This paper presents the designing process of Tourist Guiding app on iPhone. This app aims for assisting tourists to schedule their trip plan in detail. The designing process consisted of three phases: research, interface design, user evaluation. In order to focus on user-centered  research, two methods were carried out questionnaire survey, interview with participants. After the research was done, the results of research were analyzed and summarized so that the potential requirements were collected. Those requirements would decide the inclusive features of this app, such as navigation,plan a trip,search for transportation.  Meanwhile, the interfaces of this app were designed on the platform: Photoshop. Lastly, the paper prototype's evaluation was conducted with four participants. The valuable feedbacks was given and the improvements of the interfaces were done.

The project aims at exploring the process of designing recommender systems from a users’ perspective. Recommendations are the systems that can help users navigate in the overload of information, that is currently available online. This project focuses on the recommender network of Strossle, which provides article recommendations across various publishers’ websites. User-centered research has been performed to understand the current system and how that influences the users’ perceived experience. The goal was to develop a more engaging content experience for the Strossle recommendation system. This is done by means of participatory design methods. As people tend to use recommendations very sporadic and they often do not really know what they are looking for. The emphasis was on finding the balance between exploratory browsing and navigating towards the users’ preferences. In order to achieve this, a more dynamic widget has been developed that offers navigation in various related topics.

Corporations, design firms, technology, and furniture companies are rethinking the concept of the ‘workplace’ environment and built ‘office’ in an effort to respond to changing characteristics of the workplace. The following report presents a case study, post-occupancy assessment of an architecture firm’s relocation of their corporate headquarters in Dallas, TX. This ethnographic research transpired from September 2013 to February 2014 and included participant observation, employee interviews, and an office-wide employee survey. Applying a user-centered approach, this study sought to identify and understand: 1) the most and least effective design elements, 2) unanticipated user-generated (“un-designed”) elements, 3) how the workplace operates as an environment and system of design elements, and 4) opportunities for continued improvement of their work environment. This study found that HKS ODC successfully increased access to collaborative spaces by increasing the size (i.e. number of square feet, number of rooms), variety of styles (i.e. enclosed rooms, open work surfaces), and distribution of spaces throughout the office environment. An increase in reported public transit commuting from 6.5% at their previous location to 24% at HKS ODC compares to almost five times the national public transit average (5%) and fifteen times the rate of Texas workers (1.6%) and Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX Metro Area (1.5%). This supports the real estate decision and design intent of the office that relocating near public transit would increase use (nearly six times that of reported use at 1919 McKinney, 6.5%). Additional findings and discussion relate to HKS ODC’s design enabling increased access to natural light and improved air quality, increased cross-sector collaboration, increased connection to downtown Dallas and engagement with the larger Dallas architectural community, as well as the open office environment encouraging education between all employee levels. Discrepancies between designed ‘flexibility’ and work away from the desk are explored along with the role of technology to facilitate work without replacing face-to-face interaction. This work also identifies key challenges with the design and employee experience and provides recommendations for addressing areas of concern for continued improvement of the workplace design. Continued user-centered research in the field of workplace design is necessary to assess the effect of current interventions in other office environments for comparison and inform future endeavors.