This paper focuses on how to design a childrens game to help them realize that they can have a positive influence on the environment. We present a detailed description and analysis of our work process from brainstorming to the discussions after playtesting our prototype. Playing while learning has been the motivation of our work which is divided into three specific topics: How to involve the users in the design process, what type of social aspects exist in our game, and the importance of a feedback and reward system in the game. We look upon earlier research and examples within these three areas. We designed our game from a user centered perspective to make the users influence and encourage a discussion and awareness about environmental questions in a way that isnʼt negative. While designing our game we wanted to shed a positive light upon a serious issue and bring the environment into the topics of play and fun. In our research we discoverd that focusing on small subjects and tasks the children started to discuss the complex theme of the environment. We focus on the interaction with the children and using their influence to make decisions in our design process. Involving them helped us to see that there is not only one way of learning. In this game, the users learned from engagement and discussion, which ended up being the most important part of the game play.

This paper investigates how physical prototyping modules can be designed to facilitate for interactiondesigners to visualize their ideas early on in a design process. As technology is getting cheaper andeasier to use, it has opened up the possibility for others than just engineers to build with technology.We see technology being more and more used by designers for building prototypes and testing ideas.A setback with using technology is that it is time consuming and error occurs easily. By testing a set ofthree prototypes I will investigate the problems at hand for interaction designers and come up with adesign solution to facilitate their design process. I will come to conclusion about making the modulesflexible, functional and user friendly to meet the user’s demands.

Vi lever i spännande tider, där vi har tillgång till olika användargränssnitt som hjälper oss att kommunicera med andra människor i realtid, oavsett var i världen de befinner sig. Ricoh är ett globalt IT företag som har utvecklat ett kompakt videokonferenssystem för dessa ändamål som heter ”P3500M”. Utveckling av mjukvara för denna typ av teknologi kan medföra olika tekniska utmaningar. Samtidigt håller organisationer viktiga möten via videokonferens och ställer ofta höga krav på kvalitén. Att skapa ett användbart gränssnitt som beaktar alla dessa aspekter kan bli en utmanande uppgift. Denna studie syftar till att utveckla ett nytt konceptgränssnitt som effekti- viserar utveckling, samt användning av videokonferenssystem och P3500M används som en ut- gångspunkt. Genom att utnyttja framväxande webbaserade teknologier och riktlinjer från tidigare studier inom produktutveckling med användbarhet i fokus, har man i denna studie resulterat i skapandet av en designlösningen som heter ”Cloud Vision”. Studien föreslår ett nytt sätt att ut- veckla användbara gränssnitt för videokonferenssystem, genom utveckling av en central webbap- plikation som tillhandahåller gränssnittet. Med gränssnitt som kan appliceras på olika videokon- ferenssystem som en separat modul, oberoende av plattform, kan det bli lättare att underhålla utvecklingen och hålla fokus på användbarhetsperspektiven. / We live in exciting times, where we have access to different user interfaces that help us commu- nicate with other people in real-time, regardless of where they are in the world. Ricoh is a global IT company that has developed a compact videoconferencing system for these purposes, called ”P3500M”. Development of software for this type of technology can lead to various technical challenges. At the same time, organizations have important meetings through videoconferencing and often make high demands on the quality. To create a useful interface that takes all these aspects into account can be a challenging task. This study aims to develop a new concept interface that streamlines the development and use of videoconferencing systems, where P3500M is used as a starting point. By making use of emerging web technologies and guidelines from previous studies in product development with usability in mind, this study results in the creation of a new design called ”Cloud Vision”. The study proposes a new way to develop usable interfaces for videoconfe- rencing systems, through the development of a central web application that provides the interface. With interfaces that can be applied to various videoconferencing systems as a separate module, regardless of platform, it can be easier to maintain the development and keep focus on usability perspectives.

