User-Centered Design (UCD)

The role of academics has changed over the years from face-to-face teaching towards Open Distance Learning (ODL).  Teaching, assessment and moderation platforms have evolved to support virtual learning environments (VLE) platforms and moderating frameworks that support teaching and learning outcomes (Salmon 2003).  The manual moderation process is still widely used despite being tedious, time-consuming and cost-ineffective; it relies on paperwork and presents problems regarding feedback on the assessment of answer script of students (Van Staden, 2010). Online-moderation is an essential emerging technology in the era of online teaching but the application is still novel (Morgan, 2008), and the factors that determine the user experience in using eModeration have not been theorized in any depth.
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the user-experience aspect of eModeration by considering the fundamental realities and challenges faced by users with regard to eModeration information technologies.  The research is guided by the following question: How can the electronic moderation of examination scripts provide a better user experience in terms of functionality, usability, flow, interactivity, accessibility, effectiveness, efficiency, safety, learnability, memorability and user satisfaction for moderators and deans when this is compared to the paper-based moderation process?  In presenting this argument, different perspectives will be explored with a specific focus on the implementation of an eModeration system that is usable and ensures user experience.  Finally, the paper addresses the challenges faced by a Private Higher Education Institution (PHEI) named Midrand Graduate Institute (MGI), in successfully implementing online moderation and how this research can contribute to ensuring satisfactory user experiences from a managerial perspective.
Case studies on eAssessment and how Information Communication Technology (ICT) can support the formative assessment processes have been carried out, e.g. with reference to the submission of assignments online and regarding feedback between the lecturer as the eModerator and students (Bridge and Appleyard, 2008; Morgan, 2008; Vlachopoulos, 2008; Nicol, 2007; Salmon, 2003).  According to Bridge and Appleyard (2008) the online submission of assignments and the ability to provide feedback to the student enhanced the learning experience and assisted the lecturer with record keeping of assignments.  The focus of this particular study, however, is not automated marking but rather eModeration.  Furthermore the relationship between the eModerator and the dean of the faculty and not between the student and lecturer are investigated. 
The context is a Private Higher Education Institution in South Africa, named Midrand Graduate Institute (MGI).  MGI decided to investigate the possibility of moving towards an online-moderation system to replace the manual paper-based moderation system.  Initially the online moderation system was rolled out only in the Information Technology faculty.  MGI used its eLearn virtual learning environments (VLE) platform as a basis for eModeration and the principals of an eModerating framework as suggested by Salmon (2003).  The eModerate system is supposed to provide a user interface through which examination answer books can be submitted and graded electronically.  For the purpose of the researcher’s study the online moderation system was rolled out across five faculties at the institute to all moderators over a period of two examination sessions.
Creswell (2009) identified four different worldviews: post positivism, constructivism, advocacy participatory and pragmatism.  Social constructivism is often combined with interpretivism (Myers, 2009; Creswell, 2009) and is seen as an approach to qualitative research.  Social constructivists assume that individuals seek to understand the world in which they live and work (Creswell, 2009).  The philosophical worldview proposed in this study will be interpretivism.
The research strategy according to Oates (2006) is the overall approach to answering the research question.  Case study is one of the strategies that can be used (Myers, 2009; Olivier, 2009; Creswell, 2008;Oates, 2006). Interpretive case studies generally attempt to understand phenomena through the meanings that people assign to them (Myers, 2009).  Therefore the research strategy will involve a case study.
The data generation method is the means by which empirical (field) data or evidence are produced (Oates, 2006).  Data can be qualitative or quantitative (Myers, 2009; Olivier, 2009; Creswell, 2008 Oates, 2006).  By using more than one data generation method, the researcher will be able to look at the phenomenon of interest in different ways (Oates, 2009).  The reason for combining both quantitative and qualitative data is to bring about a better understanding of a research problem (Lazar et al., 2010)  by converging both quantitative numeric trends and qualitative detailed views of data and to advocate change (Creswell, 2008; Oates, 2006).  The user experience of the electronic moderation process is explored using interviews (qualitative instrument) with three deans from the three faculties at MGI.  For the purpose of this paper, however, only the interviews with deans are used as data sources.  In these situations, closed-ended quantitative data and open-ended qualitative data have been collected.  The results indicated that the proposed change in moderation has a positive impact on the turnaround time of moderators’ feedback and afforded moderators more flexibility according to the “I can moderate anywhere and at any time” principle.  The paper provides some guidelines towards the development of best practices to ensure a positive user experience of eModeration at an organizational level in an ODL environment.  The paper further contributes to the first quadrant of ODL research at UNISA called: research into ODL praxis with a focus on VLE, assessment and changing roles of academics and students.

