Dementia is a growing problem with prevalence rapidly increasing. It is a progressive and eventually severe disease that affects many areas of the person’s life. Often, as a result of this disease, individuals reside in care homes. Care staff can find it difficult to get to know a person with dementia as they have limited time to spend with each person. In addition, communication difficulties can make it difficult to learn important social information and preferences. This lack of knowledge about an individual with dementia can make social interactions very difficult and can often contribute to repetitive social interactions. This research aimed to establish if technology could be used to support care staff within their care environment to get to know people with late-stage dementia. The goal was to develop software that can act as an external communication bridge between carers and people with dementia through the creation of simple but effective ‘Portraits’. This thesis investigates the creation and use of multimedia ‘Portraits’ of individuals with dementia that are immediately and easily accessible to care staff. This thesis describes the development of a software tool called Portrait, designed to help staff in care homes quickly get to know a person with dementia as a person. It is intended to be used by the staff in their care environment to gain an initial understanding of that person’s life prior to entering care and to learn more personal information about their needs and habits. The Portrait system contains important but limited personal and social information about the people with dementia. Five key studies were conducted during this research. The first study evaluated the usability of the Portrait system. The second and third were conducted with care managers and staff in the care home setting to assess usefulness and usability of the Portrait system and to compare it to current methods used in the care home environment. The fourth study conducted case studies with families of people with dementia to investigate the Portrait creation process and the final study investigated the placement of these Portraits in the care environment. The results of this research are promising, with Portrait being very positively received by care managers, care staff and the families of people with dementia. This research highlights the potential benefits of technology in the care environment to assist care staff. A number of key areas for future research have been identified including the possibility of expanding the use of the system and using alternative state of the art devices.

The golden generation have a wealth of experience and knowledge from throughout their lifetimes that younger generations wish to retain. In our technology filled world an obvious means of collecting this information is electronically. Digital library col- lections are increasingly used by libraries and large institutions to record their large amounts of information but they can also be used for personal collections. Seniors are often willing and keen to impart their years of experience upon people of the younger generation but time is not always on their side as they grow older. Throughout a lifetime a person could collect large amounts of papers, diaries, pho- tos and media but the time it takes to organise these documents can be long and exhausting and the person's health is not always at its best in old age. Greenstone is a suite of software for creating digital libraries, which are organised collections of documents. Greenstone has the ability to distribute collections either using a server or CD-ROM, and provides advanced searching and organization tools. While Greenstone is a versatile and useful tool in creating digital collections, its in- terface is not designed for senior users. Seniors are commonly perceived to have more physical and mental disadvantages as they get older. These disadvantages can dramatically affect how usable seniors find a piece of software. The aim of this thesis is to investigate how usable the current Greenstone interface is for use by seniors and to re-design the interface so that Greenstone may be more easily used by senior users. This thesis focuses upon what types of documents and descriptive data seniors would like to include in a collection about their life. This is to ascertain exactly what parts of the interface must be improved when it comes to metadata and classifiers. The results of this investigation also helped in the creation of a customised metadata set for senior users use.

<p><em> </em></p><p><em><p>This report examines the relationship between usability and subjective judgments</p><p>about aesthetic and emotional aspects of users of a web production. Through the</p><p>development of two prototypes that reflects different aspects of usability and subjective</p><p>assessments examined the consequences of a differentiation of the concepts and</p><p>Usability and Likeability. Thereafter, an evaluation of the two prototypes are made</p><p>through user testing. Finally, the results of the evaluation is presented and are related</p><p>to the concepts of usability and likeability.</p></em></p><p> </p>

<p>When discussing matters of usability, focus is usually kept on functionality whilst other aspects, such as aesthetics, are neglected. Discussions of aesthetics are on the other hand traditionally kept within the area of fine arts. Considering that both usability and aesthetics are of big importance in people’s lives, it is astonishing to find that their relationship has not been fully explored. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to, with interfaces of a Volvo Logistics environmental calculation tool, explore whether aesthetics (in the form of visual beauty) would affect the perceived usability of a system. Hence, the question of research has been whether a visually attractive user interface will be perceived as more usable than a less attractive one when usability/functionality is kept constant? (Or in more general terms; is beautiful more usable?)</p><p>To achieve this, two interfaces with the same functionality but with different levels of visual beauty were designed and used in an experiment where participants rated perceived usability and appearance. The results of the experiment were expected; participants perceived the better looking interface as more usable whereas actual usability appears to have been constant.</p>

<p>In order to increase the independence in everyday life of the elderly population, we have developed a lifting aid for loading in the private car trunk. Independence from outside assistance affects self-esteem in a positive direction and can help increase the quality of life for a large group of individuals. As people age and experience changes in performance, it is important that aids and support is available, particularly to reduce the experience of aging and it’s increasing physical limitations. The aim was to develop a function prototype characterized by simplicity, which facilitates loading of the private car</p><p>trunk.</p><p>The project was conducted at the request of Autoadapt AB, which is one of the leading</p><p>actors in car adaptations for individuals with disablilities. A function prototype of the product Easy Load has been produced through dynamic product development and its</p><p>various tools. In an attempt to meet the requirements of simplicity and ease of use,</p><p>concepts such as universal design and usability affected the project.</p><p>In order to find a user need that could form the basis of the project, proceedings began</p><p>with a pre-study that included observations and group interviews of members in a</p><p>pensioner club in Halmstad. The Product development work continued with several</p><p>brainstorming sessions with participants from a number of the university's engineering</p><p>programs. Ideas from the sessions, together with the results from the benchmarking,</p><p>formed the basis for final product design and function. A key requirement was that the</p><p>product could be fitted in sedan car models with easy grips and without any permanent</p><p>fixings.</p><p>Construction of the prototype was made mostly in the University’s mechanical</p><p>workshop, using both self-constructed and sourced components. Stress and installation</p><p>testing and risk analysis pursuant to FMEA highlighted deficiencies that the project</p><p>group sought to adjust. In cases where this did not happen, the project group made</p><p>concrete improvement proposals to simplify further development.</p><p>This project shows that lifting aids products without permanent fixings are possible to develop for use in sedan car models. Specific product criteria have been met through a designed function prototype for loading in the private car trunk.</p>

