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.

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

Computers are developed continuously to satisfy the human demands, and typical tools used everywhere for ranging from daily life usage to all kinds of research. Virtual Reality (VR), a virtual environment simulated to present physical presence in the real word and imaginary worlds, has been widely applied to simulate the virtual environment. People’s feeling is limited to visual perception when only computers are applied for simulations, since computers are limited to display visualization of data, while human senses include sight, smell, hearing, taste, touch and so on. Other devices can be applied, such as haptics, a device for sense of touch, to enhance the human perception in virtual environment. A good way to apply VR applications is to place them in a virtual display system, a system with multiply tools displays a virtual environment with experiencing different human senses, to enhance the people’s feeling of being immersed in a virtual environment. Such virtual display systems include VR dome, recursive acronym CAVE, VR workbench, VR workstation and so on. Menus with lots of advantages in manipulating applications are common in conventional systems, operating systems or other systems in computers. Normally a system will not be usable without them. Although VR applications are more natural and intuitive, they are much less or not usable without menus. But very few studies have focused on user interfaces in VR. This situation motivates us working further in this area. We want to create two models on different purposes. One is inspired from menus in conventional system and the sense of touch. And the other one is designed based on the spatial presence of VR. The first model is a two-dimensional pie menu in pop-up style with spring force feedback. This model is in a pie shape with eight options on the root menu. And there is a pop-up style hierarchical menu belongs to each option on the root menu. When the haptics device is near an option on the root menu, the spring force will force the haptics device towards to the center of the option and that option will be selected, and then the sub menu with nine options will pop up. The pie shape together with the spring force effect is expected to both increase the speed of selection and decrease the error rate of selection. The other model is a semiautomatic three-dimensional cube menu. This cube menu is designed with a aim to provide a simple, elegant, efficient and accurate user interface approach. This model is designed with four faces, including the front, back, left and right faces of the cube. Each face represents a category and has nine widgets. Users can make selections in different categories. An efficient way to change between categories is to rotate the cube automatically. Thus, a navigable rotation animation system is built and is manipulating the cube rotate horizontally for ninety degrees each time, so one of the faces will always face users. These two models are built under H3DAPI, an open source haptics software development platform with UI toolkit, a user interface toolkit. After the implementation, we made a pilot study, which is a formative study, to evaluate the feasibility of both menus. This pilot study includes a list of tasks for each menu, a questionnaire regards to the menu performance for each subject and a discussion with each subject. Six students participated as test subjects. In the pie menu, most of the subjects feel the spring force guides them to the target option and they can control the haptics device comfortably under such force. In the cube menu, the navigation rotation system works well and the cube rotates accurately and efficiently. The results of the pilot study show the models work as we initially expected. The recorded task completion time for each menu shows that with the same amount of tasks and similar difficulties, subjects spent more time on the cube menu than on the pie menu. This may implicate that pie menu is a faster approach comparing to the cube menu. We further consider that both the pie shape and force feedback may help reducing the selection time. The result for the option selection error rate test on the cube menu may implicates that option selection without any force feedback may also achieve a considerable good effect. Through the answers from the questionnaire for each subject, both menus are comfortable to use and in good control.

<p> This research presents a new technique for user interface prototyping, called mixed-fidelity prototyping. Mixed-fidelity prototyping combines low-, medium-, and high-fidelity interface elements within a single prototype in a lightweight manner, supporting independent refinement of individual elements. The approach allows designers to investigate alternate designs, including more innovative designs, and elicit feedback from stakeholders without having to commit too early in the process. As well, the approach encourages collaboration among a diverse group of stakeholders throughout the design process. For example, individuals who specialize in specific fidelities, such as high-fidelity components, are able to become involved earlier on in the process. </p> <p> We developed a conceptual model called the Region Model and implemented a proof-of-concept system called ProtoMixer. We demonstrated the mixed-fidelity approach by using ProtoMixer to design an example application. </p> <p> ProtoMixer has several benefits over other existing prototyping tools. With ProtoMixer, prototypes can be composed of multiple fidelities, and elements are easily refined and transitioned between different fidelities. Individual elements can be tied into data and functionality, and can be executed inside prototypes. As well, traditional informal practices such as sketching and storyboarding are supported. Furthermore, ProtoMixer is designed for collaborative use on a high-resolution, large display workspace. </p>

