction, constantly evaluating the produced artifacts. SE, on the other hand, aims primarily at specifying, implementing and testing the interactive system`s functionalities and architecture. These two areas have a common objective: to create an interactive system that meets the needs of its users. To attain this goal, this work supposes that, throughout the development process, communication is needed between the professionals from these areas, in order to create a shared understanding about the problem and about what should be built, so that, consequently, the developed application layer will be compatible with the interaction layer, promoting the consistency of what will be presented to the end user. Thus, to support both the communication and the negotiation about interaction design between HCI and SE professionals, this research proposes a communication tool based on semiotic engineering, called ComunIHC-ES. This tool contains information about the problem domain, its users, the tasks involved and the usage context; a language to represent the interaction; and elements that help to explain the HCI design to software engineers. ComunIHC-ES was used in a case study involving professionals from both areas and, after analyzing its results, indications were obtained of its usefulness in supporting both the HCISE communication and the software engineers work.