Participatory Design and Process Testing to Optimize Utility, Usability, and Acceptability of a Mobile Game for Promoting Evidence-Driven Public Health Decision-Making in Resource-Constrained Settings

Innovative game-based training methods that leverage the ubiquity of cellphones and familiarity with phone-based interfaces have the potential to transform the training of public health practitioners in low-income countries such as Liberia. This article describes the design, development, and testing of a prototype of the Figure It Out mobile game. The prototype game uses a disease outbreak scenario to promote evidence-based decision-making in determining the causative agent and prescribing intervention measures to minimize epidemiological and logistical burdens in resource-limited settings. An initial prototype of the game developed by the US team was playtested and evaluated by focus groups with 20 University of Liberia Masters of Public Health (UL MPH) students. Results demonstrate that the learning objectives—improving search skills for identifying scientific evidence and considering evidence before decision-making during a public health emergency—were considered relevant and important in a setting that has repeatedly and recently experienced severe threats to public health. However, some of the game mechanics that were thought to enhance engagement such as trial-and-error and choose-your-own-path gameplay, were perceived by the target audience as distracting or too time-consuming, particularly in the context of a realistic emergency scenario. Gameplay metrics that mimicked real-world situations around lives lost, money spent, and time constraints during public health outbreaks were identified as relatable and necessary considerations. Our findings reflect cultural differences between the game development team and end users that have emphasized the need for end users to have an integral part of the design team; this formative evaluation has critically informed next steps in the iterative development process. Our multidisciplinary, cross-cultural and cross-national design team will be guided by Liberia-based public health students and faculty, as well as community members who represent our end user population in terms of experience and needs. These stakeholders will make key decisions regarding game objectives and mechanics, to be vetted and implemented by game design experts, epidemiologists, and software developers.

A Protocol for Reviewing Off-the-Shelf Games to Inform the Development of New Educational Games

This chapter shares a protocol for reviewing games and documents the process in which it was used by an educational game design team for evaluating existing games to inform the design and development of new games for early algebra. While the design team has used their own learning games design model to develop several games—all of which included some kind of immersive learning and review activity—there has been no documentation provided on the specific processes used to review games as part of that immersion. Observations offer structured means for assessing existing games in a particular space and are thus valuable to identify how best to pursue the alignment of learning objectives with teaching content and game mechanics in the development of educational games.

New Factors Affecting Productivity of the Software Factory

Productivity is very important because it allows organizations to achieve greater efficiency and effectiveness in their activities; however, it is affected by numerous factors. While these factors have been identified for over two decades, all of the previous works limited the software factory to the programming work unit and did not analyze other work units that are also relevant. 90% of a software factory's effort is absorbed by the software production component, 85% of which is concentrated in the efforts of the analysis and design, programming, and testing work units. The present work identifies three new factors that influence the software factory, demonstrating that the use of rules and events influences analysis & design, team heterogeneity negatively affects analysis and design and positively affects programming; and the osmotic communication affects programming. An empirical study on software factories in Peru, determined that 95% of the influence came from these factors, which corroborated as well that team size and trust within the team influences in software production.

The Spine, the New HQ for the Royal College of Physicians, Liverpool, UK

This chapter catalogues the working experiences of the architects AHR and their design team and their clients, the Royal College of Physicians, for the design and construction of The Spine, their new Northern HQ, in Liverpool, UK. This iconic building opened in early 2021 and optimistically reflects the ethos and values of the college, and it is set to become one of the healthiest buildings in the world. It will describe and explain the biophilic and salutogenic design construction processes taken by the design team, from commissioning to completion. The main objective for the college when commissioning AHR architects to design their new building was to significantly expand their facilities and to reflect their standing in the world of medicine. So, the AHR design team endeavored to help them attain their goal of a WELL Platinum and the Building Research Establishments Environmental Assessment Methods (BREEAM) Outstanding certification.

A Study on Aerodynamics and Stability Characteristics of a Bell-Shaped Span-Load Wing

The existence of the new bell-shaped span-load wing is said to has the best lift distribution especially comparing to the elliptical wing. Bell-shaped span-load wing is designed by configuring the twist of the wing. However, the information on the aerodynamic and stability characteristics of the bell-shaped span-load wing is limited. Thus, the main purpose of the research is to evaluate the aerodynamic and stability characteristic to strengthen the claim of the capability of bell-shaped span-load wing in producing minimum induced drag. As the research is expected to be beneficial to the aviation design team, detailed information regarding the lift distribution as well as the induced drag produced is analysed at the optimum angle of attack and the results is further explained in this research. The numerical method for the analysis is done by using Lifting Line Theory (LLT) in the XFLR5 software which can analyse the wings of aircraft in terms of its aerodynamic and stability characteristic. Then, the comparison of the aerodynamic characteristics for bell-shaped span-load, elliptical span-load and tapered wing done in this research is to strengthen the appeal made stating that the bell-shaped span-load wing is the best type of wing ever existed and may replace the elliptical wing as the best wing shape with aerodynamically most efficient. The research has proven that along the wingspan, the bell-shaped span-load wing produced the lowest and minimum induced drag when being compared. At the optimum angle of attack of bell-shaped span-load wing, though the lift produced is slightly lower than the elliptical and tapered wing, the difference in the induced drag is obvious as bell-shaped span-load wing produces induced drag that is lower than 0. In other words, starting from the semi span of the wing to the wingtip, the bell-shaped span-load wing managed to be the most aerodynamically efficient wing.

