Research tools to identify sensitive topics and thus new opportunities to design for have grown in popularity in the last twenty years within HCI, with many projects and areas to note. However, the research tools used are still underdeveloped (Crabtree, 2003), and many universal designs of the 20th century have failed to develop for more sensitive areas, bar the conventional young, non-disabled, white, cis-male (Clarkson, 2003). The topics discussed in the thesis are reviews and arguments for the use of an adapted cultural probe’s place to research sensitive topics, identify perhaps previously hidden “sensitive-HCI” (Waycott et al. 2015) design spaces. The focus is on the tools to gather data, and discover design opportunities, rather than the particular and actual findings from the study.

Human Computer Interaction (HCI) interventions such as User Experience, Usability and Accessibility are widely accepted as great milestones in the developmental process of computer-based system applications – be it web-based, PC-based or ubiquitous. However, there is still a need for an understanding of the critical benefits – both tangible and intangible – that HCI interventions may bring within business. It is still necessary to investigate and clearly understand how the issues that emanate from the usability and accessibility problems affect business as well as what value HCI techniques contribute to the profitability of implementing and using computer-based systems. A case study approach was undertaken within a Travel Management Company (TMC) on a computer-based system used for both back-end and front-end activities, such as invoicing as well as Management Information System (MIS) reports. The aim was to ascertain how the incorporation of HCI interventions (Usability and Accessibility) in evaluating the design and the development process of software applications can impact on the usefulness of such computer application systems. The investigation in areas such as the redefining business processes in order to generate a competitive advantage, enhancing user skills, improving user productivity, user satisfaction and retention, reducing training costs, and quality service provision were of particular interest. The end results of the study affirm an important and significant role that specific and focussed HCI interventions make in the successful implementation of contemporary computer-based systems. However, for businesses to gain most of the potential benefits from HCI interventions, both the software development houses and business practitioners should make use of the HCI techniques and place greater priority and emphasis on the awareness and use of HCI (Usability) standards in the development process / Computing / M. Sc. (Information Systems)

Human Computer Interaction (HCI) interventions such as User Experience, Usability and Accessibility are widely accepted as great milestones in the developmental process of computer-based system applications – be it web-based, PC-based or ubiquitous. However, there is still a need for an understanding of the critical benefits – both tangible and intangible – that HCI interventions may bring within business. It is still necessary to investigate and clearly understand how the issues that emanate from the usability and accessibility problems affect business as well as what value HCI techniques contribute to the profitability of implementing and using computer-based systems. A case study approach was undertaken within a Travel Management Company (TMC) on a computer-based system used for both back-end and front-end activities, such as invoicing as well as Management Information System (MIS) reports. The aim was to ascertain how the incorporation of HCI interventions (Usability and Accessibility) in evaluating the design and the development process of software applications can impact on the usefulness of such computer application systems. The investigation in areas such as the redefining business processes in order to generate a competitive advantage, enhancing user skills, improving user productivity, user satisfaction and retention, reducing training costs, and quality service provision were of particular interest. The end results of the study affirm an important and significant role that specific and focussed HCI interventions make in the successful implementation of contemporary computer-based systems. However, for businesses to gain most of the potential benefits from HCI interventions, both the software development houses and business practitioners should make use of the HCI techniques and place greater priority and emphasis on the awareness and use of HCI (Usability) standards in the development process / Computing / M. Sc. (Information Systems)

This thesis explores the use of avatars with facial expressions in social media and e-journalism communication interfaces. This thesis involved three experimental conditions. In the first experimental condition a survey (n=34) and an experiment (n=25) were carried out in order to explore the central problems faced by users during adding and retrieving comments and methods to overcome those problems. The survey intended to find out the position users took towards these metaphors. 25users from the Aljazeera Channel in Doha, Qatar took part. The first experimental condition consisted of two interfaces, TARCS (traditional adding and retrieving comments system) and CMARCS (classification multimodal adding and retrieving comments system). This was carried out in order to assess users' perception of unique text with graphic classification and multimodal in an EARCS (electronic adding and retrieving comments system) interface in the presence and absence of an interactive context. This was implemented in order to assess the role of these unique classification interfaces in a news comment in the term of usability. In the second experiment, forty users evaluated the use of the VARCS (visual adding and retrieving comments system) and MMARCS (multimodal adding and retrieving comments system). Both interfaces evaluated the effect on public opinion as media study and effectiveness, interactivity and user satisfaction in HCI studies. The third experimental condition consisted of one study that investigated the impactbility and usability of facial expressions compared text with graphic and multimodal metaphors. Sixty six users from Al-Arabiya Channel in Dubai, UEA took part in these two experiments. The results obtained show that users had some problems with adding and retrieving comments in social media such as missing data and lack of organisation. Also, the new classification performed better and faster under an interface that implemented avatars with specific facial expressions compared to a textual interface and multimodal. Practical guidelines were also introduced to provide assistance to multimedia designers who use avatars with facial expressions in e-journalism interactive systems as well as its impact on the public opinion.

