Textiles are a ubiquitous facet of global culture, with the potential to become records of significant relationships, events, and stories over their lifetime. This research project investigates textiles which have been informally gathered together, and kept within the home, for their emotional or symbolic resonance. No longer used for their designed function, these textiles are saved from disposal for their ability to prompt personal and family histories and stories, in a phenomenon identified within the study as the personal textile archive. Textile design research is increasingly concerned with incorporating interdisciplinary social and cultural frameworks within its traditional research fields of technology, innovation and creativity, to frame a textile's socio-cultural relevance. This shift in the field requires the development of specific textile design research tools which are capable of producing purposeful research which analyses the material and designed properties of textiles in relation to their symbolic or affective experience, in order to understand the user-experience of a textile. Phenomenological research methods are established as tools for investigating phenomena and lived experience from a first-person perspective, which the investigation of the personally significant textiles within this study requires. A particular method, interpretative phenomenological analysis, has been specifically adapted for textile design research, and it is demonstrated within this research project that is is able to investigate and analyse the personal textile archive, producing original insights into this phenomenon. Through this application of this adaptation of interpretative phenomenological analysis, the design, affordances and craftsmanship of a textile are revealed as interweaving with its emotional, sentimental, biographical orfamily historical meaning. This is a useful and important original contribution to textile design research, and the recommendation is made that other researchers in the field will be able to utilise and further test this tool within future textile design research studies.

<div>We have never felt so connected with the surrounding social and physical environment, thanks to the increasingly populating mobile computing devices and rapidly developing high-speed network. These technologies transform the everyday objects into smart-things and make us accessible to a large amount of digital information and intelligence relating closely to the physical reality. To bridge the gap between the digital interface and physical smart-thing, Augmented Reality (AR) has become a promising media that allows users to visually link the digital content to its physical target, with spatial and contextual awareness. Thanks to the vast improvement to the personal computing devices, AR technologies are emerging to popular realistic scenarios empowered by commercially available software development kits (SDKs) and hardware platforms, which makes it easier for human users to interact with the surrounding smart-things. </div><div><br></div><div>Due to the scope of this thesis, we are interested in exploring for the smart-things that have physical interaction capabilities with the reality world, such as Machines, Robots, and IoTs. Our overarching goal is to create better experience for users to interact with these smart-things, that is visual, spatial, contextual, and embodied, and we try to achieve this goal through novel augmented reality system workflow/framework design. </div><div><br></div><div>This thesis is based on our four published conference papers (Ani-Bot, V.Ra, GhostAR, Avatutar-study), which are described in chapters 3-6 respectively. On a broader level, our works in this thesis focus on exploring spatially situated visual programming techniques for human smart-thing interaction. In particular, we leverage contextual awareness in the AR environment with the interactivity of physical smart-things. We explore (1) spatial and visual input techniques and modalities for users to intuitively interact with the physical smart-things through interaction and interface design, and (2) the ecology of human smart-thing through system workflow design corresponding to the contextual awareness powered by the AR interface. In this thesis, we mainly study the following spatial aware AR interactions with our completed work: (i) Ani-Bot demonstrates Mixed-Reality (MR) interaction for tangible modular robotics through a Head-Mounted Device (HMD) with mid-air gestures, (ii) V.Ra describes spatially situated visual programming for Robot-IoT task planning, (iii) GhostAR has presented a time-space editor for Human-Robot Collaborative (HRC) task authoring. (iv) while AvaTutAR-study has presented an exploratory study that provided valuable design guidance for future AR avatar-based tutoring systems. </div><div><br></div><div>We further develop the enabling techniques including a modular robotics kit with assembly awareness and the corresponding MR features for the major phases of its lifecycle; a lightweight and coherent ecosystem design that enables spatial and visual programming as well as IoT interactive and navigatory task execution with a single AR-SLAM mobile device; and a novel HRC task authoring workflow using robot programming by human demonstration method within AR scene with avatar reference and motion mapping with dynamic time warping (DTW). Primarily, we design system workflows and develop applications for increasing the flexibility of AR content manipulation, creation, authoring, and intuitively interacting with the smart environment visually and pervasively. </div><div><br></div><div>Based on our completed projects, we conclude this thesis by summarizing the overall contributions of my Ph.D. works, and briefly providing my humble vision for the future of AR. </div>

