Web Accessibility emerged as problem when disabled and elder people started interaction with web contents soon after the inception of World Wide Web. When web based GIS applications appeared on the scene of web and users of these kinds of applications increased, these applications faced the similar problem of accessibility. The intensity of web accessibility problems in GIS based applications has increased rapidly during recent years due to extensive interaction of user with maps. Web Accessibility problems faced by users of GIS applications are identified by content evaluation and user interaction. Users are involved in identification of accessibility problems because guidelines and automated tools are not sufficient for that purpose. User Centered Approach is used to include users in the development process and this has also helped in identification of accessibility problems of the users at early stages. The thesis report identify the accessibility issues in Web based GIS application by content evaluation and user interaction evaluation. MapQuest, a web based GIS application, is taken as a case study to identify the web accessibility problems in GIS applications. This thesis report has also studied that how accessibility of the web based GIS applications can be enhanced by using UCD approach in development process of GIS applications. / Webbtillgänglighet fram som problem när funktionshindrade och äldre människor började interaktion med webb-innehåll strax efter starten av World Wide Web. När webbaserade GIS-applikationer på scenen av webb och användare av dessa typer av tillämpningar ökat, dessa tillämpningar mötte liknande problem med tillgängligheten. Intensiteten av problem webbtillgänglighet i GIS-baserade applikationer har ökat snabbt under senare år på grund av omfattande interaktion med användaren med kartor. Webbtillgänglighet problem som användare av GIS-applikationer är identifierade med innehåll utvärdering och interaktion med användaren. Användare delta i identifieringen av tillgänglighetsproblem eftersom riktlinjer och automatiserade verktyg är inte tillräckliga för detta ändamål. Användarcentrerad metoden används för att inkludera användarna i utvecklingsprocessen och detta har också bidragit till en kartläggning av tillgängligheten problem för användarna i ett tidigt skede. Avhandlingen rapport identifiera tillgänglighetsfrågor i Webbaserade GIS-applikation av innehåll utvärdering och användarinteraktion utvärdering. MapQuest, en webbaserad GIS-applikation, tas som en fallstudie för att identifiera problemen webbtillgänglighet i GIS-applikationer. Denna uppsats Rapporten har också studerat hur att tillgängligheten av webbaserade GIS-applikationer kan förbättras med hjälp UCD strategi i processen för utveckling av GIS-applikationer.

User attitude and their perceptions are increasingly being explored by a variation of methods. This thesis addresses the perception that one might have for employing smart glasses as a potential online educational tool. Furthermore, it explores the challenges that are associated with designing educational apps for smart glasses as a medium for e-learning in general. For addressing and identifying these challenges and exploring user attitude, this thesis employs two different approaches. Firstly, by identifying the current challenges associated with e-learning in literature-related studies and secondly, based on the related literature surrounding the topic of e-learning and augmented reality, this thesis conducts a field study using semi-structured interviews. This study proposes the final conclusion based on the field study and by reviewing identified challenges in literature.

Att utforma gränssnitt och system där variationen mellan användares respektive användningsmål, ålder eller andra förutsättningar varierar, kan vara en svår uppgift och kräva förståelse för de många olika användarna. Förbundet Svensk Bridge är en organisation med över 26.000 medlemmar i åldrarna 10 till 90plus, och har således många olika typer av användare, med olika förutsättningar och kunskap, för att kunna ta till sig den information som finns på Förbundets hemsida. I den här fallstudien har det tillvägagångssätt av den designprocedur för framtagandet av en prototyp på en ny hemsida åt Förbundet Svensk Bridge utvärderats. Detta har genomförts genom dokumentation av designproceduren under alla dess olika moment, och sedan genom en utvärdering och jämförelse av designprototypen gentemot dagens befintliga hemsida. Jämförelsen mellan den framtagna designprototypen gentemot Förbundet Svensk Bridge hemsida innefattade att 12 försökspersoner fick utföra ett antal uppgifter på både designprototypen och den befintliga hemsidan, för att sedan fylla i System Usability Scale som i sin tur utvärderades. Utifrån resultatet av användartesterna drogs sedan slutsatserna huruvida tillvägagångssättet som användes, kan tänkas vara ett bra tillvägagångssätt för liknande designuppdrag, exempelvis för föreningar, organisationer eller andra förbund där användarna varierar i ålder, kompetens och förutsättningar. Studien indikerar att tillvägagångssättet för framtagandet av designprototypen är ett tillvägagångssätt som skulle kunna appliceras vid liknande designuppdrag, då den framtagna prototypen fick ett bättre resultat på System Usability Scale, samt att uppgifterna som genomfördes av försökspersonerna vid användartestningen visade på kortare tidsförbrukning vid utförandet av uppgifterna på prototypen gentemot den befintliga hemsidan.

