1. You are the new Chief Design Officer (CDO) of a new start-up, DTUI Inc. The project is to design a system for hospitals that will allow receptionists to check in people at the hospital faster. They wish to develop an interface that meets both the receptionist and patient’s needs. Describe in detail a design methodology of 4 stages to facilitate proper design of such a system. Write your answer in the form of a management plan for this project. For each stage, indicate the number of weeks that should be allocated. Hint: note the four phases of the design process:

Requirements analysis Preliminary (conceptual) and detailed design Build and implementation Evaluation

During the requirements analysis stage of this project, I would interview patients and receptionists and try to find what they believe would get them into the hospital faster and most conveniently. Also, I would observe and analyze patients checking in to the hospital as well as receptionists guiding the check in in order to try to find flaws and trouble they might not have identified themselves. During the preliminary and detailed design stage, my team would compose diagrams and conceptualizations of our chosen solution to the problem. In the build and implementation phase, we would begin the implementation of our chosen solution. Lastly, we would determine the effectiveness of our solution in the evaluation phase.

The State of Maryland is developing a web-voting interface. For selecting the candidates, one design (RB) is a set of radio buttons and another is (CB) a combo-box (drops down when selecting the scroll arrow icon), both using standard fonts at 10-point size.

  1. Compare these two designs when there are 4 candidates and predict the relative speed of performance and error rates. Support your choice by a thoughtful argument.

In a race with only four candidates, the radio button group greatly outperforms the combo-box because it is easier to see the choices and it is more clear which selection you have made. A combo-box is a better fit for many selections to where you would need to scroll to find the candidate you were looking for. If you used a combo-box in this example, it might make the users think that there were supposed to be many candidates to choose from, but only four are listed.

  1. An expert reviewer complains that both designs may work with young users who are familiar and expert in using a mouse, but that there will be problems for elderly and motor-impaired users who have difficulty controlling a mouse. The reviewer recommends a new design that includes a larger font (20-point size) and a numbered list to allow selection by keyboard easily. Describe a Participatory Design or Social Impact Statement process that might clarify this issue with elderly users.

A social impact statement process might look like the company announcing through social media that they have decided to re-design their voting interface with the elderly in mind.

  1. Design an experiment to help resolve the issue brought up in Question 3. Assume you have substantial resources and access to subjects.

To test the expert reviewer’s hypothesis that elderly and motor-impaired users would prefer larger font and a numbered keyboard selection, a simulation could be held with an elderly individual with those changes implemented to see if they have an easier time navigating the interface.

  1. Provide a definition of participatory design. Give three arguments for and three arguments against participatory design.

Participatory design is part of the design process which aims at involving everyone who will be affected by the final product being developed. For example, if you are developing a product for people at a steel plant, you would get the operators involved in the design process.

  1. Consider a system that dos not yet exist. An example is a totally automated fast-food restaurant, where customers order via touch screen interactions, pay by swiping their debit or credit cards, and then pick up their food–analogous to the self-check-out at some supermarkets, but even more extreme. Discuss how you conduct a contextual inquiry for a system that does not yet exist.

You would have to make a believable simulation of the restaurant for interviewees to experience. For example, in the interview room, you could have the users buy a cheese burger by interacting with a dumbed-down touch screen (which they might even have to imagine works) and then give them the cheese burger when they have completed the checkout process. Then, you could interview them and get their thoughts and feelings on the process.