This report portrays an introduction to the sequence of work developers have to go through to produce user-friendly websites in Macromedia Flash. The paper’s goal is to understand the importance of user-focused thinking in the develop-process and help to improve the usability of Macromedia Flash content in general. Despite many critics say Macromedia Flash content doesn’t have good usability this paper shows that it’s highly possible to make flash pages usable for the visitor with technical solutions in Macromedia Flashs programming language actionscript. This report also includes a web based template with all the technical solutions applied to it so developers can follow every step of the build up. / Detta examensarbete behandlar den rad av arbete som utvecklare måste gå igenom för att producera användbarhetsanpassade flash-baserade webbplatser. Rapportens mål är att få utvecklare att förstå vikten av att alltid tänka på besökaren i utvecklingsprocessen och på så sätt hjälpa till att förbättra flash-baserat innehåll generellt. Trots att många kritiker anser att flash-baserade webbplatser inte är bra ur användbarhetssyfte visar denna rapport att det är högst möjligt att skapa användbarhetsanpassade flash-sidor för besökarna med hjälp av Macromedia Flashs eget programmeringsspråk actionscript. Denna rapport innefattar också en webbaserad mall med alla de tekniska lösningarna som nämns i texten för att utvecklare enkelt skall kunna följa varje steg i utvecklingsprocessen.

Detta examensarbete behandlar den rad av arbete som utvecklare måste gå igenom för att producera användbarhetsanpassade flash-baserade webbplatser. Rapportens mål är att få utvecklare att förstå vikten av att alltid tänka på besökaren i utvecklingsprocessen och på så sätt hjälpa till att förbättra flash-baserat innehåll generellt. Trots att många kritiker anser att flash-baserade webbplatser inte är bra ur användbarhetssyfte visar denna rapport att det är högst möjligt att skapa användbarhetsanpassade flash-sidor för besökarna med hjälp av Macromedia Flashs eget programmeringsspråk actionscript. Denna rapport innefattar också en webbaserad mall med alla de tekniska lösningarna som nämns i texten för att utvecklare enkelt skall kunna följa varje steg i utvecklingsprocessen. / This report portrays an introduction to the sequence of work developers have to go through to produce user-friendly websites in Macromedia Flash. The paper’s goal is to understand the importance of user-focused thinking in the develop-process and help to improve the usability of Macromedia Flash content in general. Despite many critics say Macromedia Flash content doesn’t have good usability this paper shows that it’s highly possible to make flash pages usable for the visitor with technical solutions in Macromedia Flashs programming language actionscript. This report also includes a web based template with all the technical solutions applied to it so developers can follow every step of the build up.

Denna rapport är resultatet av mitt examensarbete i informationsdesign vid Mälardalens Högskola. Rapporten behandlar utvärdering och utveckling av ett gränssnitt som används på charkuterimaskinen Handtmann VF 300. Målgruppen är nyanställda personer på charkuteriföretaget ”Ingemar Johansson i Sverige AB”. Rapporten beskriver det tillvägagångssätt som använts för att utveckla gränssnittet och målet har varit att göra det lättare för nyanställda att förstå hur det fungerar. Det nya gränssnittet skulle också minska olycksrisken och göra användarna tryggare. Detta för att uppfylla de krav som ställs på årets tema som är säkerhet. Utprovningar har skett på det befintliga och nya gränssnittet i form av kvalitativa intervjuer och användartester. Data som samlats in vid användartester på det befintliga gränssnittet har stått som grund vid utvecklingen av det nya. Resultatet visar stora skillnader vid användning av de båda gränssnitten.

