Design process excludes users: the co-creation activities between user and designer

User needs are a fundamental element of design. If the design process does not properly reflect user needs, the design will be severely compromised. Therefore, it is worthwhile to investigate how the user is, and user needs are, understood in the design process. In this article, three accepted linear process models for web site and interactive media design are reviewed in terms of the designer and user participation. The article then proposes a user-evolving collaborative design process which is built on co-creation activities between designer and user. Co-creation activities across the entire design process structurally and ontologically reposition the users, and user needs, centrally, which allows the designers to holistically approach to the user needs through building a partnership with the users. Co-creation creates an equal evolving participatory process between user and designer towards sharing values and knowledge and creating new domains of collective creativity.     

User values based evaluation model to assess product universality

Unlike the conventional design methodology, the universal design aims to integrate various user groups within the design space to benefit the user of all ages with distinct abilities. The objective of this work is to ensure universality of the designed product with the help of user-values based evaluation model. In the proposed model, users are classified into three groups based on their abilities and needs. This classification analyses the values associated with the individual needs of a different group of users. The universality of the product is analyzed by using the proposed model and accordingly the product can be improved by incorporating the values that have been overlooked by the designer. The frequently neglected values can be identified to modify universal design principles.Relevance to industry.Providing functional and usable products to all sets of users is the most important goal of industry, in today's marketplace. To achieve this goal, universal product design evaluation model has been proposed in this work. With the help of evaluation model, design firms and designers can ensure the universality of the product at an early phase of design and also while redesigning of the existing products.     

设计旨在沟通：功能性产品设计中的三种语言

设计是人类移情作用的产物,旨在建立设计师与用户之间的双向沟通,达成双方的相互理解。然而,在功能性产品设计过程中,设计师的“命令”、产品的“应答”和用户的“请求”这三种语言之间存在着差别。文章旨在分析研究功能性产品设计过程中三种语言的交流过程,提出符合沟通逻辑的设计原则,对产品的用户需求满足起到一定的参考意义。     

Intra‐organizational user‐centred design practices: The impact of design research departments at design consultancies

The user is a critical factor in design and innovation. Firms experiment with different approaches to involving the user in design processes, which results in new forms of intra‐ and extra‐organizational collaboration. The establishment of in‐house design research units within design consultancies is one such intra‐organizational user‐centred design practice that targets designer‐researcher collaboration. This paper addresses this issue and reports on the findings from multiple case study research exploring the impact of in‐house design research teams on designers' user knowledge construction. We utilized constructivist learning theory to assess major aspects of these intra‐organizational user‐centred design practices. Ethnographically informed field studies were conducted at six design consultancies representing three design fields (i.e., architecture, industrial design and interaction design) in the Northwestern United States. Three of the consultancies have design research departments and three do not. The findings indicate that in‐house design research units play a role in designers' user knowledge construction via their results, processes and human resources. Among these, the active participation of designers in the research process was observed to have the largest impact because of its contribution to designers' contextual and collaborative learning about users.     

A method for product form design of integrating interactive genetic algorithm with the interval hesitation time and user satisfaction

Due to the continuous release of new products, manufacturers are paying attention to customer-oriented design of products that meet user needs to minimize the risk of their products being rejected by the market. Due to the ambiguity of user cognition, it is difficult to accurately obtain the user's preference for individual productions. To respond to the challenge, we propose an engineering scientific research method of interactive genetic algorithm with the interval arithmetic based on hesitation and fuzzy kano model(FKM) to explore the emotional needs of users for product forms and drive product modeling evolution design. Through expert interviews, the morphological characteristics and perceptual images factors of the products attracting users are investigated. In order to identify the user's satisfaction relationship with the perceptual images, we use FKM to analyze the product image style that meets the user's kansei needs accurately and selects 5 factors which is attractive attributes. Meanwhile, we attempt to transform this 5 factors into evaluation carrier to guide the evolution direction of product styling in HIIF-IGA, and then optimized four electric bikes with scores over 8.8 so that it could realize user demand-driven product evolution design. To handle users' ambiguity, the FAHP method is used to quantify the user's emotional imagery criterion and create a product evolution design system platform, which can automatically generate product styling design scheme in line with user preferences. This experimental results show that the proposed method can help enterprises effectively improve customer satisfaction and reduce the cost and time of product development.     

An interactive genetic algorithm with the interval arithmetic based on hesitation and its application to achieve customer collaborative product configuration design

Complex product configuration design requires rapid and accurate response to customers’ demand. The participation of customers in product design will be a very effective solution to achieve this. The traditional interactive genetic algorithm (IGA) can solve the above problem to some extent by a computer-aided user interface. However, it is difficult to adopt an accurate number to express an individual's fitness because the customers’ cognition of evolutionary population is uncertain, and to solve the users’ fatigue problem in IGA. Thus, an interactive genetic algorithm with interval individual fitness based on hesitancy (IGA-HIIF) is proposed in this paper. In IGA-HIIF, the interval number derived from users’ evaluation time is adopted to express an individual's fitness, and the evolutionary individuals are compared according to the interval probability dominant strategy proposed in this paper. Then, the genetic operations are applied to generate offspring population and the evolutionary process doesn’t stop until it meets the termination conditions of the evolution or user manually terminates the evolution process. The IGA-HIIF is applied into the design system of the car console configuration, and compared to the other two kinds of IGA. The extensive experiment results are provided to demonstrate that our proposed algorithm is correct and efficient.     

