Completed Projects

Usability Engineering/User-Centered Design

Training Systems Design and Evaluation

Human-System Integration

Next-Generation HSI Research

 

 

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Usability Engineering/User-Centered Design

Next Generation Home Appliances

Design Interactive, Inc. completed a 5-week usability analysis for a major home appliance manufacturer that focused on two next-generation advanced feature concepts. The clientidentified three targeted user groups for their products. Using this information, DII completed user profiling and contextual task analyses (CTA) to create an initial description of tasks and environment into which system may be integrated. This was followed by two independent focus groups to validate descriptions of typical tasks and environment from earlier work and identify users’ first impressions of the advanced features.

DII staff then completed heuristic evaluations of each product by evaluating common and advanced tasks, and assessing product interaction to validated usability heuristic guidelines with the goal of identifying usability strengths and potential usability issues with current designs. Outcomes of the heuristic evaluation included a list of usability strengths and shortcomings for both products, as well as use case scenarios for user testing sessions.

User testing was completed using 12 participants on both products. Data collected included performance data, satisfaction and feature priority ratings, and emotional profiling data. Outcomes of user testing provided empirical data to verify usability strengths and shortcomings identified throughout the evaluation, and provided a means to prioritize shortcomings. For each usability shortcoming, DI provided a rationale and included redesign recommendations targeted at alleviating the observed issues.

Outcomes delivered to the customer included Usability Test Plan documents and Final Reports that summarized the usability evaluation process and results. Results were well received by the client's usability, design, engineering and marketing staff, and are currently being implemented into their iterative design cycles. - View case study (PDF).

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Online Floral Purchasing - Usability Study

Design Interactive, Inc. recently completed a usability study for a leading brand in the floral industry with millions of online orders per year. In particular, the online checkout process – a critical element of the e-shopping experience – was evaluated to assess the impact of the new design features included in a recently revised and modernized website design.

Design Interactive, Inc. conducted an expert heuristic evaluation and usability testing of targeted customers. From this evaluation, both usability strengths as well as usability shortcomings that resulted in user error and/or non-optimal navigation were identified. The usability concerns identified were deemed crucial enough by the client to reschedule the launch date of the new website so that usability shortcomings identified by Design Interactive Inc.’s review could be addressed and a best-in-class shopping experience could be ensured. - View case study (PDF).

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Theme Park Rider Experience Analyis

DI was contracted by a major theme park operator to provide guidance and user testing for a major new attraction. DI focused on the quality of user experience and potential issues of guest sickness due to the intensity of the ride experience. Ethnographic analysis of potential guest riders was created, and iterative tests of user experience on the attraction were provided. Issues of post-experience sickness and symptomology were highlighted.

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Comparative Design Evaluation: Utilizing Best-In-Class Design Elements

Design Interactive, Inc. recently completed a comparative usability study for a leading computer manufacturer. The project had three main goals: define the features and functionalities required for the investigated product offering; develop evaluation criteria and evaluate the current system against three other major competitors; and develop the new interface design and design specifications for a best-in-class product offering.

Design Interactive, Inc. conducted two focus groups (one for the client’s system and one for a leading competitor) with targeted domain users to gain insights, identify current strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and risks for the system under evaluation. This served to further define the evaluation criteria for the comparative evaluation, gather subjective perspectives of each respective system, and define common tasks performed by users. With this information, a comparative heuristic-based usability evaluation of the four competing systems was conducted utilizing best-interaction-design practices as well as insights from two focus groups, with which a set of best-in-class design elements was determined. Finally, utilizing the best-in-class design elements, a new prototype system interface was designed. The associated design specifications were defined for system review and development by the client’s product development team.

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Training Systems Design and Evaluation

Trainer Assets Management Systems (TAMS)

Under a Phase I SBIR, the DI team designed the Trainer Assets Management System (TAMS), a handheld event-based performance measurement tool to support training preparation (via training objective selection and historical performance data review), observation, and assessment of trainee performance, in addition to providing feedback to trainers/trainees. TAMS is a theoretically driven product, focused on identifying and minimizing sources of trainer workload across the training cycle. The TAMS aims to provide automated tools and methods for trainers that allow them to integrate automated performance data collection, data reduction, assessment using expert models, diagnosis using mathematical models, and archives of trainee performance.

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Training Effectiveness and Usability for
ONR’s VIRTE program

Design Interactive developed models and theories for multi-modal sensory integration in support of training transfer, building a human performance metric toolkit that can be used to assess training transfer, and conducted a set of training transfer studies that validate the theorized models, theories, and metrics that are relevant for the evaluation of VIRTE systems. DI has developed an approach to apply the HSI approach to the training domain, so that the interactive, egocentric, and affective cues that allow trainees to practice core competencies are identified and folded into the system requirements for validation. The goal of this effort was to develop design science to enhance reciprocity between training theory and practice. In conjunction with our training transfer efforts, we conducted a training effectiveness evaluation for the Combined Arms Staff Trainer (CAST). Design Interactive developed a set of metrics that can be used to examine the degree that Communication, Coordination and Allocation (CCA) of CAST teams is supported through iterative system builds.