Interactive media in public environments, such as touch screen kiosks, is a strongly growing toolfor offering service, information, advertising and entertainment. In order to achieve goodusability when designing the graphical user interface for a customer terminal, it is important tobe aware of the very specific requirements involved with such application. This master thesiscontributes to a framework for the interaction design of touch screen terminals in stores. The purpose of the thesis was to discover usability problems and solutions to usability problemsin existing touch screen terminal interfaces. Moreover the work aimed at revealing what designpatterns can be used or created in order to meet the observed problems. Usability problems stemfrom underlying use qualities. These can be seen as forces in design patterns. It was found thatthe patterns would be more useful if structured into a pattern catalogue, containing both highand low-level patterns. The study was preformed at Instoremedia, a company that, among other things, develops instore touch screen terminals. The product in focus was an interactive product cataloguedeveloped for Telia. The application was partly studied in situ. The study consisted of five steps:analytical evaluation, stakeholder interview, contextual inquiry, user analysis and design patterndevelopment. The study revealed problems, solutions, needs, goals etc, related to the use of theterminal. The final result is a proposed human computer interaction (HCI) design patterncatalogue for in-store touch screen terminals, which helps prevent the observed problems. Itconsists mostly of already known patterns. Three new patterns have been created. The aim isthat the pattern catalogue should be a helpful tool when making designs-decisions for new touchscreen terminals in the future. / Interaktiv media i publika miljöer, såsom pekskärmsterminaler, är på stark uppgång när detgäller att erbjuda service, information, marknadsföring och underhållning. För att uppnå höganvändbarhet i en kundterminals grafiska gränssnitt är det viktigt att vara medveten om despecifika krav som ställs på en sådan applikation. Detta examensarbete bidrar till ett ramverk fördesignen av pekskärmsterminaler i butiker. Syftet med examensarbetet var att hitta användbarhetsproblem och lösningar till potentiellaanvändbarhetsproblem i existerande gränssnitt för pekskärmsterminaler. Vidare syftade arbetettill att ta reda på vilka designmönster som kan användas eller skapas för att möta de observeradeproblemen. Användbarhetsproblem bottnar i underliggande användarbehov. Dessa kan ses somkrafter i designmönster. Det visade sig att designmönster är mer användbara om de ordnas i enmönsterkatalog, som innehåller både hög- och lågnivå mönster. Studien utfördes på Instoremedia, ett företag som bland annat utvecklar pekskärmsterminalerför butiker. I fokus stod en interaktiv produktkatalog utvecklad för Telia. Applikationenstuderades delvis in situ. Studien bestod av fem steg: analytisk utvärdering, intressentintervju,kontextuell undersökning, användaranalys och designmönsterutveckling. Studien avslöjadeproblem, lösningar, behov, mål etc., relaterade till användandet av terminalen. Det slutgiltigaresultatet är en föreslagen designmönsterkatalog för pekskärmsterminaler i butiker, somerbjuder lösningar till de observerade problemen. Katalogen består till största delen av redankända mönster. Tre nya designmönster har utvecklats. Målet är att mönsterkatalogen ska kunnaanvändas som ett redskap under framtida design.

As an increasing number of people are logging on to the internet to do their shopping, it is imperative for a site to be accessible and usable. Nielsen’s heuristic method is one esteemed method that many web site developers use in their design work. One study suggests that online shopping needs most improvement with the heuristics “User control and freedom” where an undo button often is lacking and in ‘Help and Documentation’ where the user may not easily switch between their work and the help. The study, however, has been made on grocery shops alone. The following study adopts the results of the past study as hypotheses and investigates if they hold true for another type of online shopping site – women’s apparel. The results of the study confirm that these two heuristics indeed are the two most troublesome. However, for the biggest usability disaster under each, the results are either inapplicable or only lend weak support. The following results lend more support to a possible generalization for all online sites and better awareness among software developers of online shopping sites. Yet a more consistent base of common usability disasters under these two specific heuristics needs to be developed.

This report documents the work and result of a master thesis in Media Technology and Engineering at Linköping University conducted in collaboration with Siemens Industrial Turbomachinery AB. The aim of the project was to develop an interactive visualization application to be used for data exploration. The purpose of the application is to provide Siemens with valuable insights about how different configurations of their gas turbines affect the lifetime of the machines and their components. The result is a JavaScript based web application, ViSITelligence, that allows employees at Siemens to explore the data in order to discover patterns and relationship between different settings in the configuration of the turbines. ViSITelligence has been developed through an agile process with usability and perception in mind, and facilitates the answering of questions and the emergence of new ones.

This thesis provides insight into long-term factors of user behaviour with a Web site or application using low-level interaction events (such as mouse movement, and scroll action) as a proxy. Current laboratory studies employ scenarios where confounding variables can be controlled. Unfortunately, these scenarios are not naturalistic or ecologically valid. Existing remote alternatives fail to provide either the required granularity or the necessary naturalistic aspect. Without appropriate longitudinal approaches, the effects of long-term factors can only be analysed via cross-sectional studies, ignoring within-subject variability. Using a naturalistic remote interaction data capturing tool represents a key improvement and supports the analysis of longitudinal user interaction in the wild. Naturalistic low-level fine-grained Web interaction data (from URLs visited, to keystrokes and mouse movements) has been captured in the wild from publicly available working live sites for over 16 months. Different combinations of low-level indicators are characterised as micro behaviours to enable the analysis of interaction captured for extended periods of time. The extraction of micro behaviours provides an extensible technique to obtain meaning from long-term low-level interaction data. 18 thousand recurring users have been extracted and 53 million events have been analysed. A relation of users' interaction time with the site and their degree of familiarity has been found via a remote survey. This relation enables the use of users' active time with the site as a proxy for their degree of familiarity. Analysing the evolution of extracted micro behaviours enables an understanding of how users' interaction behaviour changes over time. The results demonstrate that monitoring micro behaviours offers a simple and easily extensible post hoc approach to understand how Web-based behaviour changes over time. Results of the analysis have identified key aspects from micro behaviours that are strongly correlated with users' degree of familiarity. In the case of users scrolling continuously for short periods of time, it has been found that the speed of the scroll increased as users' become more familiar with the Web site. Users have also been found to spend more time on the Web site without interacting with the mouse. Understanding long-term interaction factors such as familiarity supports the design of interfaces that accommodate users' interaction evolution. Combining found key aspects enables a prediction of a user's degree of familiarity without the need for continuous observation. The presented approach also allows for the validation of hypothesis on longitudinal user interaction behaviour factors.