The international communities of user interface, user experience and interaction designers are in an increasing need of considering Chinese users’ experiences when designing websites. China, along with other mandarin speaking populations, consists of a huge market. Almost one-fifth of global Internet users used Chinese as preferred language in 2020. Additionally, more and more companies worldwide are interested in doing business with the Chinese market.  Targeting the needs of internet users coming from a different cultural background requires a special approach as cultural characteristics may influence the users’ expectations. Even though there have been attempts to characterise user interface menus suitable for Chinese users, as of 2022, it is still challenging to access a study on explicitly navigation. The purpose of this qualitative study is to investigate how local navigation can be adapted to the needs of Chinese users. This study also aims to examine the differences between Chinese and European users’ local navigation preferences. During the study, 2 Chinese subjects and 2 European subjects tested three versions of a web prototype that been developed according to the already established research on designing user interface (UI) for Chinese users. Each prototype alternative presented one of the three local navigation alternatives: inverted L, horizontal and embedded vertical. The data has been collected through conducting contextual inquiry in the form of semi-structured interviews and observations. The gathered information was then analysed through thematic analysis. The two themes: Accessibility of content and Interpreting functionality emerged from the coded data. This study acknowledged that differences between local navigation for Chinese and European users arise in cognitive traits. The Chinese users tend to categorise based on interdependence and relationship (thematic cognitive style) rather than to classify by functions, analyse components and infer common features (functional cognitive style). Furthermore, it has been recognised that Chinese population performs better with horizontal menu layouts with English interfaces. Results from this study show that the horizontal local navigation gained the biggest amount of positive feedback from Chinese interviewees, whereas vertical one the least. Even though, the findings illustrate that both Chinese and European subjects considered horizontal local navigation to be the most effective solution, interviewed Chinese users represented the least homogeneity in preferences. This study suggests that in order to develop guidelines for a fully functioning navigation system with English interfaces suitable for Chinese users, more studies on not solely local but also global and contextual navigation should be carried out. / Interaktionsdesigners samt UI/UX-designers över hela världen världen är i ett ökande behov av att ta hänsyn till kinesiska användares erfarenheter när de designar webbplatser. Kineserna, tillsammans med andra mandarintalande befolkningar, består av en enorm marknad. Nästan en femtedel av de globala internetanvändarna använde kinesiska som sitt föredragna språk i 2020. Dessutom, fler och fler företag globalt blir mer intresserade av att göra affärer med den kinesiska marknaden. För att se till att behoven hos internationella internetanvändare tillgodoses, krävs det ofta ett speciellt tillvägagångssätt. Detta eftersom kulturella egenskaper möjligtvis kan påverka användarnas förväntningar. Syftet med denna kvalitativa studie är att undersöka hur lokal navigering kan anpassas till kinesiska användarnas behov. Även om det redan finns några studier som satsar på att känneteckna användargränssnittsmenyer lämpliga för kinesiska användare, saknas det fortfarande studier som undersöker möjliga anpassningar av just navigering. Denna studie syftar vidare till att undersöka skillnaderna mellan kinesiska och europeiska användarnas lokala navigeringspreferenser. Under studien testade 2 kinesiska och 2 europeiska deltagare, tre versioner av en webbprototyp. Prototypen utvecklades enligt den redan etablerade forskningen kring design av användargränssnitt (UI) för kinesiska användare. Varje version av prototypen innehöll ett av de tre lokala navigeringsalternativen: inverted L, horizontal och embedded vertical. Data samlades in genom kontextuella undersökningar i form av semistrukturerade intervjuer och observationer. Den insamlade informationen analyserades sedan genom en tematisk analys. De två teman som framkom ur den kodade datan var: Tillgänglighet av innehåll och Tolkning av funktionalitet. Denna studie erkände att skillnader mellan lokal navigering för kinesiska och europeiska användare uppstår i kognitiva egenskaper. De kinesiska användarna tenderar att kategorisera baserat på ömsesidigt beroende och relation (tematisk kognitiv stil) snarare än att klassificera efter funktioner, analyskomponenter och härleda gemensamma drag (funktionell kognitiv stil). Dessutom har det insetts att den kinesiska befolkningen presterar bättre med horisontella menylayouter med engelska gränssnitt. Resultat från denna studie visar att den horisontella lokala navigeringen fick den största mängden positiv feedback från kinesiska intervjupersoner, medan den vertikala minst. Även om resultaten illustrerar att både kinesiska och europeiska ämnen ansåg horisontell lokal navigering vara den mest effektiva lösningen, representerade intervjuade kinesiska användare minst homogenitet i preferenser. Denna studie föreslår att för att utveckla riktlinjer för ett fullt fungerande navigationssystem med engelska gränssnitt lämpliga för kinesiska användare, bör fler studier om inte bara lokal utan även global och kontextuell navigering genomföras.