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Usability Evaluation for the Conning Officer Virtual Environment (COVE)

Design Interactive was contracted by NAVAIR Orlando, TSD to provide iterative usability evaluation for the COVE trainer. COVE provides technology to the Surface Warfare Community to train or refresh "seaman's eye". It is a flexible, portable unit that can be used in the schoolhouse or is deployable onboard ship. Central to its concept is the extensive integration of new intelligent tutor techniques with state-of-the-art virtual environments (VE). COVE is intended to produce a unique blending of the two emergent technologies, in such a way as to vastly increase the training effectiveness that neither would achieve alone. Design Interactive provided consultation on the usability of the system, the VE technologies used, including hardware and software, sickness issues and performance measurement.

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Naturalistic Decision Making (NDM)

DI is conducting task analysis on operational ad hoc teams to identify the cognitive and behavioral processes underlying team consensus and decision making for one-of-a-kind or unique task situations.

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Tool for the Optimization of Multimodal Cues in Advancement of Training System Design (TOMCAT)

Ensuring that training systems are based on operationally, theoretically, and empirically driven requirements is a key component to improve VE system effectiveness as it focuses training on targeted goals. System designers may not have access to specialist resources to develop these requirements, and there is little guidance available on the process. TOMCAT aims to guide developers through the process of extracting the necessary contextual data to develop system requirements which support training effectiveness, and then allowing them to optimize these requirements by integrating theoretical, empirical and cost benefit findings.

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Human-System Integration

Speech, Earcons, and Auditory Spatial Signals (SEAS)

Military personnel are required to make decisions in rapidly dynamic developing situations. Oftentimes, information is poorly organized, represented, and displayed using standard visual interaction paradigms. The challenge to designers is to create interfaces that allow individuals to process an optimal amount of essential data by amplifying cognition via optimizing the distribution of human information processing. One approach with great potential is to leverage the auditory paradigm of Speech, Earcons, and Auditory Spatial Signals (SEAS). This project developed theoretically sound, principle driven design guidelines from the perspective of cognitive science, neuroergonomics, and human computer interaction theories using an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) application. The main goal of such multimodal interaction is to augment traditional visual interaction with auditory cues such that human information management capacity is substantially enhanced.

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Training Effectiveness Evaluation with Neurophysiological Metrics: Fidelity Assessment of VE Training Systems (TEE-FAST)

Under a Navy Phase I SBIR, Design Interactive is developing the Training Effectiveness Evaluation with Neurophysiological Metrics: Fidelity Assessment of VE Training Systems (TEE-FAST) framework that will build upon current theoretical frameworks for assessing virtual environment (VE) system fidelity.

The goal of the effort is to develop a combination of behavioral and physiological metrics to effectively gauge simulation fidelity that can be incorporated into a TEE-FAST framework that includes task analysis products and associated algorithms for identifying when experiences between a VE and the real world do not result in similar behavior and/or physiological responses. Examples of physiological gauges may include presence, arousal, attention, stress responses, etc., and may be developed using a combination of physiological indicators (e.g., heart rate, skin resistance, electroencephalography, etc.), while behavioral measures may include response times, accuracy, etc. captured via observation (in operational environment) and by the VE system itself.

By leveraging the task analysis guidance methodology and framework under development in the TOMCAT and A-VETS efforts, a system will be created that will allow evaluators to compare the cues present in the operational environment to those in the VE to determine where non-optimal levels of physical, functional, and psychology fidelity exist and provide guidelines to optimize system fidelity at those levels.

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Next-Generation HSI Research

Physiological Real-time Metric of Situational Awareness

This SBIR Phase I effort for DARPA aimed to develop a human-system dyad that enhances individual and team situation awareness (SA) through seamless transition of displayed data based on real-time neurophysiological sensors through development of objective measures of SA using electroencephalography (EEG) and an innovative mitigation display strategies framework.

During Phase I, researchers focused on developing an event-based approach to optimizing perception of elements in the environment by monitoring EEG and behavioral measures. Results from this effort showed that specific signatures (event-related potentials [ERP]) in the stream of electroencephalogram (EEG) data can be reliably captured for single events that are relevant to an individual operator’s SA status (e.g., when a new entity appears on a radar screen). Investigators made advances towards developing a system that measurably improves the speed and quality of individual situation awareness (SA) and decision making in tactical environments by creating event-based neurophysiological templates that could be used to drive real-time system mitigation for enhanced individual SA, decision making and performance. Phase II will build from the methodology developed and successes found, particularly in text processing signatures (i.e., identification of question versus statement) and rule-based decision making signatures, to create distinct signatures that relate to key events in text analysis.

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