Abstract The main difficulty in the usability evaluation of a product concept or a prototype is that it is very difficult to take reliably into account many different characteristics or attributes, which cannot be measured with the same unit, scale or instrument. Secondly, evaluation always involves some uncertainty. One can never be really sure that all the essential aspects that affect the final user emphasis are taken into consideration. This uncertainty can be decreased by involving diverse people in the evaluation process during R&D or, before the final decision, by elaborating the best ideas to a level at which they can be really used on a pilot scale in the field. Most often, though, the latter takes too much time and would result in many other problems. Evaluation can possibly be best enhanced by using enough involved people, i.e. various experts and especially end-users, who need or use the product in question. A key ingredient to the success of product development, in addition to ergonomic knowledge, is often thought to be active involvement of the intended product users by (1) measuring user-product interaction and (2) participation in design decisions. When a potential end-user experiments with the product, both quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods can be used. This thesis shows some methodological possibilities of evaluation, especially through simulation. It also describes in detail the practical phases of the experiments. For example, a lot of development was needed to find out how to communicate product alternatives and their concepts to (elderly) users. And most importantly, this thesis aims to give evidence of how the procedure called experimental ergonomic evaluation (EEE) should be feasibly implemented and statistically confirmed for significance and consistency. A special focus in the experiments was placed on elderly end-users. Since the number of elderly citizens is increasing, there is a need for products to help the elderly live independently at their homes. Studying and understanding how users accomplish their tasks helps to identify their needs and to formulate implications for the design of technology to satisfy those needs. Thus, user studies conducted before beginning to design a new technology provide a proactive way of involving users in the design process. The first prototypes then enable usability studies, such as user trials. With an emphasis on usability engineering, trials can be developed into more feasible EEE procedures for industrial companies. All the developed and applied EEE procedures were based on a user-centred approach with different user trial types (N = 15). The users as subjects (N = 264) performed as real tasks as possible and, based on their perceptions during the trials, gave their preferences or scored certain variables. The subjects were also observed and measured by the researcher. The products or other technologies in the trials comprised a total of 9 cases, ranging from "low-tech" steps and chairs to "high-tech" information and communication technology (ICT) applications. The perceived preference and observed performance measures were then combined. Different methods are needed simultaneously to make the results more accurate. The present EEE procedures proved to be cost-effective, efficient and sufficiently valid at least in a research context. The EEE procedures ranged from subjective estimations, such as rating and ranking, to more complex multi-criteria methods that can be used to facilitate decision-making, such as conjoint analysis, Mitchell's paired comparison and use-value analysis. Objective evaluation was also used, including measurement of products and users as well various observations. Both experts and end-users (subjects) had their own important roles in the experiment. Based on this study, EEE procedures are easy to implement in industry for routine usability testing in the course of product development. EEE with its wide coverage yields more universal and absolute usability values, not only ones based on direct benchmarking.

Abstract Context-awareness, a state where the device is aware of the situation in which it is used, is a technology which has gained an increasing amount of attention in recent years. A context-aware device can infer the use condition, and adapt its behavior according to the circumstances. Mobile handheld devices, which have been highly adopted by large user groups, especially in the form of mobile phones, constitute an interesting platform for context-awareness. They are used in different kinds of situations, where the preferences of users may vary, and where different features are prioritized. While the increasing complexity and growing number of features set challenges to intuitive and easy use of devices, context-awareness may offer solutions to more efficient use of mobile applications and services. This thesis investigates the interaction issues with context-aware mobile devices. The research has been exploratory including several separate case studies, where interaction and usability matters have been charted. These studies consider topics such as location-awareness, user-defined settings of context-aware applications, and information sharing and privacy. In addition to these case studies, the author has sough to draw a bigger picture on interaction and usability issues with context-aware mobile devices, and incorporated the findings to a more general framework. Through presenting the case studies it is concluded that context-awareness can improve the usability of mobile devices, but careful design in the application development phase must be emphasized. The usability risks identified through case studies relate to numerous themes, such as diminished user control, increased number of interruptions, information overflow, users' subjective understanding of context attributes and privacy threat. As context-aware technology employs greater risks, e.g. due to the uncertain nature of context recognition, the user-centric design practices and testing in the authentic environment of the context-aware applications should be stressed. The author proposes design guidelines, which have been developed based on the findings from distinct case studies. The design guidelines aim to offer tangible help to application designers, who may not be acquaint with the special characteristics of context-awareness, and intend to prevent potential usability problems identified through the individual studies. Moreover, an evaluation for the design guidelines and their iteration to the presented form is demonstrated.

This diploma thesis is dedicated to the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), which covers user friendliness, usability and further aspects of interaction between computer and a human. According to the assumptions of author this field is not favourably promoted during the educational process of the Czech IT experts at Czech universities. Knowledge of HCI is one of the crucial factors of development of effective information systems. The first key part of this thesis contains evaluation of education in HCI at Czech universities. In the second key part the author proposes a subject of HCI, which could be thought at Czech universities. Finally the reached goals are compared with the set ones.