As the growth of rapid prototyping techniques shortens the development life cycle of software and electronic products, usability inquiry methods can play a more significant role during the development life cycle, diagnosing usability problems and providing metrics for making comparative decisions. A need has been realized for questionnaires tailored to the evaluation of electronic mobile products, wherein usability is dependent on both hardware and software as well as the emotional appeal and aesthetic integrity of the design. This research followed a systematic approach to develop a new questionnaire tailored to measure the usability of electronic mobile products. The Mobile Phone Usability Questionnaire (MPUQ) developed throughout this series of studies evaluates the usability of mobile phones for the purpose of making decisions among competing variations in the end-user market, alternatives of prototypes during the development process, and evolving versions during an iterative design process. In addition, the questionnaire can serve as a tool for identifying diagnostic information to improve specific usability dimensions and related interface elements. Employing the refined MPUQ, decision making models were developed using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and linear regression analysis. Next, a new group of representative mobile users was employed to develop a hierarchical model representing the usability dimensions incorporated in the questionnaire and to assign priorities to each node in the hierarchy. Employing the AHP and regression models, important usability dimensions and questionnaire items for mobile products were identified. Finally, a case study of comparative usability evaluations was performed to validate the MPUQ and models. A computerized support tool was developed to perform redundancy and relevancy analyses for the selection of appropriate questionnaire items. The weighted geometric mean was used to combine multiple numbers of matrices from pairwise comparison based on decision makers' consistency ratio values for AHP. The AHP and regression models provided important usability dimensions so that mobile device usability practitioners can simply focus on the interface elements related to the decisive usability dimensions in order to improve the usability of mobile products. The AHP model could predict the users' decision based on a descriptive model of purchasing the best product slightly but not significantly better than other evaluation methods. Except for memorability, the MPUQ embraced the dimensions included in the other well-known usability definitions and almost all criteria covered by the existing usability questionnaires. In addition, MPUQ incorporated new criteria, such as pleasurability and specific tasks performance. / Ph. D.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T14:26:15Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 ThiagoMP_DISSERT.pdf: 24825408 bytes, checksum: a4d71b4273fcca93c12e78e5c44cd7cf (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-08-21 / Este trabalho tem como objetivo o desenvolvimento de interfaces com o usu?rio para aplicativo m?vel smartphones com intuito de contribuir para a efici?ncia das atividades de profissionais e pesquisadores da ?rea de fisioterapia ao oferecer suporte ao acompanhamento cl?nico da dor no tratamento de pacientes fibromi?lgicos. Utilizando a abordagem de Design Centrado no Usu?rio - DCU, foram realizadas entrevistas e uma investiga??o contextual para a identifica??o inicial dos problemas e necessidades dos usu?rios. Verificou-se que as atividades de monitoramento e acompanhamento das sess?es do tratamento de pacientes fibromi?lgicos s?o, tradicionalmente, realizadas por meio de manipulando de formul?rios e fichas em papel (registro das condi??es de sa?de do paciente) e escalas de classifica??o da dor em formato impresso (apresentadas ao paciente para indica??o de sua dor percebida para cada ponto pr?-determinado do corpo). Os procedimentos envolvidos nestas atividades dificultam o gerenciamento do desempenho do tratamento, o que, segundo relatos, reflete no comprometimento dos pacientes na ades?o e frequ?ncia as sess?es. A partir da observa??o e do levantamento das necessidades desses profissionais diante de suas atividades, foi proposto um aplicativo para smartphone com a inten??o de minimizar os problemas ocasionados pelo uso das ferramentas convencionais e de prover informa??es r?pidas acerca dos dados coletados. Ent?o, seguindo a abordagem do DCU foi elaborado um modelo conceitual durante a etapa de concep??o de solu??es, o qual guiou a cria??o dos prot?tipos. A avalia??o das interfaces do prot?tipo foi realizada com o envolvimento dos usu?rios a partir da t?cnica de avalia??o cooperativa. Seus resultados proporcionaram o refinamento das interfaces e o desenvolvimento de uma nova proposta do design das interfaces em prot?tipo de alta fidelidade, produzido para o ambiente Android. Assim, esse trabalho faz parte do processo de desenvolvimento de um produto de software personalizado com foco na concep??o e avalia??o das interfaces com o usu?rio. Por meio da metodologia aplicada, observaram-se ind?cios os quais sugerem que as interfaces propostas apresentaram-se como um recurso facilitador e capaz de contribuir para efici?ncia das atividades no acompanhamento do tratamento de pacientes fibromi?lgicos

How is traditional design being applied to create next level interfaces for electronic media? The principles guiding graphic design are the fundamental base of modern design, whether it is for the latest IOS interface or a HUD for the latest blockbuster game. How is current electronic design implementing these guiding fundamentals to create new ideas in interface design like the invisible interface? Here we discuss what some of these guiding principles are and how they relate to modern design.

