Search

The global COVID-19 pandemic dramatically altered learning experiences for children, parents, and teachers worldwide. For very young children, the scrambled introduction of complex virtual tools as a proxy for the classroom experience has been particularly challenging. I conducted interviews with kindergarten teachers and parents with young children to better understand their experiences navigating virtual learning during a stressful time. Insights from those discussions informed the iterative design process I used to generate alternative interactive interfaces for online kindergarten instruction. In this thesis, I present findings from the interviews, the multi-stage interface design process, participant responses to the interface design, and promising directions for future work.

Near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy is widely used for non-destructive prediction of fruit traits. Common traits such as dry matter (DM) and soluble solids contents (SSC) can be predicted with reliable accuracy. However, the main problem with NIR spectroscopy is that a model developed on one batch may not perform very well when tested on other batches. Reasons for that are the physical, chemical and environmental differences between the experiments performed in different batches. To deal with these issues, approaches such as variables selection, dynamic orthogonal projection (DOP) and transfer component analysis (TCA) can be used. However, the techniques are known but it is rarely possible for a new user or non-specialist to implement them in the practical situations. To overcome this limitation, for the first time, a graphical user interface-based toolbox (FRUITNIR-GUI) for basic chemometric data processing (regression and variable selection) is developed and presented. The GUI allows performing model adaption and maintenance in the context of multi-batch NIR spectroscopic experiments related to fruit. Furthermore, a case-study demonstrating its effectiveness in correcting for seasonality when predicting DM in apples is presented. The toolbox provides a push-button approach to build chemometric models of varying complexity for the characterization of fruit quality. Moreover, approaches such as variable selection and batch correction with DOP and TCA can improve the model performances on new batches. FRUITNIR-GUI can be freely downloaded at https://github.com/puneetmishra2/FRUITNIR and run using the password “welovenirs” (without quotation marks).

Nowadays, lots of geo-information (GI) is openly available. The value of this information lies in its use. Geoportals play an important part in allowing users to discover and access suitable data for their use cases. However, the user-friendliness of these geoportals is not as it should be. As the communicational layer between a system and its users, a more user-friendly UI can result in a more user-friendly geoportal. In an explorative research methodology involving a literature study into UIs and geoportals, assessing existing geoportals, and a user requirements session, I developed a guideline for user-friendly geoportal UIs: the Geoportal User-Interface Design Evaluator (GUIDE). The elements captured in the GUIDE cover the different parts of the UI: the content presentation, the interaction with available services (system interaction, navigation, search mechanisms, access mechanisms, and communication mechanisms) and the enabling information (metadata and help mechanisms). Concrete implementation examples of these design elements are provided by implementing a mock-up in accordance to the GUIDE. To assess whether or not the elements of the GUIDE result in an increase in user-friendliness, the results of a benchmark usability session are compared to the results achieved during a follow-up usability session with the mock-up. The tasks participants perform during these sessions are all related to the most important reasons why users would visit a geoportal: discovering data, assessing whether the discovered data is suitable for a specific use case, and accessing the data. The comparison of the results of the two usability studies suggests that the elements listed in the GUIDE as implemented in the mock-up indeed result in a more user-friendly geoportal UI. In the adopted usability metric that covered 128 fields related to performance and self-reported metrics, the mock-up outperformed the benchmark in 95 fields. This improvement is confirmed by qualitative comments, Geomatics

