Thesis (Ph.D)--University of Florida, 2005. / Title from title page of source document. Document formatted into pages; contains 169 pages. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Oregon State University, 2007. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 137-146). Also available on the World Wide Web.

With concerns for the environment becoming more prevalent in business and the government, it is increasingly important to re-evaluate and update processes to include sustainability considerations early in the design process. In response to this charge, this research effort was designed to integrate sustainability factors into the usercentered design process. The results of this research highlight the benefits of sustainability requirement planning, as well as those derived from integrating sustainability into the current user-centered design model

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In this thesis, a framework for improving model-driven system design productivity with Requirements-Driven Design Automation (RDDA) is presented. The key to the proposed approach is to close the semantic gap between requirements, components and architecture by using compatible semantic models for describing product requirements and component capabilities, including constraints. An ontology-based representation language is designed that spans requirements for the application domain, the software design domain and the component domain. Design automation is supported for architecture development by machine-based mapping of desired product/subsystem features and capabilities to library components and by synthesis and maintenance of Systems Modeling Language (SysML) design structure diagrams. The RDDA framework uses standards-based semantic web technologies and can be integrated with exiting modeling tools. Requirements specification is a major component of the system development cycle. Mistakes and omissions in requirements documents lead to ambiguous or wrong interpretation by engineers, causing errors that trickle down in design and implementation with consequences on the overall development cost. We describe a methodology for requirements specification that aims to alleviate the above issues and that produces models for functional requirements that can be automatically validated for completeness and consistency. The RDDA framework uses an ontology-based language for semantic description of functional product requirements, SysML structure diagrams, component constraints, and Quality of Service. The front-end method for requirements specification is the SysML editor in Rhapsody. A requirements model in Web Ontology Language (OWL) is converted from SysML to Extensible Markup Language Metadata Interchange (XMI) representation. / The specification is validated for completeness and consistency with a ruled-based system implemented in Prolog. With our methodology, omission s and several types of consistency errors present in the requirements specification are detected early on, before the design stage. Component selection and design automation have the potential to play a major role in reducing the system development time and cost caused by the rapid change in technology advances and the large solution search space. In our work, we start from a structured representation of requirements and components using SysML, and based on specific set of rules written in Prolog, we partially automate the process of architecture design. / by Mihai Fonoage. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Asset management is a time consuming and error prone process. Information Technology (IT) personnel typically perform this task manually by visually inspecting assets to identify misplaced assets. If this process is automated and provided to IT personnel it would prove very useful in keeping track of assets in a server rack. A mobile based solution is proposed to automate this process. The asset management application on the tablet captures images of assets and searches an annotated database to identify the asset. We evaluate the matching performance and speed of asset matching using three different image feature descriptors. Methods to reduce feature extraction and matching complexity were developed. Performance and accuracy tradeoffs were studied, domain specific problems were identified, and optimizations for mobile platforms were made. The results show that the proposed methods reduce complexity of asset matching by 67% when compared to the matching process using unmodified image feature descriptors. / by Reena Ursula Friedel. / Thesis (M.S.C.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2012. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2012. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Orientador: Luis Carlos Paschoarelli / Banca: José Carlos Plácido da Silva / Banca: Paulo Kawauchi / Resumo: É muito importante que os aspectos ergonômicos como segurança, conforto e bem estar sejam considerados na manipulação de objetos para que contemplem as capacidades física e mental dos usuários, bem como características variadas, como gênero e idade. As embalagens são exemplo de interfaces manuais comuns do cotidiano, dentro desse exemplo encontram-se as Embalagens Especiais de Proteção à Criança (EEPCs) que necessitam de mais de um movimento para serem abertas, o que pode levar o usuário a ter sérias dificuldades na tentativa de abertura, gerando constrangimentos principalmente naqueles com menores capacidade biomecânicas, como as mulheres ou os idosos. Por isso, o design de embalagens deve estar atento aos requisitos ergonômicos a fim de disponibilizar produtos que sejam confiáveis e seguros. No caso das EEPCs, elas devem ser ao mesmo tempo acessíveis a idosos e de difícil acesso para crianças. No Brasil, tais embalagens não são obrigatórias, mas podem ser encontradas em diversos produtos, como por exemplo os enxaguantes bucais que se utilizam de uma tampa com sistema de abertura do tipo aperte e gire (squeeze and turn). Entretanto, muitos estudos mostram que essas embalagens difíceis de abrir, especialmente por parte dos idosos. Por esse motivo, esse estudo objetivou avaliar e analisar a influência do design na usabilidade e na aplicação de forças manuais durante uma simulação de abertura de enxaguantes bucais com tampas de proteção. Para isso foi realizado um teste de usabilidade com 67 sujeitos de diferentes gêneros e faixas etárias, utilizando três embalagens de enxaguantes bucais com diferentes formatos. Também foi realizada uma avaliação biomecânica (preensão de torque), em atividades simuladas com 113 indivíduos de diferentes gêneros e faixas etárias, utilizando as mesmas embalagens. Os resultados mostram que a embalagem com maior tampa oferece as melhroes condições de usabilidade e... / Abstract: It is very important that the ergonomic aspects such as safety, comfort and well-being be considered in manipulating objects to contemplate the physical and mental skills of the users as well as various characteristics, such as gender and age. Packages are examples of common manual interfaces of everyday life, among those examples are the Child Resistant packaging (CRP) that require more of one movement to be opened, which leads the user to serious difficulties in opening, causing embarrassment especially in those people with lower biomechanical capabilities, such as women or the elderly. Therefore, the packaging design should be aware of the ergonomic requirements in order to develop products that are reliable and secure. In the case of CRP, they must be bath accessible to elderly and inaccessible to children. In Brazil, such packages are nat mandatory, but they can be found in several products, such as mauthwashes with a squeeze-and-turn cap system. However, many studies have shown that those packages are considered difficult to open, especially to the elderly. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate and analyze the influence of the design in usability and the application of manual forces during an opening simulation of mouthwashes with squeeze-and-turn caps. So, a usability test, with 67 subjects of different genders and age group, was performed using three packages of mouthwashes with different shapes. A biomechanical evaluation (grip torque) was also performed in a simulated task with 113 individuals of different genders and age group, using the same packages. The results showed that the package with the largest cap affers the best of usability and force application, mainly due to the design of the cap, because its size allows better visualization of the opening instructions, that cap also has grooves only at the places where it should be pressed, which provides greater friction between cap and fingers, enabling a higher application... / Mestre

