Technology plays an increasingly important role in modern health care. This thesis presents an approach to usability evaluation of mobile information and communications technologies designed for diabetes patients&rsquo / use in their daily lives. According to our study conducted on 60 diabetes patients, several important findings are obtained. Fifty nine (98.3%) diabetes patients were highly satisfied with the mobile health technology and expressed that they would use it, and found the measured values reliable. For 57 (95%) diabetes patients / measuring, checking and accessing the blood glucose level easily anytime and anywhere were very important. Fifty six (93.3%) said that they would wish to send their blood glucose levels to their physicians via e-mail. When participants were asked to provide a decision on future health care, predominate number of participants said they would change their lifestyle rather than visit a doctor regardless of their blood glucose level. In conclusion, little is known about such effects of mobile information and communications technologies in self-management care situations. It is clear that usability studies in the field are more difficult to conduct than laboratory evaluations. Further studies with larger sample sizes are needed to further evaluate these initial findings.

Designing a software interface for healthcare requires thorough domain knowledge, and effective user research and benchmark analysis. This thesis examines the requirements for an improved patient information management system for emergency medicine and describes the iterative process of designing and evaluating the system. I conducted observational study of Emergency Department (ED) physicians’ workflow and information needs, from which I derived a set of functional requirements, created scenarios, performed hierarchical task analysis, and developed a preliminary user model for the patient information management system. Based on these, I developed an interface prototype and evaluated the design with a sample of ED physicians. I review the user testing and design iterations carried out and report on the design improvements made based on the user feedback.

Designing a software interface for healthcare requires thorough domain knowledge, and effective user research and benchmark analysis. This thesis examines the requirements for an improved patient information management system for emergency medicine and describes the iterative process of designing and evaluating the system. I conducted observational study of Emergency Department (ED) physicians’ workflow and information needs, from which I derived a set of functional requirements, created scenarios, performed hierarchical task analysis, and developed a preliminary user model for the patient information management system. Based on these, I developed an interface prototype and evaluated the design with a sample of ED physicians. I review the user testing and design iterations carried out and report on the design improvements made based on the user feedback.

Information Technology (IT) has been put forth as a reasonable way to sustain visitor interest and encourage visit repetition in museums. Therefore, IT is becoming more common in museum settings and professionals express their need for more information about how their visitors interact with these systems. This dissertation is an attempt to answer this call. We propose three essays that deal with different aspects of museums and IT from a user-centered perspective. The first essay is an attempt to determine with a free simulation experiment how IT and more particularly websites can arouse interest for museological content. The second essay relies on a field study to analyze the influence of IT on affective and cognitive reactions during a museum visit, namely perceived enjoyment, perceived authenticity and learning. In the third essay, we use focus groups and questionnaires to explore visitor expectations towards a phenomenological experience and the role played by IT in visitor experience of the past. This dissertation contributes to research by (1) advancing our knowledge of IT dedicated to the cultural heritage area, and (2) identifying and understanding visitor perceptions of hedonic systems. By proposing a set of key dimensions that could be used for IT evaluation in the cultural heritage, this dissertation also offers actionable advices to museum professionals.

Though a relatively new form of communication technology, the podcast serves as a remediated form of the classical orator—merging the classical practices of oration with current methods of production and delivery. This study draws connections from the historical five canons of rhetoric and current usability studies to build a heuristic for developing and evaluating usable podcast design.

Interactive fisheye views use distortion to show both local detail and global context in the same display space. Although fisheyes allow the presentation and inspection of large data sets, the distortion effects can cause problems for users. One such problem is lack of memorability the ability to find and go back to objects and features in the data. This thesis examines the possibility of improving the memorability of fisheye views by adding historical information to the visualization. The historical information is added visually through visit wear, an extension of the concepts of edit wear and read wear. This will answer the question Where have I been? through visual instead of cognitive processing by overlaying new visual information on the data to indicate a users recent interaction history. This thesis describes general principles of visibility in a space that is distorted by a fisheye lens and defines some parameters of the design space of visit wear. Finally, a test system that applied the principles was evaluated, and showed that adding visit wear to a fisheye system improved the memorability of the information space.