Die bisherigen Methoden des Usability Engineerings werden oft nur mit Webseiten beschrieben und auf diesen angewendet.Die vorliegende Arbeit verwendet die klassischen Methoden des Usability Engineerings. Es kommen Use Cases, Personas, Szenarien, Usability-Test und Fragebögen zum Einsatz, um eine Verbesserung der Metriken zu erzielen und diese im Anschluss evaluieren zu können.Durch die Analyse der derzeitigen firmeninternen Testsoftware wurde versucht ein Konzept zu entwickeln, wodurch die Usability erhöht werden soll. Diese Software prüft automatisiert elektronische Baugruppen und gibt das Ergebnis der Prüfung aus. Wie jedes System, ist auch dieses nicht immun gegen das Auftreten von Fehlern. In der vorliegenden Arbeit sind Eingabefehler und Funktionsstörungen behandelt worden. Aus diesen Fehlern wurden Testfälle für die Usability-Evaluation generiert. Zuerst wurde das aktuelle System evaluiert. Es sind die aktuellen Benutzergruppen und Use Cases begutachtet worden. Anschließend wurde mit den gewonnen Verbesserungspotenzialen und Erkenntnissen ein neuer Prototyp generiert, welcher die Vorlage für ein neues System bilden soll. Es wurde die Effektivität durch erfolgreiche Aufgabenausführung gemessen. Zusätzlich sind auch die aufgetretenen Probleme und Fehler aufgezeichnet worden. Zuletzt wurde auch noch die Usability aus der Sicht der Anwender durch den SUS-Fragebogen überprüft, um ein Feedback über die Verbesserung der Usability zu erhalten.Die deutlichsten Probleme waren die Nichtbenutzung von abstrakten Begriffen, fehlende Anweisungen, Informationsüberfluss und Navigationsprobleme. Auch bei der zweiten Evaluierung wurden bei einem etwas längeren Fehlertext, die wichtigen Punkte zweimal überlesen. Hier müsste nochmal ein Test mit der Hervorhebung der Information durchgeführt werden.Durch die Behebung dieser Probleme konnte die durchschnittliche Task Success Rate von 43 Prozent auf 87 Prozent erhöht werden. Durch die Überprüfung mit dem System Usability Scale-Frageb

When teaching at scale in the physical classroom or online classroom of a MOOC, the scarce resource of personal instructor communication becomes a differentiating factor between the quality of learning experience available in smaller classrooms. In this paper, through real-time predictive modeling of engagement analytics, we augment a MOOC platform with personalized communication affordances, allowing the instructional staff to direct communication to learners based on individual predictions of three engagement analytics. The three model analytics are the current probability of earning a certificate, of submitting enough materials to pass the class, and of leaving the class and not returning. We engineer an interactive analytics interface in edX which is populated with real-time predictive analytics from a backend API service. The instructor can target messages to, for example, all learners who are predicted to complete all materials but not pass the class. Our approach utilizes the state-of-the-art in recurrent neural network classification, evaluated on a MOOC dataset of 20 courses and deployed in one. We provide evaluation of these courses, comparing a manual feature engineering approach to an automatic feature learning approach using neural networks. Our provided code for the front-end and back-end allows any instructional team to add this personalized communication dashboard to their edX course granted they have access to the historical clickstream data from a previous offering of the course, their course’s daily provided log data, and an external machine to run the model service API.

This article focuses on how the development of human-computer interaction in music has been aided and influenced by both experimental/academic electroacoustic art music and popular electronic music. These two genres have impacted upon this ever-changing process of evolution in different ways, but have together been paramount to the establishment of interactivity in music as we understand it today; which is itself having wide-ranging implications upon the modern-day musical landscape as a whole - both in the way that we, as listeners and audience members, purchase and consume music as well as conceptualise and think about it.

LIVIVO is the new interdisciplinary search portal for life sciences, developed by ZB MED - Leibniz Information Centre for Life Sciences. LIVIVO contains 45 quality proved data bases in the subject areas of medicine, health, and nutritional, environmental and agricultural sciences. Open access publications are as well integrated as research data. The intelligent search technology uses specialist ontologies from the life sciences for an easier research. Its user-friendly interface design is based on usability studies and user surveys. The article describes the development of new the search portal, shows some of its features and offers a glimpse into the future of LIVIVO., ZB MED - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Lebenswissenschaften hat ein neues interdisziplinäres Suchportal für die Lebenswissenschaften entwickelt: LIVIVO. LIVIVO durchsucht 45 qualitätsgeprüfte Fachdatenquellen der Bereiche Medizin, Gesundheitswesen, Ernährungs-, Umwelt- und Agrarwissenschaften und weist neben Open-Access-Publikationen auch Forschungsdaten nach. Die intelligente Suchtechnologie bindet Fachontologien aus den Lebenswissenschaften zur Unterstützung der Recherche ein. Das moderne User-Interface verfügt über eine intuitive Nutzerführung, die basierend auf Ergebnissen von Usability-Untersuchungen und Nutzerbefragungen entwickelt wurde. Der Artikel stellt die Hintergründe der Entwicklung des Suchportals vor, erläutert die wichtigsten Features und gibt einen Ausblick in die Zukunft von LIVIVO.

