Claudia Nass

DESIGNi: a workbench for supporting interaction design

New devices expand design possibilities, but also lead to more challenges in the creation of interaction forms. This article introduces DESIGNi, a workbench that supports designers in exploring interaction forms and their attributes in a structured and systematic way. We present the components of DESIGNi and its use in creating a business application. Moreover, a comparison of the interaction forms specified in the design process with DESIGNi and the perceived interaction characteristics in user studies revealed interesting insights and points for improvement in the interaction design itself.

Balancing User and Business Goals in Software Development to Generate Positive User Experience

Business contexts represent a big challenge for software development, specifically in terms of finding a balance between business goals and user goals. The users of a business application are forced to use it as part of their jobs. It would be beneficial to their motivation, their health, and their performance if the software they use were not only functional in the sense that the job can be done with it, but that doing the job would be a pleasure for them. The challenge is in engineering intrinsic aspects into the product in a systematic way and finding a decent equilibrium between the right numbers of functional aspects and hedonic aspects. If an ideal balance is achieved between these elements, the software can support the achievement of the expected results for the company and also generate a positive user experience (UX) for its users. In this chapter, we discuss the definition and structure of business and user goals and their mutual relationships in the work environment. We also present an integrated software development approach that allows engineers to build this bridge between business and users goals as well asa case study in which this approach was successfully applied.

Reliable and Smart Decision Support System for Emergency Management Based on Crowdsourcing Information

Command and control centres face the challenge of quickly obtaining accurate information about emergencies they should response to. Conversely, crowdsourcing information and mobile technologies offer great potential for better engaging eyewitnesses in emergency and crisis management processes. This paper describes the vision and the realisation of the RESCUER system, a smart and interoperable decision support system for emergency and crisis management based on mobile crowdsourcing information. Eight evaluation exercises with end users were performed during the project duration, in addition to technical verifications of the individual system components. The results of the evaluation exercises were quite positive and helped to continuously improve and extend the system.

Interaction Modes for Emergency Mobile Apps

While seemingly irrational behaviors such as panicking or displaying antisocial behavior are the responses to emergency situations the media and movies lead us to believe, several studies show that people rather react based on decision-making such as acting altruistically and protectively. However, what can we really expect from people in a crowd in terms of participation in an emergency response system? In this paper, we present a mobile application called the RESCUER App, which allows civilians to participate in the emergency response process by providing information about the emergency to a command center and to receive instructions from this command center. We developed a human reaction model for emergencies to better understand the human–computer interaction capabilities of people in an emergency situation. Based on this model, we defined three different interaction modes: one-click interaction, guided interaction, and chat interaction. These interaction modes were implemented in an interactive prototype and evaluated in an experiment in which high cognitive load was induced to simulate a stress situation, similar to the stress experienced in an emergency. The experiment results showed that the three predefined interaction modes enabled people to interact with the RESCUER App even though they were in a stress situation.