Effective Communication in Requirements Elicitation: A Comparison of Methodologies

The elicitation or communication of user requirements comprises an early and critical but highly error-prone stage in system development. Socially oriented methodologies provide more support for user involvement in design than the rigidity of more traditional methods, facilitating the degree of user–designer communication and the ‘capture’ of requirements. A more emergent and collaborative view of requirements elicitation and communication is required to encompass the user, contextual and organisational factors. From this accompanying literature in communication issues in requirements elicitation, a four-dimensional framework is outlined and used to appraise comparatively four different methodologies seeking to promote a closer working relationship between users and designers. The facilitation of communication between users and designers is subject to discussion of the ways in which communicative activities can be ‘optimised’ for successful requirements gathering, by making recommendations based on the four dimensions to provide fruitful considerations for system designers.     

Designing for user benefit: a methodological cautionary tale

This paper is concerned with the problem of ‘losing sight’ of the user during the design of human-computer interfaces. A methodological practice is proposed which enables the designer to track the implications of design proposals with respect to both the benefits they confer on the user and their goodness of fit with user characteristics. The methodological practice, which is seen as a technique for early or formative evaluation, is then applied in retrospect to two adaptive prototypes which are currently being incorporated into a Multi-Author Document Preparation System. The results of this process are intended as a methodological cautionary tale for other designers, illustrating the potential consequences of failure to evaluate the implicit assumptions that are being made about users by the designer.     

创新性与满意度融合的用户创新方法及其在产品外观优化中的应用

针对产品方案优化中对创新性和满意度这2项感性指标综合评估的需求,基于用户创新思想和交互式遗传算法构建了融合优化机制.通过差异化集结来评估方案的创新性,利用改进的交互评价方法产生满意度指标和用于创新性计算的参数敏感度系数;讨论了基于回避的创新性与满意度指标融合的方式,并给出了优化目标函数.优化流程分为2个独立阶段,分别由用户和设计师主导.第一阶段基于随机种群广泛获取用户的交互评价信息,并利用统计分析方法得到敏感度系数;第二阶段在设计师的主导下实施创新性与满意度融合的进化式寻优.文中基于产品外观形态优化的例进行了应用测试.     

Cultural differences,experience with social networks and the nature of “true commitment” in Facebook

Formed on an analysis of design practices, the behaviour chain model stipulates that social network designer’s ultimate aim is to encourage users to adopt the social network site by entering a phase of true commitment. During this phase, social network users are driven to connect to known or unknown others by engaging in instrumental uses that create value and content and involve others, while staying active and loyal by investing time in the site. This paper investigates how designer’s intentions, as captured by the behaviour chain model, materialise through users’ reported practices in the social network site Facebook. A total of 423 Facebook users from 5 countries answered a questionnaire that allowed us to examine how 2 user characteristics, experience with the site, and culture, shape the nature of true commitment. Our findings show that experience with the site and even more so, culture, have an effect on users’ motivations for using Facebook, as well as their instrumental uses and the time they invest on the site. This analysis reifies the behaviour chain model by allowing designers to understand how the features they design are embodied in users’ practices.     

Semiotic engineering: bringing designers and users together at interaction time

Semiotic engineering is a semiotic theory of human–computer interaction, where interactive computer systems are viewed as one-shot messages sent from designers to users. Through the system's interface, in many direct and indirect ways, designers are telling the users how they can, should, or must interact with the system in order to achieve a particular range of goals anticipated at design time. Designers are thus active interlocutors at human–computer interaction time. Their interactive discourse is delivered implicitly and/or explicitly by the system, which constitutes the designer's deputy. The importance of bringing designers and users together at interaction time springs from the intellectual nature of software artifacts. They are the result of human reasoning, choice and decision, rather than the direct effect of universal or natural laws. An adequate understanding of interactive artifacts depends on apprehending and comprehending the human intellect in action. Hence, in addition to producing interactive artifacts, designers must also introduce them appropriately, as is the case of other intellectual products. In this paper, we show how semiotic engineering can provide substantial theoretic support for viewing and exploring design possibilities brought about by this shift in perspective. We also discuss ontological and epistemological aspects of the theory, and conclude that it can bridge some of the gaps between other fragmented HCI theories and approaches.     

Recommendation system using location-based ontology on wireless internet: An example of collective intelligence by using ‘mashup’ applications

Location-Based Service (LBS) is considered as a key component of upcoming ubiquitous environments. A recommendation system based on LBS is expected to be an important service in ubiquitous environments, and most hardware technologies such as location estimation of a user by using Global Positioning System (GPS), as well as hi-speed internet access through cell phones, are currently supported. However, in terms of software, most services are driven and supported by a LBS service provider only. Consequently, lack of participation of users may occur in mobile environments. In this study, we suggest a LBS knowledge base inference platform with ontology which considers the current location and available time of users. Our knowledge base supports user participation as collective intelligence. We mashed up Open Application Programming Interface (OpenAPI) for scalable implementation of the system. Through experiments, we show that a user can build up his/her knowledge base, and by using this information, the system recommends to other users appropriate information that matches the user’s condition and profile through inference.     

