ABSTRACT
Mobile Financial Services (MFS) has gained significant popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially among marginalized and low-income, low-literate communities around the world. Such communities have not been traditionally considered while designing MFS services via smartphone apps or USSD services in featurephones. Financial constraints limit such end-users towards basic featurephones, where recent appstore support has made it possible to deploy app-based MFS solutions beyond USSD. This new featurephone platform is a relatively underexplored area in terms of addressing design issues related to aforementioned end-users while developing MFS solutions. Our work addresses this gap by presenting qualitative findings on barriers to technology access focused on MFS solutions in marginal communities. We present a prototype non-USSD, app-based solution on an appstore-supported featurephone platform designed via a human-centered approach. This work has the potential to increase the financial inclusivity of marginalized communities in cashless MFS transactions via low-cost, appstore-enabled featurephones. © 2023 ACM.
ABSTRACT
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been an increasing growing need for learning experience or instructional designers. As a result, online courses on user experience (UX) design for learning are in demand to prepare those much-needed professionals. This paper reports the first circle of educational design research (EDR) on such a completely online problem-based course using group contracts and peer-evaluations to promote collaborations. Multiple datasets were collected from a range of data sources from a graduate-level course and were analyzed by two researchers. The study yielded several meaningful results: (1) group contracts helped students work smoothly and keep goals focused on collaborative learning in PBL; (2) the instructor could facilitate the group formation process; (3) peer evaluations helped group collaboration and monitoring; and (4) collaborative technologies are critical for collaboration. The findings also revealed important design principles for collaborative learning in PBL that can be used in similar courses. In addition, this study provides a successful example of how to teach UX design in an online PBL environment, and sheds light on how to further improve similar practices while contributing to the limited body of research on UX design for learning. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10639-022-11495-6.
ABSTRACT
COVID-19 has revolutionized our lifestyle. Whether it is “Do Not Touch” or “Maintaining Social Distance”, there is a need for distance. Unless COVID-19 disappears automatically, we will have to change the way we live for a long time. The distance between people and things will be maintained by physical measures to make it safer, but the psychological dimension needs to be intimate. Therefore, closing the space between people and things through emotional design (whether physical or virtual) and the shortening the distance between people and the world around them is worthy of further discussion. This paper first reviews the concepts involved, then randomly selects two typical exhibitions for analysis and discussion, and finally puts forward conclusions and suggestions. Whether the audience’s experience meets expectations will determine the success of the exhibition to some extent. In the process of interaction, “touching” the real exhibits may still be unacceptable, but it can satisfy people’s curiosity and innate habits in other ways. As part of a previous study, we also hope that more readers will genuinely comment on this issue. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
Focusing on the clinical doctor-patient consultation setting, this paper outlines the methodology and presents the results from a series of observational studies between doctor and patients undertaken in September and October 2020 within a public hospital setting during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a design thinking methodology, the authors gained empathy and insights into the challenges experienced from both doctor and patient perspectives, during this period. This paper also discusses emergent themes from this qualitative investigation and examines the role of empathy in helping define the extent of the challenges that arose. As the first phase in a planned set of research phases, this work is informing and helping to shape subsequent ideation and design of multimedia related interventions to see if these human-centred design interventions can assist in improving the complex doctor-patient communication process. © 2021 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
This paper proposes a university course centred around a problem-based laboratory called “Crowd Engineering (CE)”. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, collaborative work had to be moved predominantly into the virtual space. Thus, the need for virtual collaborative work in teaching increased significantly. CE is a joint remote collaboration by two academic institutions working together in a transfer-oriented, publicly funded project. In the course, design and product engineering students learnt to cope with today's complex problems. They acquire skills to think beyond subject and system boundaries and are equipped with these job-related qualities already during university education by solving a crowd-sourced real-world task. Students worked with various tools to arrive at an initial design proposal that is supposed to be implemented in a future physical prototype. This paper describes the collaboration context of both university partners, concept development and implementation of the laboratory course and lessons learned from the collaboration. © PDE 2021.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: This article investigates the research problem of digital solutions to overcome the pandemic, more closely examining the limited effectiveness and scope of the governmental COVID-19 tracing apps, using the German COVID-19 tracing app (Corona-Warn-App) as an example. A well-designed and effective instrument in the technological toolbox is of utmost importance to overcome the pandemic. METHOD: A multi-methodological design science research approach was applied. In three development and evaluation cycles, we presented, prototyped, and tested user-centered ideas of functional and design improvement. The applied procedure contains (1) a survey featuring 1993 participants from Germany for evaluating the current app, (2) a gathering of recommendations from epidemiologists and from a focus group discussion with IT and health experts identifying relevant functional requirements, and (3) an online survey combined with testing our prototype with 53 participants to evaluate the enhanced tracing app. RESULTS: This contribution presents 14 identified issues of the German COVID-19 tracing app, six meta-requirements, and three design principles for COVID-19 tracing apps and future pandemic apps (e.g., more user involvement and transparency). Using an interactive prototype, this study presents an extended pandemic app, containing 13 potential front-end (i.e., information on the regional infection situation, education and health literacy, crowd and event notification) and six potential back-end functional requirements (i.e., ongoing modification of risk score calculation, indoor versus outdoor). In addition, a user story approach for the COVID-19 tracing app was derived from the findings, supporting a holistic development approach. CONCLUSION: Throughout this study, practical relevant findings can be directly transferred to the German and other international COVID-19 tracing applications. Moreover, we apply our findings to crisis management theory-particularly pandemic-related apps-and derive interdisciplinary learnings. It might be recommendable for the involved decision-makers and stakeholders to forego classic application management and switch to using an agile setup, which allows for a more flexible reaction to upcoming changes. It is even more important for governments to have a well-established, flexible, design-oriented process for creating and adapting technology to handle a crisis, as this pandemic will not be the last one.