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This report examines usability shortcomings of a self-checkout (SCO) and subsequently explores improvement suggestions for these issues using the double diamond design process. Shortcomings are identified through a heuristic evaluation against Jakob Nielsen’s ten usability heuristics and through a user study conducted in a retail environment. After prioritizing the identified problems, two issues are addressed: members missing to input their membership information and the checkout process slowing down due to the bag selection and payment method screens. After studying how other SCOs operate and gathering user opinions on SCO experiences, improvement proposals are presented. A new step for inputting membership information is proposed and a redesign of the screens for bag selection and payment method is suggested. To verify if the new design contributes to increased usability, a test is conducted; however, the results are not significant enough to demonstrate an improvement.

The current best practices of user-centered design (UCD) may not be optimal with respect to eliciting information from representative users from special populations. This research extended elicitation approaches traditional focus on user needs and context to include criteria describing obstacles users encounter. Military veterans were selected for this research effort as representative users for a use case in technology design that addresses the difficulties associated with community reintegration. This work provides several contributions to the UCD field. First, different elicitation methods were compared by the depth and breadth of design space criteria elicited. Guidelines were generated for designer use of phenomenology in practice. Obstacles were added as an important facet of design, with corresponding grammar rules for construction. Finally, an algorithm was applied as a method for generating personas. Additionally, this dissertation contributes to the field of veteran research. Some example contributions include a set of design space criteria for designers to consider when designing for veterans, and two veteran personas grounded in data procured from the analysis. This research effort was conducted in three phases: elicitation, first-cycle analysis, and second-cycle analysis. The elicitation process engaged 40 military veterans to complete an interview session and a design session. These sessions explored the lived experience of veterans as they reintegrate into communities, and gathered their ideas for technology to assist with veteran reintegration. The researchers who conducted first-cycle coding focused on categorizing the most important participant statements (meaning units) using a codebook. This analysis resulted in over 3,000 meaning units. Additionally, the meaning unit corpus was subjected to systematic second-cycle analyses, using standardized linguistic structures to generate design space criteria. In total, over 6,000 design space criteria were discovered, and these criteria were synthesized to create personas using a situated data mining (SDM) algorithm. Results suggest that the interview session was crucial to elicit higher quantity and broader coverage of design space criteria. It is recommended that designers conduct and analyze interviews that focus on understanding the lived experience of users (not on their technology ideas) as part of a UCD approach. / Ph. D.