An early detection of heart disease can save lives, caution individuals and also help to determine the type of treatment to be given to the patients. The first test of diagnosing a heart disease is through auscultation - listening to the heart sounds. The interpretation of heart sounds is subjective and requires a professional skill to identify the abnormalities in these sounds. A medical practitioner uses a stethoscope to perform an initial screening by listening for irregular sounds from the patient's chest. Later, echocardiography and electrocardiography tests are taken for further diagnosis. However, these tests are expensive and require specialized technicians to operate. A simple and economical way is vital for monitoring in homecare or rural hospitals and urban clinics. This dissertation is focused on developing a patient-centered device for initial screening of the heart sounds that is both low cost and can be used by the users on themselves, and later share the readings with the healthcare providers. An innovative mobile health service platform is created for analyzing and classifying heart sounds. Certain properties of heart sounds have to be evaluated to identify the irregularities such as the number of heart beats and gallops, intensity, frequency, and duration. Since heart sounds are generated in low frequencies, human ears tend to miss certain sounds as the high frequency sounds mask the lower ones. Therefore, this dissertation provides a solution to process the heart sounds using several signal processing techniques, identifies the features in the heart sounds and finally classifies them. This dissertation enables remote patient monitoring through the integration of advanced wireless communications and a customized low-cost stethoscope. It also permits remote management of patients' cardiac status while maximizing patient mobility. The smartphone application facilities recording, processing, visualizing, listening, and classifying heart sounds. The application also generates an electronic medical record, which is encrypted using the efficient elliptic curve cryptography and sent to the cloud, facilitating access to physicians for further analysis. Thus, this dissertation results in a patient-centered device that is essential for initial screening of the heart sounds, and could be shared for further diagnosis with the medical care practitioners.

Reality-based interfaces bring new design opportunities to social games. These novel game interfaces, exemplified by Wii, Kinect, and Smart phones, leverage players' existing physics, bodily, environmental, and social skills. Moreover, they enable a shared hybrid physical-digital space in which the players' co-presence can be enhanced by their physical and digital co-location. However, many digital social games occupy players' attention with the digital display and content, reducing their attention spent on one another and limiting the synchronization of actions and emotions among players. How do we design technologies that do not interfere with social play but enhance and innovate it? In this thesis work, I focus on one particular kind of reality-based interfaces, Handheld Augmented Reality (HAR), to extend players' interaction from the small mobile devices to the shared hybrid space around a computationally trackable surface. This thesis explores how to encourage social play with HAR interfaces, which brings in challenges of designing with the affordances and constraints of the HAR interface, understanding the complicated phenomenon of social play, and integrating these understandings in multiplayer HAR game design. Adopting Research-through Design as the overarching research method, I collaborate with multiple teams, design and study three multiplayer HAR game prototypes. I present four main contributions. First, this work yields design artifacts and examples of social games with HAR interfaces. I communicate to the game design and Augmented Reality communities through these prototypes, including BragFish, ARt of Defense, and NerdHerder. Second, I provide empirical findings on social play in a shared hybrid space. Through lab-based user studies, observation, video analysis, interviews, and surveys, I collect and analyze interpersonal play behaviors and emotions in the shared hybrid space enabled by the HAR interface. Third, I adopt and adapt sociological theories to the domain of social games. I generate a list of theory-based design guidelines for co-located social games, especially HAR games. I prove its usefulness through the user study on an HAR game that embodies a subset of these design guidelines. Fourth, this thesis work is a case study that bridges Human Computer Interaction knowledge and methods with game design practices. It shows the outcome and benefits of multidisciplinary research, calling for more effort in integrating reality-based interfaces, as playful and experimental design materials, into different phases of game design process.

Die Idee einer mobilen Verwaltung1 entspringt der Kombination von drei derzeit wirkenden Entwicklungslinien. Als erstes zu nennen ist das Electronic Government, das aufbauend auf der Einführung der elektronischen Datenverarbeitung nun zu einer umfassenden Vernetzung der Verwaltung führt.

