With the complexity increase of enterprise solutions, the need to monitor and maintain them increases with it. SAP Concur offers various services and applications across different environments and data centers. For all these applications and the services underneath, there are different Application Performance Management (APM) tools in place for monitoring them. However, from an incident management point of view, in case of a problem it is time consuming and non-efficient to go through different tools in order to identify the issue. This thesis proposes a solution for a custom and centralized APM which gathers metrics and raw data from multiple sources and visualizes them in real-time in a unified health dashboard called Pulse. In order to fit this solution to the needs of service managers and product owners, Pulse will go through different phases of usability tests and after each phase, new requirements will be implemented and tested again until there is a final design that fits the needs of target users.

Stroke is the major cause of permanent adult disability worldwide. Often stroke affects the motor control of the upper limb, leading to difficulties in performing activities of daily living. Many hours are spent in resource-intensive therapy to regain functionality of the upper limb. In order to decrease the burden to therapists and increase access to rehabilitation, an upper limb rehabilitation robotic device was developed. Observations from therapists and an international survey of stroke therapists were conducted to understand general requirements of an upper limb rehabilitation device. These requirements were the basis of the mechanical design portion of the prototype. The prototype was evaluated with stroke therapists in a focus group. Although more iterations of design, testing and evaluation are needed, this project is a step in developing a lower cost, portable device to increase access to upper limb stroke rehabilitation.

Stroke is the major cause of permanent adult disability worldwide. Often stroke affects the motor control of the upper limb, leading to difficulties in performing activities of daily living. Many hours are spent in resource-intensive therapy to regain functionality of the upper limb. In order to decrease the burden to therapists and increase access to rehabilitation, an upper limb rehabilitation robotic device was developed. Observations from therapists and an international survey of stroke therapists were conducted to understand general requirements of an upper limb rehabilitation device. These requirements were the basis of the mechanical design portion of the prototype. The prototype was evaluated with stroke therapists in a focus group. Although more iterations of design, testing and evaluation are needed, this project is a step in developing a lower cost, portable device to increase access to upper limb stroke rehabilitation.

Over the past several years, the press, trade publications and academic literature have reported with increasing frequency on the social concerns caused by ubiquitous computingInformation Technology (IT) embedded in artifacts, infrastructure and environments of daily life. Designers and researchers of ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) technologies have spent considerable efforts to address these concerns, which include privacy and data protection issues, information security and personal safety. Yet, designing successful ubicomp applications is still an unreliable and expensive endeavor, in part due to imperfect understanding of how technology is appropriated, the lack of effective design tools and the challenges of prototyping these applications in realistic conditions. I introduce the concept of proportionality as a principle able to guide design of ubiquitous computing applications and specifically to attack privacy and security issues. Inspired by the principle, I propose a design process framework that assists the practitioner in making reasoned and documented design choices throughout the development process. I validate the design process framework through a quantitative design experiment vis--vis other design methods. Furthermore, I present several case studies and evaluations to demonstrate the design methods effectiveness and generality. I claim that the design method helps to identify some of the obstacles to the acceptance of ubiquitous computing applications and to translate security and privacy concerns into research questions in the design process. I further discuss some of the inquiry and validation techniques that are appropriate to answer these questions.

This thesis explores the design of a website to communicate international activities undertaken by or associated with the University of Victoria. The research was seeded by and undertaken in collaboration with the University of Victoria’s office of Vice-President Academics and Provost, and the Office of International Affairs. The thesis introduces and implements a product design process to create a mapping application for the university to display all of its international connections. The thesis advanced the study of how to incorporate users into the design process of an online map. User-centered design is an established practice of studying users and collecting their feedback during all stages of design. This process has begun to be used for online mapping. A challenge with online mapping is that potential users can be an unwieldy community. In this case study the users could come from anywhere within the UVic community, but also the public. With such a large and diverse group, incorporating all the potential users into the design process is not possible. A challenge therefore is to capture feedback from a meaningful representative sample of potential users. This research describes a process of user-centered design in which a sample of users were surveyed at the beginning of the process to determine their requirements and preferences for a mapping application, and then interviewed to test the usability of the product. The thesis concludes with recommendations for design and layout of an online mapping application, including identification where further study or decisions are required. / Graduate

El texto completo de este trabajo no está disponible en el Repositorio Académico UPC por restricciones de la casa editorial donde ha sido publicado. / Pursuit of innovation projects with the absent of a methodology to follow hampers the development of the software product as its complexity grows since the freedom of its own advancement is confused with the lack of order on it. Traditional and agile methodologies do not adapt to this kind of projects therefore, in this paper we aim to design a model that incorporates characteristics of both of them to get a solution of a need found in society. In this study, we focus on the construction of a mobile application that answer to the lack of a system that integrates pharmaceutical products from different establishment through the appliance of usability concept with the UCD (User centered design) approach. In this case we only detail about four of the seven stages proposed in the model developed with its techniques, tools and activities conducted. Results obtained show that the model proposed achieve the expectative and its use is not limited to just mobile applications but to any kind of software project. / Revisión por pares

