Michael D. Bradley

Learning to use new technologies by older adults: Perceived difficulties, experimentation behaviour and usability

This paper examines the factors and theoretical frameworks for the adoption of technology for older adults, and proposes two models of technology acceptance and rejection, one from an ease of learning perspective, and one from a system and user perspective. Both models are supported from reports on two case studies of older adults using handheld touchscreen tablet devices; one in which the participants are supported during tasks primarily related to walking and navigation, and one in which participants are unsupported in communication related tasks. The first study shows the powerful role that facilitating conditions have for learning how to use digital technologies for this user group, whether supporting through step by step guidance, providing a friendly space to use trial and error methods, and/or provision of a manual. The second study shows the pitfalls of a lack of facilitating conditions during initial use, and highlights potential for appropriate design in helping to avoid some user errors during this phase.

Making the case for inclusive design

This paper describes the University of Cambridge, Engineering Design Centres (EDC) case for inclusive design, based on 10 years of research, promotion and knowledge transfer. In summary, inclusive design applies an understanding of customer diversity to inform decisions throughout the development process, in order to better satisfy the needs of more people. Products that are more inclusive can reach a wider market, improve customer satisfaction and drive business success. The rapidly ageing population increases the importance of this approach. The case presented here has helped to convince BT, Nestlé and others to adopt an inclusive approach.

Conceptual framework and models for identifying and organizing usability impact factors of mobile phones

Usability has been regarded as a critical factor affecting the quality of mobile phones. Many studies have examined usability impact factors of mobile phones on the basis of software usability concepts. However, considering mobile phones as multi-media and information appliances, a new usability concept and associated factors should be developed. This paper proposes a conceptual framework which has five views to reflect different aspect of interactions between users and mobile phones, and from which various usability impact factor models can be derived. Five views include user view, product view, interaction view, dynamic view, and execution view. Furthermore, we developed a hierarchical model which organizes usability factors in terms of goal-means relations. Through two case studies, we could verify the usefulness of the framework and model. Lastly, we developed a set of checklists that are helpful to measure the usability of mobile phones, thereby increasing the practicality of the framework and model.

WISEngineering: Supporting precollege engineering design and mathematical understanding

Introducing engineering into precollege classroom settings has the potential to facilitate learning of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) concepts and to increase interest in STEM careers. Successful engineering design projects in secondary schools require extensive support for both teachers and students. Computer-based learning environments can support both teachers and students to implement and learn from engineering design projects. However, there is a dearth of empirical research on how engineering approaches can augment learning in authentic K-12 settings. This paper presents research on the development and pilot testing of WISEngineering, a new web-based engineering design learning environment. Three middle school units were developed using a knowledge integration learning perspective and a scaffolded, informed engineering approach with the goal of improving understanding of standards-based mathematical concepts and engineering ideas. Seventh grade math students from two teachers in a socioeconomically diverse and low-performing district participated in three WISEngineering units over the course of a semester. Students significantly improved their mathematical scores from pretest to posttest for all three projects and on state standardized tests. Student, teacher, and administrator interviews reveal that WISEngineering projects promoted collaboration, tolerance, and development of pro-social skills among at-risk youth. Results demonstrate that informed engineering design projects facilitated through the WISEngineering computer-based environment can help students learn Common Core mathematical concepts and principles. Additionally, results suggest that WISEngineering projects can be particularly beneficial for at-risk and diverse student populations.

Model-based approaches to quantifying the usability of mobile phones

Several factors make it difficult to quantify the usability of mobile phones. Nevertheless, a quantified value of the usability could be used for several purposes, such as design innovation and benchmarking. This paper proposes three approaches (task centred, usability indicator-based, and design area-based quantification) to quantifying the usability of mobile phones on the basis of a hierarchical model of usability factors. Each of them provides process and rules for calculating the usability score of a mobile phone by applying weighting value assignment methods. Through two case studies, we could obtain empirical data to be used for determining the weighting value for quantification and confirm the usefulness of the proposed approaches.

Empathic engineering: helping deliver dignity through design

Abstract Dignity is a key value within healthcare. Technology is also recognized as being a fundamental part of healthcare delivery, but also a potential cause of dehumanization of the patient. Therefore, understanding how medical devices can be designed to help deliver dignity is important. This paper explores the role of empathy tools as a way of engendering empathy in engineers and designers to enable them to design for dignity. A framework is proposed that makes the link between empathy tools and outcomes of feelings of dignity. It represents a broad systems view that provides a structure for reviewing the evidence for the efficacy of empathy tools and also how dignity can be systematically understood for particular medical devices.

A Population Perspective on Mobile Phone Related Tasks

For design to be truly inclusive, it needs to take into account the range of users’ capabilities. To do this appropriately, good data on those capabilities is needed. This paper reports on results from a postcode sampled survey of 362 people. The survey examined a wide range of user capabilities and characteristics, but the paper focuses on just a few of the survey measures. These measures examine some of the component activities involved in using mobile telephones: selection of a menu item via two different interaction patterns, use of differing sized pushbutton controls and insertion of two different types of electrical connector. These results can help to inform more inclusive design of mobile phones by examining how people’s capability to perform these activities varies across different activities and by age and gender.

Assessing the Inclusivity of Digital Interfaces - A Proposed Method

In the assessment of the inclusivity of products with interfaces for digital devices, there are difficulty and validity issues relating the cognitive demand of using and learning an unfamiliar interface to the capabilities outlined in the population source data. This is due to the disparity between the types of cognitive tasks used to create the source data, and those needed to operate a digital interface.

Visualising the number of people who cannot perform tasks related to product interactions

Understanding the number of people who cannot perform particular tasks helps to inform design decisions for mainstream products, such as the appropriate size and contrast of visual features. Making such informed decisions requires a dataset that is representative at the level of a national population, with sufficient scope and granularity to cover the types of actions associated with product use. Furthermore, visualisations are needed to bring the dataset to life, in order to better support comparing the number of people who cannot perform different tasks. The 1996/97 Disability Follow-up Survey remains the most recent Great British dataset to cover all types of ability losses that may be relevant to using everyday products. This paper presents new visualisations derived from this dataset, which are related to vision, hearing, cognition, mobility, dexterity and reach. Compared to previous publications on this dataset, the new visualisations contain task descriptions that have been simplified, described pictorially and separated out into different categories. Furthermore, two-dimensional visualisations are used to present exclusion results for products that require vision and/or hearing and for tasks that require each hand to do different things. In order to produce these new visualisations, the publicly available version of this dataset had to be reanalysed and recoded, which is described here-in detail.

Obtaining design requirements from the public understanding of driverless technology

Despite a large literature on autonomous vehicles and a large number of relevant surveys examining public perception of self-driving vehicles, recent studies suggest that reported public perception is rapidly changing, volatile, and highly dependent on context and potential biases in reporting. In addition, some conclusions from very recent studies are supported: namely, that very little of the survey literature addresses key user centred design consideration that arise from inclusion of the wider population in the use of autonomous vehicles. We report initial studies that are intended to form part of a method currently under development that aims to bring together automotive design and Inclusive design; an analytical functional approach to design for user capability in the wider population. This paper describes the development stages of a user centred design capable methodology for sampling public opinion from a range of different qualitative studies. The finding are made available at two levels. Firstly, a general report on public perceptions’, examines key elements of sensitivity in responses to autonomous vehicle issues. Secondly, the methodology shows how to address in an unbiased way the specification and design a number of potential HMI concepts for managing takeover from car to driver in an autonomously capable vehicle in urban and highway usage cases.