Background: Web-based patient education is increasingly offered to improve patients’ ability to learn, remember, and apply health information. Efficient organization, display, and structural design, that is, information architecture (IA), can support patients’ ability to independently use web-based patient education. However, the role of IA in the context of web-based patient education has not been examined systematically.

Objective: To support intervention designers in making informed choices that enhance patients’ learning, this paper describes a randomized experiment on the effects of IA on the effectiveness, use, and user experience of a patient education website and examines the theoretical mechanisms that explain these effects.

Methods: Middle-aged and older adults with self-reported hip or knee joint complaints were recruited to use and evaluate 1 of 3 patient education websites containing information on total joint replacement surgery. Each website contained the same textual content based on an existing leaflet but differed in the employed IA design (tunnel, hierarchical, or matrix design). Participants rated the websites on satisfaction, engagement, control, relevance, trust, and novelty and completed an objective knowledge test. Analyses of variance and structural equation modeling were used to examine the effects of IA and construct a theoretical model.

Results: We included 215 participants in our analysis. IA did not affect knowledge gain (P=.36) or overall satisfaction (P=.07) directly. However, tunnel (mean 3.22, SD 0.67) and matrix (mean 3.17, SD 0.69) architectures were found to provide more emotional support compared with hierarchical architectures (mean 2.86, SD 0.60; P=.002). Furthermore, increased perceptions of personal relevance in the tunnel IA (β=.18) were found to improve satisfaction (β=.17) indirectly. Increased perceptions of active control in the matrix IA (β=.11) also improved satisfaction (β=.27) indirectly. The final model of the IA effects explained 74.3% of the variance in satisfaction and 6.8% of the variance in knowledge and achieved excellent fit (χ217,215=14.7; P=.62; root mean square error of approximation=0.000; 95% CI [0.000-0.053]; comparative fit index=1.00; standardized root mean square residual=0.044).

Conclusions: IA has small but notable effects on users’ experiences with web-based health education interventions. Web-based patient education designers can employ tunnel IA designs to guide users through sequentially ordered content or matrix IA to offer users more control over navigation. Both improve user satisfaction by increasing user perceptions of relevance (tunnel) and active control (matrix). Although additional research is needed, hierarchical IA designs are currently not recommended, as hierarchical content is perceived as less supportive, engaging, and relevant, which may diminish the use and, in turn, the effect of the educational intervention.@en

The intensive care is a complex environment where nurses have to deal with more than 500 tasks a day, an administrative burden and an information overspill coming from a multitude of IT systems and colleagues. On top of that, a high rate of alarms is false and messages are not always relevant. These stressors have a large impact on patient safety and work satisfaction. In literature, multiple solutions are proposed to improve this situation. However, these research outcomes are not consistently implemented in the field, the solutions found are not generally accepted due to current hospital cultures and the usability of implemented solutions is often insufficient.

This project started with the assignment to design a dashboard for ICU nurses that would improve patient safety and work satisfaction. To reach that goal, a contextual research, based on contextmapping, was done, in which seven ICU nurses were interviewed about their workflow and information management. There, it came forward that improving effectiveness and efficiency, could improve work satisfaction and patient safety. To achieve this, collaboration and the feeling of having control of the situation had to be improved. This led to the design goal “Design a dashboard that increases the feeling of control and collaboration by showing timely and relevant information.”

To come to a design that fits the ICU environment, the appearance and interaction style was based on the general characteristics of an ICU nurse. The content of the dashboard was based on a co-creation session with ICU nurses, which also provided structure to the interface. To provide alert fatigue to occur, an alert philosophy was formulated that gives guidance to prioritizing the alerts and to visualizing the types of notifications.

This design was tested with six ICU nurses, with the aim to get insight in their opinions about the system and to formulate recommendations for further development. The results of this test show, that the nurses think this system is intuitive, easy to learn and has future potential to improve information provision and patient safety.

However, it has to further developed to conclude this with more certainty. For example, the interface of the dashboard has to be evaluated when it is used next to the current registration software, so it can be concluded whether the current design does justice to the dashboard’s main functionalities. Next to that, it is recommended to look into supporting communication in multidisciplinary teams by means of this ICU Dashboard.

It could be concluded that this project has provided a good foundation to reach the goal of New Compliance. It provided insight in the ICU context and proposed a design, which seems to be able to support the ICU nurses’ workflow. Not only is it a tool that helps nurses to locate specific information more quickly, it also gives insight in the activities of team members so that collaboration can run more smoothly. In short, the ICU Dashboard is a good start to improve patient safety and work satisfaction.

COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) is a lung disease that causes damage in the patients lung and results in energy and breathing problems. COPD patients often experience a decrease in their energy level. This decrease means they have to adjust their routine and habits and that can be a big challenge. In this graduation project the needs and challenges of COPD patients in regard to energy management are explored. The insights in the needs and challenges leads to a set of criteria. This set of criteria can be used to develop and evaluate e-health solutions that support COPD patients in energy management. Needs COPD patients have two general needs in regard to self-management: autonomy and security. They want to feel secure about their abilities and feel in control of their life. Challenges In order to adjust their routine and feel secure & autonomous the patients meets some challenges. Three groups, with a total of nine of challenges are defined based on interviews with patients. The three groups of challenges are: Keep focus on energy level and act if needed, Find new applicable routine, Put yourself in first place. Needs for support All the challenges of COPD patients lead to specific needs and needs for support. The needs for support are translated into criteria for e-health solution that help COPD patients with energy management. Criteria The result is a list of in total twenty validated criteria. The criteria can be used to evaluate concepts and when translated in a “how to.. “ question as guidens during ideation.

