The nursing information systems: Collaborative design of healthcare information systems

This paper will describe a participatory design process by which individuals from many levels of hierarchy and diverse technical background envisioned and then determined the design criteria for the software system to support the delivery of high quality nursing services.     

Product architecting for personalization

Personalization is an emerging manufacturing paradigm whereby customers can tailor products to their individual needs while maintaining high production efficiency. This paradigm necessitates “personalized product architecting” for determination of customizable/personalizable product modules and cost-effective manufacturing methods. This paper presents an initial effort in developing a method for identifying appropriate product architectures and manufacturing resolutions to achieve personalization considering functional utility and manufacturing cost. Ergonomic experiments and conjoint analysis are implemented to build functions relating manufacturability, price, and utility. Using these functions, a case study based on shoe products is conducted and the common integer programming welfare problem is expanded to a mixed-integer programming optimization problem for determination of a product family incorporating both personalized and customized offerings.     

The application of ergonomics in the design of automotive displays

Ergonomics can play an important role in the design and evaluation of novel display concepts. The rapid growth in the application of new technology has posed as many queries for the designer and engineer as it has provided design opportunities. Car dashboard displays are an example of such an ara of growth. Ergonomists have addressed the queries arising from the interface between the display and the user and can work with the designers and engineers towards solutions.     

Designing for work place learning

The use of computers to support learning at work has for long been propagated. Although a large bulk of experience exists in this field, it is still an open question what role computer applications play and can play in the process of learning. It can even be questioned if the learning processes themselves are sufficiently well understood to enable designers and others to provide relevant support. In this article these questions are addressed with reference to experience gained with two projects on computer support for shop floor learning. The projects involved the future users actively in the design process and it is argued that this involvement reached far beyond the mere shaping of the learning artefacts.     

Defining stakeholder involvement in participatory design processes

A participatory approach could be used to implement work place or organizational improvements. However, the question is which participants should be involved and how. In this paper the theoretical involvement in different steps of a linear stepwise approach is described and compared with the latest projects of 300 practitioners.

From a theoretical point of view ergonomists and employees play an essential role in the improvement process and are involved in most stages of a change process. Designers play an important role in idea generation and prototyping. Top management and middle management are important in the first step to set goals that are consistent with the strategy of the enterprise. Middle management is also needed in the steps where improvements are selected.

This theoretical prediction is affirmed. However, middle management appeared to be also involved in implementation. The role of ergonomists is in practice limited in later stages in implementation, which is not preferred by the ergonomists.     

Universal product design involving elderly users: a participatory design model

Recent studies have shown that people prefer to age in their familiar environments, thus guiding designers to provide a safe and functionally appropriate environment for ageing people, regardless of their physical conditions or limitations. Therefore, a participatory design model is proposed where human beings can improve their quality of life by promoting independence, as well as safety, useability and attractiveness of the residence. Brainstorming, scenario building, unstructured interviews, sketching and videotaping are used as techniques in the participatory design sessions. Quality deployment matrices are employed to find the relationships between the elderly user's requirements and design specifications. A case study was devised to apply and test the conceptual model phase of the proposed model.     

In pursuit of rigour and accountability in participatory design

The field of Participatory Design (PD) has greatly diversified and we see a broad spectrum of approaches and methodologies emerging. However, to foster its role in designing future interactive technologies, a discussion about accountability and rigour across this spectrum is needed. Rejecting the traditional, positivistic framework, we take inspiration from related fields such as Design Research and Action Research to develop interpretations of these concepts that are rooted in PD׳s own belief system. We argue that unlike in other fields, accountability and rigour are nuanced concepts that are delivered through debate, critique and reflection. A key prerequisite for having such debates is the availability of a language that allows designers, researchers and practitioners to construct solid arguments about the appropriateness of their stances, choices and judgements.To this end, we propose a “tool-to-think-with” that provides such a language by guiding designers, researchers and practitioners through a process of systematic reflection and critical analysis. The tool proposes four lenses to critically reflect on the nature of a PD effort: epistemology, values, stakeholders and outcomes. In a subsequent step, the coherence between the revealed features is analysed and shows whether they pull the project in the same direction or work against each other. Regardless of the flavour of PD, we argue that this coherence of features indicates the level of internal rigour of PD work and that the process of reflection and analysis provides the language to argue for it. We envision our tool to be useful at all stages of PD work: in the planning phase, as part of a reflective practice during the work, and as a means to construct knowledge and advance the field after the fact. We ground our theoretical discussions in a specific PD experience, the ECHOES project, to motivate the tool and to illustrate its workings.     

Social interaction around a rural community photo display

Public displays of photographs are a common sight in community spaces, yet while much attention has been given recently to the use of digital photography in the home, the community domain remains underexplored. We describe the Wray Photo Display, a public situated display for community-generated photography in an English rural village, which aims to understand the community's use of photos for social purposes and the ways in which public display technology may support these social interactions. This article presents the techniques used in designing and evaluating the display as well as understanding the community and its use of photos, and our discussion of the issues and challenges presented by this study.     

