Automobile dashboards are evolving into intelligent largely screen-based computer interfaces. Recent evidence suggests unnatural aspects of some secondary systems (including infotainment systems). Naturalness of interaction is a minority discipline not yet applied to the automobile; while automotive interface research is a mainly quantitative discipline that has not yet applied a naturalness approach. To advance the field, a measurement scale based on rigorous qualitative exploration of natural-feeling interaction with secondary controls was required. Study 1 used ethnographic interview with Contextual Inquiry inside 12 ordinary drivers' cars, to investigate natural-feeling aspects of past, present and future driver-car interactions. Thematic analysis suggested a framework of ten characteristics. Half concerned control and physicality; half concerned perceived socio-intelligent behaviours of the car. Study 2 involved intensive exploratory workshops with ten drivers comprising Think Aloud, artefact modelling and focus groups, to explore natural-feeling interaction with secondary controls in different ways. The resulting thematic framework comprised 11 characteristics in four categories: familiarity/control, physical connection, low visual/cognitive demand, and humanlike intelligence and communication. Study 3 comprised two ethnographic participant observations. Eight drivers were observed interacting with their controls during long road journeys. Twenty-two drivers were observed interacting verbally with futuristic 'intelligent' secondary systems while driving on public roads. Design guidelines relating to physicality, usability, automation, and humanlike communication were formulated. Study 4 converted all the qualitative findings into a questionnaire comprising 46 bipolar five-point scales. Eighty-one drivers used it to rate one control in their cars. Correlation and factor analyses revealed three underlying factors and 14 items suitable for the first industrially applicable measurement scale for driver-car naturalness. These items concern perceived helpfulness, politeness, competence, predictability, control, ease, mental demands, intuitiveness, 'realness', instantaneousness, communication, logical location, mapping and 'affordance'. Initial testing found acceptable validity. The conclusion recommends further data collection, expanded validity testing, and potential applications to self-driving cars.

After over 25 years of decline, the global poverty rate has started to increase driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, taking millions back into poverty, most of them live in Sub-Saharan Africa. Low-income consumers are underserved and do not have the means to pay for or access to goods or services which are required for a minimum standard of living. These consumers struggle to find essential goods, the products do not always meet their needs or are too expensive for them to afford and the products' benefits are not easily understood. Yet the spending power and demand from consumers at the bottom of the economic pyramid in emerging markets and developing countries are motivating for global consumer goods companies. Not only does the opportunity presents financial benefit but is a social obligation to democratise new product innovations across markets. The 4As Framework (Affordability, Acceptability, Availability and Awareness) encompass factors which help manufacturers to better reach and serve low-income consumers. This framework is applied in this research to understand products meet their needs of low-income consumer across these four factors; and how designers employ human centred design to design products for low-income consumers against these factors. Human Centred Design has been employed to develop solutions to complex problems with great empathy to users and stakeholders for many years but has been gaining popularity with business and social ventures since the early 2000s. By interviewing consumers and designers, this study delved into understanding (1) the motivations and challenges of designing products for low income consumers, (2) how human centred design was being employed in the design of consumer goods for this group against the 4As framework and (3) how products currently meet the needs of low-income consumers, against the 4As framework. It was found that designers were consistently motivated by designing products for this consumer group which they believed served them. However, the constant evolution of needs, and needing to design for an affordable price were challenges. It was also found that some human centred design practices were prominent but there was more consistency needed in application, particularly when dealing with acceptability, affordability and awareness.

The shift from traditional models of public service design to public-driven ones has been slow in the health service and particularly in the General Practice Consultation in the UK. This hesitation about fully adapting these design methods has been found to be motivated by a lack of evidence regarding the successful implementations of public involvement activities and the use of its tools, partial coverage of these tools, and failures to report on the use of alternative tools, among other reasons. This research therefore aimed to propose Human-Centred Design (HCD) as an underlying philosophy and a pragmatic set of methodologies to better understand the challenges related to the application of customer involvement activities and the use typical methods when deployed in the investigation of issues and opportunities for the design of healthcare settings. This research consisted of three stages. An exploration stage, in which it was identified and confirmed several research gaps as well as a specific case for study with a degree of complexity and known for supporting customer involvement approaches. These activities involved a literature review about customer involvement processes and a qualitative interview study (with 30 participants) in which it was identified that, a suitable case for study to perform a large ethnographic investigation using representative Human-Centred Design tools could be 'Communication and relationship between GPs and patients'. A development stage, in which it was investigated the design of public involvement activities as well as the identification and selection process of some ideal HCD tools (Focus Groups, Future Workshops / Rich Pictures. Love & Break-up Letters, and Crowdsourcing) to work with the selected case. For these activities, a total of 72 participants were recruited (n=18 per activity). Lastly, an evaluation and proposal phase, analysed these tools through a comparative study to identify several of their strengths and weakness in order to identify the best tool or combination of tools. The outcome from this comparison suggested that among the tools used for this research there was not a most optimal option or combination of options and that the success of an involvement activity relies in the careful and thorough preparation of such processes. This research concludes, that the most optimal form of helping health researchers to undertake public involvement research and to better understand the process of identifying and selecting ideal engagement tools, could be by providing a best practice informative guide containing a simplified and comprehensive version of the most commonly found steps embedded in this kind of design practices.

