In joint human-automation systems, operators must often supervise the automation and adapt their reliance on it based on judgments of its context-specific reliability. For this to occur, operators should trust the automation appropriately. In the design of a water monitoring decision aid’s display, Ecological Interface Design was used to satisfy design guidelines for supporting appropriate trust. Design focused upon a visualization that made the aid’s use of the Dempster-Shafer theory directly perceptible. The display was evaluated using a signal detection theory-based approach that measured reliance on automation. Results indicated that the ecological display yielded less appropriate reliance and poorer performance than a conventional display for a highly reliable decision aid. However, the experimental task prevented participants from adapting to the aid’s context-specific reliabilities, reducing the validity of the findings. A subsequent study is proposed to further study the effects of ecological displays on automation reliance.

In joint human-automation systems, operators must often supervise the automation and adapt their reliance on it based on judgments of its context-specific reliability. For this to occur, operators should trust the automation appropriately. In the design of a water monitoring decision aid’s display, Ecological Interface Design was used to satisfy design guidelines for supporting appropriate trust. Design focused upon a visualization that made the aid’s use of the Dempster-Shafer theory directly perceptible. The display was evaluated using a signal detection theory-based approach that measured reliance on automation. Results indicated that the ecological display yielded less appropriate reliance and poorer performance than a conventional display for a highly reliable decision aid. However, the experimental task prevented participants from adapting to the aid’s context-specific reliabilities, reducing the validity of the findings. A subsequent study is proposed to further study the effects of ecological displays on automation reliance.

E-commerce is becoming increasingly familiar across industries. Customers find it easier to browse and purchase items and services online than by visiting the traditional bricks-and-mortar stores. This allows the customers and firms to save money and generate business faster. The main challenge of e-commerce is acquiring and maintaining good customer relations and trust because the customer only interacts with an electronic interface. Therefore the interface and its design is very important for businesses. This dissertation considers various website interface design parameters and determines whether a relationship between the parameters and the popularity of the website exists. The research methodology utilised is a statistical analysis of a survey of high, medium and low popularity websites and the interface parameters. The e-commerce websites explored fall into the clothing, consumer electronics, and health sectors. The researcher will also discuss the design parameters employed by popular websites. / Dissertation (MIT)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Informatics / unrestricted

No description available.

Having a well-developed Graphical User Interface (GUI) is often necessary for a human-robot team, especially when the human and the robot are not in close proximity to each other or when the human does not interact with the robot in real time. Most current GUIs process and display information in real time, but the time to interact with these systems does not scale well when the complexity of the displayed information increases or when information must be fused to support decision-making. We propose a new interface concept, a Graphical Narrative Interface (GNI), which presents story-based summaries driven by accumulated data. This thesis (a) uses literature and preliminary GNI designs to identify a set of design requirements for easily managing spatiotemporal information, (b) presents a set of algorithms designed to satisfy these requirements, (c) evaluates the utility and limitations of these algorithms, (d) describes a prototype GNI that combines these algorithms with a graphical interface, and (e) compares the GNI and a GUI through a user study and evaluates the efficiency of the GNI.

The thesis examines the factors that need to be considered in order to undertake successful design of user interfaces for older users. The literature on aging is surveyed for age related changes that are of relevance to interface design. The findings from the literature review are extended and placed in a human context using observational studies of older people and their supporters as these older people attempted to learn about and use computers. These findings are then applied in three case studies of interface design and product development for older users. These case studies are reported and examined in depth. For each case study results are presented on the acceptance of the final product by older people. These results show that, for each case study, the interfaces used led to products that the older people evaluating them rated as unusually suitable to their needs as older users. The relationship between the case studies and the overall research aims is then examined in a discussion of the research methodology. In the case studies there is an evolving approach used in developing the interface designs. This approach includes intensive contribution by older people to the shaping of the interface design. This approach is analyzed and is presented as an approach to designing user interfaces for older people. It was found that a number of non-standard techniques were useful in order to maximize the benefit from the involvement of the older contributors and to ensure their ethical treatment. These techniques and the rationale behind them are described. Finally the interface design approach that emerged has strong links to the approach used by the UTOPIA team based at the university of Dundee. The extent to which the thesis provides support for the UTOPIA approach is discussed.