Business Intelligence (BI) enables organizations to collect and analyze internal and external business data to generate knowledge and business value, and provide decision support at the strategic, tactical, and operational levels. The consolidation of data coming from many sources as a result of managerial and operational business processes, usually referred to as Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) is itself a statically defined process and knowledge workers have little to no control over the characteristics of the presentable data to which they have access. There are two main reasons that dictate the reassessment of this stiff approach in context of modern business environments. The first reason is that the service-oriented nature of today’s business combined with the increasing volume of available data make it impossible for an organization to proactively design efficient data management processes. The second reason is that enterprises can benefit significantly from analyzing the behavior of their business processes fostering their optimization. Hence, we took a first step towards quality-aware ETL process design automation by defining through a systematic literature review a set of ETL process quality characteristics and the relationships between them, as well as by providing quantitative measures for each characteristic. Subsequently, we produced a model that represents ETL process quality characteristics and the dependencies among them and we showcased through the application of a Goal Model with quantitative components (i.e., indicators) how our model can provide the basis for subsequent analysis to reason and make informed ETL design decisions. In addition, we introduced our holistic view for a quality-aware design of ETL processes by presenting a framework for user-centered declarative ETL. This included the definition of an architecture and methodology for the rapid, incremental, qualitative improvement of ETL process models, promoting automation and reducing complexity, as well as a clear separation of business users and IT roles where each user is presented with appropriate views and assigned with fitting tasks. In this direction, we built a tool —POIESIS— which facilitates incremental, quantitative improvement of ETL process models with users being the key participants through well-defined collaborative interfaces. When it comes to evaluating different quality characteristics of the ETL process design, we proposed an automated data generation framework for evaluating ETL processes (i.e., Bijoux). To this end, we classified the operations based on the part of input data they access for processing, which facilitated Bijoux during data generation processes both for identifying the constraints that specific operation semantics imply over input data, as well as for deciding at which level the data should be generated (e.g., single field, single tuple, complete dataset). Bijoux offers data generation capabilities in a modular and configurable manner, which can be used to evaluate the quality of different parts of an ETL process. Moreover, we introduced a methodology that can apply to concrete contexts, building a repository of patterns and rules. This generated knowledge base can be used during the design and maintenance phases of ETL processes, automatically exposing understandable conceptual representations of the processes and providing useful insight for design decisions. Collectively, these contributions have raised the level of abstraction of ETL process components, revealing their quality characteristics in a granular level and allowing for evaluation and automated (re-)design, taking under consideration business users’ quality goals.

User centered design is a process which aims to understand user needs and desires by using different tools and methods. This is challenging in the industry as companies have different goals compared to the academic discipline of user centered design. As companies have different goals, common UCD methods which are used in the academic field are often not used. Therefore, there is a gap in how UCD is done in practice compared to theory. Designers and user experience specialists must use the tools which are available, capitalize on the opportunity to use existing resources in the organization in order to understand users and their needs. Insights explain the why and the motivation of the consumer or user, and they are less apparent and intangible, hidden truths that result from continuous digging. Insights can be draw from several different sources, from data and qualitative sources. This thesis investigates from what available sources in an organization can insights be generated from in order to understand users and design better experiences, specifically from the organizations perspective. The purpose is not only to understand users but to drive the organization’s objectives and goals. This thesis uses an innovative collaborative workshop methodology, working with digital designers, to answer the research questions and as a result presents an insights generation model. The research has been specifically conducted for an organization, and from their available sources, but the methodology and model creation has the potential to be used in similar settings, domains or projects.

Abstract Usability methodology has matured into a well-defined, industrially relevant field with its own findings, theories, and tools, with roots in applying information technology to user interfaces ranging from control rooms to computers, and more recently to mobile communications devices. The purpose is regularly to find out the users’ goals and to test whether a design fulfils the usability criteria. Properly applied, usability methods provide reliable and repeatable results, and are excellent tools in fine-tuning existing solutions The challenges of usability methodologies are in finding new concepts and predicting their characteristics before testing, especially when it comes to the relatively young field of mobile user interfaces. Current usability methods concentrate on utilising available user-interface technologies. They do not provide means to clearly identify, e.g., the potential of auditory or haptic output, or gestural input. Consequently, these new interaction techniques are rarely used, and the long-envisioned useful multimodal user interfaces are yet to appear, despite their assumed and existing potential in mobile devices. Even the most advocated and well-known multimodal interaction concepts, such as combined manual pointing and natural language processing, have not materialised in applications. An apparent problem is the lack of a way to utilise a usage environment analysis in finding out user requirements that could be met with multimodal user interfaces. To harness the full potential of multimodality, tools to identify both little or unused and overloaded modalities in current usage contexts are needed. Such tools would also help in putting possibly existing novel interaction paradigms in context and pointing out possible deficiencies in them. In this thesis, a novel framework for analysing the usage environment from a user-centric perspective is presented. Based on the findings, a designer can decide between offering a set of multiple devices utilising various user-interface modalities, or a single device that offers relevant modalities, perhaps by adapting to the usage environment. Furthermore, new techniques for creating mobile user interfaces utilising various modalities are proposed. The framework has evolved from the experiences gathered from the designs of experimental and actual product-level uni- and multimodal user interface solutions for mobile devices. It has generated novel multimodal interaction and interface techniques that can be used as building blocks in system designs.