The automotive industry is facing significant technological and sociological shifts, calling for an improved understanding of driver and passenger behaviours, emotions and needs, and a transformation of the traditional automotive design process. This research takes a human-centred approach to automotive research, investigating the users' emotional states during automobile driving, with the goal to develop a framework for automotive emotion research, thus enabling the integration of technological advances into the driving environment. A literature review of human emotion and emotion in an automotive context was conducted, followed by three driving studies investigating emotion through Facial-Expression Analysis (FEA): An exploratory study investigated whether emotion elicitation can be applied in driving simulators, and if FEA can detect the emotions triggered. The results allowed confidence in the applicability of emotion elicitation to a lab-based environment to trigger emotional responses, and FEA to detect those. An on-road driving study was conducted in a natural setting to investigate whether natures and frequencies of emotion events could be automatically measured. The possibility of assigning triggers to those was investigated. Overall, 730 emotion events were detected during a total driving time of 440 minutes, and event triggers were assigned to 92% of the emotion events. A similar second on-road study was conducted in a partially controlled setting on a planned road circuit. In 840 minutes, 1947 emotion events were measured, and triggers were successfully assigned to 94% of those. The differences in natures, frequencies and causes of emotions on different road types were investigated. Comparison of emotion events for different roads demonstrated substantial variances of natures, frequencies and triggers of emotions on different road types. The results showed that emotions play a significant role during automobile driving. The possibility of assigning triggers can be used to create a better understanding of causes of emotions in the automotive habitat. Both on-road studies were compared through statistical analysis to investigate influences of the different study settings. Certain conditions (e.g. driving setting, social interaction) showed significant influence on emotions during driving. This research establishes and validates a methodology for the study of emotions and their causes in the driving environment through which systems and factors causing positive and negative emotional effects can be identified. The methodology and results can be applied to design and research processes, allowing the identification of issues and opportunities in current automotive design to address challenges of future automotive design. Suggested future research includes the investigation of a wider variety of road types and situations, testing with different automobiles and the combination of multiple measurement techniques.

This research explores how human values and concerns are manifested and negotiated through the process of design. In undertaking this study, a variety of design interventions were explored to facilitate how values can be articulated and discussed amongst project stakeholders during the design process. These design interventions will be referred to as projects within the exegesis. In this exegesis, I will argue for the importance of a dialogic process among project stakeholders in the creation of a human-centred design practice in communication design. This exegesis explains the central argument of the research and how the research questions were investigated. It presents a journey of the discoveries, learnings and knowledge gained through an inquiry of the research questions. The total submission for this research consists of the exegesis, exhibition and oral presentation. Through each mode of delivery I will share and illuminate how the research questions were investigated.

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Abstract Product development (PD) has an important role as a key competitive factor in business environments. The capacity of designers and other stakeholders to perceive and process product related information is burdened by the increasing complexity of products and the high demands of working life. Therefore, companies need new human-centred perspectives and methods of balancing and enhancing their overall PD processes in order to develop successful products. The main motive for this research arises from the fact that ergonomics design research has been scarce from the process-oriented and systemic methods perspective. It has mainly focused on the methods, such as those needed in user interface design, and the usability and safety testing of products. The purpose of this dissertation is to consider the PD work system from the macroergonomics perspective. Macroergonomics is a top-down sociotechnical systems approach that is concerned with the analysis, design and evaluation of work systems. Nowadays, the individual user context is the dominating source of product requirements, but the designers’ work system has significant influence on its outcome as well. As an open work system, PD covers the use and design contexts of a product, not only at the individual, but also at the social and system levels. In this dissertation, the use and design contexts of products are examined through six individual studies, which were carried out during a demanding PD project of a new simulation game. In this design process, from the initial state to the goal state, macroergonomics was used as the main theoretical guideline. In many companies, PD processes are considered and developed mainly from the project management or technological points of view. However, because of the increasing complexity and systemic nature of products, PD organisations, too, will have to become more participatory, more networked and more systems oriented. As the main findings, this dissertation indicates that the macroergonomic approach can enrich the PD process and its outcomes by emphasising the balance between the technical and social subsystems of PD work system. The emerging complexity of products must be controlled from the entire PD work system, not the individual context of use only. The research introduces a new PD work system model that includes both the design and use contexts of products and demonstrates their analogical sociotechnical structures. The value of this dissertation for the industry is that companies can overcome certain emerging challenges of PD by applying the introduced macroergonomic principles. The findings of the research may encompass the re-designing of the current PD process in a company. Instead of shutting their eyes to the complexity of the surrounding world, companies should consider it as the macroergonomic PD work system and be more aware about the overall product requirements.