What higher education is still primarily concerned with when it comes to teaching communication skills, is the teaching of cognitive-academic language and related textual genres. In society and the workplace, however, these genres have limited relevance. Teachers, for example, primarily communicate with people outside of the professional in-crowd: they communicate with pupils and also parents, often with various ethnic backgrounds, and they make use of new media and technologies in order to do so. In a two-year project, funded by the KU Leuven Association, a multidisciplinary team is developing a toolkit to help all teachers and students in higher education with conceptualizing and developing strategic, multimodal communication designs for real-world situations. The project aims at bringing together relevant insights from the fields of ICT, graphical design and communication,
and making these insights available for teachers and students. In this paper, the results of several pilot projects and testing sessions are discussed. In general,
the toolkit seems promising in helping teachers to create an educational environment in which students are offered opportunities to prepare themselves for communicative
life outside the walls of higher education.

Keberadaan sebuah aplikasi pembelajaran sangat membantu guru dan juga siswa dalam proses pembelajaran. Aplikasi pembelajaran yang berbasis multimedia lebih komprehensif dan efektif karena mencakup banyak elemen, seperti teks, grafik, audio, video atau animasi. Untuk merancang sebuah aplikasi dibutuhkan sebuah konsep yang tepat agar aplikasi tersebut dapat tepat sesuai dengan kebutuhan para penggunanya. UCD (User Centered Design) merupakan sebuah konsep pendekatan untuk merancang dasar dari proses informasi terhadap orang-orang yang akan menggunakan produk. Proses UCD fokus pada pengguna melalui perencanaan, desain dan pengembangan produk. UCD berperan menentukan kesesuaian tampilan aplikasi dengan karakteristik pengguna. Dalam hal ini, harus dilakukan pengumpulan data terhadap pengguna aplikasi dengan berbagai metode, yaitu wawancara, observasi dan kuesioner. Penulisan ini bertujuan merancang aplikasi multimedia pembelajaran Iqro’ yang memberikan materi belajar, soal bermain serta fitur buku Iqro’ digital menggunakan konsep UCD. Hasil dari rancangan aplikasi ini adalah mampu memberikan tingkat kepuasan dan kebergunaan (usability) aplikasi tersebut.

Infant mortality rate (IMR) is an important indicator of progress toward health equity and socioeconomic development. Despite progress, the US is ranked 45th among 192 countries in IMR, with non-Hispanic black IMR 2.2 times that of non-Hispanic white rates, and higher than average IMR in Native American populations. The Preconception Peer Educators (PPE) program of the U.S. DHHS Office of Minority Health Resource Center (OMHRC) aims to raise awareness about IMR disparities in African Americans, and to promote preconception health behaviors among women of childbearing age and sexually active men. Building upon this program, this report focuses on lessons learned from a capacity-building and participatory planning pilot program designed and implemented in 4 US cities by Health Equity Initiative in collaboration with the OMHRC to encourage multisectoral partnerships, and engage local leaders and organizations in participatory planning and infant mortality prevention.