Ease of use with digital tabletops in public settings is contingent on how well the system invites and guides interaction. The same can be said for the interface design and individual graphical user interface elements of these systems. One such interface element is menus. Prior to a menu being used however, it must first be discovered within the interface. Existing research pertaining to digital tabletop menu design does not address this issue of discovering or opening a menu. This thesis investigates how the interface and interaction of digital tabletops can be designed to encourage menu discoverability in the context of public settings. A set of menu invocation designs varying on the invocation element and use of animation are proposed. These designs are then evaluated through an observational study at a museum to observe users interactions in a realistic public setting. Findings from this study propose the use of discernible and recognizable interface elements – buttons – supported by the use of animation to attract and guide users as a discoverable menu invocation design. Additionally, findings posit that when engaging with a public digital tabletop display, users transition through exploration and discovery states before becoming competent with the system. Finally, insights from this study point to a set of design recommendations for improving menu discoverability.

Organizing personal collections of digital documents can be frustrating for two main reasons. First, the effort required to work with the folder system on personal computers and the possible misplacement and loss of documents. Second, the lack of effective organization and management tools for personal collections of digital documents. The research in this thesis investigated specific visualization and clustering features intended for organizing collections of documents and built in a prototype interface that was compared to a baseline interface from previous research. The results showed that those features helped users with: 1) the initial classification of documents into clusters during the supervised stage; 2) the modification of clusters; 3) the cluster labeling process; 4) the presentation of the final set of organized documents; 5) the efficiency of the organization process, and 6) achieving better accuracy in the clusters created for organizing the documents.

In the context of knowledge management, the challenge for organizations is to convert individual human knowledge into structural capital so that the knowledge becomes persistent in the organization, making it more accessible and hence more usable. How to codify the knowledge of a workforce, including the tacit knowledge of experts, and how to apply that codified knowledge with success are unresolved issues. The conversion of individual knowledge into structural capital is of particular relevance in the field of design. Design is a complex activity that creates valuable knowledge. However, that knowledge is often implicit, unstructured, and embedded in procedures, methods, documentation, design artifacts, and of course in the minds of designers and other project stakeholders. In addition, design teams are often multidisciplinary and include experts who apply tacit knowledge to arrive at solutions. Design projects extend over time so that the risk of losing design knowledge increases. Information in itself is not knowledge for the purposes of structural capital. A user interface (UI) design specification for example, does not capture the knowledge used to create that design. The specification tells us what the artifact should be, but it does not tell us how the design came to be or why it is the way it is. Design rationale (DR) is a field of study surrounding the reasoning behind design decisions and the reasoning process that leads to the design of an artifact. The objective of creating a design rationale is to make the reasons for design decisions explicit. Design space analysis (DSA) is one perspective on design rationale that explores alternative design solutions and the assessment of each against design objectives. The rationale behind design decisions provides insight about the design knowledge that was applied and is therefore, of interest to the structural capital of organizations. Moreover, the process of making the rationale explicit is of interest to the domain of user interface design. The challenge for UI designers and the question addressed in this research is how to make the design rationale explicit and use it to effectively support the design process? The proposed solution is to conduct design space analysiS as part of the process of de.slgn. To. test this solution it is important to explore the implications of generating design rationale in practice and to explore whether DSA reflects the knowledge that expert deSigners apply. The "DSA study" demonstrated and examined the use of design space analysis by UI experts in a long-term, practical, design setting. The findings suggest that design space analysis supports communication and the reasoning process, and it provides context around past design decisions. It was also found that conducting design space analysis encourages designers to accumulate design ideas and develop an understanding of design problems in a systematic way. In addition, the study showed that designers are capable of producing and using the notation, but that the effort to conduct DSA is an obstacle to its use in practice. Conclusions are drawn that DSA can structure the reasoning aspect of design knowledge. The "design skills study" identified the skills that user interface experts apply in practice. The findings indicate that many of the skills of UI experts correspond to the skills that are emphasized by DSA. The study emphasized the pervasiveness and importance of the communication activity in design, as well as the role of reasoning in communication and decision making. The study also identified design activities that receive comparatively little attention from UI experts and design skills that may be comparatively poor. Conclusions are drawn that DSA reflects in part the knowledge that designers apply in practice. Findings from the above studies point to two approaches that maximize the positive effects of DSA and minimize the effort to conduct a design space analysis. I describe these approaches as coaching and heuristics. Informal evaluations indicate that coaching and heuristics warrant further investigation. The findings from each of the studies have implications for design space analysis. These are discussed around several themes: the tension between the processes of designing and structuring design knowledge, the trade-off in effort between structuring design knowledge and interpreting unstructured design knowledge, design knowledge and the complementary roles of communication and documentation, and DSA as it pertains to expert and novice designers. It is inevitable that where there are new findings and solutions there are also new questions to be explored. Several interesting questions raised by these investigations suggest an agenda for future work.

No description available.