It is becoming a problem that the number of people who have loneliness by a physical distance between family members has lately kept increasing. Home is not only about space, but also about where an individual makes memories, feels secured with its familiarity and feels comfortable with his or her family member(s). Individuals, who live alone and feel lonely, have not been getting these senses. The available ways of connection between remote family members are not enough.  The aim of the research is to understand the current condition of the connection between remote family members to map pain points. The purpose is to develop a product that can decrease a sense of loneliness and increase positive emotions through an experience which makes a lonely individual feel a little bit more connected to a long-distance family in everyday life.  Based on the in-depth interviews, eight insights and two kinds of stakeholders, whom the connection should be made between, was revealed. Over forty ideas were created to solve the problem of loneliness based on the defined insights and stakeholders, and the ideas were narrowed down on the criteria of to what extent the idea can satisfy the revealed insights and to what extent the connection created by each idea can last easily between the two stakeholders.  The resulting product called One Home Lamp can provide an emotionally warmer experience to a target user than other similar products do with four main features: 1) a connection which lasts in everyday life in a way that everyone can keep in touch with each other more easily, 2) a better sense of identity which belongs to each family by customization with colour and stickers, 3) a better sense of belongingness towards a family by seeing an imaginal house where you and your family live together, 4) a better sense of touch which is closer to human warmth with the material and soft texture used.  The result is beneficial for modern societies in terms of the fact that it has a great possibility to reduce loneliness, increase positive emotions and improve well-being among lonely individuals which is one of the sustainable development goals to be achieved by 2030 advocated by the United Nations General Assembly.

In the future, as world markets become more diverse, designers will be increasingly asked to create products for people dissimilar to themselves. Human issues, such as product pleasure, will also become more important as advances in manufacturing (enabling companies to produce high quality goods more cheaply) will mean companies will look elsewhere to achieve a competitive edge. These changes will affect designers who presently work with little or no user information. This thesis investigates the attributes designers need in resources that offer them an immediate yet broad understanding of users. The research presented in the thesis has a philosophical strand and a design strand. In the design strand, two mock up resources and a prototype resource are developed. These creations are used in the philosophical strand: the mock ups are used to provide focus while collecting opinions from participants and the prototype is evaluated at the end of the research as if it were a real resource. The thesis starts with a literature review; this review reveals that designers need to understand users' physical, psychological and social needs as well as their environments if they are to design appropriate products for them. It explains that designers find much ergonomics information too technical and not visual enough and reveals that no tools or methods exist that offer a broad and instant understanding of users at the start of the design process. Following this, the results from a set of interviews and a focus group are presented. These studies reveal that designers want both personal and general user information that is reliable, video based, contextual and authentic. The results also show that designers want a fast, online resource that allows information to be easily tagged, compared and shared. Next, the thesis describes the development of the prototype resource and its examination using a heuristic inspection. This resource is then evaluated by designers. The evaluation reveals that designers perceived that the resource would be of value to the design process and thought that the videos showing people going about their everyday lives and the virtual tours around people's homes would be particularly useful. The thesis concludes that designers want contextual user information presented as easily navigable video in an Internet based resource. In doing so, it provides an original contribution to knowledge.

While physical activity has many important benefits on our health and well-being, many people find it hard to establish and maintain long-lasting exercise routines. Technology can be an effective tool to combat this issue by increasing users’ motivation to exercise and encouraging them to make healthier choices. In this qualitative study, we explored the persuasive effect and potential of an online booking system (OBS) implemented in a gym in the South West of United Kingdom to limit the amount of people in the facilities during the Covid-19 pandemic. The purpose of our research was to examine gym members’ experiences of the system, how it had impacted their motivation to exercise, and to explore how their experiences could be used in a digital system aiming to promote regular gym-use and long-lasting exercise routines. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews, carried out with five gym members. The results demonstrate that all informants had ambivalent feelings towards the OBS, with both positive and negative attitudes towards the system. Three key findings were identified. First, the system forced the users to adapt their exercise routines and daily activities in general to its new constraints which, in some instances, reduced their motivation to exercise. Second, the activity of booking and scheduling gym sessions gave the users a sense of commitment and determination, which increased their motivation to adhere to their planned exercise regime. Third, the users experienced the increased familiarity in the gym as a positive outcome of the OBS. Based on the empirical findings, we proposed a set of recommended features and three key components which can be beneficial to include in a digital system aiming to increase gym user’s motivation to exercise, and that could come of use to designers developing interactive systems for gym settings.