As a result of Internet popularly, the World Wide Web, a killer application which improves the global network, is used much more frequently. Because World Wide Web is browsed through GUI (Graphic User Interface) which allows end-user to interact and operate with internet websites easily, more and more websites are created and operating. For this moment, the web based GUI proved its advantages that it can be applied not only to general website but also to electronic commerce, enterprise information system, and system resources administration. Today, the processing architecture evolves from early centralized processing architecture to recently distributed processing architecture which is composed of several servers and in which each server is responsible for a different system service. But because each system platform runs on its own unique operating system, system administrators have difficulties operating it. Due to increased numbers of servers, a well-defined systematic management architecture and remote management is necessary. This thesis contains the designs of web based system administration architecture through the designs of united library interface to increase the convenience of expansion on library. In this paper, a prototype system created during the research development will serve as theory verification and as an example for developers of future system management platforms.

This study presents a systematic methodology which integrated the model driven architecture with object-oriented technique to transform the user interface (UI) platform independent model (PIM) into Web-based UI platform specific model (PSM), and then into code model. A real-world case using the integrated techniques is presented and the Rational Rose is used to illustrate the concepts, application, and the advantages of using the proposed methodology. With this approach, the system developer can transform UI PIM into Web-based UI PSM and code automatically and thereby enhance the efficiency of system development.

Curved bridges with steel/concrete composite girders are used frequently in the recent years. Analysis of these structural systems presents a variety of challenges. Finite element method offers the most elaborate treatment for these systems, however its use is limited in routine design practice due to modeling requirements. In recent years, a finite element program named UTrAp was developed to analyze construction stages of curved/straight composite bridges. The original Graphical User Interface could not be used with the modified computation engine. It is the focus of this thesis work to develop a brand new Graphical User Interface with enhanced visual capabilities compatible with the engine. Pursuant to this goal a Graphical User Interface was developed using C++ programming language together with OPENGL libraries. The interface is linked to the computational engine to enable direct interaction between two programs. In the following thesis work the development of the GUI and the modifications to the computational engine are presented. Moreover, the analysis results pertaining to the newly added features are checked against analytical solutions and recommendations presented in design specifications.

Graphical user interface (GUI) has become the key element of modern information systems and is commonly viewed as one of the decisive factors for the success of an information system project. To help develop effective GUIs, many tools have been introduced by software vendors to meet the needs of designing a variety of interfaces. Such modern design tools offer system developer vehicles to create sophisticated GUI with a few codes. However, the complicity of many GUIs and the varying expectations among users, designers and developers make the communication among them and the use of most prevailing design tools a real challenge. An integrated tool for better design and development of GUIs may help alleviate the problems caused by the mis-communication and the knowledge gaps existing among users, designers and developers. In this paper, a new design tool, which integrates the GUI design techniques embedded in Unified Modeling Language (UML) and the Presentation-Abstraction-Control (PAC) model in Web environment (Net-PAC) is proposed. The potential problems of using vendor-provided design methodology will be presented. Special features of the proposed integrated tool will then be discussed. Some real-world cases using the integrated techniques will be presented to illustrate the advantages of using proposed methodology.

This Thesis explores the application of Tangible User Interfaces to Education. For this, a research study was conducted by building and testing an interactive game called Tangram Bridge. This Tangram based game was designed to teach players about basic physics principles such as balance, friction and motion on inclined planes. The focus of this Tangram Bridge is middle school physics, and therefore concerns children aged 11 years and up, their instructors and care givers. This research also lays a lot of emphasis on constructive play amongst children. Tangram Bridge is a versatile platform that can be scaled for younger or older populations A comparative study of existing Tangible User Interfaces ( TUIs) revealed opportunity spaces for this project. Through a compilation of related research in the fields of education, hands on learning, Tangible interaction and understanding play and learning amongst children, the constructionist views on learning are explored as guidelines for the design of this study. Through the analysis of comparative research studies, trends on TUI with relation to education emerged, informing the design process for Tangram Bridge. This research study discusses the application of Tangible user interfaces to education. It combines the research data collected through market research, user testing and literature reviews to explore the efficacy of TUI as teaching tool for abstract concepts that require imagination and experimentation.