The aim of this thesis is to identify innovation opportunities, which will serve to encourage individuals with inborn metabolic disorder phenylketunuria (also PKU) to comply with their strict dietary restrictions. The theoretical part of the thesis is devoted to the definition of basic concepts of innovation and techniques of Design thinking focusing on the Human-centered design approach. Futhermore the reader will find introduction into inborn metabolic disorder phenylketonuria. The practical part contains a plan of research, description of the current situation on the Czech market, outputs of research with experts, outputs of the workshop with individuals with PKU and the identification of innovation opportunities and recommendations.

Syftet med denna masteruppsats var att undersöka skillnaden i Game User Experience Satisfaction (GUESS) vid användning av SimProv, både i VR (Oculus Rift) och på skärm. SimProv är en spelliknande klassrumssimulation. Studien avsåg även finna potentiella problem som användaren kunde stöta på under testsessionen. För att kunna undersöka och utvärdera detta behövde SimProv vidareutvecklas. Vidareutvecklingen utfördes genom att använda spelmotorn Unity med PlayMaker, som är ett visual scripting språk, tillsammans med att följa rekommendationer som finns för UI- och User experience-design för VR-spel. Inomgruppsdesign med 30 deltagare användes som testmetod. Hälften av deltagarna fick antingen börja med att spela på skärm eller i VR med Oculus Rift. Efter varje spelsession fick deltagarna fylla i den nya psykometrisk validerade skalan Game User Experience Satisfaction Scale (GUESS), som består av nio subskalor. Avslutningsvis kunde deltagarna fylla i två fritextfrågor genom ett digitalt formulär, om de potentiella problem de stött på vid respektive spelsession. Då GUESS är en ny skala har få studier av denna typ utförts. De få studier som har utförts pekar åt olika håll i frågan om spel bör utvecklas i VR eller inte. Resultaten från denna studie, som utfördes med tvåsidig hypotesprövning med t-test, visade inga signifikanta skillnader mellan VR och skärm. Endast en subskala, Play Engrossment, visade signifikant skillnad för VR. De textbaserade resultaten som analyserades med tematisk analys visade att majoriteten av deltagarna föredrog VR, men att alternativen i spelet upplevdes som begränsande. / The aim of this Master’s Thesis was to find out the difference in Game User Experience Satisfaction (GUESS) when using SimProv, both in VR (Oculus Rift) and on monitor. SimProv is a game-like classroom simulation. The purpose of this thesis was also to find potential problems that users may encounter during the test sessions. To assess and evaluate this, SimProv had to be furthered developed. This development was done using the game engine Unity and the visual scripting language PlayMaker in combination with following UI and UX design recommendations for VR games. A within subjects design with 30 participants was conducted. The users played either the monitor version or the VR version first, with no particular order. After each play session participants were asked to fill in the GUESS-scale, which is a newly developed and psychometrically validated scale that consists of 9 subscales. At the end of the play sessions participants could choose to answer two questions, through a digital form, about potential problems they may have encountered in both modalities. Since GUESS is a new scale few studies of evaluating VR versus monitor, using GUESS, have been conducted. The few studies that have been conducted showed no consensus in whether games should or should not be developed for VR. The inferential analysis with two-tailed paired samples t-tests in this study showed no significant difference between VR and monitor. The subscale Play Engrossment showed significant differences for VR. The text-based questions, that were analyzed with a thematic analysis, showed that the majority of the participants preferred VR. However, many participants felt that the answer options in the game where restricted.

The present work was performed at Aurora Innovation. Its purpose was to develop a proof-of-concept of an application where you could book an appointment and add personal information. This application is meant to be used by people of different ages, technology skills and preferences. User centered design was used during the development of the proof-of-concept, primarily the user centered design methods existing in contextual design. This project reflects on the value of these methods, and what the consequences could be if a product is developed from a single point of view. It was found that even for a relatively small project the user centered design proved valuable for collecting data, which then was used to improve the final proof-of-concept. Furthermore the results show how not having a varied test group can negatively affect your final product.

Globally in the medical and healthcare field, due to technological advancement and higher success rate of life-saving procedures, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of blood stem cell transplants performed each year. Consequently, the demand for blood stem cells from the donors is continual. The process of acquiring these cells from donors has its obstacles. Once volunteers are willing to donate and are identified as a potential match to the patient, they go through various stages, involving a long waiting period for the donors.  The aim of the project  is to apply and combine interaction design practices in the healthcare and medical world: how it would affect and shape specific experiences for the blood stem-cell donor. I would propose a digital service design that provides strategies to enhance the donation journey experience for the volunteer donors and the stakeholders involved in the process. The thesis project explores how we might design alternative ways to enhance a donor experience through digital services.