Understanding customers' holistic perception of switches in automotive human-machine interfaces

For successful new product development, it is necessary to understand the customers' holistic experience of the product beyond traditional task completion, and acceptance measures. This paper describes research in which ninety-eight UK owners of luxury saloons assessed the feel of push-switches in five luxury saloon cars both in context (in-car) and out of context (on a bench). A combination of hedonic data (i.e. a measure of ‘liking’), qualitative data and semantic differential data was collected. It was found that customers are clearly able to differentiate between switches based on the degree of liking for the samples' perceived haptic qualities, and that the assessment environment had a statistically significant effect, but that it was not universal. A factor analysis has shown that perceived characteristics of switch haptics can be explained by three independent factors defined as ‘Image’, ‘Build Quality’, and ‘Clickiness’. Preliminary steps have also been taken towards identifying whether existing theoretical frameworks for user experience may be applicable to automotive human-machine interfaces.     

Embarking on Spoken-Language NL Interface Design

Natural language (NL) user interfaces are growing in popularity. Unfortunately, the complexity of NL interaction makes these interfaces difficult to design. For NL interfaces to become successful, universal tools are needed to help support the NL design process. What work practice should these tools explicitly support? Interviews with NL designers and our own experiments have identified a specific work practice that designers should consider as they begin to incorporate NL into user interface designs. The work practice study highlights the value of using Wizard of Oz prototyping in NL design. We describe a tool that we have built, called SUEDE, to explicitly support the first stage of NL design for spoken-language user interfaces. Our tools and tools like it will help make NL in human-computer interaction (HCI) more commonplace.     

Human-centric design personalization of 3D glasses frame in markerless augmented reality

This paper presents a virtual try-on system based on augmented reality for design personalization of facial accessory products. The system offers several novel functions that support real-time evaluation and modification of eyeglasses frame. 3D glasses model is embedded within video stream of the person who is wearing the glasses. Machine learning algorithms are developed for instantaneous tracking of facial features without use of markers. The tracking result enables continuously positioning of the glasses model on the user’s face while it is moving during the try-on process. In addition to color and texture, the user can instantly modify the glasses shape through simple semantic parameters. These functions not only facilitate evaluating products highly interactive with human users, but also engage them in the design process. This work has thus implemented the concept of human-centric design personalization.     

艺术设计工作室教学模式的研究

文章通过对艺术设计教育特点和现状的分析,结合现代设计教育的理念,提出艺术设计工作室教学模式的意义和构建方法,探索当前形式下艺术设计专业最适合的教学模式之一,以便更好地适应现实社会对艺术设计人才的需求。     

考虑道路友好性的载货汽车悬架参数优化仿真

为了减少汽车轮胎动载荷对路面的损伤,研究兼顾行驶平顺性和道路友好性的悬架参数优化方法.建立了四自由度二分之一汽车振动模型,给出了整车振动方程、频响函数和路面输入模型,针对该汽车常用的行驶条件,以行驶平顺性指标和道路友好性指标的线性加权和作为优化目标,运用Matlab优化工具,对B级和C级路面典型工况的悬架刚度和阻尼进行仿真优化.优化结果表明,悬架参数对行驶平顺性和道路友好性有较大的影响;与原车相比,悬架参数优化后,行驶平顺性提高了5%～15%,道路友好性提高了2%～3%;针对B级和C级路面条件得到的两组优化结果为悬架参数没计提供了可行的目标范围.     

Interactive scenarios—building ubiquitous computing concepts in the spirit of participatory design

The amount of information technology in our everyday lives is increasing and getting more and more ambient in our daily environments. The environments are supposed to be intelligent, adaptive, intuitive and interactive in the future. User participation for future concept building is essential, but challenging, when designing appliances that might be unfamiliar in their appearance, functionality and impressiveness compared to the users current everyday life. New allocated methods and viewpoints are needed for user experience design and evaluation of intelligent environments to build systems that naturally support the users in their daily life. We present interactive scenario building together with potential users (including role-playing, drama and improvisational aspects) as one promising tool for early concept definition phase.     

Representing older people: towards meaningful images of the user in design scenarios

Designing for older people requires the consideration of a range of design problems, which may be related to difficult and sometimes highly personal matters. Issues such as fear, loneliness, dependency, and physical decline may be hard to observe or discuss in interviews. Pastiche scenarios and pastiche personae are techniques that employ characters to create a space for the discussion of new technological developments and user experience. This paper argues that the use of fictional characters can help to overcome restrictive notions of older people by disrupting designers’ prior assumptions. In this paper, we reflect on our experiences using pastiche techniques in two separate technology design projects that sought to address the needs of older people. In the first pastiche scenarios were developed by the designers of the system and used as discussion documents with users. In the second pastiche personae were used by groups of users themselves to generate scenarios which were scribed for later use by the design team. We explore how the use of fictional characters and settings can generate new ideas and undercut the potential in scenarios, for weak characterisation of “the user” to permit scenario writers to fit characters to technology rather than vice versa. To assist in future development of pastiche techniques in designing for older people, we provide an array of fictional older characters drawn from literary and popular culture.     

Consideration of LCD legibility for automobiles

Some improvement is required in legibility of liquid crystal displays for them to be used in cars. Many factors - for example LCD material characteristics, cell gap, polarizers, operating conditions and instrument panels arrangements - influence the legibility. The dependence of contrast, viewing angle and response on such factors was investigated and a method of using LCDs for automobiles established.