Designing a software interface for healthcare requires thorough domain knowledge, and effective user research and benchmark analysis. This thesis examines the requirements for an improved patient information management system for emergency medicine and describes the iterative process of designing and evaluating the system. I conducted observational study of Emergency Department (ED) physicians’ workflow and information needs, from which I derived a set of functional requirements, created scenarios, performed hierarchical task analysis, and developed a preliminary user model for the patient information management system. Based on these, I developed an interface prototype and evaluated the design with a sample of ED physicians. I review the user testing and design iterations carried out and report on the design improvements made based on the user feedback.

Designing a software interface for healthcare requires thorough domain knowledge, and effective user research and benchmark analysis. This thesis examines the requirements for an improved patient information management system for emergency medicine and describes the iterative process of designing and evaluating the system. I conducted observational study of Emergency Department (ED) physicians’ workflow and information needs, from which I derived a set of functional requirements, created scenarios, performed hierarchical task analysis, and developed a preliminary user model for the patient information management system. Based on these, I developed an interface prototype and evaluated the design with a sample of ED physicians. I review the user testing and design iterations carried out and report on the design improvements made based on the user feedback.

Digital Immortality or Not?The aim of this thesis was to explore how we might be stewards for our post-life digital self after physical death, and to provide a new interaction experience in the form of a tangible, digital, or service design solution. Prior to the project kick-off secondary research, including academic research papers, analogous services, and existing projects, was distilled to form topical questions. These questions were then presented in many casual topical conversations and revealed that although post-life digital asset management awareness is increasing, little consideration exists on how to reflect legacies into the future long after death. A second stage of primary research included multiple on-site investigations, paired with in-person interviews and a quantitative online survey. Insights and understandings then lead to initial concepts that were tested to address distinctive qualities between tangible and digital design solutions. The main findings included that although people want to be remembered long after they die, current methods of tangible and digital content management can not sufficiently support the reflection of legacies long into the future. In conclusion, this thesis argues that to become part of an everlasting legacy, the interaction experience can leverage commonalities and shared moments from life events captured in digital media. These points of connections rely on associated metadata (i.e. keyword tags, date stamps, geolocation) to align relevant moments that transcend time and generations. The solution proposed here harnesses the benefits that both digital and tangible media afford and are presented as a tablet interface with an associated tangible token used as a connection key.

The Nursing Coordinators (NCs) at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute (UOHI) fields phone calls from patients who have been discharged and are undergoing home care procedures at a daily basis. The project described in this thesis aims to provide tools for the Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) that the NCs can use during the phone calls. The Cognitive Work Analysis (CWA) and Ecological Interface Design (EID) approach are used to identify the information requirements to design the system. Major challenges of the telephone consultation process that are additionally identified by literature review and interviewing the NCs included visibility of patients, individual differences, and lack of standardized procedures. A combination of decision trees and visualization techniques is proposed to aid the process. Implementation of decision trees would help unload mental workload especially accesses to "knowledge in the head" as well as facilitate expert knowledge transfer to less experienced nurses. Visualization tools display integration of multiple-cues from patients in an abstract nature and can be accessed by users at any point of decision process. <br /><br /> Preliminary experiment with static images showed that visualization tools helped the decision makers more when the judgement tasks were more complex. The effects of different types of decision support on the cardiac nurses in simulated telephone consultation processes were examined. The system improved the performance of the decision makers and induced different types of strategic behaviours: a standardized checklist, OLDCAR, induced more through assessment, the decision algorithms induced efficient and more detailed recommendation, and the semantic network symptom map induced information gathering more relevant to diagnosis. <br /><br /> The research also explored methodologies to examine multi-layered decision process, where many decision makers with varying expertise are involved in modeling the strategic behaviours. This type of process can be applicable when the primary decision makers do not monitor the work domain, but can be alerted when something goes wrong.

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.

For this essay we used pattern theory from interface design and applied it in an analysis of touch games. In order to make full use of the patterns, we selected five of them and adapted these slightly with the help of game related patterns to be useful for the framework of this essay. The selection of games were the top eight games on the App Store’s “What’s Hot”. The results showed, among other things, that the games had a clear focus on getting a pleasant apperance, and they did it relatively well. The grouping and positioning of buttons on the other hand was illogical and at times frustrating. We came to a conclusion that the focus on the visual apperance of the games had consequences on other aspects that were perhaps more important to the interface. Furthermore, we noticed a distinct lack of interface in both menus and during gameplay. We deduced this was since the game developers chose to use the technical aspects of touch, rather than implement more interface such as buttons or similiar. / I denna uppsats använde vi oss av teori från gränssnittdesign och applicerade den i en analys av touchspel. För att kunna utnyttja patterns optimalt, valde vi ut fem stycken av dem och anpassade dessa för att passa syftet av vår uppsats. Urvalet av spel valdes genom att hämta de åtta spel som visades under App Stores ”What’s Hot”-lista. Resultaten visade bland annat att spelen hade ett tydligt fokus på att ha ett trevligt utseende vilket de också lyckades med relativt väl. Grupperingen av knappar var dock ologisk och stundtals frustrerande. Vi kom fram till att fokuset på den visuella aspekten av gränssnitten hade konsekvenser på andra aspekter som möjligtvis är viktigare för gränssnittet. Utöver detta noterade vi även att det var en klar brist på gränsnitt i spelen, både i menyer och under spelandet. Detta beror enligt oss på att spelutvecklarna valde att utnyttja de tekniska aspekterna av touch, snarare än att implementera mer gränssnitt såsom knappar eller liknande. / C-uppsats för Medieteknik

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.

