<p>Systems engineering (SE) is an increasingly relevant domain in an increasingly interconnected world, but the demand for SE education is impeded by the challenges of effectively teaching interdisciplinary material that emphasizes the development of a mentality over specific skills. A modularized, asynchronous, distributed course configuration may provide an advantageous alternative to more traditional hybrid course designs. Online courses have been a topic in the educational field since the establishment of the internet. However, the widespread disruptions to higher education due to the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the demand for and difficulty of developing deliberate and robust learning environments designs that consider a variety of traditional and non-traditional students. This thesis presents a case design of a learning environment for an interdisciplinary-focused, introductory graduate-level systems course that has previously been designed for, and taught in, a hybrid environment. The case design will emphasize the information architecture (IA) and user experience (UX) prototype design of the learning environment as informed by user-centric principles, cognitive theories and analyses, the IA literature, and existing course content. This focus on learner knowledge development (“beyond-the-screen”) factors rather than the direct user interface (“at-the-screen”) provides design recommendations and insights that are robust to changing user interface trends and preferences. A distribution of learners with varying backgrounds, learning needs, and goals associated with the material will be identified. These individual differences can dramatically impact the effectiveness of potential interventions, particularly when different types of learners have directly conflicting needs. Thus, the online learning environment will utilize adaptable interfaces to move away from a “one-size-fits-all” design approach. Content modularization and non-sequential, tag-based navigation were utilized to address the challenges of teaching highly interdisciplinary material. This thesis emphasizes a learning environment design that aims to teach highly interdisciplinary systems subject matter to a variety of learners with a variety of characteristics in an asynchronous, online format while making use of existing course material. </p>

Present-day Agent Based Modelling is used to simulate complex systems in which agents are explicitly heterogeneous. Researchers within the field of ABM have a set of tools at their disposal, yet little is known about the usability and learnability of these systems. Information Architecture establishes a set of guidelines for constructing digital spaces that facilitate the fulfilment of the user’s goal; these guidelines are expressed as Principles of Information Architecture and categories of user behaviour. The purpose of this paper is to determine the needs of ABM researchers and explore how scientific software can be improved to better support them in their work. A System Usability Scale questionnaire quantifies the current level of usability on ABM frameworks while semi-structured interviews with six expert modellers provide data on user needs and user behaviour. The participants are allowed to review more than one ABM framework by means of questionnaires and a cognitive walkthrough that exposes GUI elements and other framework features linked to procedural steps of modelling. Information Architecture principles are exposed in each interface along with user behaviour categories. Albeit limited in its scope of participants, the survey with in-depth interviews provides valuable information on the needs of domain experts. Data is analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively; the paper follows, therefore, a mixed-method approach. It is proven that, at the present moment, most ABM frameworks fail to meet established standards for usability and learnability. User needs are exposed through an analysis of the data reported by experts. Finally, considerations are presented upon the impact of implementing Information Architecture guidelines within ABM frameworks.

В магистерской диссертации рассмотрены современные проблемы управления информационной архитектурной предприятия. Изучена деятельность Государственного бюджетного учреждения «НТЦИТ», проведено моделирование информационной архитектуры бизнес-процессов, разработано информационное приложение для управления процессов внедрения ИТ-проектов, а также проведен расчет оценки внедрения вэб-ресурса. / In the master's thesis, modern problems of information architecture enterprise management are considered. The activity of the State Budgetary Institution "STCIT" has been studied, modeling of the information architecture of business processes has been carried out, an information application for managing the processes of implementing IT projects has been developed, and an assessment of the implementation of a web resource has been calculated.