基于社会性软件和复杂信息系统的LBS服务体系研究*

以往基于线性系统设计的LBS1.0系统割裂了系统与用户、用户与用户之间的联系,用户被动地接受系统提供的功能和消费系统提供的数据,对系统的改善和优化、数据的更新没有贡献。基于Mobile Web2.0的LBS2.0系统,引入了社会性软件和复杂信息系统的理论,利用用户与系统、用户与用户之间复杂的社会关系,使用户成为系统的一个节点,而不是一个端点,用户不再只是被动的数据消费者,同时是系统的设计者、数据的报道者。运用Web2.0的元素,通过大量用户自组织行为的涌现,利用集体的智慧和力量提高系统的自适应性,加强数据     

The influence of a knowledge-based system on designers' cognitive activities: a study involving professional web designers

Over the last few decades, several usability knowledge-based systems have been developed to provide user interface designers with usability knowledge (e.g. heuristics, usability guidelines, standards). Such systems are intended to assist designers during the design process, and to improve the usability of the user interface being designed. However, the assumption that such systems actually improve the usability of the resulting user interface remains to be demonstrated: virtually no systems have been empirically tested by designers who create products. In order to confirm this assumption, we conducted an experimental study in which professional web designers had to create webpages, either using a knowledge-based system – MetroWeb – or without it. This study was intended to determine the influence of MetroWeb on the professional web designers' cognitive activity, and to find out whether MetroWeb actually assists them to develop a user-centred design. The results show that the web designers did not very often use MetroWeb while designing webpages; however, rather surprisingly, the designers who did use MetroWeb more often exhibited a user-centred activity than those working without MetroWeb. We conclude this paper by discussing these findings, and suggesting future possible ways of research intended to assist designers to adopt a user-centred approach to their activity.     

Modeling users' task performance on the mobile device: PC convergence system

This study aims to establish a model-based approach for user interface design that simultaneously considers the system's information hierarchy, users' task procedure knowledge, and system interfaces. The approach is based on a framework that contains multiple interaction models to express both system elements and users' knowledge. The framework evaluates system interface through the interaction between user's knowledge on interface, task procedure and information structure perceived by the user in the system. The interface is evaluated by its contribution to the users' task performance and system navigation.These three factors were defined as design factors that affect users' task performance. Through the crosscheck process of models, the relation between information, interface, and task procedure is calculated into combined difficulty index (CDI) that expresses the difficulty of a system interface that users would experience during the use of system. A user test was conducted for the validation of the CDI. The difficulties of the interface of a mobile healthcare system were predicted with the CDI, and the predictions were compared with the experimental results, where the users' performance showed consistence with the prediction.     

Optimizing layout using spatial quality metrics and user preferences

Computational design is one of the most common tasks of immersive computer graphics projects, such as games, virtual reality and special effects. Layout planning is a challenging phase of architectural design, which requires optimization across several conflicting criteria. We present an interactive layout solver that assists designers in layout planning by recommending personalized space arrangements based on architectural guidelines and user preferences. Initialized by the designer’s high-level requirements, an interactive evolutionary algorithm is used to converge on an ideal layout by exploring the space of potential solutions. The major contributions of our proposed approach are addressing subjective aspects of the design to generate personalized layouts; and the development of a genetic algorithm with a multi-parental recombination method that improves the chance of generating higher quality offspring. We demonstrate the ability of our method to generate feasible floor plans which are satisfactory, based on spatial quality metrics and designer’s taste. The results show that the presented framework can measurably decrease planning complexity by producing layouts which exhibit characteristics of human-made design.     

Machine learning: A tool to support usability?

One problem facing designers of interactive systems is catering to the wide range of users who will use a particular application. Understanding the user is critical to designing a usable interface. There are a number of ways of addressing this problem, including improved design methodologies using ''intuitive'' interface styles, adaptive interfaces, and better training and user support materials. In this article, we argue that each of these solutions involves pattern recognition in one form or another and that machine learning can therefore aid designers of interactive systems in these areas. We report on experiments that demonstrate the potential of machine learning to user modeling that has application to two of these areas in particular: adaptive systems and design methodologies.     

从设计角度看生态环境问题的解决方法

面对严峻的生态环境问题,本文从设计角度探讨其解决方法。通过分析设计与生态环境问题之间的关系,得出结论:①设计对生态环境的影响,关键取决于设计师的行为;②设计师的行为是由其价值观决定的,其价值观受到消费者和企业主的制约;③需要把设计、设计师、价值观、消费观、经营观整合到一个大的复杂系统(商业模式),通过协调系统要素之间的关系,才能达到从深层次解决生态环境问题之目的。