Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2018, Instructional Technology (Education)

Instructional designers are often discouraged from testing their learning products due to the challenges faced when attempting to apply the traditional approaches of usability testing. As a result, scholars have been trying new methods to overcome those challenges. Remote usability testing, often operated by crowdsourcing websites, is one of those methods. However, crowdsourced usability testing websites are usually restricted to adult users. Consequently, the instructional designers of children's learning products do not have the advantage of harnessing the potentials of remote usability testing. As a first step for the instructional designers of children's products to overcome the challenges of the existing usability testing methods, this study was intended to create a set of guidelines for the design of remote usability testing websites for children's interactive products. Following a design and development research methodology, the researcher has used the literature's guidelines of usability testing with children and the principles of cognitive load theory in designing a remote usability testing tool to answer the following research questions: What can be learned about the remote usability testing guidelines in terms of the features and characteristics of the usability testing tool that are related to the children nine to ten years old? What can be learned from iterative design process to inform remote usability testing guidelines in terms of improving the role of parents in such a way that can reduce their workload while maintaining a good quality of usability testing results? And what concerns do parents have regarding their children's participation in crowdsourced usability testing? Observations, interviews, and fieldnotes were used to collect data in three iterations from 18 participants, nine parents and nine children. The results cover the specifications in the remote usability testing tool that worked with the children and the parents, and (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: David Moore Professor (Advisor) Subjects: Education; Educational Software; Educational Technology; Instructional Design

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2022, Food Science and Technology

Traditional sensory and consumer testing practices do not allow for the appropriate capture of holistic product experiences in a controlled environment. In-hall testing is performed in sterile booths purposefully devoid of any context to minimize participant interaction and prevent bias. Panelists utilize a questionnaire for providing opinions on specific attributes after tasting or using a small amount of sample. This experience does not reflect how and where products are used in real-life scenarios and can lead to missing insights and product failure after launch. In-home testing improves ecological validity as the product is used and evaluated in the true environment of use, however, the lack of experimental control brings data quality and reliability into question. In-hall immersive testing has been explored as an alternative to traditional in-hall and in-home testing, reintroducing relevant context to product evaluations. While this helps restore ecological validity and the reliability of results for use in product development, available survey technologies are counterproductive to the environment investigators seek to recreate. In everyday life, people do not use tablets to provide their opinion of a product they just consumed, instead they verbally share their thoughts with those around them. This highlights a need to explore different technologies for administering sensory and consumer questionnaires. Smart-speakers may provide a solution for further improving ecological validity of immersive testing. Technological advancements in smart-speaker operating systems have made it possible for these devices to perform multi-step tasks, allowing for more complex experiences. Programmers have developed platforms to create and deploy surveys on these devices, allowing participants to provide feedback using more of a conversational experience. While smart-speakers could enhance ecological validity in immersive testing, best practices for how to employ the (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Christopher Simons (Advisor); Luis Rodriguez-Saona (Committee Member); Devin Peterson (Committee Member) Subjects: Food Science

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, Food Science and Technology

Typical sensory and consumer testing is often done in isolated booths where external environmental stimuli and extrinsic product attributes are removed or controlled for the purpose of yielding responses from panelists that are influenced solely by a product's intrinsic sensorial products. The issue with this is that food is not consumed in such neutral environments, but rather in environments with various contextual elements that influence human behavior and perception of food. There is currently a growing body of research investigating the reintroduction of contextual elements into sensory and consumer tests using immersive technologies. A gap that currently lies in this body of literature is the impact of social context on panelist perception, liking, and behavior. This is a large oversight as many food consumption scenarios are completed in social contexts. In these commensal scenarios, humans exhibit behaviors and changes in perception as a result of social elements in the environment. By not including these social elements, responses from panelists may not be reflective of real-life perceptions of food. Therefore, we aimed to introduce social elements to sensory evaluations using immersive technologies such as video walls and VR headsets. In Chapter 3, panelists evaluated popcorn samples in three different environments: a solo environment, and two environments where social context was added via video of an actor eating popcorn playing on a video wall. The two social environments differed in rate of popcorn consumption of the actor. Results revealed that panelists consumed more popcorn when evaluating in the social environments than in the solo environment. Ecological validity increased in the social environments as evidenced by the observation of the social facilitation of eating, a phenomenon commonly observed in commensal scenarios. In Chapter 4, we investigated emotional responses to a positive carbonated cola and a negative flat cola when evaluations occur (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Christopher Simons (Advisor); Luis Rodriguez-Saona (Committee Member); Devin Peterson (Committee Member); Jessica Cooperstone (Committee Member) Subjects: Food Science; Technology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, Food Science and Technology

Food and beverage consumption occur in contextual settings where consumers are exposed to various environmental cues important for shaping product expectations. Traditional sensory and consumer testing conducted in isolated, neutral booths lacks ecological validity, which can lead to uninformative results and potential costly product failures. To facilitate evaluations reflective of real-world experiences and reliable data collection, sensory scientists have recently compiled a growing body of research using virtual reality (VR) immersive technologies to restore relevant context during consumer sensory testing. While promising effects of immersive contexts were found on consumer perception and acceptance data, limitations of existing sensory VR systems that prevent widespread adoption of the technologies include a diminished sense of presence, unrealistic visuals, and the lack of interactive capabilities enabling the integration of real-world features that facilitate taste testing and/or data collection. Therefore, we aimed to develop a user-friendly, interactive 360° VR system for sensory and consumer testing. Two system iterations with VR controllers (System 1) and hand tracking (System 2) as interactive techniques were assessed in two separate studies for their ability to deliver realistic consumption contexts and to facilitate a virtual product evaluation experience (Chapter 3). Participants found both systems usable and experienced high levels of presence and engagement during testing. System 1 (VR controllers) performed better at interactions with the virtual tablet interface to answer questionnaires, whereas interactions with the food objects were easier using System 2 (hand tracking). Prior research has applied the same consumption context for all participants without accounting for varying individual consumption habits; evaluating products in a consumption scenario of low personal relevance can also lead to misleading consumer response (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Christopher T. Simons (Advisor); Neal Hooker (Committee Member); Yael Vodovotz (Committee Member); Jessica Cooperstone (Committee Member) Subjects: Food Science; Technology