The objectives and goals of this study is to analyze different styles of viewing information on mobile platforms and to find out what each different view brings to the table by creating and testing them with varied users. The study takes into account List View, Scroll View, and Grid View and compares them while viewing three different data formats. For this study, plain text, tabulated text, and interactive text will be analyzed. Smart mobile devices are the most used platform to view data in today's information rich world according to a survey conducted by Forrester Research. When designing for them, a lot must be considered but not knowing what is best suited for each application can be daunting for developers and designers, especially in the user experience context. This study aims to explore each mobile interface and give a better understanding about the different user interface designs features. Information visualization on cross-media information spaces and platforms is an important part of how information is disseminated today. Considering nowadays people get their information through multiple different media platforms like tablets, mobile phones, and web browsers, how to visualize data across all these platforms is a study to focus on in itself. The study showed that users performed better with certain views paired with different data types over others. Certain features of each view helped users understand the data types better over others while others improved users speed in reading data. Users showed certain preferences when interacting with each view on mobile devices when viewing cross media information which is mentioned in the study. / Målet för den här studien är att analysera olika sätt att visa information på mobila enheter och jämföra dessa genom att testa med olika användare. Studien undersöker de olika vyerna List View, Scroll View och Grid View och jämför dem med tre olika dataformat: vanlig text, tabellerad text och interaktiv text. Smarta mobila enheter är den mest använda plattformen för att synliggöra i dagens informationsrika samhälle enligt en undersökning av Forrester Research. När man utformar designlösningar för smarta mobila enheter är det mycket man behöver ta hänsyn till. Att inte veta vad som är bäst för varje applikation kan vara en svår uppgift för utvecklare och designers, särskilt ur användarperspektiv. Den här studiens syfte är att utforska varje mobilt gränssnitt och ge en bättre förståelse för de olika designlösningarna. Att visualisera information på olika mediers informationsytor och plattformar är en viktig del av hur information sprids idag.Om man tar i beaktan att människor numera får information via flertalet medieplattformar som tex läsplattor, mobiltelefoner, och webbläsare så inser man att visualisering av data på alla dessa medieplattformar är en studie i sig. Studien visade att användare lyckades bättre med vissa vyer och datatyper i kombination jämfört med andra. Specifika funktioner i varje vy hjälpte användare att förstå vissa datatyper bättre än andra, medan andra förbättrade användarnas snabbhet att läsa data. Användare tycktes föredra att interagera med vyer på mobila enheter när de tittade på information på olika medieplattformar, vilket nämns i studien.

Ce document présente les résultats d’une étude empirique sur l’utilisation de la vidéoconférence mobile selon le contexte de l’usager afin de proposer des lignes directrices pour la conception des interfaces des dispositifs de communication vidéo mobile. Grâce à un échange riche d’informations, ce type de communication peut amener un sentiment de présence fort, mais les interfaces actuelles manquent de flexibilité qui permettrait aux usagers d’être créatifs et d’avoir des échanges plus riches lors d’une vidéoconférence. Nous avons mené une recherche avec seize participants dans trois activités où leurs conversations, leurs réactions et leurs comportements ont été observés. Deux groupes de discussion ont aussi servi à identifier les habitudes développées à partir de leur utilisation régulière de la vidéoconférence. Les résultats suggèrent une différence importante entre l’utilisation de la caméra avant et la caméra arrière de l’appareil mobile, et la nécessité de fournir des outils qui offrent plus de contrôle sur l’échange dans la conversation. L’étude propose plusieurs lignes directrices de conception pour les interfaces de communication vidéo mobiles, concernant la construction du contexte mobile de l’utilisateur. / This paper presents an exploratory empirical study of mobile videoconferencing according to user’s context in order to suggest guidelines for the improvement of the user interface in mobile video communication devices. Through rich exchange of information, mobile video communication can provide a better sense of presence than other means of communication. Yet the current mobile interfaces lack flexibility to be creative and have more meaningful exchanges in a videoconference. We conducted observations with sixteen participants in three activities where their conversations, reactions and behaviours were observed. Two focus groups were used to identify habits formed from regular use. Results suggest an important difference between using the front-facing or back-facing camera and a clear need for tools that provide more control over the video exchange. From these results, the study proposes several design guidelines for mobile video communication interfaces, respecting the construction of the user’s mobile context.