Investigations into past accidents at nuclear power generating facilities such as that of Three Mile Island have identified human factors as one of the foremost critical aspects in plant safety. Errors resulting from limitations in human information processing are of particular concern for human-machine interfaces (HMI) in plant control rooms. This project examines the application of Ecological Interface Design (EID) in HMI information displays and the effects on operator situation awareness (SA) for turbine secondary systems based on the Swedish Forsmark 3 boiling-water reactor nuclear power plant. A work domain analysis was performed on the turbine secondary systems yielding part-whole decomposition and abstraction hierarchy models. Information display requirements were subsequently extracted from the models. The resulting EID information displays were implemented in a full-scope simulator and evaluated with six licensed operating crews from the Forsmark 3 plant. Three measures were used to examine SA: self-rated bias, Halden Open Probe Elicitation (HOPE), and Situation Awareness Control Room Inventory (SACRI). The data analysis revealed that operators achieved moderate to good SA; operators unfamiliar with EID information displays were able to develop and maintain comparable levels of SA to operators using traditional forms of single sensor-single indicator (SS-SI) information displays. With sufficient training and experience, operator SA is expected to benefit from the knowledge-based visual elements in the EID information displays. This project was researched in conjunction with the Cognitive Engineering Laboratory at the University of Toronto and the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) in Halden, Norway.

The Nursing Coordinators (NCs) at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute (UOHI) fields phone calls from patients who have been discharged and are undergoing home care procedures at a daily basis. The project described in this thesis aims to provide tools for the Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) that the NCs can use during the phone calls. The Cognitive Work Analysis (CWA) and Ecological Interface Design (EID) approach are used to identify the information requirements to design the system. Major challenges of the telephone consultation process that are additionally identified by literature review and interviewing the NCs included visibility of patients, individual differences, and lack of standardized procedures. A combination of decision trees and visualization techniques is proposed to aid the process. Implementation of decision trees would help unload mental workload especially accesses to "knowledge in the head" as well as facilitate expert knowledge transfer to less experienced nurses. Visualization tools display integration of multiple-cues from patients in an abstract nature and can be accessed by users at any point of decision process. <br /><br /> Preliminary experiment with static images showed that visualization tools helped the decision makers more when the judgement tasks were more complex. The effects of different types of decision support on the cardiac nurses in simulated telephone consultation processes were examined. The system improved the performance of the decision makers and induced different types of strategic behaviours: a standardized checklist, OLDCAR, induced more through assessment, the decision algorithms induced efficient and more detailed recommendation, and the semantic network symptom map induced information gathering more relevant to diagnosis. <br /><br /> The research also explored methodologies to examine multi-layered decision process, where many decision makers with varying expertise are involved in modeling the strategic behaviours. This type of process can be applicable when the primary decision makers do not monitor the work domain, but can be alerted when something goes wrong.

New social networking and social web tools are becoming available and are easing the process of customizing online social environments. With these developments in technology, core design efforts are being extended beyond usability for individual users and beginning to include notions of sociability for the engagement of communities of users. This thesis is an investigation of these developments. It is guided by the principal research question: how do you design for social engagement in an online social environment intended to facilitate interaction in a community of users? To address this question, this thesis presents a domain-community model developed from the communities of practice concept and the Work Domain Analysis model used in Cognitive Work Analysis. The domain-community model provides a basis for the design a composition of web components for an online social environment that will addresses issues of social engagement and domain effectiveness. In a case study, the domain-community model was used as a basis for the redesign of a social networking portal used by an international development leadership community called UCP-SARnet. A social network analysis of core members of UCP-SARnet was conducted before and after the portal was redesigned. From the social network analysis, it was concluded that the structure of UCP-SARnet was positively affected by the redesign: core group members reported they knew one another significantly more after the redesign of the website than before the redesign. User experience measures of the UCP-SARnet portal, website usage data, and a tally of website communication activity also changed significantly with the redesign of the website. This provided more evidence that a design informed by Cognitive Work Analysis and communities of practice produced a measurable effect on the structure of the UCP-SARnet online community. As such, this model can provide a basis for designers of online communities to more systematically account for social phenomena in relation to collective efforts in a given work domain. Furthermore, it is expected the effectiveness of the model can be taken forward with future work by refining the domain-community model, developing techniques to translate the model into interface concepts, and building practices for community-based research and design.