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2021, Allied Health Sciences: Communication Sciences and Disorders

Due to COVID-19, communication between healthcare providers and patients is hampered by isolation requirements, use of personal protective equipment (PPE) and lack of access to patients' family. To address this gap, a novel user-friendly, prototype of a mobile communication app, Talking About Living with COVID (TALC©) was developed using human-centered design principles. This dissertation employed a user-centered design approach to develop and test a prototype of a mobile-based communication app that is intended to promote effective communication between the healthcare providers and patients with communication challenges during COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. More specifically, this study aimed to answer two research questions: RQ1: What characteristics of the TALC© prototype do healthcare providers perceive as potentially helpful when interacting effectively with their patients with communication challenges? RQ2: On a well-established reference measure, such as the System Usability Scale (SUS), do healthcare providers rate TALC© as a potentially usable technology in their health setting? Usability was assessed using a think aloud method, where 17 healthcare providers described their interaction with the porotype followed by completion of a System Usability Scale (SUS) and Perceived Satisfaction and User Perceived Value scale. The median score for the SLP group was 77.5 (SUS1); the median score for the Non-SLP group was 92.5 (SUS2). On a 6-point Likert scale, eight participants (SLP= 2; Non SLP =6) indicated that they were “very satisfied” with the TALC© prototype, and nine participants (SLP= 5; Non SLP = 4) indicated that they were “moderately satisfied.” Qualitative data suggest the healthcare providers responded favorably to the prototype, with the majority commenting that the TALC© would be useful to support communication in their setting and has potential to alleviate communication challenges during—and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.

Committee: Aimee Dietz Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Suzanne Boyce Ph.D. (Committee Member); Nancy Creaghead Ph.D. (Committee Member); Carrie Rountrey Ph.D. (Committee Member); Rhonna Shatz D.O. (Committee Member) Subjects: Speech Therapy

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2004, Communication

This dissertation project focused on design practitioners' communicative experiences as they occurred during usability testing in an attempt to isolate and lay out the contradiction that occurs between practitioners' belief in user-centered design (UCD) and their practice of that methodology. Communication was important to study because it is a central aspect of UCD, but the notion that design practitioners perceive communication to be instructive and/or useful as indicated by their design practice has not been well documented and represents an axiom of sorts in the design field. The goals of this research were to trace the contradiction to determine how design practitioners perceive communication between themselves and the users—the UCD rationale—and by extension, to better understand communication's impact upon their subsequent design decisions. The following research questions flowed from this idea: (a) How does the contradiction between design practitioners' values and practices play itself out in their experiences communicating with users to implement UCD in the form of usability testing? (b) What do design practitioners say about the reasons that factor into their decisions to exclude users' suggestions from the final product design? Sense-Making Methodology, a methodology in the tradition of Grounded Theory, was used to isolate contradictory communication behaviors related to design practitioners' belief in UCD and their practice of UCD methodology as represented by usability testing and users' suggestions. Twenty-two in-depth interviews were conducted and Sense-Making's Communication-As-Procedure analytic was used to analyze the data, examining occurrences of contradicting communication behaviors. The results of this exploratory study indicated that communicative tactics seeking connection with and direction from users to validate the product under design, led most often to a design effort that included usability testing and users' suggestions. On the other (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Brenda Dervin (Advisor) Subjects:

MFA, Kent State University, 2012, College of Communication and Information / School of Visual Communication Design

Information retention is paramount to the education process. There is not a single act in academia that does not require extensive information recall. Beginning with the middle school grades, teachers increasingly rely on the lecture method of instruction. Incidentally, the middle grades are a critical period in the instruction of study skills as the students in that age range are developmentally ready to become strategic learners. Notable is a versatile tool that functions in varied note-taking environments. Considerations for different learning styles and activities that aid in information retention and recall are uniquely utilized throughout the application. This thesis offers a framework for the development of Notable. Ethnographic research was conducted on middle school students to gain insight on their learning environments, including the classroom, lecture styles, notetaking tools, organizational methods and social interactions among teachers and classmates. Quantitative research was conducted in the form of a survey. Over 70 participants submitted answers to questions revolving around achievement levels, learning styles, tools, and study habits. Data synthesized from surveys informed the construction of user personas and usage scenarios to help focus an iterative design approach toward the development of a comprehensive note-taking application.

Committee: Ken Visocky O'Grady (Advisor); Jerry Kalback (Committee Member); Karl Fast (Committee Member) Subjects: Design; Education; Educational Software; Educational Technology; Middle School Education; Teaching; Technology

MDES, University of Cincinnati, 2013, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Design

Given the emergence of mobile technology, the difference of devices and their adjunct operating systems have been progressively enlarged. On devices with varying screen sizes, user interaction and user experience become different. This makes web application design a more complicated task than before in order to meet various compatibility and user experience requirements. To fix this issue, web application design approaches have evolved into two categories: repurposing approach and optimized approach. In this study, I design and develop a cross–device web application by using these two approaches respectively. Usability testing is performed to collect data and user experience comments from respondents. Then analysis of the data shows which approach is more superior in specific situations.

Committee: Benjamin Meyer M.F.A. (Committee Chair); Heekyoung Jung Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Design