TY - THES A1 - Hörnschemeyer, Heike T1 - Development of a Usability Capability Self-Assessment Tool for Improvement and Monitoring of Human-Centred Design in Small and Medium-Sized Companies N2 - Usability is an important quality aspect of software products. Today, companies need to be capable to develop software with good usability to stay competitive. This can be achieved by practicing human-centred design (HCD) during the development process. However, especially small and medium-sized software enterprises (SMEs) still practice HCD on a low level, if at all. This thesis explores whether and how the approach of process capability assessment can support SMEs with a systematic improvement of HCD. It is shown that a process capability assessment for usability at SMEs can only be successful, when the first steps of initiating HCD are al-ready done. Then, a process assessment approach seems to be useful to systematically improve the usability capability at SMEs. Based on this theoretical background, a usability capability self-assessment tool tailored for SMEs is developed. It has a simplified assessment procedure and uses the DIN EN ISO 9241-220 as reference model. The self-assessment tool was applied at two German software SMEs to test whether the approach is useful for SMEs and whether the reference model is suitable. The results indicate that the usability self-assessment tool is a promising approach for future SMEs as several interesting applications were identified. The chosen reference model seems to be an appropriate choice for a self-assessment; only the complex language used in the standard impedes the assessment. All in all, the thesis lays the foundation for a systematic approach to support SMEs with usability. KW - Self-assessment KW - Usability capability KW - Small and medium-sized enterprises KW - Process assessment KW - DIN EN ISO 9241-220 Y1 - 2017 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:hbz:1383-opus4-2433 ER - TY - THES A1 - Koch, Kerstin T1 - How to communicate UX requirements? Guidelines based on a systematic literature review and interview study N2 - This thesis addresses the question of a suitable way to communicate user requirements to an interdisciplinary team. UX professionals are responsible for communicating user needs and UX requirements in a clear and understandable way so that other team members such as software developers can work in a user-centric way. The thesis examines known forms of requirements specification and identifies possible challenges in communicating user needs with the help of a systematic literature review. Based on design patterns, possible solutions for these problems are developed. In an interview study, these solution proposals are compared with real scenarios and adapted. As a result, the thesis presents nine guidelines that UX professionals can use to communicate user requirements. The idea is to promote a good exchange with the other team members and suitable, short forms of specification. A key point was that these should always convey a reason or the user’s motivation for a requirement to provide meaningful context information to those who have never been in touch with the user. Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:hbz:1383-opus4-8843 ER - TY - THES A1 - Knoblich, Roger T1 - Führt die Einführung von Scrum in einem Unternehmen zu einer Steigerung der psychologischen Sicherheit bei den Mitarbeitenden? Inwieweit hat dies Effekte auf die affektive Bindung sowie die Mitarbeitendenzufriedenheit? N2 - Frühere Studien, insbesondere die Metaanalyse von Frazier et al. (2017), zeigen, dass psychologische Sicherheit eine Schlüsselrolle für Arbeitszufriedenheit und organisationales Commitment spielt. Der Einfluss agiler Arbeitsweisen wurde in diesem Zusammenhang jedoch bisher kaum untersucht. Diese Studie widmet sich der Frage, wie agile Arbeitsweisen, insbesondere das Scrum-Rahmenwerk, die psychologische Sicherheit, das affektive Commitment und die Arbeitszufriedenheit beeinflussen. In einem mittelständischen Unternehmen wurde eine Intervention im Rahmen einer Studie mit Pre-Posttest-Design (N = 37) durchgeführt. Eine Interventionsgruppe arbeitete nach dem Scrum-Rahmenwerk, einschließlich zweiwöchiger Sprints und agiler Events, während die Kontrollgruppe ohne agiles Rahmenwerk arbeitete. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass psychologische Sicherheit ein signifikanter Prädiktor der Arbeitszufriedenheit und des Commitments war - jedoch nur im Prätest. Agiles Projektmanagement erhöhte die psychologische Sicherheit nicht signifikant, was auf die moderierende Rolle von Stress und organisatorischen Rahmenbedingungen hinweisen könnte. Affektives Commitment erwies sich hingegen über beide Messzeitpunkte hinweg als stabiler Einflussfaktor auf die Arbeitszufriedenheit. Die vorliegende Arbeit liefert weitere Einblicke in die Bedeutung von psychologischer Sicherheit und Commitment in agilen Arbeitskontexten, betont jedoch, dass deren Entwicklung nicht automatisch durch agile Arbeitsweisen gefördert wird. Aufgrund methodischer Limitationen sollten die Ergebnisse differenziert betrachtet werden. Die Befunde bieten praktische Anhaltspunkte, dass ergänzende Maßnahmen wie systemisches Stressmanagement zur Reduzierung von Stress auf organisationaler und individueller Ebene sowie Weiterbildungen für Führungskräfte, die Vertrauen und Teamstabilität fördern, notwendig sind, um die potenziellen Vorteile agiler Methoden vollständig zu auszuschöpfen. KW - Psychologische Sicherheit KW - Agilität KW - Arbeitszufriedenheit KW - affektives Commitment Y1 - 2025 ER - TY - THES A1 - Torabizadeh, Mohammad T1 - Evaluating Tool Support for