This thesis contains the development of a software capable of evaluating the performance of ten unique photovoltaic (PV) systems located 10 kilometers outside of Västerås, Sweden. The ten systems have different configurations according to this list: Dual-axis tracking Single-axis tracking with 30°tilt Ground mounted, free-standing with 19° tilt Ground mounted, free-standing with 41° tilt Roof mounted with 19°tilt Each of the above configurations exist with and without installed power optimizers adding up to a total of ten unique systems. The development goal for the evaluation software is to provide the user with a variety of tools to determine which of the systems that has the best yield and performance. Integrated in the development of the software is therefore a literature study where it is investigate how photovoltaic systems operate and especially how their performance can be evaluated. Some of the frequently used parameters are; system yield, reference yield and performance ratio. The software features are focused around presenting the data collected from the PV systems in a variety of graphs. The different types of graph are designed to let the user easy compare the data between the systems and thus find how and why a particular system is performing better than the others. The software is developed in a Matlab environment and has an intuitive user interface. The thesis time-frame is too short for any conclusive result to be presented, but to showcase the software features a short-termed evaluation of the systems have been performed. The period evaluated is a three week period in the middle of May 2014. The short-termed evaluation highlights several scenarios and issues that can arise. It has been detected throughout the project that it is difficult to separate which effects that causes one system to be better than the other. Irregularities seen in the data can be caused by many factors. Some of the more evident are; installed power optimizers, differences i, Evaluation of first MW PV plant in Sweden

Introduction of web technology have turned the current world into a global village and web design becomes a huge challenge to develop a website in a better way. To develop a user friendly interface and easy access environment of webpage is the key issue of usability in this field. Improved and user friendly interface of a web site is becoming more popular. There are so many mistakes being committed when a designer develops end users interface of a web site. The main purpose of usability in this field is to provide a user friendly, easy access environment. This paper reveals a guideline for usability of the website design.Most of the designer or developer thinks about their websites outlooks rather than thinking about users’ concern. If it becomes difficult to use their website, people won’t revisit their site. So if designers want to have a successful website, they have to ensure that their design fulfills the users’ requirement. The purpose of this paper is to indicate the existing common usability issues which are being overlooked by the designers and developers, and to provide some possible solutions to reduce these usability problems. It also suggests some simple but effective tips and techniques as well as some guidelines for website design that could be helpful for designer and developer if they keep these in mind during designing a website. The results of the paper specify that there should be the interest to designers and developers who are concerned about improvement of usability and more accessibility of their websites by users.In this thesis, I am committed to create the understanding on the aspects of usability principles suitable to make a user interface more acceptable to the users. This understanding will surely be a pilot project for upcoming future researches on the development of interface design., Program: Magisterutbildning i informatik

Conventional buildings, due to their inflexibility and permanence, can hardly stay in a high quality and being adaptive to changing demand during their life span. Historically, some architectural innovations such as Open Building System practiced the notion of building flexibility. However, the customizing freedom of Open Building System is only limited in the form of façade and interior. Other decision levels such as structure, programme and capacity have not been discussed. Starting with observation of undergoing urban transition in Amsterdam Sloterdijk -one of the typical pure business districts in Netherlands, through tackling one of the most critical issues -the mismatch between supply and demand in building market-which considered as the primary cause for the office vacancy and urban mono-function, via the reflection on architectural position in this situation, through the formulation of objective and research question, via the reference to urban planning evolution, and eventually reaching the destination of a definition for Hyper-open Building System and its reflection on architectonic, this research document is trying to develop a building system, which can achieve a set of goals including the individual autonomy in decision-making, interchangeability in typology, evolvability in architectural quality and efficiency in design construction process. As a technical guideline for subsequent design, the research document will be concluded by a catalog of architectonic criteria and an optimized building prototype. And by using the criteria, a set of existing vacant office buildings around Amsterdam area will be evaluated in order to get the general idea about the current building conditions and transformation potentials. On the other hand, the design project chose a specific vacant office building to transform by applying the Hyper-Open Building System. More specifically, after the redesign of support construction, individual users are invited to the design proces, Architectural Engineering, Architecture, Architecture

