Denna studie beskriver innebörden i begreppen användbarhet och Activity Theory, samt hur den senare kan användas för att stärka utvecklingen av användbara webbplatser. Studien är genomförd ur ett utvecklarperspektiv. Resultatet av studien visar att användbarhet är en egenskap som uppstår i användandet av en artefakt, detta pekar både teori och empiri på. Studien visar också att Activity Theory kan användas på flera sätt för att stärka utvecklingen av användbara webbplatser. Vi anser att de resultat vi kommit fram till i vår studie gäller inte bara för utveckling av webbplatser utan de gäller även utvecklingen av informationssystem och informationsteknologi i en vidare utsträckning.

Den snabba generella eltekniska utvecklingen har även satt sina spår i pumpbranschen. Detta har lett till en mängd nya funktioner och med det ett nytt uppförande hos pumparna. Detta har lett till missförstånd mellan användare och pump. Användaren tror till exempel att pumpen är trasig då den egentligen är automatiskt stoppad, vilket får följden att pumpen skickas på service även då den inte är trasig. Syftet med examensarbetet är att utveckla ett HMI med hög användbarhet som ser till att användaren inte missförstår pumpens nya agerande. Genom fältstudier erhölls kunskap om användaren, arbetsmiljön, arbetssättet och utrustningen. Detta lade grunden till hela arbetet. Informationen som samlades in analyserades ur ett användbarhetsperspektiv, och sammanställdes i en kravspecifikation och i Holtzblatts (1998) arbetsmodeller. Det slutgiltiga resultatet har arbetats fram genom konceptutveckling. Det som började som en idé har sedan genom vidareutveckling resulterat i sex koncept. Koncepten har sedan utvärderats ur ett användbarhetsperspektiv. Under utvärderingen är hänsyn inte tagen till varken ekonomi eller teknik. Det som koncepten har gemensamt är således att de alla har hög användbarhet. Utvärderingen visar också att det för 2600-serien finns en uppdelning användarna emellan. En typ av användare med specifika krav för de små pumparna och en annan typ av användare med andra specifika krav för de större pumparna. För användarna av de små pumparna önskas en enkel lösning, som endast visar om pumpen går eller inte. Här passar alltså en lösning med enkla dioder där en färgkodning visar pumpens status. För de större pumparna finns istället ett intresse för en mer sofistikerad lösning. Här önskas fjärrlarm och loggad data, vilket gör det mer lämpligt med digitala lösningar. / The fast development within electronic technology has given the pump a new appearance. This has led to misunderstandings between the user and the pump. For example, the user thinks the pump is broken when it is in an auto stop mode. The consequence of that is that the pump is sent for maintenance even though it is not broken. The purpose of the master thesis is to develop a HMI with good usability, where the HMI makes sure the user will not misunderstand the new appearance of the pump. Field studies were made to understand the users, their working environment, the way they work and also the equipment. The studies became the base on which the thesis relies on. The information that were collected in the field studies were carefully analyzed through a usability perspective. The results were presented as requirements of usability. The methodologies of concept development were used to create a number of HMI solutions. What once started as many ideas has now ended up as six concepts of a HMI with good usability. The concepts were all evaluated in usability. The work of this project does not cover the considerations of economy and technology. The evaluation shows that the users of the 2600 series can be divided in to two major groups; the user of the small pump and the user of the big pump. The users of the small pump prefer a simple solution that only shows whether the pump is running or not. Instead, the users of the big pump prefer a more sophisticated solution, with alarms, specified indicators and instruction of repairs.