This thesis aims to explore what are the main factors for designers to consider, when they design persuasive technologies for improving environmentally sustainable behavior. This paper starts out with a definition of sustainability as such, while also describing the most pressing issues within ecological sustainability. The biggest part of related research is dedicated to the persuasive technologies and three main factors of ability, trigger and motivation. We also talk about a fourth, additional factor of an emotional relationship. Besides persuasive technologies, this part describes sustainable Human-Computer Interaction, location-based services, and ethical issues are mentioned as well. The first part of the next section is dedicated to the description of a High Fidelity prototype of persuasive mobile application. The second part talks about quantitative and qualitative methods used while collecting data. After that, the reader is presented with the study results, which are then also analyzed. The following part discuss these results in a more depth. In the end, we summarize obtained results and the whole study.

Many within the industry, including designers, recognize the need to consider UX as the key to designing new products and services. As a consequence of this, the territory of UX has extended into many different industries and different disciplines. However, some practitioners still claim a UX project does not pay off even if they have improved UX. This way of thinking is induced from an old issue of UX. The term itself does not have a clear theoretical definition and it even makes a contradiction of itself. This phenomenon further aggravates the issue. The rapid expansion of UX territory made a gap between academia and practitioners. This research attempts to measure and examine the gap between academia and practitioners. A survey was conducted to observe how aware practitioners are of UX and their ability to recognize it as compared to the recent academia’s research.

<p>Sammanfattning: Det är minst lika många människor som besöker arrangemang och gudstjänster i kyrkor som besöker idrottsevenemang. Det behövs studiogudstjänster dock sänds det allt färre Tv-gudstjänster direkt från kyrkor och medlen för att göra detta är också på väg att minskas. Många som ser dessa gudstjänster har av olika orsaker inte möjlighet att besöka en kyrka. Detta kan t ex bero på funktionshinder och sjukdom men också att många äldre har svårt att förflytta sig och se gudstjänster live. Ett sätt för kyrkorna att nå ut på bredare front skulle kunna vara att använda sig av Internet som media.</p><p>Syftet med uppsatsen är att genom intervjuer, användningstestning och slutligen prototyptestning, ta fram en lösning för digital överföring av ljud och bild från ett ställe till ett annat via ett IP-nätverk och finna en avvägning mellan det tekniska och användbarheten då användaren har begränsad teknisk kunskap.</p><p>Vid datainsamlingen användes en kvalitativ forskningsprocess med intervjuer och observation som insamlingstekniker. Vid användningstesterna användes observation som metod och testpersonerna uppmanades att tänka högt. Analysen av testerna visade vikten av att minimera inblandning av för mycket teknik i lösningarna då områdeskunskapen hos användare varierar kraftigt.</p>

Humans have a strong natural ability to remember item locations. In graphical user interfaces, this ability is one of the primary mechanisms by which users become efficient. However, there are two ways in which modern applications often fail to exploit the potential of spatial memory. First, they overuse hierarchical structures such as cascading menus, which slows down interaction for expert users who already know item locations; and second, they move items around, most commonly in response to changing display geometry. The three goals of this thesis are therefore to (1) develop a better understanding of human spatial memory in the context of user interfaces; (2) design and validate efficient command-selection interfaces based on the strength of spatial memory; and (3) design and validate interface strategies that allow users to maintain spatial memory even when display geometry changes. Addressing goal (1), a comprehensive literature review of spatial memory for user interfaces is presented. The review covers underlying psychological models of spatial memory, the observable properties of spatial memory, and existing applications of spatial memory to human-computer interaction. In addition to informing the research in this thesis, the review is intended to provide a useful summary of the state of spatial memory research for scientists in HCI, as well as providing a set of design guidelines on spatial memory for practitioners. Addressing goal (2), this thesis presents the design and evaluation of two related user interface techniques, CommandMaps and StencilMaps. The CommandMap is a spatially stable interface with a flattened hierarchy, intended as a replacement for cascading menu systems. Theoretical performance predictions indicate that CommandMaps should be significantly faster than traditional user interfaces such as menus and the Microsoft Office Ribbon, and laboratory-based empirical studies of command selection confirm these predictions. These positive results motivated the design and implementation of two real-world CommandMap user interfaces based on Microsoft Word and Pinta (an open-source image editing application). Evaluation results confirmed that CommandMaps continue to demonstrate performance and subjective advantages in the context of actual tasks, including interleaved command selection, typing, and direct manipulation. Qualitative data gathered from interviews, questionnaires, and conversations provide substantial insight into users' reactions to CommandMaps, leading to a set of design recommendations regarding when and how they should be implemented in real applications. One design limitation identified during CommandMap evaluations was that novice users could be initially overwhelmed by the number of controls displayed at once. To address this concern, an extension to the CommandMap, called a StencilMap, was designed and evaluated. By using a stencil overlay to de-emphasise more advanced controls, the StencilMap directs users' visual search to a subset of controls they are most likely to need. Then, when novice users progress to the full interface, they can utilise their existing knowledge of command locations. An initial study shows that stencils are more effective at guiding visual search than ephemeral adaptation, another subset emphasis technique; however, users' spatial learning decreases as the amount of guidance increases. A second study compared StencilMaps to a palette-based subset interface, which displays the most likely commands in a ready-to-hand tool panel. Results show that StencilMaps enable stronger learning of the full UI compared to the palette approach. Addressing goal (3), this thesis presents an investigation of how interfaces can be adapted to changing interface constraints while still supporting the user's memory for item locations. A human factors study on spatially consistent transformations was conducted, with results showing that people's spatial memory is only minimally disrupted by geometric transformations (such as scaling, translation, or perspective distortion), as long as the set of items in a display is transformed as a whole. This idea is then applied to a file browser layout: by scaling the item grid when the parent window is resized, rather than reflowing items, memory for item locations can be maintained. A second study validates this idea, showing that a scaling interface outperforms both reflow and scrolling-based techniques for revisitation when windows are resized. In summary, the contributions of this thesis are: (1) an in-depth literature review of spatial memory in psychology and HCI, which is intended to inform designers and future researchers as well as the material in this thesis; (2) the design, implementation and evaluation of a new interface, the CommandMap, which shows that spatial stability and hierarchy flattening enable a high ceiling of expert performance; (3) the design of a stencil overlay technique to help novice users find commands, and an evaluation highlighting the key trade-off between helping users and allowing them to learn; and (4) empirical evidence showing that most types of whole-interface transformations have a small effect on spatial memory, and that correspondingly, scaling interfaces outperform reflowing interfaces under changing window constraints.

