Designing usable Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) is a complex process and requires at least two things: knowledge of known GUI design principles and guidelines, and knowledge of structured methods for achieving usability. The purpose of writing this thesis was to investigate whether a GUI standard increases a program's usability or not. In many cases, people who take part in GUI decisions do not consider following a standard and the decisions are often based on what is best for them. Consequently, in most of the cases, programs turn out to be inconsistent and less usable. But following a GUI standard does not necessarily guarantee usability. To carry out the investigation, the GUI of a program was deliberately manipulated. Apart from the original one, two more versions were created; one strictly according to the Microsoft Standard, and one that among other things violated the standard. To be able to compare the three GUI versions, usability testing with four test users was conducted. The result of the entire investigation showed that a GUI standard increased the usability considerably. But the result also showed that the test users found the GUI, that in some aspects violated the standard, more pleasant to use, that is to say, users' satisfaction was higher. This indicates that standards ensure consistency, which provides a sense of stability and makes the GUI familiar and predictable. But GUIs should also be tailored for and validated against the users' requirements, and this is done with structured methods for achieving usability. As a GUI designer, your knowledge of the standards is the absolute minimum requirement for developing GUIs. By knowing and understanding the standards, you will also have the knowledge of how to violate the standards in order to achieve a higher degree of usability.

This thesis provides a baseline study for eye tracking user interface design for controlling a mobile robot. The baseline study is an experiment involving the use of a radio controller (RC) to drive the robot, while gaze data is collected from each subject monitoring the position of robot on the remote screen that displays the view for the turret-mounted video camera on the robot. Initial data from the experiment provides a foundation for interface design of actual control of the mobile robot by gaze interaction. Such an interface may provide Tele-presence for the disable. Patients with motor disability cannot use their hands and legs but only use their eye motions. Such applications of an eye tracking system can provide patients with much flexibility and freedom for search and identification of objects. / Muhammad Asghar Jan (+46-700183140) syedmaji@hotmail.com (+46-736805771)

Boverket har huvudansvar för att skapa en portal för samhällsplanering som ska kunna förse kommuner, landsting, företag och privatpersoner med olika typer av kartinformation. Denna portal kallas Planeringsportalen och som ett led i dess utveckling hölls ett designmöte i april 2007. Inför mötet gjordes en analys av diverse förebilder för att beskriva de goda designlösningar som finns i genren WebGIS, enligt förlaga från Lundberg, Holmlid och Arvolas (2007) arbete. Uppsatsen beskriver hur dessa designlösningar kan användas i designen av Planeringsportalen tillsammans med en redogörelse för hur förebilder kan bidra till en bättre designprocess. Genren representeras i arbetet av webbplatserna Eniro, Norge digitalt, RATP samt Mapquest som alla studerats enligt ett formaliserat förfarande. Analysen identifierade ett stort antal goda designlösningar varav en del ansågs passa in i Planeringsportalens designsituation.

Usability is an important aspect of product development that deals with the quality of interaction between the user and the product. Capturing requirements is aimed at understanding what the users expect the system to do. This report attempts to apply principles from both the Usability Engineering and the Requirements Engineering methodologies in the development of a subsystem for managing an e-commerce solution. The main focus is on the user interface design, which is developed by iterating the three phases of design, usability testing and evaluation, until the desired level of usability is achieved. Prototyping was central to the rapid development, but the use of software prototyping tools instead of paper-mockups would reasonably have improved the usefulness of the evaluations. The desired usability level was set to reach a specified fix point, instead of attempting to achieve some absolute usability metrics as is typically practiced. The former approach was apparently simpler to use without the broader experience otherwise needed to write reasonable requirements. The transition from the throw-away prototype to the implemented evolutionary prototype in ASP.NET posed some interesting problems that are further discussed.

This report describes the process of outlining a design proposal for a resource planning tool for TV post-production. A feasibility study in form of a participant observation has been carried out on-site, which has resulted in a requirement specification. Based on the requirement specification, mockups have been created to illustrate the functions and features that a final planning tool should have. In addition to developing a design proposal, an evaluation of the existing resource planning tool Ganttic has been conducted. Ganttic has been reviewed based on how well it meets the list of requirements. The result shows that Ganttic fails to meet a crucial requirement, thus cannot be used by the client. The recommendation is instead that the client implements the functions described in the design proposal in their current booking system.

The inability of standard cognitive science, the information-processing approach, to provide theoretical underpinnings for designing usable computer-based systems has already been noted in the literature. It has further been noted, with varying degrees of clarity, that the breakdown of standard cognitive science in this respect is not an independent event, but that it rather is coupled with the spreading of computer use, that is, the appearance of personal computers, which brought into plain view the incommensurability of humans and present-day computers, and the difficulty in "interfacing" them to each other. In this work, the insufficiency of standard cognitive science is investigated towards demonstrating that it lies in the fallacious assumption and reliance on mental representations as formally defined physical entities on which mental operations are performed. It is further argued that, if the formal approach within cognitive science is seriously taken, then cognitive science cannot account for some important cognitive processes, namely abstraction and interpretation. In its empirical part, this study is related to a concrete development project. With respect to a possible application within it, some newer cognitive theories are reviewed and discussed, namely those that take into account environment, society, situation, and artefacts. Based on these considerations and the theoretical findings regarding standard cognitive science, a method for designing user interface is proposed and applied. Inspired by phenomenology and bearing similarities with nondirective counselling, it is referred to as "user-directed" method. Possible approaches to assessment of its validity are discussed.

This study focuses on creating an instrument for terminologists to use when working with terminology in different fields of work that require structured documentation. When evaluating the prototype of the instrument the test-participants won’t be terminologists. The methods used to create the instrument are sketching and prototyping a wireframe. The evaluation of the prototype is done with ‘think aloud-protocol’ and heuristic evaluation. The results are presented as annotated pictures of the prototype.

The diploma thesis focuses on describing the potential modifications of the ECCAIRS system, using the Taxonomy Design Tools toolkit, and creating a proposal to use the toolkit to simplify the user experience of the ECCAIRS system on a national level. The theoretical part includes a description of the legislation related to the aviation accidents and incidents reporting, covered by the Regulation (EU) No 376/2014, followed by the procedure of aviation occurrence reporting in the Czech Republic and the description of the ECCAIRS system, its tools, features and modification options. The practical part of the thesis contains the proposal of using the specified toolkit to optimize the ECCAIRS system usage efficiency, including a detailed description of the steps taken to achieve that goal.

This thesis investigates how principles of game design can be applied to a PC game settings menudesign to make the interaction fun and enhance the user satisfaction of interaction and navigation.Through exploring the question “How can principles of game design be applied to UI design inorder to enhance the user satisfaction of interacting with an interface?” it might be possible to addto the experience of using UI without removing any of the usability goals that is customary today.This is determined through user testing of a common design pattern of game settings menusrecognized in World of Warcraft (2004) Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011) Stardew Valley (2016)and a game settings menu designed through game design principles where the respondentsevaluated their experience in an SUS form (Brooke, 1996) and a form created for this study basedon Swink’s (2009) Game Feel. The results revealed that the common menu design generatedhigher scores in usability than the interface designed through game design principles but therewas no significant difference in game feel between the prototypes. However, when dividing gamefeel into questions regarding usability and aesthetics a clear difference between the twoprototypes could be determined where the prototype designed through game design principlesdisplays a trend to score higher in aesthetics than the traditional UI. This could be strengthenedthrough optional comments from the participants where 6 used the word “fun” to describe thegame design prototype while the traditional UI design were described with words such as“functional” “intuitive” “straightforward” “easy to use” and “felt more like a chore”.

No description available.