Although computers are smaller and more readily accessible today than they have ever been, I believe that we have barely scratched the surface of what computers can become. When we use computing devices today, we end up spending a lot of our time navigating to particular functions or commands to use devices their way rather than executing those commands immediately. In this dissertation, I explore what I call unmediated interaction, the notion of people using computers as if the computers are not there and as if the people are using their own abilities or powers instead. I argue that facilitating unmediated interaction via personalization, new input modalities, and improved text entry can reduce both input overhead and output overhead, which are the burden of providing inputs to and receiving outputs from the intermediate device, respectively. I introduce three computational methods for reducing input overhead and one for reducing output overhead. First, I show how input data mining can eliminate the need for user inputs altogether. Specifically, I develop a method for mining controller inputs to gain deep insights about a players playing style, their preferences, and the nature of video games that they are playing, all of which can be used to personalize their experience without any explicit input on their part. Next, I introduce gaze locking, a method for sensing eye contact from an image that allows people to interact with computers, devices, and other objects just by looking at them. Third, I introduce computationally optimized keyboard designs for touchscreen manual input that allow people to type on smartphones faster and with far fewer errors than currently possible. Last, I introduce the racing auditory display (RAD), an audio system that makes it possible for people who are blind to play the same types of racing games that sighted players can play, and with a similar speed and sense of control as sighted players. The RAD shows how we can reduce output overhead to provide user interface parity between people with and without disabilities. Together, I hope that these systems open the door to even more efforts in unmediated interaction, with the goal of making computers less like devices that we use and more like abilities or powers that we have.

Modern Geoweb-enabled PPGIS methodologies incorporate interactive map applications as the main driver for public engagement and data collection. However, little research explores exactly how the public interact with these applications to produce spatial data, a fact that contributes to criticisms of final data quality. Usability evaluation offers a solution for developing better PPGIS data production systems by identifying problems in the application interface for which the public engage. Drawing on a case study example of a PPGIS application developed to collect socio-spatial data from members of a random public, this paper addresses usability in a three-stage approach. First, controlled experimentation methods capture performance, preference, and data production metrics. Second, visual and statistical analysis of the captured usability data identify problems in the interface. Results indicate that users learned, became efficient, and were generally satisfied with the application, but also committed errors that may have affected data quality. Third, a solution-oriented critique of the application interface suggests new design options to mitigate future problems in similar applications. The paper ends by providing a conceptual framework for usability as it relates to PPGIS data production and incorporates it into an informed discussion on data quality and future research needs for maintaining the viability of PPGIS projects.

A great deal of effort has been put into developing Embodied Conversational Agent (ECA) systems that provide a human-like assistant in the user interface. However, little is known whether improvements to ECA interfaces made by such efforts can ever be significant from the users point of view. I studied user experiences with ECA interfaces and evaluated the ECA style of interaction with respect to user expectation, perception, behavior and performance. I introduce a conceptual framework that offers a holistic view of the design space of ECA systems. I also have created a middleware toolkit that facilitates rapid development of application content across different speech and animation platforms. A series of user studies has been carried out to investigate the similarities and differences between human-computer interaction and human-ECA interaction and between human-ECA interaction and human-human interaction. Results from these studies provide strong evidence that people are consciously aware of the capabilities and limitations of ECAs. Traditional GUI design heuristics should be carefully followed when designing ECA interfaces. Furthermore, the results soundly suggest that designers of ECA interfaces take extra care to accommodate individual differences and preferences. Social norms that guide human-human interaction greatly affect individuals expectation and perception of ECA characteristics. The findings support the argument that drawing from both human-computer interaction and human-human interaction can be significantly advantageous to the design of both effective and affective human-ECA interaction.