Reference:  Schiavo, Renata; Estrada-Portales, Isabel; Hoeppner, Elena; Ormaza, Denisse; and Ramesh, Radhika (2016) "Building Community-Campus Partnerships to Prevent Infant Mortality: Lessons Learned from Building Capacity in Four US Cities," Journal of Health Disparities Research and Practice: Vol. 9: Iss. 3, Article 5.
Available at: http://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/jhdrp/vol9/iss3/5

According to the 2020 Lloyd's Bank Digital Index, 16% of the UK population are unable to use the internet and their devices by themselves, and many more struggle to access and make the most of digital health products services. It’s not necessarily who we might expect either:

44% of those offline are under the age of 60, and the reasons for this are not yet fully explored.
This preliminary study was devised using service design and user centric approaches, and utilises rapid ethnography to capture and examine the experiences of people using digital health tools and services.
The goal is to explore these questions:
Are cognitive impairments a significant barrier or hindrance to those using digital healthcare?
Are cognitive accessibility factors well understood and addressed yet?
If not, why, and what can we do about this?
The study also aims to outline key themes and insights in a social, cultural and legal context.
Critical findings include:

In 2020, 11.1% of people said that they were highly confident in using digital health. This rose to 23.3% in 2021, reflecting a general upwards trend.
Many people have cognitive issues that affect their ability to use digital health, and the numbers have risen for many of these issues
97% of participants reported using some form of digital health, and yet many reported barriers and difficulties.
People's satisfaction with digital health products and services is high for products that meet simple or commonly encountered needs.  Yet when people have complex health issues or problems that are harder to communicate, the satisfaction drops considerably, as such needs are not readily met.
This correlates with concerns that digital health products and services have tended to cherry pick the easier, more straightforward cases, and leave others unaddressed.
This inequity and exclusion is a significant barrier to individuals and everyone in the sector as it is stifling both service provision and innovation.
This report aims to highlight the opportunities that lie in addressing these barriers, as much as making clear who is affected and how.

A representative group of existing cognitive accessibility guidelines have been  placed under initial review, a draft evaluation framework established, and further steps identified.

This study is based on the projects held in a Design Thinking Graduate class in 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 Fall Semesters, in an ITU industrial design department. Based on the hypothesis that design thinking interventions to entrepreneurship projects will help their development, graduate students were paired with technology start-ups. The aim of the project is to intervene the project development process of technology start-ups with a human centred perspective by the help of the tools of design thinking approach, develop ideas for solving existing problems, also pin out new problems that are not classified as problems by the companies yet. Following this idea, students were required to design and conduct their own process by the help of design thinking approach and related methods. The number of the projects held during the process was 34 and 4 of them will be explained in detail in this paper. This study is significant in terms of investigating how design thinking affects start-up culture as a catalyst, in which phase/s of the projects design thinking is more relevant and effective, how design thinking helps find solutions to missing and premature aspects of entrepreneurship projects.

A team led by architecture practice Matter has developed guidance to improve the design of prisons. Setting out a series of practical design principles, Wellbeing in Prison Design argues that the way in which prisons have been commissioned and built in the past has proved to be a barrier to rehabilitation and the welfare of the workforce.

Funded by the RIBA and Innovate UK, the team has engaged with the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) Prison Estate Transformation Programme to provide independent guidance on design-related benefits within the prison environment and a method of monitoring the success of improvements over time.

The guidance uses evidence from the field of environmental psychology to specify areas of design that will support better health and wellbeing of people residing in, working in and visiting prisons. Focusing on planning processes, construction methods, layout, materials, landscape, atmosphere and accessibility, the guidance is informed by direct consultation with prisoners and staff at the UK’s newest and largest prison, HMP Berwyn.
An electronic survey, to be delivered to the whole prison population at HMP Berwyn will provide a unique dataset and a means to monitor the effect of design improvements over time and across different establishments.

The guidance covers issues like lighting, acoustics and how design can support employment, positive choices and relationships. It aims to ensure that the design of any new prisons will help with desistance, rehabilitation and resettlement, arguing this will ultimately support its aim of reducing reoffending.