A computer-user interface is the software that communicates the user's inputs to the computer and returns information from the computer back to the user. A variety of user interfaces have been developed, including command language interfaces, direct manipulation interfaces, and menus. This research explored the relative benefits of command language interfaces (CLE) and direct manipulation interfaces (DMI) for performance of simple and complex tasks by novices. Two levels of task complexity were used, one requiring five inputs (simple) and one requiring 24 inputs (complex). Dependent variables were (1) time to complete each task set, (2) number of errors, and (3) number of references to online help. Results indicate that learning to use a DMI takes longer than learning to use a CLI. No significant difference was observed in time to complete the simple task. However, once a novice learns to use a DMI, a complex task requires less time, fewer errors are made, and references to help screens are required less often. With complex tasks, direct manipulation interfaces appear to help novices to be more productive than do command language interfaces., http://archive.org/details/theeffectoftaskc1094526514, Lieutenant, United States Navy Reserve, Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to develop an administration tool that will be used by a helpdesk in IKEA IT. The helpdesk members have a lot of responsibilities and have to perform various tasks on a daily basis, thus the goal is to develop an administration tool that has an interface which allows a helpdesk member to perform basic tasks without needing any prior education or experience of the tool. The first part of the thesis consists of a research with three different research methods: • Survey and observation with helpdesk members • Analysis of three different administration tools that currently are being used on a daily basis by the helpdesk • Literature studies: User Interfaces by Soren Lauesen Don’t make me think by Steven Krug Information Architecture by Louis Rosenfenfeld, Peter Morwille Summarizing and examining the results of the researches provided the thesis with a wider knowledge base, which made it possible for us to develop the administration tool we had envisioned from the start. From the results gathered from the research a workflow and prototypes were developed. With a combination of user-tests and surveys enough knowledge was acquired so that the prototypes could be processed until a prototype was approved. There is currently only one person in IKEA handling all the administrative tasks in ALM and to relieve the workload of this person these administrative tasks will be handed over to a helpdesk in IKEA. The administration tool will help to ease the future workload for the helpdesk by making it faster and easier to perform the administrative tasks in ALM. The amount of time it takes to handle requests has been decreased by approximately seven times compared to the existing method. This shows that mental model a user develops when facing the new administration tool for the first time is as intuitive and logical as planned. The final user-test with the final product using the helpdesk members as the test-users proved the design and function

Product customization has become more prevalent in today’s manufacturing industry. In fact, given a choice in today’s society and taking into consideration the present technology, customers would prefer a product that can be built according to their specific needs and desires (Kumar, 2008). Customization of a product is typically done by an individual possessing the necessary product knowledge and design skills and applying them to the interpretation of the customer’s desired requirements and specifications. This process is generally costly and time-consuming. As computer-aided design (CAD) software grows in terms of control and functionality, the potential exists to enable customers with little to no CAD skills to customize a product within a defined range of specifications. This project report describes the creation of intelligent software interface to allow a consumer with minimal CAD knowledge to interact with the CAD software to customize existing product designs. The Visual Basic based user-interface uses the CAD software’s built in application programming interface (API) command structure. This process allows the automation of select embedded CAD productivity tools whereby the customer is able to modify specific parameters to manipulate the shape of their product to automatically generate a 3-dimensional computer-aided model reflecting their specific modifications. The result of this project was the development of an interactive design tool that prevents design engineers from needing to design the same product family repeatedly to suit the needs of the customer, thereby reducing the design time and mistakes while enhancing the consistency of the product.

