This thesis presents a series of design-led case studies concerned with the use of digital technology and the practice of interaction design for children within the context of UK special educational needs classrooms. It explores the use and development of accessible digital systems to support groups of students who have a range of special educational needs. Working with groups of mixed ability students has found to be the most typical situation for teaching in the participant schools and is a rich but underexplored area of concern for interaction design research. This thesis presents detailed accounts and grounded analysis of four embedded, design-led, case studies in two UK special needs schools. It makes three main contributions to the community of researchers, designers and educational practitioners who are concerned with the use of digital technology with children and more specifically working within the field of interaction design for children with special educational needs. These contributions are: A set of design guidelines developed through an analysis of the detailed and thorough accounts of four embedded design-led research projects in two special needs school in the UK. A discussion of the development of the research approach taken in this thesis. A set of design personas of teaching staff interaction designers are likely to encounter when working in a UK special needs school.

<p>The technology availability and hype of virtual reality has intersected as of 2016, bringing a lot of attention to virtual reality (VR) games. The research into this technology has been ongoing since its early exploration in the 1970’s. Methods have been created to try to understand and predict what causes phenomena such as motion and simulator sickness in the human computer interaction devices. Heuristics have been developed to aid the design these applications and to avoid such discomforting circumstances. Concepts and their continued exploration have been growing to improve the experience of virtual reality technology and continue the expanding imagination of what is capable with this technology. All the tools are available to create highly immersive virtual experiences, but it is up to the interpretant, the user to decide how believable, immersive and enjoyable these experiences are. By conducting an interview study on a part of the VR gaming community, more can be understood about the success and failure of immersive design by exploring the experiences of certain highly immersive games. This study takes the opportunity to listen to gamers as a means of highlighting significant key challenges and characteristics creating immersive VR games. By evaluating transcripts via thematic analysis, themes were created to understand and categorize the various aspects that are most important to the immersion and embodiment in VR games. This study and themes drawn from it reflect on the experiences and feelings of experienced VR gamers in the context of role-playing games.</p>

This research was to develop a real-time, modifiable, tangible interactive tabletop system for participatory urban design. The targeting user group was those stakeholders in urban design charrettes. Previous system solutions overlooked the importance of the modifiable tangible medium in the situation of reaching spatial-temporal consensus. These design issues impeded communication between the stakeholders and the professionals. Users of these systems had difficulties expressing ideas to professionals during the collaborative design process. Literature in evolving technology in the smart city context, collaborative urban design, embodied interaction, and depth-sensing was referred to guide the system design. Based on the review, this research identified the pivotal role of a shapeable and tangible medium in the system. The prototype system unified the modifiable, realistic model with its digital equivalent in urban analytics in real-time. By integrating tangible interaction, depth-sensing, and large touch screen tabletop, an intuitive, immersive decision-making interface for non-professional stakeholders could be created. During the system implementation, system elements centering ‘tangible interoperability’ were documented along the system pipeline. A heuristic evaluation, a method of usability inspection, was conducted to assess and to guide the future system design. The result was promising and inspiring. In the end, challenges and directions of system design were discussed. The contribution of this research included: discovering direction, centering tangibility, implementing a prototype, and documenting elements in each stage along the system pipeline of designing a modifiable tangible interactive tabletop system for the urban design charrette.

<div><div><div><p>The purpose of this project was to investigate and propose a solution to gaps identified in existing paradigms for buying and selling secondhand goods online. Through a review of existing literature, the secondhand market was explored together with the variety of reasons for individuals’ participation. Different modes of collaborative consumption and some of the challenges unique to peer-to-peer markets were also examined. A computational approach to identifying items and actions within digital media was reviewed in support of the proposed solution. Research discoveries uncovered through directional surveys, semi-structured interviews, and an analysis of peer products were summarized. These discoveries were consolidated into a list of requirements, including 1) being able to sell many items at once, 2) disbursing items quickly and with minimal effort, 3) making lower value items worth selling, 4) establishing and maintaining trust by designing for safety and encouraging quality, and 5) reducing the need for communication between buyers and sellers by managing the sale, condition, and inventory status. After multiple rounds of concept development, a principal direction based upon the “make me move” concept in the real estate industry was selected. Combined with panoramic images, the resulting solution relied on computer-driven tagging of items for sale. This allowed many items to be listed at once through a single image while making it possible for buyers to find and place offers. Offers were suggested in lieu of bids or an immediate checkout process to avoid some of the negative, bid-related behaviors and minimize the communication required to complete a sale. An interactive prototype was created to evaluate the concept and usability via online user testing, which included surveys and cognitive walkthroughs. The results were analyzed and prioritized to refine the final details of the solution. Overall, I demonstrated a unique concept for buying and selling secondhand goods which supports selling many items, efficiently and safely, while eliminating much of the back and forth communication required to facilitate transactions on many existing platforms.</p></div></div></div>

<p>We make decisions every day, some with the potential for a huge impact on our lives. This process of decision-making is crucial not only for individuals but for industries, including construction. Unlike the manufacturing industry, where one can make certain decisions regarding an actual product by looking at it in real time, the nature of construction is different. Here, decisions are to be made on a product which will be built somewhere in the near future. The complex and interim nature of construction projects, along with factors like time essence, increasing scale of projects and multitude of stakeholders, makes it even more difficult to reach consensus. Incorporating VR can aid in getting an insight on the final product at the very beginning of the project life cycle. With a visual representation, the stakeholders involved can collaborate on a single platform to assess the project, share common knowledge and make choices that would produce better results in all major aspects like cost, quality, time and safety. This study aims at assessing decision-making in the earlier stages of construction and then evaluating the performance of immersive and non-immersive VR platforms.</p> <br> <p> </p>

<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>

<p>The construction industry contributes significantly to the GDP of the United States, attributing to its growth at an unprecedented rate. Efficient planning on all stages of construction is the only way to combat dynamic obstructions and deliver projects on time. The first element involved in the planning phase deals with the layout of the Construction Site. It significantly regulates the pace at which construction operations function and directly affects the time, cost, and safety linked to the successful delivery of the target project. Hence, it is paramount to ensure that every component of the construction site maneuvers with the utmost productivity. One such equipment that occupies significant attention while carrying out the CSLP process is Tower Crane. Tower crane optimization is pivotal to ensure proper lifting and handling of materials, and warrant conflict-free work zones. This research, therefore, aims to optimize its position by maximizing the lift ability. To achieve the goals, Generative Design- a paradigm that integrates the constructive features of mathematical and visual optimization techniques, is used to develop a relatively comprehensible prototype. The first part of the research, thus, utilized Generative Design on two construction sites- one from the United States and one from India. After implementing the visual programming algorithm, an improvement of 40% was warranted in the lift score. A pool of potential alternatives was explored and supplemented by the trade-off illustrations. The concept of trade-off was substantiated by allowing a framework for prioritization of lift cycles, and facilitating a holistic decision-making process. To evaluate the usability, 12 participants were chosen based on their previous experience with tower crane operations. The participants witnessed a live demonstration of the algorithm, answered a Likert scale questionnaire, and appeared for an open-ended interview to provide feedback about the proposed Generative Design technique. After carrying out narrative analysis for the usability aspect- it has been unanimously observed that the technique has extreme efficiency of usage and can evidently prevent the occurrence of errors. The study concludes by providing recommendations to augment the significance and usability of Generative Design for tower crane position optimization. </p><br>