Chinese floating population residents' underprivileged living status and intensified social tension are becoming the two major issues inside their community living settlements. The thesis research holds the position that urban open space can enhance Chinese floating population's quality of life and also contribute to the social capital within their living settlement. It is critical to create the open space system that brings great social and health benefits to the group. Literature reviews reveal floating population's characteristics such as existing and potential leisure activities and leisure places. Contemporary thinking on urban open space qualities, benefits and typologies were reviewed to determine which types of open space are of value to this population. Specific qualities and corresponding benefits of floating population community open spaces, which are closely related to the group's characteristics, are identified. Findings from the literature reviews were used to develop open space design guidelines specific to government sponsored floating population settlement areas. Planning and site design level design guidelines address social and health benefits for the floating population residents. Types of open space and their spatial distributions are identified at the planning level. At the site design level, place-based design guidelines were developed for three major open space categories: the daily use spaces around dwelling units, the streets, and the plaza/squares. Under each category, design strategies were developed to promote desirable open space qualities inside the floating population settlement area, and descriptive design objectives are proposed to achieve these qualities. The design guidelines connect the group's demographic, leisure and work characteristics to open space typologies, qualities and respective benefits, and provide recommendations for the open space design of Chinese floating population community. These design guidelines offer planners and site designers a new tool to guide planning and site design decisions of floating population community open space. / Master of Landscape Architecture

In the world today, the portion of aging people grows continuously. Due to successfulof healthcare services, people are living longer and the number of newborn isdecreasing. This can imply that the population of young and working people isdecreasing in many countries. This leads to the mean value incrementing of the meanworld population’s age value in the whole world. It has become more and moreimportant to consideration human factors of elderly people in many businesses.Software companies have to consider design of software concerning of usability forageing people. Currently, most of the software is designed to support younger users.To support elderly users, we have to consider more on age-related differences. Thisthesis presents a literature survey, and related theories used in designing graphic userinterface for ageing people. Besides, criteria for designing software for older users arealso discussed and suggested as guidelines for future studies and development. Thepurpose is to improve older users’ potential in using information technologies, and topotentially allow older users to gain more benefit from using of computer software.A case study for software design for elderly users was implemented to verifysuggested guideline and gain deeper design understanding. The elderly volunteerswere involved in design evaluation process. The results from case study have showneffectiveness of the design guideline approach.

Anti ram perimeter barriers are part of the protection of important facilities such as power plants, air ports and embassies against unrestricted vehicle access. Many different systems can be used to achieve the containment goal. One of these systems makes use of soil embedded posts either single posts if the soil is hard enough or groups of soil embedded posts tied together by beams if the soil is not hard enough for a single post to stop the in-coming truck. The design of these soil embedded posts needs to take account a number of influencing factors which include the soil strength and stiffness, the post strength and stiffness, the mass of the vehicle and its approach velocity. This dissertation describes the work done to develop a set of design recommendations to select the embedment of a single post or group of posts. The post is a steel beam with an H shape cross section: W14X109 for the single post system and W14X90 for the group system with a double beam made of square hollow steel section HSS8X8X1/2. The spacing of the posts for the group includes 2.44 m, 4.88 m, and 7.32 m. The soil strength varies from loose sand and soft clay to very dense sand and very hard clay. The vehicle has a mass of 6800 kg and the velocities include 80 km/h, 65 km/h, and 50 km/h. The design guidelines presented here are based on 10 medium scale pendulum impact tests, 2 medium scale bogie impact tests, 1 full scale impact test on a single post, 1 full scale impact test on a group of 8 side by side posts with a 5.2 m spacing and connected with two beams, approximately 150 4-D numerical simulations of full scale impact tests using LS-DYNA, as well as fundamental theoretical concepts.

The influence of color on size and depth perception has been explored for a century, but there is very limited research on interventions that can reduce the color illusions. This study was motivated to identify interventions and propose design guidelines for information visualization, especially where size judgment is critical. This study replicated the color size illusion and color depth illusion on an LCD monitor and it was found that yellow is the smallest and farthest color among red, yellow, green, and blue on a white background. Three types of interventions (background brightness, border color, and background grid brightness) were tested to identify the conditions that reduce the color illusions, but all of them were not statistically significant. Based on the experiment results and literature survey, design guidelines were proposed. To extend the guidelines to the bioinformatics field, design recommendations were proposed and implementation examples were illustrated. Evaluations on design implementations were evaluated by interviewing domain experts. Additionally, the relationship between the color size illusion and the color depth illusion was explored. / Master of Science

In 1970&rsquo / s, significant shifts occurred both in planning and design theories as a response to the decreasing role of state in property relations and widening arena of private property. This shift in planning approaches led to an increase in the importance of &lsquo / flexibility&rsquo / concept. However this study proposes that flexibility in the control of spatial development is not an indisputable solution, but rather it is a dilemma. This is because / the definition, degree and effect of flexibility may change in every step of the process depending on the actors in the process. While it may be a way of solution in one case, it may be the problem itself in another. In the study, this dilemma is discussed in the context of spatial development in science parks. The concept of flexibility has a particular importance in respect to science parks which host especially technology based firms. Due to market changes and technology shifts, the spatial requirements of market and also the tenants change in time rapidly. That is why flexibility becomes a necessary tool in the physical planning of science parks. In this context, firstly the role flexibility in different planning and decision-making approaches is discussed. Then the structural characteristics of science parks and specifically METU Technopolis are defined. Within this framework, the physical development process of METU Technopolis and the role of flexibility in planning and decision making processes is examined. Finally some suggestions for controlling the flexibility in planning and design processes are developed.