The world moves toward the era of a smart society that is human-centered, sustainable, and inclusive. Countries employed new information and communication technologies to deliver services and engage citizens in the decision-making process. These services are evolving and in the near future, we can expect a plethora of new services related to Smart Society 5.0 and Industry 4.0, in addition to more traditional services. The possibility of these new technologies to foster sustainable development can only be obtained when all target users have fair access to the offered services. In the e-government context, ensuring service quality is crucial for success. While many factors contribute to service quality, user experience is becoming increasingly important. Governments need to put citizens at the center of the design process of their services and ensure that all target users have an enhanced experience with the offered e-services. Moreover, e-government constantly changes over time and continues to drive opportunities and open new possibilities for potential developments. Therefore, it is highly recommended that government agencies regularly evaluate citizens' experience with the offered services and investigate the factors that significantly influence their adoption behavior. However, numerous research efforts investigated the user experience of e-government from the lens of specific government services in an individual or specific range of countries. There has been a lack of a global e-government adoption framework to evaluate users' adoption behaviors of e-government services. Despite successful efforts to formalize certain aspects of user experience, there remains a need for a comprehensive and systematic framework for user experience evaluation. Therefore, the main objective of this thesis is to conduct a comprehensive study of the state of the art in user experience evaluation and develop a unified framework that integrates existing knowledge on the topic. It provides a systematic approach for enhancing user experience by providing guidelines on how to evaluate users' adoption behaviors of e-government services efficiently as a reference for future investigations. The research approach was conducted through two main phases. The first phase aims to design the proposed conceptual framework to evaluate users' adoption behaviors of e-government services. Hence, we have conducted a systematic literature review on user experience towards e-government services and cover all different aspects to better understand target users and enhance their overall experience. This systematic review informed the design of a holistic conceptual framework by investigating factors that significantly affect users' adoption of e-government services globally. The proposed framework provides a standard overarching process for future research in the e-government domain by providing an established methodology for evaluating users' adoption behaviors of e-government services. This framework is global, it is used to evaluate users' adoption behaviors of e-government in any country to ensure that citizens have a good experience with e-government services in that country. The framework includes the most common significant factors influencing users' adoption behaviors of e-government that represent the necessary steps to enhance citizen experience and boost their adoption behavior. The second phase implies the utilization of the proposed framework to evaluate users' adoption behaviors of e-government by developing a reference implementation of e-government adoption based on the proposed framework. The quantitative research methodology was employed using a web-based questionnaire to evaluate the e-government adoption behavior. The questionnaire contains a set of measurement items pertaining to each factor that existed in the proposed framework to investigate their potential relationships. The questionnaire underwent an iterative process of testing and validation to ensure the reliability and credibility of the measurement items. Then, the multivariate statistics, including the structural equation modeling, have been adopted to analyze and examine the framework relationships. Preliminary results of this thesis include two user studies investigating user experience towards specific e-government services to support the development of the conceptual framework. Then, the proposed framework alongside the reference implementation were applied to evaluate the Saudi e-government adoption by evaluating the adoption behavior and developing an explanatory model for the adoption behaviors of Saudi citizens. The contributions of this thesis can be summarized by conducting a systematic literature review on user experience towards e-government services to inform the design of the proposed framework. Then, developing a global conceptual framework for evaluating users' adoption behaviors of e-government. Overall, this thesis provides valuable insights into enhancing citizen experience and increasing their adoption of e-government services, which supports government agencies, practitioners, and policymakers. / Doctor of Philosophy / Governments employed new technologies that are dynamic and smart to deliver services to citizens and ensure they are engaged while using these services. Nowadays, the phenomenon of 'smart society' refers to systems that are human-centered, sustainable, and accessed by all target users. Universal access to government services is the pillar to achieving sustainable development goals as expressions of a smart society. In the electronic government context, ensuring service quality is crucial for success. While many factors contribute to service quality, user experience is becoming increasingly important. Governments need to put citizens at the center of the design process of their services and ensure that all target users have an enhanced experience with the offered e-services. Moreover, e-government constantly changes over time and continues to drive opportunities and open new possibilities for potential developments. Therefore, it is highly recommended that government agencies regularly evaluate citizens' experience and investigate the factors that influence their adoption behavior. In the literature, there has been a lack of a comprehensive review of user experience towards e-government services globally. In addition, many research efforts focused on developing e-government adoption