Usability is a way to study how good a website is which is what our research builds upon. On a mission from Liseberg our purpose is to find out if their website liseberg.se is good from a user’s perspective. Our way of carrying this out where grounded upon a qualitative study through observations and following interviews with a number of participants. By compositing tools of method we have started with the theories descriptions of usability tests and we have also used the theories to be able to reflect around and to understand the results from the tests. To be able to get the best use of the theories we have put together a frame with important concepts which describes usability in a structure and concrete way. These concepts works as a starting point of our data collection. In observations and the following interviews certain usability problems with liseberg.se appear. These results then are put to analysis based upon theories and our own understanding of the subject. To sum up a description of what should be reflected upon and changed on a website, with liseberg.se as an example, is presented. We want to show what makes the good website. / Användbarhet är ett sätt att studera hur bra en webbplats är vilket är vad vår undersökning bygger på. På uppdrag av Liseberg har vi som syfte att ta reda på om deras webbplats liseberg.se är bra ur ett användbarhetsperspektiv. Vårt sätt att genomföra detta grundar sig på en kvalitativ studie genom observationer och efterföljande intervjuer med ett antal testdeltagare. I framtagning av metodverktyg så har vi utgått från teoriernas beskrivning av användbarhetstest och vi har även använt teorierna för att kunna reflektera kring och utläsa resultat från undersökningar. För att kunna få störst användning av teorierna har vi sammanställt en ram med viktiga begrepp som beskriver användbarhet på ett strukturerat och konkret sätt. Dessa begrepp fungerar som utgångspunkt för vår datainsamling. I observationer och efterföljande intervjuer framkommer vissa användbarhetsproblem med liseberg.se. Dessa resultat analyseras sedan utifrån teorier och vår egen förståelse i ämnet. Sammanfattningsvis beskrivs vad som bör reflekteras kring och förändras på en webbplats, med liseberg.se som exempel. Vi vill visa vad som utgör den goda webbplatsen.

Designing computer systems that effectively support the user is the major goal within human-computer interaction. To achieve this, we must understand and master several tasks. This process must initially deal with the question of knowing what to develop and later, with the question of knowing how to design and develop the system. This view might seem off-target at first, since it does not explicitly mention the goals or functions of the system. However, more often than not, there is no objective goal to aim for that can be formally specified and used as a target criterion that will signal when we have designed an appropriate system. Instead, there is a large set of vague goals – some of which may last through the entire project and some that will not. It is therefore somewhat confounding that most of the current methods of systems development require that these goals are explicitly laid out, in order to steer development. For researchers in Human-Computer Interaction, the existence of many varying – and possibly conflicting goals – presents is a great challenge. The constructive main focus on producing usable systems is a matter of understanding this complex situation and knowing how to proceed from there. There are many existing approaches that can be used to carry out this complex development process. This thesis presents one approach, based on the notion that the elements that constitute a successful system are also a part of the solution. This thesis presents this approach as it is applied to the development of systems for computer-supported work in health care. The projected solution suggests that we need to focus more intently on active user involvement in iterative development that is significantly long-term. The traditional, rather narrow circle of focus that encompasses design, development and evaluation is not sufficient.

The purpose of this study was to: obtain and review guidelines for designing on a small screen from several theoretic sources and to purpose own guidelines for this context. There was chosen for the development of 3 different prototypes meant for the use on 3 different mobile devices. Those mobile devices had a different screen size and were: an e-reader, PDA and mobile phone. The prototypes provided the user with a future e-newspaper service (a TV schedule). First design principles for good usability on small screens were abstracted from literature. With this knowledge the three prototypes were developed. The development started with writing down the functional and user requirements for the prototypes. After that the developing process had two stages. The first stage was a low-fidelity prototype, this were sketches of the graphical user interface that was commented by users. The second stage was a high-fidelity prototype, this stage consisted of three fully functional prototypes. The three different prototypes were used in a user evaluation. After the evaluation interviews with the users took place to obtain additional information. In this research the main question was: “What are the challenges for designing the (graphical) user interface, as a part of an e-newspaper service which is aimed at use on multiple devices with heterogeneous screen sizes, to be recognized as the same service?”. The results from this research are three challenges in designing the (graphical) user interface for devices with small screens. These challenges are: how to make the user recognize the service in the software (recognition of service), how to develop one service on multiple devices (use on multiple devices) and how to develop software that it is useful and pleasant to use (usable software). In total fifteen guidelines derived from theory were found, this research shows that thirteen of them are applicable when designing for small screens. Three of those thirteen are reformulated in this study to make them fit better in the context. Next to this, seven additional guidelines were proposed in this study. Examples of the purposed guidelines are: reconstruct the layout from the non-digital service in the interface as much as possible, explore the targeted user group, built further on their mental model and pay attention to possible disabilities of the group, implement extra’s that give users a good reason to use the service and make it easy for the user to select the sought information.