This paper presents a novel human-computer interface that enables the computer display to be perceived without any use of the eyes. Our system works by tracking the user's head position and orientation to obtain their 'gaze' point on a virtual screen, and by indicating to the user what object is present at the gaze location via haptic feedback to the fingers and synthetic speech or Braille text. This is achieved by using the haptic vibration frequency delivered to the fingers to indicate the type of screen object at the gaze position, and the vibration amplitude to indicate the screen object's window-layer, when the object is contained in overlapping windows. Also, objects that are gazed at momentarily have their name output to the user via a Braille display or synthetic speech. Our experiments have shown that by browsing over the screen and receiving haptic and voice (or Braille) feedback in this manner, the user is able to acquire a mental two-dimensional representation of the virtual screen and its content without any use of the eyes. This form of blind screen perception can then be used to locate screen objects and controls and manipulate them with the mouse or via gaze control. Our experimental results are provided in which we demonstrate how this form of blind screen perception can effectively be used to exercise point-and-click and drag-and-drop control of desktop objects and open windows by using the mouse, or the user's head pose, without any use of the eyes.

The Mobile phone has contributed to massive changes in the way that human beings communicate with each other and is a technology that is a part of society’s globalization. Opinions differ in the area of user interface where some feel that mobile phones exclude users such as senior citizens or users with an intellectual or a physical disability. Universal Design –‘design for all’, is a vision that intends to bring about settings, products and services that suits as many people as possible irrespective of an individual’s needs and prospects. The criteria for ‘design for all’ are among other things flexibility, user friendliness, comprehensibility and a high tolerance for mistakes. The purpose of this essay is to investigate the mobile phones graphic user-interface from the theory of a universal design. From this general purpose the study look more closely at senior citizens perspective of mobile phones graphic user-interface. A qualitative study in the form of 4 interviews was used. All of the individuals that participated in the study felt that the mobile phone is a very good and beneficial invention. Mobile phones bring about a feeling of security and safety since it is felt that is always possible to reach family and friends in the event of a crisis. It is difficult to provide a interface that is Universal, because every individual is unique. Every individual has a different opinion on what is Universal Design and what is not. People have different needs of using the mobile phone and that’s one of the reasons why it’s difficult to provide a universal design of the graphical user interface of a mobile phone.

The Mobile phone has contributed to massive changes in the way that human beings communicate with each other and is a part of society’s globalization. Opinions differ in the area of user interface where some feel that mobile phones exclude users such as senior citizens or users with an intellectual or a physical disability. Universal Design –‘design for all’, is a vision that intends to bring about settings, products and services that suits as many people as possible irrespective of an individual’s needs and prospects. The criteria for ‘design for all’ are among other things flexibility, user friendliness, comprehensibility and a high tolerance for mistakes. The purpose of this essay was to investigate the mobile phones graphic user-interface from the theory of a universal design. From this general purpose the study looked more closely at senior citizens perspective of mobile phones graphic user-interface. To achieve empirical support for the study a qualitative method in the form of interviews was used. All of the individuals that participated in the study felt that the mobile phone is a very good and beneficial invention. Mobile phones bring about a feeling of security and safety since one can always reach family and friends in the event of a crisis. The participants were included in the study if they were capable of using mobile phones to reach others and for others to reach them. However, individual’s that did not have the technical ability to understand the other possible functions of the user-interface were excluded from the study. It is difficult to provide a interface that is Universal, because every individual is unique.

This paper reviews the practical and theoretical issues associated with designing maritime technology. It follows the implementation of the Human Centred Design (HCD) component of the HCD and SQA Guideline that was developed under the auspices of the IMO e-navigation initiative. First we describe the project, which focused on the development of a shared interface for pilots and tug masters. Next we describe the implementation of the HCD process. Finally we reflect on some of the challenges associated with the implementation of the process. Implications for the movement of ships in ports, and for maritime technology design are identified.

Winomms is a prototype graphical interface designed to support the Navy's goal of paperwork reduction. Designed to replace the existing interface of the Navy's Maintenance Data System program,"MicroOmms", Winomms provides an intuitive easy to learn and use graphical environment that greatly enhances productivity for shipboard maintenance requirements., http://archive.org/details/developmentofgra1094528122, Lieutenant, United States Navy, Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.