This dissertation presents a case study in user-centered design completed at the University of Central Florida. Leadership in the College of Graduate Studies at UCF realized the need for an advisement tool to assist advisors in the academic colleges to track the success of their students. After an advisement product was selected, the user-centered design approach started to be implemented. End-users were shown the basic functionality and known benefits of the product. Then they were asked how they could make it standardized across programs. The users selected the order in which information and degree requirements should display. The users asked for additional information to be shown on the new advising report called the Graduate Plan of Study (GPS). This information would assist them in advising students and certifying that the students' had met requirements to earn their degree. With the help of the end-users, a prototype was developed and delivered to computer services. End users assisted with the testing of current and additional functionality. After attending focus groups, the end-users had a better understanding of the need for testing. They assisted in providing ideas for training and a deployment plan to the university. The use of the user-centered design approach helped to keep our end-users engaged in the project. They were the central cause of the successful implementation of a new advisement module for graduate students at UCF.

In the U.S., the majority of construction companies are small companies with 10 or fewer employees (BLS, 2004). The fatality rate in the construction industry is high, indicating a need for implementing safety training to a greater extent. This research addresses two main goals: to make recommendations and design a safety training system for small construction companies, and to use Contextual Design to design the training system. Contextual Design was developed by Holtzblatt (Beyer and Holtzblatt, 1998) in an effort to address the challenge of designing new systems. Ethnographic in nature, the Contextual Design methodology requires field data collection, requirements analysis, model building, visioning and story boarding, and prototyping. A sample of 12 participants consisting of 7 tradespersons, 3 forepersons, and 2 owners/ managers, was selected for data collection. The data was analyzed based on the Contextual Design approach and a training system prototype was designed. The results of this study are recommendations for safety in small construction companies, a low fidelity paper prototype of the training system, and recommendations on future use of Contextual Design for developing training systems. / Master of Science

This thesis deals with the topic of website optimization and user testing, with focus on the user experience. The main objective of this thesis is to design a software tool for on-line testing of the user experience of web applications, which currently does not exist on the Czech Internet. The first part deals with the user experience in theoretical aspect. It contains a comparison of experts' opinions on the issue and deals with the definition of basic concepts. The theoretical part contains an analysis of research techniques used in designing the user experience, which is an important output for the second part. Practical part of thesis includes at the beginning a research of the availability of tools to support analyzed research techniques on Czech Internet and assess their suitability for implementation into the designed tool. Afterwards thesis follow up the main goal - the development of a software tool for usability testing of web applications and websites (incl. the proposed business model and potential areas for future development). This tool should among other things provide benefits in terms of speed up and simplification of usability testing, including reducing the costs of testing.

För att brandmännen på flygplatser ska känna sig trygga när olyckan är framme är det viktigt att de får den information som krävs för att veta hur de ska agera när en flygfarkost kraschar. Utöver att vara ett stöd vid skarpa lägen ska Brand- och räddningsinstruktionen, BRI, vara ett läromedel i brandmännens utbildning och ett komplement under resten av deras yrkesliv. Dagens BRI uppfattas av användarna som en tråkig hemsida som inte är anpassad för dem, därför handlar detta examensarbete om hur BRI bör utformas för att vara användbar, samt bidra till lärande och en god användarupplevelse. Detta arbete har varit en iterativ användarcentrerad designprocess. Arbetet började med en kontextuell undersökning hos användaren för att fastställa deras behov. Utifrån dessa behov resulterade arbetet i ett förslag på ett grafiskt användargränssnitt som följer Saabs grafiska profil och som genom tester visar sig uppfylla användarnas centrala behov. Det visualiserades med en interaktiv prototyp. Genom att strukturera visualiseringarna med tillhörande text, se till att ingen information är dold och tillämpa en konsekvent navigeringsstruktur påverkas användarupplevelsen positivt. Denna studie har identifierat vikten av samspelet mellan information och visualisering för att främja användbarhet och inlärning. / When accidents happen it’s important that the airport's fire fighters feel safe with the knowledge that they have. This is why it’s important that they receive the information that is needed so that they know how to act when an aircraft crashes. In addition to being an aid during critical situations the Fire and Rescue Instruction, FRI, is a digital data bank, which is used to educate new fire fighters, and also to keep fully trained fire fighters up to date. Users perceive the FRI as a boring website which isn't designed for them. Which is why this master thesis will investigate how the FRI should be designed to improve the user experience and increase the learning effect. The process, which has been implemented during this thesis, is an iterative user-centered design process. The work began with a contextual inquiry to determine the users' needs. Their needs were then used to develop a user interface concept that followed Saab's graphic profile. The users’ then evaluated the concept to make sure that it met the users' key requirements. The concept was visualized with an interactive prototype. A positive user experience can be accomplished by structuring the visualizations with its corresponding text, you should also ensure that no information is concealed and apply a consistent navigation structure. This study has identified the importance of the interaction between information and visualizations to promote the learning effect and usability.