Application of Anti-Stigma Design Heuristics for Usability Inspection

User interface evaluation has become important in developing usable health care technologies. Although usability engineering methods have been applied in the design and evaluation of health care software, available heuristics focus on task-work aspects and do not address stigma associated with many health conditions. We used a previous set of heuristics and propose a new set of anti-stigma heuristics to evaluate stigmatization in health care websites. The extended set of heuristics were concurrently applied in a heuristic evaluation and a cognitive walkthrough to evaluate an endometriosis and sexual pain website. The walkthrough involved 5 tasks that required 21 actions to execute. Twenty-six usability problems were identified and recommendations for re-design were made to the design team before end-user testing. The anti-stigma heuristics received worse ratings than the traditional heuristics, resulting in several design changes that might otherwise have been missed. Thus, the new anti-stigma heuristics were a valuable contribution.

The DEMO Water-Cooled Lead–Lithium Breeding Blanket: Design Status at the End of the Pre-Conceptual Design Phase

The Water-Cooled Lead–Lithium Breeding Blanket (WCLL BB) is one of the two blanket concept candidates to become the driver blanket of the EU-DEMO reactor. The design was enacted with a holistic approach. The influence that neutronics, thermal-hydraulics (TH), thermo-mechanics (TM) and magneto-hydro-dynamics (MHD) may have on the design were considered at the same time. This new approach allowed for the design team to create a WCLL BB layout that is able to comply with different foreseen requirements in terms of integration, tritium self-sufficiency, and TH and TM needs. In this paper, the rationale behind the design choices and the main characteristics of the WCLL BB needed for the EU-DEMO are reported and discussed. Finally, the main achievements reached during the pre-conceptual design phase and some remaining open issues to be further investigated in the upcoming conceptual design phase are reported as well.

The feasibility of 'Building Performance Sketching' within the building design process

<p>This study investigated the question of whether or not the distributed model method (DMM) could be perceived by the New Zealand building industry’s architects and engineers as overcoming barriers which prevent them from implementing building performance sketching within their design processes. Current literature on the barriers to building performance simulation (BPS) have suggested a number of recommendations for tool developers to address, with little documented success to their impact on overcoming these perceived barriers. The recommendations suggested mainly improving tool interoperability for effective design team collaboration, and means to demonstrate model quality assurance. The DMM presented itself within literature as a new means to overcome the difficulties of interoperability faced by the central modelling method, commonly used in building information modelling (BIM), to meet requirements for design team collaboration. With the ability to provide high interoperability and parametric capabilities with detailed simulation programs, the DMM was hypothesised to address all recommendations from literature to overcome the barriers to implementing BPS within the design process. Furthermore, the study proposed the use of building performance sketching as an approach to assess the architectural sketch as a means to ensure quality assurance. The study concluded that DMM cannot currently address all wants and wishes of users established in literature, but has potential. Future research efforts are required to focus upon: creating industry specific templates for building types; developing these templates to be adaptable for the different modelling operators of the proposed workflow demonstrated to the participants within this study; and developing quality assurance standards for modelling and guidelines for model validation. Finally, the study concluded with future work required beyond tool development: improving education of architects; and introducing legislation.</p>

The feasibility of 'Building Performance Sketching' within the building design process

<p>This study investigated the question of whether or not the distributed model method (DMM) could be perceived by the New Zealand building industry’s architects and engineers as overcoming barriers which prevent them from implementing building performance sketching within their design processes. Current literature on the barriers to building performance simulation (BPS) have suggested a number of recommendations for tool developers to address, with little documented success to their impact on overcoming these perceived barriers. The recommendations suggested mainly improving tool interoperability for effective design team collaboration, and means to demonstrate model quality assurance. The DMM presented itself within literature as a new means to overcome the difficulties of interoperability faced by the central modelling method, commonly used in building information modelling (BIM), to meet requirements for design team collaboration. With the ability to provide high interoperability and parametric capabilities with detailed simulation programs, the DMM was hypothesised to address all recommendations from literature to overcome the barriers to implementing BPS within the design process. Furthermore, the study proposed the use of building performance sketching as an approach to assess the architectural sketch as a means to ensure quality assurance. The study concluded that DMM cannot currently address all wants and wishes of users established in literature, but has potential. Future research efforts are required to focus upon: creating industry specific templates for building types; developing these templates to be adaptable for the different modelling operators of the proposed workflow demonstrated to the participants within this study; and developing quality assurance standards for modelling and guidelines for model validation. Finally, the study concluded with future work required beyond tool development: improving education of architects; and introducing legislation.</p>