Nonprofit organizations are faced with unprecedented challenges as they seek to accomplish their lofty missions in a complex environment, ripe with uncertainty. The global COVID-19 pandemic brought forth new problems for communities and workplaces. As a result, some old ways of working may no longer be useful. To make meaningful progress on their social missions while navigating an unfamiliar post-pandemic context, nonprofits need new tools to help them understand and respond to changing community needs. Evidence has shown design thinking to be an effective approach to developing innovative strategies tailored to real needs, however, it has not been widely practiced in the nonprofit sector. Therefore, the purpose of this action research study was to introduce design thinking to one nonprofit organization where new strategies were necessary to effectively support constituents’ evolving needs. Five action research cycles engaged staff and stakeholders in a design team to apply human-centered design to a real organizational challenge. Research questions sought to understand how design thinking practices were implemented, which attributes contributed to the development of a new strategy, and the ways in which design thinking influenced how the organization responds to evolving constituent needs. Qualitative data from participant interviews, observation, and focus groups found four themes addressed the research questions: Relevance, Leadership Expectations, Capacity, and Intentionality. By way of engaging in play and inquiry, participants saw design thinking as an opportunity to innovate and adapt, helping nonprofits become more relevant. Findings also revealed expectations for leaders to have the answers may hinder ideation and implementation, though data also suggest leadership communication may be a particularly powerful facilitator of design thinking implementation, providing clarity on organizational priorities and aligning leaders and team members. Capacity, including organizational resources and personal bandwidth, was also found to affect how the design team’s ongoing work was supported and implemented across the organization. Finally, intentionality was revealed through the application of empathy, collaboration, and testing assumptions to aid learning. Such attributes may have already been present, but following design thinking, became intentional practices. Taken together, this also suggests incorporating elements of design thinking may be beneficial for nonprofits, as well as easier to implement than a full design thinking process. Findings from this study provide insights into what helps and hinders the implementation of a human-centered design practice, based on real experiences of nonprofit practitioners attempting to innovate and adapt to better serve their communities. This study contributes to knowledge regarding how design thinking might impact nonprofit organizations and offers some actionable insights regarding team dynamics, leadership, and facilitation of design practices. Finally, these findings offer practical implications and recommendations for organizations seeking to address longstanding problems in new ways, which may be particularly important in complex times.

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The aim of this thesis is to create an architectural design for youth that is informed by and in response to current trauma informed healthcare guidelines and research about wellness, with a focus on safety, trustworthiness, and empowerment. 70% of adults in the U.S. have experienced some type of traumatic event at least once in their lives, which stems into a larger risk factor public health group for substance abuse disorders and behavioral health issues (SAHMSA, 2014). “Individual trauma results from an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or life threatening and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and mental, physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being” (National Council for Behavioral Health, 2013). Understanding how trauma can affect humans and applying this information from a human centered approach helps architectural designers create spaces that cultivate wellbeing. These spaces acknowledge the needs of the user by integrating the knowledge of trauma into its design phase, from beginning to end. As a result, re-traumatization is avoided, and a user-focused space can be created. This paper will evaluate and combine research about how to care for traumatized patients in the healthcare setting with research about how spaces make us feel, to create a community center with a focus in mental health outreach in Easthampton, MA. This project addresses the idea that design and space do have an influence on healing in various settings.