frameworks based on government services in a specific country or a limited range of countries. There has been a lack of a global e-government adoption framework to evaluate users' adoption behaviors of e-government services. Despite successful efforts to formalize certain aspects of user experience, there remains a need for a comprehensive and systematic framework for user experience evaluation. Therefore, the main objective of this thesis is to conduct a comprehensive study of the state of the art in user experience evaluation and develop a unified framework that integrates existing knowledge on the topic. It provides a systematic approach to enhance the user experience by providing guidelines on how to evaluate users' adoption behaviors of e-government services efficiently as a reference for future investigations. This comprehensive review informed the design of a holistic conceptual framework by investigating significant factors influencing users' adoption behaviors of e-government services globally. Hence, the proposed framework includes the most common significant factors influencing users' adoption behaviors of e-government imported from the comprehensive review's results. This framework provides a standard overarching process for future research in the e-government domain by providing an established methodology for evaluating users' adoption behaviors of e-government services. It is used to evaluate the e-government adoption behaviors in any country to ensure the efficiency of e-government services and enhance the citizen experience in that country. The quantitative research methodology was employed using a web-based questionnaire to evaluate the e-government adoption behavior based on the proposed framework. The questionnaire was tested and validated to ensure the reliability and credibility of the questionnaire items. After that, specific statistical techniques, including structural equation modeling, were used to examine and refine the framework relationships. Preliminary results of this thesis include two user studies investigating users' experience towards specific e-government services to support the development of the conceptual framework. Hence, the proposed framework alongside the developed questionnaire and implemented analysis techniques were applied to evaluate the Saudi e-government adoption by evaluating the adoption behavior and developing an explanatory model for the adoption behaviors of Saudi citizens. This thesis supports the e-government by providing valuable insights to government practitioners and policymakers on enhancing citizen experience and increasing their adoption of e-government services.

This study presents a case study that addresses a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system as a key component in managing customer relations for companies. Due to these systems being very complex and needing a complete understanding of the user requirements to support their actions, this user experience can potentially be hindered. This study aims to highlight these challenges by identifying key usability challenges faced by users and suggesting targeted design improvements from a developer perspective.   This qualitative study explored usability challenges within an existing CRM system through a user-centered approach, gathering data from the users of the CRM-system. Empirical data was collected using interviews in a semi-structured form to delve into the user experience and what issues the users was facing. This methodology has facilitated a great understanding of areas that would need further development of the CRM-system. Applying Nielsen’s usability heuristics as an analytical framework, multiple critical enhancements were identified. These recommendations for enhancements are aimed with the goal of simplifying the user interface and the work conducted in it. The active involvement of the users in this study addressed multiple critical factors of improvements in the CRM-system, with the likes of the importance of integrating direct communication tools within the CRM-system to facilitate direct customer interaction. Additionally, there emerged a need for further development of the system’s performance and responsiveness, as well as enhancing its personal flexibility to adapt the CRM-system to each user's individual work process. This study contributes to the ongoing discourse on enhancing CRM-system effectiveness and user satisfaction through strategic design enhancements.

In the world of software development, the most common framework is the agileframework. This framework first arose as a counter-reaction to waterfall development,mostly to incorporate user-centered design. But today the user-centered design and theuser are often overlooked. Still, some believe that the integration of user-centereddesign and agile development could help improve software development. Thisintegration is called user-centered agile design or UCAD for short. The main reason forconsidering UCAD over agile development is that software stands and falls with gooduser experience. Something that the user-centered perspective can help with.This thesis therefore sought to research the usage of UCAD in daily work with anautoethnographic approach. This meant that the author could use their experiencesfrom developing a piece of software as the basis of the research. This software was awebshop application for Quintus Technologies AB that acts as a way for their customersto buy spare and wear parts. The results were therefore in the form of a story told infirst-person perspective about the whole development period of about 20 weeks.This project found amongst other things that UCAD does hold some merit and theauthor also enjoyed this way of working. There were of course some problems, with thebiggest challenge being the act of trying to balance UX and functional tasks. To combatthis problem the notion of gear-switching was conceptualized. One specific factor thatwas brought up by earlier research was also found to be important. This factor was thetask factor and most importantly this factor brought up the consideration of tasks overroles. Whilst this project indicates that UCAD might be a good evolution of the agileframework there is still a lot more research that needs to be done mostly in differentsettings. Such as bigger teams and with more mature software. Whilst more research isneeded, this project still shows great potential for the UCAD framework.