User-Centric Requirements Engineering in Software Development: A Jira-Based Approach N2 - User requirements are important for a successful software development process, yet their effective integration throughout the development lifecycle remains challenging. This study evaluates requirements engineering (RE) tools and addresses the gap in the requirements engineering process and the systematic integration of user requirements into development processes. After literature review and expert evaluations, a framework was established for the evaluation of RE tools across key dimensions. This evaluation revealed significant limitations in requirements management and analysis capabilities. A Jira-based prototype was developed using Atlassian Forge, consisting of an Issue Panel for requirement-to-issue linkage and a Global Page for the rest of the requirement engineering process, with its main goal being to integrate user requirements in the software development lifecycle. Testing with 16 participants proved high satisfaction (mean of 4.382/5) and effectiveness in integrating requirements into development workflows (mean of 4.438/5). The study also provides areas for future improvements, useful for the future work to be done in the field. KW - Usability engineering KW - Requirement engineering KW - Jira KW - User requirements Y1 - 2025 ER - TY - THES A1 - Khalifeh, Amro T1 - Analysis of the Perceived Effectiveness of Design Sprints in Corporations: A Study Based on Qualitative Interviews with Practitioners from Startups and Large Enterprises N2 - Purpose — The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate the perceived effectiveness of the Design Sprint process according to practitioners in the field, and investigate optimal contexts of use as well as the limitations of the process. Design/Methodology — A qualitative study based on interviews conducted with eleven practitioners from startups and large enterprises. Data from the interviews were analyzed, interpreted, and related to the existing literature in order to answer the research questions. Findings — The hypotheses regarding the effectiveness of Design Sprint and its role in enabling efficient and effective decision-making were validated by the eleven practitioners who took part in the research. Additionally, patterns regarding optimal contexts of use of Design Sprint were identified, namely kickstarting product development initiatives and creating innovative solutions, as well as limitations of Design Sprint such as its limited use for exploring the problem space of challenge. Limitations — The research is limited by the small number of eleven participants and the lack of quantitative data. Practical Implications — The study provides useful information to researchers as well as practitioners enabling them to understand the effectiveness of Design Sprint in real-world contexts. The data from this research can be used to further investigate the topic of Design Sprint in the literature while providing practitioners with insights to help them decide in which contexts it would be best to deploy Design Sprint and gain internal support for using Design Sprint. Originality/Value — This is the first qualitative research that investigates the effectiveness of Design Sprint and academically validates its claims of value. Keywords — Design Sprint, product development, innovation, process Y1 - 2019 ER - TY - THES A1 - Bolaji, Elizabeth Oluwatobi T1 - User Involvement in FinTech Product Design N2 - This thesis investigates the user involvement practices in the product design process of FinTech UX practitioners mainly located in Nigeria. The study aims to identify the design activities used to involve users, the methods the practitioners used, the challenges they faced, and how they measured the impact of these activities. The study used an online survey research method to collect quantitative and qualitative data from 62 respondents. Results from the survey show that user involvement is mainly done during testing. However, it is less prevalent during the software design activity. Some of the significant challenges reported are user recruitment, user participation, user requests, budget, and time constraints. A mix of direct and indirect user involvement methods were also reported, such as surveys, observational techniques, user interviews, data analytic tools, user communities, and social media platforms. To measure the impact of user involvement, the practitioners mainly depended on analytical data, user feedback, and reviews. For most of the practitioners, user involvement is not well established in their design process possibly due to the project-related, user-related, or organizational-related constraints reported in this study. KW - Fintech KW - Product design KW - User involvement KW - Human centred design KW - Financial technology product Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:hbz:1383-opus4-13809 ER - TY - THES A1 - Adebiyi, Akinloluwa Iyanu T1 - Combining User Experience Design & Service Design: Theory meets Practice N2 - This thesis explores how UXD and SD can work together more seamlessly in practice. UXD and SD have a lot of similarities. This has led to confusion around the borders and overlaps of both fields. Therefore researchers called for more studies to clarify their relationship. Most recent studies suggested diverting from polishing single touchpoints; some studies and focussing on end-to-end journey and the customer. The thesis examines the underlying activities of existing theoretical approaches and the challenges of combining UXD and SD with the help of thematic analysis. A set of proposed strategies were developed based