Η παρούσα διατριβή πραγματεύεται το πρόβλημα της αποτελεσματικής σχεδίασης ιστοτόπων που υποστηρίζουν την εύχρηστη διαδραστική αναζήτηση. Με τον όρο διαδραστική αναζήτηση περιγράφεται η διερευνητική αλληλεπίδραση ενός χρήστη με έναν ιστότοπο, με στόχο την εύρεση πληροφορίας στο πλαίσιο μίας εργασίας του, χωρίς τη χρήση διαδικτυακών μηχανών αναζήτησης. Η διατριβή εντάσσεται στην περιοχή της ευχρηστίας του Διαδικτύου και γενικότερα της μελέτης αλληλεπίδρασης ανθρώπου-υπολογιστή και ειδικότερα αλληλεπίδρασης χρηστών με πληροφορία. Ένας ιστότοπος είναι συχνά, όχι μόνο μια εφαρμογή με την οποία αλληλεπιδρά ο χρήστης αλλά και ένας πληροφοριακός χώρος, του οποίου η κατάλληλη δόμηση και διασύνδεση του περιεχομένου επηρεάζουν σε μεγάλο βαθμό την ευχρηστία του. Συνεπώς, η ανάπτυξη μεθοδολογιών για τον επιτυχή σχεδιασμό της πληροφοριακής αρχιτεκτονικής (information architecture) ενός ιστοτόπου παραμένει μία σημαντική σχεδιαστική πρόκληση. Η διατριβή προτείνει μία νέα μεθοδολογία σχεδιασμού και αξιολόγησης της πληροφοριακής αρχιτεκτονικής ιστοτόπων, τη MEDIAMIS (Methodology for the Efficient Design of Information Architectures based on Models of Interactive Search). Η συνεισφορά της έγκειται στο γεγονός ότι βελτιστοποιεί και συστηματοποιεί τη διαδικασία σχεδιασμού ή αξιολόγησης. Η MEDIAMIS είναι εμπνευσμένη από εδραιωμένες χρηστοκεντρικές τεχνικές και πρόσφατα μοντέλα της συμπεριφοράς των ανθρώπων κατά τη διαδραστική αναζήτηση. Η μεθοδολογία απευθύνεται σε μηχανικούς του Διαδικτύου και αποσκοπεί στη δημιουργία ιστοτόπων που υποστηρίζουν την εύχρηστη διαδραστική αναζήτηση από τους χρήστες τους. Προκειμένου να υποστηριχθεί η MEDIAMIS αναπτύχθηκαν δύο πρωτότυπα εργαλεία, το AutoCardSorter (Automated Card Sorting Tool) και το ISEtool (InfoScent Evaluator Tool). Το πρώτο υποστηρίζει τη διαδικασία δόμησης του περιεχομένου ενός ιστοτόπου, ενώ το δεύτερο τη δημιουργία σημασιολογικά κατάλληλων λεκτικών περιγραφών για τους υπερσυνδέσμους ενός ιστοτόπου. Τέλος, στο πλαίσιο της διατριβής, εξετάζεται η εγκυρότητα και αποδοτικότητα της MEDIAMIS και των υποστηρικτικών εργαλείων, μέσα από έξι πειραματικές μελέτες. Στις μελέτες αυτές συγκρίθηκαν εκτενώς τα αποτελέσματα της προτεινόμενης προσέγγισης με αυτά καθιερωμένων χρηστοκεντρικών τεχνικών και μετρικών της παρατηρούμενης συμπεριφοράς των χρηστών. Τα συμπεράσματα των μελετών έδειξαν ότι η MEDIAMIS παράγει αποτελέσματα εφάμιλλης ποιότητας με εδραιωμένες χρηστοκεντρικές τεχνικές, αλλά με σημαντικά αποδοτικότερο τρόπο. / This thesis addresses the problem of effective design of websites that enhance findability of information during interactive search. The term interactive search is used to describe the exploratory, goal−directed browsing activity of a user, while seeking information in a website. Seeking information using a search engine is not an object of study in this thesis. The thesis falls into the field of human computer interaction, and the subfields of Web usability and human information interaction. A website should be treated both as a user interface as well as a hypertext information space, whose structural design has a significant influence on intuitive access to content, task completion and overall user experience. In today’s information explosion, one of the biggest challenges in web design is the effective design of its information architecture. The latter constitutes the research objective of this thesis. The thesis proposes a new methodology to design and evaluate the information architecture of websites, the MEDIAMIS (Methodology for the Efficient Design of Information Architectures based on Models of Interactive Search). The contribution of the proposed approach is that is optimizes and systemizes the information architecture design or evaluation process. MEDIAMIS is inspired by established user-centered techniques and recent cognitive models of user’s interactive search behavior. MEDIAMIS is addressed to Web practitioners and deals with the design or evaluation of a website’s information structure and labeling system. In the context of the proposed methodology, two innovative tools have been developed. The first tool, AutoCardSorter (Automated Card Sorting Tool), supports the structural design of a website. The second tool, ISEtool (InfoScent Evaluator Tool), facilitates the production of semantically appropriate hyperlink labels for the typical goals of a website. The applicability of the proposed methodology and the effectiveness and efficiency of the associated tools were examined through six experimental studies. These studies compared both quantitavely and qualitatively the results of the proposed methodology against the ones derived from established user-centered design approaches, such as card sorting, and against observed and subjective user data. It was found that the proposed methodology lead to a substantial efficiency gain, without expense in the quality of results.

Main topic of this thesis is evaluation of user interfaces of learning management systems (LMS). It is the users and their interaction with the system who are the focus of user interface design within the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI), and that is why user experience was taken into account for interface evaluation. The aim of the thesis was proposition of function criteria field that reflect users' requirements on the system and that can therefore serve as a basis for partial LMS evaluation. Within the scope of HCI interdisciplinarity, we focused on technical-psychological view (computer - human), complemented by the field that reflects the very purpose of LMS - pedagogical process. We believe that combination of general function criteria, which can be applied to any system, and learning content criteria is crucial for LMS evaluation, together with criteria concerning distribution forms and work methods. Based on defined areas, LMS Unifor courses from 2012- 2014 period of time and LMS Moodle courses from 2015-2017 period of time were evaluated using qualitative and quantitative research methods. The output of the research is a set of function criteria, which we regard to be elementary and suggest to be taken into account when considering a LMS.