Nowadays, social interaction is often mediated by technology, which makes it possible for people to interact with each other when they are separated. However, most of these technologies target the interaction between 'weak ties' and they cannot support the naturalness and richness offered through face-to-face interaction. Recently, a new type of mediated social interaction technology, social VR, is opening new possibilities. Social VR technology allows users who are separated to interact with virtual representations of other people in shared virtual environments. These types of social VR technologies are believed to have the potential to create social interactions that are similar to face-to-face interaction.
Efforts are needed to understand how people experience interacting with others in social VR. What are the advantages of social VR that make it different from other social medias, and how can these be used to improve mediated social interaction. Regarding this knowledge gap, the problem defined in this project is to understand the impact of social VR on user experience during social interaction.

This project is divided into six parts: exploring a UX framework for social VR, understanding the photo sharing context, designing an evaluation methodology, evaluating user experience in an experiment, providing design recommendations and reflecting on the project.

In PART 1, the user experience framework of social VR is explored. Several relevant frameworks are selected and compared. These frameworks help us to create a common ground understanding of user experience in social VR.
In PART 2, user experience is explored in a specific scenario - photo sharing between two friends. Context mapping is used to understand the important dimensions of user experience. Three dimensions of experience are identified: Quality of interaction, Social meaning and Presence/immersion.
In PART3, an evaluation methodology is developed according to the research findings in PART 2. This methodology consists of a quantitative part and a qualitative part. For the quantitative part, a questionnaire is developed, based on a set of questions selected from related work. For the qualitative part, a semi-structured interview is designed.
In PART 4, the evaluation methodology from PART 3 is used in a user experience experiment. We compare the experience of photo sharing in Social VR with a Face-to-face situation and a Skype situation. The experiment results show that social VR provide good experience of social meaning as well as presence and immersion. But the quality of interaction needs to be improved.
In PART 5, design recommendations for social VR are proposed, based on the evaluation results from the experiment in PART 4.
In PART 6, reflections on the whole project are provided. Suggestions for future research are given.

The goal of the assignment was to:
Design a high-quality User Experience and User Interface for the Schluss personal data vault.

This user experience should be hands-on, transparent, intuitive and clear. The user interface should feel extremely private, secure and trusted, whilst containing all the data that Schluss users need or want to track.

In order to depict the user experience, a more practical deliverable is needed: 
A functional user interface prototype for the Schluss data vault.

What has been done? 
The design process consisted of three stages: 
1. Validate Schluss’ value propositions. 
2. Design the user interface. 
3. Evaluate and redesign the user interface. 


1. Validate value propositions
Before starting with the design, a value proposition validation has been done, for which four value propositions are distilled from information about Schluss, context and comparable services. These were the propositions:  
Schluss enables its users to...
... have a better ensured/protected privacy. 
... share data easily. 
... manage consent easily. 
... have all data correct for all data users easily. 

These values have all been validated positively with a survey, where the participants were first shown the different possibilities with Schluss.

2. Design the user interface
After validating that users see value in Schluss’ propositions, it was time to design a corresponding user interface. For the design Schluss has been separated into three core functionalities:
1. Logging in with Schluss at third party data users
2. Updating your information in the Schluss vault. 
3. Managing consent in a Schluss dashboard and receiving notifications about consent. 
Designs and functional prototypes are made for every functionality in the form of a Mobile Application and a Desktop Dashboard

3. Evaluate and redesign part of the user interface. 
The first functionality is evaluated. I think this is the most important part, because Schluss has yet to be introduced to consumers and this is the functionality that consumers see first. Most onboarding will happen through this functionality. This is the reason that this functionality - in this stage of Schluss - needed most attention.

Every year 550 children are diagnosed with a cancer in the Netherlands. Currently a new hospital is being built in Utrecht, the Prinses Maxima Centrum for child Oncology, this hospital will focus solely on paediatric oncology.

The families that deal with child cancer have to go to the hospital frequently and spend long days there. These days are filled with different appointments and treatments so there is a lot of waiting involved. These waiting times can make the parents feel stressed and the children feel anxious, this results in an elongated waiting experience.

In order to decrease the stress and anxiety the parents and children experience a system was created that provides the families with information and distraction. This system consists of an app for the parents and a basic wearable on a bracelet for the children. Furthermore, the system makes use of portals and patches which create an interactive environment. This system makes it possible for the families to receive notifications about waiting times and can be used to play a game, Parent and child can track each other and send messages to each other. The system gives the parents a sense of control and gives the children a sense of freedom and provides them both with a form of distraction.

This thesis presents an approach for 1) analyzing Human Machine Interfaces (HMI) for sub-sea robotic Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROV) 2) structurally redesigning its interface modules and 3) evaluating the resulting designs. The thesis exemplifies this process by redesigning the interface modules that pertain to the diagnosing of hardware failures of the propulsion systems of rock dumping ROVs. The redesign focused on providing the user with more situational awareness.