on a survey on current practices and challenges with practitioners and thematic analysis. As a result, the thesis presents four strategies that design teams can incorporate into their processes. The idea is to promote the creation of better quality products and services by harnessing the benefits of both fields. The key point was that these concepts are still broad and should be simplified into leaner modes that can be applied in daily activities. KW - User experience design KW - Service design KW - Design practice KW - Persona Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:hbz:1383-opus4-16337 ER - TY - THES A1 - Mou, Youness T1 - A Hybrid Strategy Using Human Centered Design and Agile Methodologies to Develop an Error Taxonomy to Assist Businesses in Avoiding and Repairing Software Issues N2 - Companies often utilize error taxonomies to handle software problems. Agile and scrum-based software engineering procedures leverage software testing and quality management to find, repair, and prevent functional faults. Taxonomies help programmers see patterns and solve comparable challenges. Usability engineering-based taxonomies emphasize the use of HCD approaches to discover and classify usability concerns across the software development life cycle. Software and usability engineering have pros and cons. This thesis presents a hybrid software challenge taxonomy to bridge these two areas. The research project aims to build a new hybrid error classification system for identifying and correcting software errors at their source, leading to more user-centric software. Software engineering taxonomies and design issues are investigated. The weaknesses of any research taxonomy are then evaluated against one that fits some of this thesis' needs. User interviews and contextual inquiry are used to uncover software faults. The results of the study showed that poor usability, a mediocre user interface, workflow issues, and poor user experience caused most non-technical problems. Non-functional faults may have created many technical challenges. Six out of ten company professionals who participated in a questionnaire and interview mistook "usability" for "user experience." Usability and user experience were valued by two out of ten specialists, but they were misunderstood, expensive, and time-consuming premium approaches, and thus not included in the software development lifecycle. Ignoring non-functional issues may have caused numerous software failures. Scrum and agile used alone may also be to blame for many of the software issues uncovered in this thesis project. KW - Usability engineering KW - Software engineering KW - Agile KW - Scrum KW - Error taxonomy KW - HCD KW - Hybrid error taxonomy approach KW - Software applications Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:hbz:1383-opus4-16355 ER - TY - THES A1 - Parayil Sivan, Kavya T1 - Design and Evaluation of a Mobile Application to Support Autistic Passengers in Air Travel. From Identifying User Needs to Assessing its Effectiveness in Reducing Anxiety and Enhancing Travel Preparedness N2 - Air travel can present significant accessibility barriers for autistic travellers. This study examined the needs, requirements, and challenges experienced by level 1 and level 2 autistic travellers during air travel and evaluated the effectiveness of a user-centred mobile application in reducing anxiety, improving their travel preparedness, and creating a more predictable air travel experience. A mixed-methods approach was employed for the study. In the beginning, an online survey with 35 participants (21 autistic individuals and 14 support persons) was conducted to understand the need, requirement and challenges of the autistic participants. Findings from the survey showed generally low satisfaction among autistic travellers who has prior air travel experience. The major challenges were related to unpredictability, sensory overstimulation, complex airport procedures, difficulty finding sensory-friendly spaces, and in-flight discomforts. Based on the insights from the survey, a high-fidelity mobile application prototype was designed to work across different airlines and airports providing real-time flight updates, airport and airline specific accessibility information, navigation support, communication cards, and travel checklists. The prototype was then evaluated with 5 autistic participants through a moderated remote usability test followed by a post-test interview and questionnaire. The results showed that features such as real-time flight updates, travel checklists, navigation support, and accessibility information were effective and perceived as helpful in reducing anxiety and increasing preparedness but some discoverability issues were identified in the prototype showing the need to iterate it. Overall, the findings suggest that the application is functionally effective and usable but only partially effective in improving overall travel experience as external environmental factors like airport procedures, in-flight discomforts are beyond the scope of the application. The study also highlights that a thoughtfully designed mobile application can partially support autistic travellers by improving the predictability and helping them prepare for the journey. This study contributes to the growing research on accessibility for autistic individuals by examining air travel challenges and evaluating a user-centred mobile application. KW - Autism spectrum disorder KW - Air travel accessibility KW - User centred design KW - Mobile application KW - Usability evaluation KW - Air travel Y1 - 2026 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:hbz:1383-opus4-23492 ER -