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Many IT systems fail to realize their objectives because not enough attention has been paid to the business context in which the system functions. One reason expressed--an emphasized technical focus which tend to omit business and organizational issues germane to the organization's and the system's success. When an organization's information system is in line with, and provides support for its business strategy--strategic alignment--superior business performance is often the result. Within the Requirements Engineering (RE) community there has been several attempts to develop and utilize approaches which can illuminate business and organizational informational needs. In this dissertation, the DAGS framework is used to develop an integrated web-based requirements elicitation system which is based on Critical Success Factors (CSFs), Jackson's problem diagrams and organizational strategy analysis technique to represent and model an organization's IT requirements. This research employs the DAGS (multi-methodological approach consisting of Design Science, Action Research, Grounded Theory and System Development research methodologies) framework for Information System (IS) design to assist the Information Technology (IT) department in developing a collaborative user requirements system to assist in designing and constructing more effective information systems by incorporating the needs of various stakeholders in support of organizational goals while satisfying these varied needs. Top management's field of vision is represented in the CSFs which provide a compelling clarification of what is important to the organization. Failure to achieve a CSF directly affects the organization's ability to accomplish its mission; Research shows that alignment of IT systems with business strategy leads to superior organizational performance. Industry professionals have consistently considered alignment of IT with business strategy essential to their success thus requirements for an organization's information systems need to be aligned with the objectives of the business strategy that its stakeholders intend to support. This dissertation contributes to the literature on validating an organization's IT and Business Strategic alignment. It has also provided an example of research, grounded in theory but which is nevertheless relevant to business.

The less glamorous aspects of a transportation system'­s infrastructure, such as signage, ticketing systems, and wayfinding elements, typically get little or no attention from creative professionals. Instead they are purchased directly from manufacturers as minimally customized off-the-shelf components. Paradoxically, these parts that go unconsidered and undesigned are what transit riders most directly interact with, and what most affects their experience of the transit system/product. This thesis focuses specifically on the Washington DC Metro Area Transportation Authority's (WMATA) Metrorail, aiming to reshape the entrance segment of this public transportation experience by increasing both appeal and accessibility. The design process began with primary and secondary design research, using observational and interactive methods to produce an informed picture of Metrorail users'­ current perspectives. A design strategy was then developed from the collective research findings, which led to a period of blue-sky ideation and finally the design of elegant and accessible mass transit entrance system components. / Master of Science

Representing marginalized identities in visual communication is animportant effort to making them part of the majority’s perceived reality,therefore normalizing and destigmatizing their existence. By exploringthe concepts of discourse, re-presentation and reception,based on the works of Michel Foucault and Stuart Hall, and examining whereidentity and labels originated, I came to the conclusion that the current(common) practice of representation in design is rather paradoxical. Thoughrepresentation intends to push back on hegemonic oppressive structures,designers rely on the visible recognizability of marginalized identities, reinforcingthe structures that singled out and condemned traits outside of thenorm to begin with. This foundational research is compiled as the Grundstein(engl. cornerstone), essentially a foundational handbook, to encouragedesigners to rethink representation as a practice and think of other ways visualcommunication can aid not only the inclusion of marginalized people,but the deconstruction of oppressive structures. Throughout, the thesis focusesspecifically on the mis- and underrepresentation of [aromantic asexuals]and lays out how considerations of those identities could also impactdesign practice.Delabeling is my implementation of the Grundstein into design, proposingthe immaterialization of identity by omitting the depiction of bodies,and instead focusing on the representation of shared experience betweenminority and majority groups. The aim is to introduce [aromantic asexuality],a rather unknown sexual identity, by not focusing on what makes them‘different’ from the majority, but by inviting the observer to ‘recognize’ themselvesin the [aro-ace] experience. Neither Delabeling or the Grundstein are intended as ‘alternatives’ tocurrent practice, but I hope they invite designers to reconsider industry‘rules’ and standards and motivate them to develop own ideas for more radicalforms of representation in visual communication.

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