Immersive analytics is an emerging field of data exploration and analysis in immersive environments. It is an active research area that explores human-centric approaches to data exploration and analysis based on the spatial arrangement and visualization of data elements in immersive 3D environments. The availability of immersive extended reality systems has increased tremendously recently, but it is still not as widely used as conventional 2D displays. In this dissertation, we described an immersive analysis system for spatiotemporal data and performed several user studies to measure the user performance in the developed system, and laid out design guidelines for an immersive analytics environment. In our first study, we compared the performance of users based on specific visual analytics tasks in an immersive environment and on a conventional 2D display. The approach was realized based on the coordinated multiple-views paradigm. We also designed an embodied interaction for the exploration of spatial time series data. The findings from the first user study showed that the developed system is more efficient in a real immersive environment than using it on a conventional 2D display. One of the important challenges we realized while designing an immersive analytics environment was to find the optimal placement and identification of various visual elements. In our second study, we explored the iterative design of the placement of visual elements and interaction with them based on frames of reference. Our iterative designs explored the impact of the visualization scale for three frames of reference and used the collected user feedback to compare the advantages and limitations of these three frames of reference. In our third study, we described an experiment that quantitatively and qualitatively investigated the use of sonification, i.e., conveying information through nonspeech audio, in an immersive environment that utilized empirical datasets obtained from a multi-dimensional geophysical system. We discovered that using event-based sonification in addition to the visual channel was extremely effective in identifying patterns and relationships in large, complex datasets. Our findings also imply that the inclusion of audio in an immersive analytics system may increase users’ level of confidence when performing analytics tasks like pattern recognition. We outlined the sound design principles for an immersive analytics environment using real-world geospace science datasets and assessed the benefits and drawbacks of using sonification in an immersive analytics setting. / Doctor of Philosophy / When it comes to exploring data, visualization is the norm. We make line charts, scatter plots, bar graphs, or heat maps to look for patterns in data using traditional desktop-based approaches. However, biologically humans are optimized to observe the world in three dimensions. This research is motivated by the idea that representing data in immersive 3D environments can provide a new perspective that may lead to the discovery of previously undetected data patterns. Experiencing the data in three dimensions, engaging multiple senses like sound and sight, and leveraging human embodiment, interaction capabilities, and sense of presence may lead to a unique understanding of the data that is not feasible using traditional visual analytics. In this research, we first compared the data analysis process in a mixed reality system, where real and virtual worlds co-exist, versus doing the same analytical tasks in a desktop-based environment. In our second study, we studied where different charts and data visualizations should be placed based on the scale of the environment, such as table-top versus room-sized. We studied the strengths and limitations of different scales based on the visual and interaction design of the developed system. In our third study, we used a real-world space science dataset to test the liabilities and advantages of using the immersive approach. We also used audio and explored what kinds of audio work for which analytical tasks and laid out design guidelines based on audio. Through this research, we studied how to do data analytics in emerging mixed reality environments and presented results and design guidelines for future developers, designers, and researchers in this field.

The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) plays a vital role in restoring grasslands by removing highly erodible land from production; however, landscape-scale conservation success depends on participation. Fluctuating trends in participation suggest a need to better understand landowners' motivations for enrolling. Since participation hinges on agricultural producers' perceptions of programs, there is utility in understanding programs through their lens to ensure program design accounts for their needs. To understand what drives enrollment, I conducted immersive ethnographic fieldwork in farming and ranching communities of southwest Kansas and southeast Colorado. Through interviews and participant observation, I examined producers' reasons for participating, program perceptions, and the degree to which CRP fits with their lived experiences. I also explored challenges faced by field staff of the Farm Service Agency (FSA) and Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) in working within the program structure. I used open coding to identify common themes and quotes to capture producers' and field staff's points of view. I identified several frames through which producers think about CRP and themes related to how CRP fit well or poorly with producers' and field staff's lives. Frames characterized producer perceptions of CRP as a financial savior, a way to maintain financial solvency, and to gain leverage for their operation. Additionally, CRP was framed as a retirement fund and a conservation program that provides a solution for erodible land. Lived experiences related to wind erosion and the Dust Bowl, perceived community impacts of CRP, and the cultural and economic history of the region, also influenced how producers make sense of and 'frame' the program. Guaranteed payments to maintain cover incentivize participation, especially for land which some producers believe should have never been farmed, or 'broke out', in the first place. Even so, the economic and cultural aspiration to farm may prompt program avoidance or re-cultivation of prior CRP land. In identifying program fit, many felt the program serves a noble purpose but is complicated by rules which lack 'common sense'. While producers valued the program's role in soil stabilization and increased wildlife habitat, CRP requirements during the grass establishment phase and mid-contract management do not always align with producer and field staff visions. Mixed opinions existed around suitable grass species and management practices such as disking, interseeding, and grazing. A dominant theme emerged from producers, echoed by field staff, in the benefits of grazing and need for CRP to increase flexibility to maximize grazing compatibility. Broader program concerns included a shifting program focus, inconsistent enforcement of rules, and one-size-fits-all management. Personal relationships between FSA, NRCS, and producers were generally regarded as positive, and staff members value their role in working with producers to harmonize program requirements with producer needs, within the bounds of the program. Juggling various programs with limited time and other procedural issues leave many field staff feeling overwhelmed and understaffed. Field staff expressed a desire for greater one-on-one time with producers to better communicate program requirements or amend management plans. Both producers and field staff felt CRP could be enhanced to achieve a greater conservation benefit, alleviate staff burdens, and improve overall satisfaction if program rules had both greater flexibility and regional tailoring to correlate with the variable climate and local conditions. In exploring CRP 'frames' and 'fit', this case study provides a window into the interplay of producers' lived experiences in the shadow of the Dust Bowl, and a ubiquitous conservation program's impact on the way land is used. / Master of Science