Active Reading is an important part of a knowledge worker’s activities; it involves highlighting, writing notes, marking with symbols, etc., on a document. Many Active Reading applications have been designed in seeking to replicate the affordances of paper through digital-ink-based annotation tools. However, these applications require users to perform numerous steps to use various types of annotation tools, which impose an unnecessary cognitive load, distracting them from their reading tasks. In this thesis, we introduce GestAnnot, an Active Reading application for tablet computers that takes a fundamentally different approach of incorporating multi-touch gesture techniques for creating and manipulating annotations on an e-document, thus offering a flexible and easy- to-use annotation solution. Based on the literature review, we designed and developed GestAnnot and then performed lab and field evaluations of the software. In lab evaluation, GestAnnot performed better than one of the best existing annotation application in many aspects, including number of steps. The design was then refined based on the feedback received. The field evaluation of the improved design helped us to understand the performance of the application in the real world. We proposed a set of design guidelines through the feedback received from both evaluations, which any future Active Reading application could benefit from.

Executive function (EF) comprises a series of interrelated cognitive and self-regulatory skills which are required in nearly every facet of everyday life, particularly in novel circumstances. EF skills begin developing from birth and continue to grow well into adulthood but are most crucial for children as they are associated with academic and life success as well as mental and physical health. There is now strong evidence that these skills can be trained through targeted intervention in a diverse range of approaches, such as computer games, physical activity, and social play settings. This thesis presents the process of the design and evaluation of an active EF-training game (BrainQuest) for smart-phones, in participation with end-users: a group of 11-12-year-old children from a local Primary School. The design process placed emphasis on creating an engaging user experience, a phenomenon which has eluded many serious games, by building upon motivational game design theory and satisfying end-user requirements. However, in the pursuit of promoting particular executive functions: working memory; inhibitory control; planning and strategizing, the design integrated aspects of a cognitive assessment while also utilizing a range of alternative approaches for training EF, including physical activity and social play. Following an iterative design process which included many single session prototype evaluations, a mixed methods evaluation was undertaken during a 5-week study with twenty-eight 11-12-year-old school children. The study gathered exploratory qualitative and quantitative evidence regarding the game’s potential benefits which was evaluated by triangulating a range of data sources: multi-observer observations notes, interviews with children and teachers, game performance data and logs, and cognitive assessment outcomes. The analysis describes the statistical relationships between game and executive function ability, before exploring user experiences and evidence of cognitive challenge during gameplay through a series of triangulated case studies and general whole-class observations. The analysis presents the game to be engaging and enjoyable throughout the study and, for most children, able to generate a sustainable challenge. Though there were initial difficulties in understanding the complex game rules and technology, the game became increasingly usable and learnable for the target user group and created opportunities for goal setting. It also encouraged feelings of pride and self-confidence as well as facilitating positive social interactions and requiring regulation of emotion, which are considered to be pathways to developing executive functions (Diamond, 2012). There was also promising initial evidence that the game’s variable difficulty level system was able to challenge executive functions: planning and strategizing, working memory, and inhibitory control. Most notably, the game appeared to support improvements in strategizing ability by demanding increasing strategic complexity in response to evolving and increasingly difficult task demands. Supporting BrainQuest’s cognitive challenge, several statistical relationships emerged between executive function ability and game performance measures. However, the game’s ability to significantly improve cognitive outcomes could not yet be concluded. Nevertheless, these findings have implications for both the future design and evaluation practices undertaken by cognitive training researchers. From a design perspective, less credence should be paid to simply gamifying cognitive assessments while greater emphasis should be placed on integration of formal game design and motivational theories. With regards to evaluation, researchers should understand the importance of establishing first whether CTGs can remain engaging over time as well as the feasibility of their challenge to cognitive functions.