Primary care clinics play a vital role in the US healthcare system, providing preventative and cost-effective care. New trends in healthcare such as the development of the medical home model for care, the application of electronic medical records (EMRs), the effort to increase access to care, and the need to adhere to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) will have direct impacts on the work flow and spatial delineation of primary care clinics. To ensure the success of primary care practices, the architectural design of primary care clinics needs to address these changes to satisfy both patients and staff, and to improve efficiency and outcomes of care. There is limited literature on the design usability (efficiency, effectiveness, and user satisfaction) of primary care clinics. This study developed a set of building usability evaluation tools to collect, analyze and interpret the “usability” of a primary care facility. The study used previous literature as well as a case study primary care clinic in Maryland as a basis to develop these tools. In the clinic, data were collected through an initial interview with the head nurse, a forty-hour behavioral observation, and a staff survey. A behavioral observation tool and a survey questionnaire were developed for the data collection. For data analysis, JMP Pro 9 software was used to analyze the data collected through behavioral observation and the staff survey. The literature review developed a “Building Usability Framework” specifically for healthcare design. A data analysis tool, the “Usability Matrix” was created to integrate and understand the analyzed data within the Building Usability Framework. Integrating the analyzed data from the case study within the Usability Matrix, a primary care clinic usability evaluation survey was developed at the end of the study. This survey along with the behavioral observation tool and design analysis tools were compiled together to produce the “Building Usability Evaluation Tool-Kit for Primary Care Clinics.” This tool-kit can be used by architects and researchers interested in designing and analyzing “usable” primary care clinics.

Interactive fisheye views use distortion to show both local detail and global context in the same display space. Although fisheyes allow the presentation and inspection of large data sets, the distortion effects can cause problems for users. One such problem is lack of memorability the ability to find and go back to objects and features in the data. This thesis examines the possibility of improving the memorability of fisheye views by adding historical information to the visualization. The historical information is added visually through visit wear, an extension of the concepts of edit wear and read wear. This will answer the question Where have I been? through visual instead of cognitive processing by overlaying new visual information on the data to indicate a users recent interaction history. This thesis describes general principles of visibility in a space that is distorted by a fisheye lens and defines some parameters of the design space of visit wear. Finally, a test system that applied the principles was evaluated, and showed that adding visit wear to a fisheye system improved the memorability of the information space.

In my teaching and software development practice, I realized that most applications with human-computer interaction do not respond to users’ emotional needs. The dualism of reason and emotion as two fairly opposite entities that dominated Western philosophy was also reflected in software design. Computing was originally intended to provide applications for military and industrial activities and was primarily associated with cognition and rationality. Today, more and more computer applications interact with users in very complex and sophisticated ways. In human-computer interaction, attention is given to issues of usability and user modeling, but techniques to emotionally engage users or respond to their emotional needs have not been fully developed, even as specialists like Klein, Norman and Picard argued that machines that recognize and express emotions respond better and more appropriately to user interaction (Picard, 1997; Picard & Klein, 2002; Norman, 2004). This study investigated emotion from designers’ perspectives and tentatively concludes that there is little awareness and involvement in emotional design in the IT community. By contrast, participants in this study (36 IT specialists from various fields) strongly supported the idea of emotional design and confirmed the need for methodologies and theoretical models to research emotional design. Based on a review of theory, surveys and interviews, I identified a set of themes for heuristics of emotional design and recommended future research directions. Attention was given to consequences; participants in this study raised issues of manipulation, ethical responsibilities of designers, and the need for regulations, and recommended that emotional design should carry standard ethical guidelines for games and any other applications. The research design utilized a mixed QUAN-qual methodological model proposed by Creswell (2003) and Gay, Mills, and Airasian (2006), which was modified to equally emphasize both quantitative and qualitative stages. An instrument in the form of a questionnaire was designed, tested and piloted in this study and will be improved and used in future research.

TOUCHE (Task-Oriented and User-Centered process model for developing interfaces for Human-Computer-Human Environments) is a process model for software development created to develop groupware. The creation of TOUCHE is part of a research project carried out at three Spanish universities. The aim of the project is to create a complete process model for the development of usable groupware. This thesis is part of this project and aims to further advance the TOUCHE process model so that it fulfills its aim on developing for usability. The thesis is based on research from the HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) and CSCW (Computer-Supported Cooperative Work) fields. In the thesis a new version of TOUCHE is created which has a strong focus on developing for usability.This is done by selecting four principles from the HCI field, incorporating what is considered to be most important when developing for usability. The principles are a strong focus on, and the involvement of users throughout the whole process, an iterative process, multidisciplinary design, and aim for groupware usability. TOUCHE is analyzed from these principles and missing elements are identified. The difficulties of integrating these elements into TOUCHE are discussed and finally elements are chosen to be integrated into TOUCHE. These elements include a usability guide, evaluation cycles, prototyping, pre-documentation and a multidisciplinary team.