The Swedish Sea Rescue Society (SSRS) is a non-profit organization that performs sea rescue operations around Sweden’s coast line and lakes. In their sea rescue work, they came up with an idea that could be used to prevent accidents that are caused by harsh weather. According to Trafikverket, two out of three accidents at sea can be related to bad weather. Today, the SSRS have a weather application that you can download and note the weather where the different national weather stations are located. The data for this application is gathered from SMHI and YR.no. The SSRS wants to complement this data with their own weather measurements from specific places in e.g. the archipelago. To be able to do this they want to develop a portable and self-sufficient weather station. The weather station will be overseen by the SSRS rescue personnel, who will transporting and installing the weather station onto specific place. The weather station shall express the SSRS design profile, blend into the environment, and be easy to transport and install. The SSRS doesn’t have any prior products of that sort, and through a market study of competing or similar products / ideas, it became clear that this product would be innovative. By studying the environment which the weather station will be placed and faced with, and who the different users are and their requirements, a requirement framework was established which the end result would need to fulfil.  Through different methods and analysis of what people from different background think and feel about the archipelago, a joint view of what the archipelago associates with was established in order for the weather station to be designed to t into the desired environment. Studies and innovation around technical functions that the weather station should be able to perform, have led to different design restrictions in order for the weather station to be able to work. The end result of the project is a concept of a self-sufficient and portable weather station, making it possible to be transported and installed by one person. The design of the weather station has been made to make it blend into the environment and up close be able to identify as a product of the SSRS. The design has also been made to be user friendly for those handling it. / Svenska Sjöräddningssällskapet (SSRS) är en ideell organisation som utför sjöräddningar runt Sveriges kuster och insjöar. I deras sjöräddningsarbete, har de kommit på en produktidé för att förebygga olyckor orsakade av oväder. Tra kverket har noterat från deras statistik att två av tre olyckor på sjön kan kopplas till dåligt väder. SSRS har idag en väderapplikation som man kan ladda ner och notera vädret omkring där de nationella väderstationer är placerade. Informationen till applikationen baseras på data hämtad från SMHI och YR.no. SSRS upplever att de vill komplettera denna information med egna vädermätningar från specifika platser i exempelvis skärgården. För att kunna göra detta behövs en portabel, självförsörjande väderstation. Väderstationen skall hanteras av SSRS räddningspersonal som transporterar ut och installerar väderstationen på de specifika platserna. Denna väderstation ska då uttrycka SSRS designprofil, smälta in i naturen, och vara lätt att transportera och montera. SSRS har inte någon tidigare liknande produkt, och genom marknadsundersökning konstaterades att denna produkt är mycket innovativ. Genom att studera miljön som väderstationen kommer placeras i och utsätta för, samt vilka de olika användarna är och deras krav på produkten, kunde ett ramverk skapas inom vilket projektets resultat skulle uppfylla. Genom olika metoder och analyser av vad personer med olika bakgrund tycker och tänker om skärgården, kunde en gemensam bild skapas i där väderstationen har samma uttryck. Studier och innovation kring tekniska funktioner som väderstationen skulle kunna utföra, har lett till designrestriktioner för att väderstationen ska kunna fungera. Slutresultatet av projektet är ett koncept på en självförsörjande portabel väderstation, vars funktioner gör det möjligt för en person att transportera och installera stationen. Formgivningen av väderstationen har skapats för att få den att smälta in i naturen, och på nära håll kunna identi eras som en produkt från SSRS. Designen av väderstationen har även gjorts användarvänlig för att förenkla hanteringen av den.