The report also makes recommendations for embedding design values in the government’s commissioning and procurement process. This includes the effective engagement with local stakeholders in the design process, including governors, prison officers and prisoners; and the introduction of a Design Review for prisons.

This paper discusses User Centric Design (UCD) standards, processes in the light of user oriented services in academic Institutions. It discusses traditional methods of user services in libraries and shift to modern user centric services by which users are able access all types of resources online and can even interact with the librarian with regard to any services. The users are able to renew their books online and get the resources of other libraries through document delivery services without physically stepping into the library. Some of the models mentioned in this paper highlight the services which are designed as per users’ needs. The changes of automation, e-publishing and publishers way of delivering online resources with added value services like e-mail alerts, RSS feeds etc. have forced librarians to concentrate on library users while planning services and to transform the libraries in academic institutions from document centric to User Centric

This paper presents the initial experiences and reflective accounts on the arrival of a European research colleague who recently joined our team of researchers working with Indigenous communities in Namibia. He aims to explore how communities across Namibia take on, understand and create persona artefacts of their own, and whether this may simulate or differ from persona as depicted in literature. We report on
the first set of interventions in three pastoral locales where persona creation by Namibian Ovaherero was first attempted. We narrate this as a synchronous dialogue that recounts the blunders, protocol-breakings, misunderstandings, and also some breakthroughs obtained thus-far. Ultimately, we reflect on the importance of the preliminary preparation of the researcher and on the usefulness that local experienced researchers’ guidance provides. We conclude drawing on a series of thoughts on how the overall experience has resulted thus-far.

The demands of an increasingly knowledge based society and the dramatic advances in mobile phone technology are combining to spur the growth of mobile learning. However, for mobile learning to attain its full potential, it is essential to develop pedagogy and instructional design tailored to the needs of this new learning environment. At present, there is a lack of research on message design for mobile learning. Towards these ends, this paper explores the principles and processes of message design for mobile learning (mLearning), including learning theories, HCI principles, devices, and methodologies. And it presents a number of practical guidelines for designing instructional messages for mobile learning.

Background: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is one of the world's most common neurologic disorders. Fatigue is one of most common symptoms that persons with MS experience, having significant impact on their quality of life and limiting their activity levels. Self-management strategies are used to support them in the care of their health. Mobile health (mHealth) solutions are a way to offer persons with chronic conditions tools to successfully manage their symptoms and problems. Gamification is a current trend among mHealth apps used to create engaging user experiences and is suggested to be effective for behavioral change. To be effective, mHealth solutions need to be designed to specifically meet the intended audience needs. User-centered design (UCD) is a design philosophy that proposes placing end users' needs and characteristics in the center of design and development, involving users early in the different phases of the software life cycle. There is a current gap in mHealth apps for persons with MS, which presents an interesting area to explore.

Diversity of human requirements in his living environment is obvious. Architecture ideal is to respond such these various requirements. The Architectural Design Process (ADP) which has been defined for this basic purpose aims at fulfilling not only physical and functional but also psychological human necessities. Recent trends in architectural design show that in most of the cases, the focus of ADP has been shifted to the business goals, fancy features and technological capabilities. Even if none of these approaches can be blamed, but what has been lost here is a mere respect to human values. In this regard, paying attention to end-users’ ideas, believes, attitudes and desires, which has been named self-selection in this paper, can be considered as an appropriate method for deriving final users’ values. In fact, User-Centered Design (UCD) is a format of self-selection which focuses on designer’s side. UCD attaches importance to architectural plan as an output. This type of architectural plan tries to adopt with final users’ requests, wishes, feelings, behaviors and life styles. Inspiring from the concept, some different methods have been driven. Designing according to UCD principles and basics contributes architectural plan to be more satisfactory and desirable by the users since they would able to realize their ideas. In addition, this kind of ADP encourages end-users to personalize more eagerly their surrounding built environment. Ultimately, the users would feel more comfortable and convenience in his living space. In this respect, not only designers but also the users share the same amount of satisfaction.