The verbal protocol method is used extensively in computer usability studies. This study was designed to test the feasibility of using the verbal protocol method as a means of conducting field research on the online catalogue. Ten undergraduate students conducted their own research on DRA’s Infogate. As they searched, they talked aloud about what keys they were pressing, what was happening on the screen, and their reactions. Transcripts of sessions were analyzed. A total of 65 different problems or comments were noted during search sessions, with 11 problems or comments noted in three or more sessions. This supports the hypothesis that the verbal protocol method is a valuable means of identifying common problems for users. It is suggested that the verbal protocol method offers great potential as a research tool in librarianship, for example in the area of interface design.

In Arbeitsprozessen des Informationszeitalters, z. B. in Forschungs- und Entwicklungsabteilungen, spielen die Erhebung und Darstellung von Daten eine zentrale Rolle. In dem Beitrag wird ein Ansatz zur ingenieurtechnisch basierten Konstruktion von Informationen vorgestellt. Als Information werden abgeschlossene, aus Daten bestehende Einheiten im Sinne von Items, Symbolen, Diagrammen oder sonstigen symbolisierten Datenaufbereitungen verstanden. In Anlehnung an die Mensch-Maschine-Interaktion wird eine Mensch-Daten-Interaktion vorgeschlagen.

Norint pilnai ištirti programos, skirtos tarptautinei rinkai, vartojamumą, reikia išbandyti ją su skirtingų kultūrų atstovais. Kadangi dažniausiai nėra galimybių tiesiogiai bendrauti su vartotojais iš viso pasaulio, reikalingas karkasas, nuotoliniam vartotojų veiksmų registravimui. Kuriamas karkasas ne tik registruos vartotojo veiksmus, bet ir leis juos analizuoti. Tokiu būdu, galima aptikti tam tikroje pasaulio vietoje būdingų vartotojo sasajos trūkumų, juos pataisyti, ir ištirti naujos versijos efektyvumą. / If you want to do usability research for program, which is being used in whole world, you need to try it with persons from different cultures. Most of the times there is no way, that you can communicate with users all over the world, so you need framework, that whould register user actions through distance. This new framework, that is being created, will also let you to do analysis of registered actions, so you can detect usability problems, which reveals only in specific place of the world. You can also fix that defect and do the research again, to find out if that problem is gone.

Emotions play an important role for everyday communication. Different methods allow computers to recognize emotions. Most are trained with acted emotions and it is unknown if such a model would work for recognizing naturally appearing emotions. An experiment was setup to estimate the recognition accuracy of the emotion recognition software SHORE, which could detect the emotions angry, happy, sad, and surprised. Subjects played a casino game while being recorded. The software recognition was correlated with the recognition of ten human observers. The results showed a strong recognition for happy, medium recognition for surprised, and a weak recognition for sad and angry faces. In addition, questionnaires containing self-informed emotions were compared with the computer recognition, but only weak correlations were found. SHORE was able to recognize emotions almost as well as humans were, but if humans had problems to recognize an emotion, then the accuracy of the software was much lower.

Despite the wide availability of computers to teachers throughout New Zealand, and despite the strong philosophy supporting Internet use for teacher development, the actual use of Internet websites aiming to enhance teacher professional development is not high. The New Zealand website Te Kete Ipurangi (TKI) was developed with the aim of connecting teachers to a wide range of materials and information. Professional development of this kind is well supported by many theorists as being able to break down teacher isolation and build a supportive teaching and learning community. Websites for teachers, such as this one, are beginning to develop on the Internet, and their availability to all teachers is of no dispute. The extent to which they are able to be easily employed by teachers as the resources they were intended is, however, a matter only a few have investigated. This research studies some of the navigation aspects of TKI and the usability issues which influence the overall use of this website. Usability tests and a questionnaire were utilised to examine the degree to which this website was usable for teachers and the extent to which there were navigation issues for its intended users. It found that use of TKI was constrained by teachers' own lack of confidence and feelings of inability, as well as several navigation issues. These issues centered on the language used in the website - particularly in the headings; the search facility; the layout of the site; and the speed of use.