(in English): The diploma thesis deals with the use of design methods among Czech UX designers in the design of web and mobile applications. The aim of this work is to find out and critically describe how Czech UX designers use design methods in practice. The thesis analyse the design process of website, web and mobile applications, its various stages and procedures. The theoretical part of the thesis introduces the basic terminology of the User Experience field and current research in the field, with emphasis on relevant terms and processes that occur in design practice. This part of the thesis is based on data obtained in the practical part, according to which popular approaches, frameworks, processes and methodologies of the UX field will be identified and described on the basis of professional literature. In the research part, qualitative research will be carried out in the form of semi-structured interviews with Czech User Experience designers, focused on the identification of methods, procedures and principles and ways of their usage. At the end of the thesis, the obtained data will be evaluated and it will be identified whether Czech designers in their practice adhere to academic approaches, or what existing and theoretically described methodologies and procedures their design process...

This is a study regarding the use of information aimed at relatives and close ones to people that is experiencing hypoglycemia due to their diabetes. And how the use of the classical rhetorical appeal pathos can be used to design such information, in order to emphasize the importance of knowing how to act when a person is experiencing the hypoglycemia state and how to make the information more relatable. This is a design study with and academic leap containing qualitative interviews with three participants. The problem studied is the information gap between people with diabetes and their surrounding family and friends. In this study the results show that the participants face danger in environments outside their home due to the lack of knowledge about diabetes and hypoglycemia symptoms. The focus of the study is understanding how people with diabetes type-1 experience hypoglycemia, so that I can inform about this subject in a manner and language that will reach the intended receiver. Done research shows that a low knowledge regarding diabetes is more than a fact, it’s a real problem within the field of information design and textdesign. Keywords: textdesign, hypoglycemia, diabetes, information design, human centered design, pathos

The multi-cultural demographics of those who are diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease should be closely examined. From a designer’s standpoint, its cultural traits can foster positive behaviors that lead to better quality of life for patients and caregivers. A patient-centered approach in design was explored in order to shape community-based care that empowers (1) individuality in care services, (2) interpersonal connection in caregiver–patient activities, and (3) a communal culture of being valued via humanitarian approaches.

People have difficulties using computers. Some have more difficulties than others. There is a need for guidance in how to evaluate and improve the accessibility of systems for users. Since different users have considerably different accessibility needs, accessibility is a very complex issue.<p>ISO 9241-171 defines accessibility as the "usability of a product, service, environment or facility by people with the widest range of capabilities." While this definition can help manufacturers make their products more accessible to more people, it does not ensure that a given product is accessible to a particular individual.<p>A reference model is presented to act as a theoretical foundation. This Universal Access Reference Model (UARM) focuses on the accessibility of the interaction between users and systems, and provides a mechanism to share knowledge and abilities between users and systems. The UARM also suggests the role assistive technologies (ATs) can play in this interaction. The Common Accessibility Profile (CAP), which is based on the UARM, can be used to describe accessibility.<p>The CAP is a framework for identifying the accessibility issues of individual users with particular systems configurations. It profiles the capabilities of systems and users to communicate. The CAP can also profile environmental interference to this communication and the use of ATs to transform communication abilities. The CAP model can be extended as further general or domain specific requirements are standardized.<p>The CAP provides a model that can be used to structure various specifications in a manner that, in the future, will allow computational combination and comparison of profiles.<p>Recognizing its potential impact, the CAP is now being standardized by the User Interface subcommittee the International Organization for Standardization and the International Electrotechnical Commission.