Technology plays an increasingly important role in modern health care. This thesis presents an approach to usability evaluation of mobile information and communications technologies designed for diabetes patients&rsquo / use in their daily lives. According to our study conducted on 60 diabetes patients, several important findings were obtained. Fifty nine (98.3%) diabetes patients were highly satisfied with the mobile health technology and expressed that they would use it, and found the measured values reliable. For 57 (95%) diabetes patients / measuring, checking and accessing the blood glucose level easily anytime and anywhere were very important. Fifty six (93.3%) said that they would wish to send their blood glucose levels to their physicians via e-mail. When participants were asked to provide a decision on future health care, predominate number of participants said they would change their lifestyle rather than visit a doctor regardless of their blood glucose level. In conclusion, little is known about such effects of mobile information and communications technologies in self-management care situations. It is clear that usability studies in the field are more difficult to conduct than laboratory evaluations. Further studies with larger sample sizes are needed to further evaluate these initial findings.

Machine-readable privacy policies have been developed to help reduce user effort in understanding how websites will use personally identifiable information (PII). The goal of these policies is to enable the user to make informed decisions about the disclosure of personal information in web-based transactions. However, these privacy policies are complex, requiring that a user agent evaluate conformance between the users privacy preferences and the sites privacy policy, and indicate this conformance information to the user. The problem addressed in this thesis is that even with machine-readable policies and current user agents, it is still difficult for users to determine the cause and origin of a conflict between privacy preferences and privacy policies. The problem arises partly because current standards operate at the page level: they do not allow a fine-grained treatment of conformance down to the level of a specific field in a web form. In this thesis the Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) is extended to enable field-level comparisons, field-specific conformance displays, and faster access to additional field-specific conformance information. An evaluation of a prototype agent based on these extensions showed that they allow users to more easily understand how the website privacy policy relates to the users privacy preferences, and where conformance conflicts occur.

Few studies examine technical barriers, such as usability, to successful Computerized Provider Order Entry (CPOE) system implementation. This thesis explores this literature gap through the evaluation of the Sunnybrook CPOE order set system with a heuristic evaluation of the Sunnybrook CPOE system, the development of a more user friendly CPOE order set interface (Test Design), and a usability study comparing three order set formats (Sunnybrook CPOE, Test Design, and paper order sets). A randomized trial was conducted with 27 Sunnybrook physicians at the hospital. Results showed that the Sunnybrook CPOE order set system was less efficient (task times were on average 364 seconds longer than Test Design and 344 seconds longer than paper), less user-friendly (users were less confident, less satisfied, and more frustrated with Sunnybrook CPOE tasks), and less safe than paper order sets (more harmful errors). Test Design was as efficient and safe as paper order sets.

Game reviews play an important role in both the culture and business of games the words of a reviewer can have an influential effect on the commercial success of a video game. While reviews are currently used by game developers to aid in important decisions such as project financing and employee bonuses, the effect of game reviews on players is not known. Additionally, the use of game reviews to improve evaluation techniques has received little attention. In this thesis we investigate the effect of game reviews on player experience and perceptions of quality. We show that negative reviews cause a significant effect on how players perceive their in-game experience, and that this effect is a post-play cognitive rationalization of the play experience with the previously-read review text. To address this effect we designed and deployed a new heuristic evaluation technique that specifically uses game reviews to create a fine-grained prioritized list of usability problems based on the frequency, impact, and persistence of each problem. By using our technique we are able to address the most common usability problems identified by game reviews, thus reducing the overall level of negativity found within the review text. Our approach helps to control and eliminate the snowballing effect that can be produced by players reading reviews and subsequently posting their own reviews, and thus improve the commercial success of a game.

Few studies examine technical barriers, such as usability, to successful Computerized Provider Order Entry (CPOE) system implementation. This thesis explores this literature gap through the evaluation of the Sunnybrook CPOE order set system with a heuristic evaluation of the Sunnybrook CPOE system, the development of a more user friendly CPOE order set interface (Test Design), and a usability study comparing three order set formats (Sunnybrook CPOE, Test Design, and paper order sets). A randomized trial was conducted with 27 Sunnybrook physicians at the hospital. Results showed that the Sunnybrook CPOE order set system was less efficient (task times were on average 364 seconds longer than Test Design and 344 seconds longer than paper), less user-friendly (users were less confident, less satisfied, and more frustrated with Sunnybrook CPOE tasks), and less safe than paper order sets (more harmful errors). Test Design was as efficient and safe as paper order sets.