Markus Modzelewski

Creative design for inclusion using virtual user models

The development of products that are accessible to the largest possible group of users can be regarded as a major challenge for manufacturers of consumer products. It is therefore crucial, that the product development process is supported by practical methods and tools that can help incorporate these essential human factors in early phases of the development process. Ergonomics evaluation and user testing with real users are user centred design methodologies often conducted by companies that are not only complex, but can be very time and cost-intensive. As an alternative approach virtual user models (VUM) have been proposed for supporting the early phases of the product development process. In this paper we will present the model-based design approach of the European research project VICON supporting inclusive design of consumer products particularly at the early stages of product development.

Supporting Inclusive Design of Mobile Devices with a Context Model

The aim of inclusive product design is to successfully integrate a broad range of diverse human factors in the product development process with the intention of making products accessible to and usable by the largest possible group of users (Kirisci, Thoben et al. 2011). However, the main barriers for adopting inclusive product design include technical complexity, lack of time, lack of knowledge and techniques, and lack of guidelines (Goodman, Dong et al. 2006), (Kirisci, Klein et al. 2011). Although manufacturers of consumer products are nowadays more likely to invest efforts in user studies, consumer products in general only nominally fulfill, if at all, the accessibility requirements of as many users as they potentially could. The main reason is that any user-centered design prototyping or testing aiming to incorporate real user input, is often done at a rather late stage of the product development process. Thus, the more progressed a product design has evolved the more time-consuming and costly it will be to alter the design (Zitkus, Langdon et al. 2011). This is increasingly the case for contemporary mobile devices such as mobile phones or remote controls.

Supporting inclusive design of user interfaces with a virtual user model

The aim of inclusive design is to successfully integrate human factors in the product development process with the intention of making products accessible for the largest possible group of users. In order to meet this challenge, the involvement of human users has so far been an efficient approach. Yet, such ergonomics evaluation experiments that employ a versatility of user groups can be very time and cost-intensive. Therefore, virtual user models (VUM) have been proposed for supporting certain phases of the product development process. In this paper a model-based design approach is proposed, which supports inclusive design of physical user interfaces of consumer products at the early stages of product development. Accordingly the objective is to explore how virtual user models can be used to conceptualize user interfaces of consumer products in such a way that even the needs of users with physical impairments are fully considered.

Prototype of a virtual user modeling software framework for inclusive design of consumer products and user interfaces

The recent developments in technology inspire designers and engineers in creating more and more sophisticated and smart consumer products. However, the most ingenious device in the world will fail, if its users are not able to access the mastermind it provides. How can we best support product creators in the thorny task of inclusive design? In this paper a prototypic realization of a virtual user modeling framework to support designers in creating more inclusive products following the phase-based product development process is presented. A qualitative usability survey evaluated the acceptance of the proposed end-user applications among designers and the effectiveness of the recommendations-driven support --- the paper provides insights.

Hand Gesture Recognition Interface for Visually Impaired and Blind People

The practical adaption of interface solutions for visual impaired and blind people is limited by simplicity and usability in practical scenarios. Different solutions (e.g. Drishti [1]) focuses upon speech or keyboard interfaces, which are not efficient or transparent in every-day environments. As an easy and practical way to achieve human-computer- interaction, in this paper hand gesture recognition was used to facilitate the reduction of hardware components. Additionally a qualitative user study was performed to compare learning curves of different subjects with and without prior knowledge of gesture recognition devices, interpreting the readings from a sensitive surface by machine learning algorithms. The user study was made using well-known machine learning algorithms applied to recognizing symbols from the graffiti handwriting system [2] and the WEKA data mining software [3] for comparing individual machine learning approaches.

Function-oriented Inclusive Design.

Technological advancements regarding functional capabilities of products affect product development processes. We observe the following: More functionality can be included in smaller devices. New devices are invented as hybrids between existing devices. Products can be individually adapted for end customers. Although the current product development processes already include contextual information about target customer groups and scenario of use, this information is strongly linked to single devices. We present a hierarchical superstructure above devices regarding functional capabilities able to categorize devices by functionality but also recommend devices for a set of functionalities.