Inspired by "A Work-Centered Approach to System User-Evaluation" by Roth (2021) and UX design principles, this thesis project aims to determine the usability levels of the ASU Class Search System to locate pain points and provide appropriate recommendations. The ASU class search system allows students to complete the necessary tasks, but the user experience is frustrating due to unnecessary scrolling, clicking, and searching. The user evaluation confirms that some improvements could be made to the class search system to improve its utility and usability. The main improvements suggested in this work address filter and navigation inconsistencies, an overwhelming amount of scroll real estate, minor design inconsistencies, minor jargon and content inconsistencies, scroll stoppers, and guide support.

I compared scores of situational awareness to mission performance scores from the Human-Robot Interaction Lab at the ASU campus. This study uses Roblox in a virtual environment to simulate a search and rescue environment. Higher situational awareness was seen to be positively correlated with mission performance scores, but the study is yet to be complete.

Our project is to create a simplified, portable, modular electrocardiogram known as ECG/EKG. Most medical facilities, including hospitals, clinics, and skilled nursing facilities, still rely on traditional 12-lead EKG equipment consisting of a large cart with long 10 wires. These wires can be a pain to constantly detangle and rearrange to determine a person’s heart conditions. This creates issues in fast paced scenarios such as when a patient is experiencing a heart attack and needs an EKG stat. Additionally, the current technology can be somewhat unreliable at determining heart conditions, causing providers to request multiple EKG’s for patients. With our improved versatile EKG, we can help solve these issues and implement additional outpatient use with its portable features. This can be done by remotely monitoring heart conditions during activities such as exercise, sleep, or stressful events, without worrying about wire disturbance.

Patient identification is becoming more crucially important, particularly as healthcare is becoming more data based and automated. Patient misidentification can cause a series of issues that affect patient safety and the quality of care, including increased time and money from the medical institution. Additionally, with the lack of standardization for identifying patients, interoperability is limited and Health Information Exchange cannot be optimized, One partial solution to the problem would be the implementation of a Unique Patient Identifier system; however, the United States has had some controversy over the implementation of such as system in the past as Congress prohibited any funding from going towards a UPI system in 1998 after HIPAA introduced a Unique Patient Identifier mandate in 1996. However, with more than 2 decades passing since the Congressional ban, the general American perception of Unique Patient Identifiers is not well known. This study attempts to answer the question of the current American perception of the implementation of a UPI system through an informational survey that induces critical thinking when answering qualitative questions with supportive quantitative questions. Participants were generally in favor of the implementation of a UPI system, and through a Chi-square analysis, it was shown that there was an association between knowledge learned about Unique Patient Identifiers in relation to the current identification system and developing a positive perception towards UPI implementation; however, this study cannot be generalized to the public as the sample size was not large enough and was not representative of the entire population. Still, future research should be conducted in relation to this subject as UPIs are a potential solution to our current “identity crisis”.

The intent of this project was to design, build, and test a female-intended vibrator that incorporates elements of haptic feedback, biomimicry, and/or micro robotics. Device development was based on human-centered user design elements and the study of physiological arousal, as sexuality and sexual functioning are a part of a human’s overall assessment of health and well-being. The thesis sought to fill the gap that prevents data collection of a female entire sexual response from initial arousal to final orgasm.

Online learning has been more prevalent since the rapid increase of the technology field, this paper examines if the interactivity of an online learning website can affect learning, usability, and time spent interacting. Participants were collected from Amazon Mechanical Turk, and they were compensated $1.00 for their time. 39 participants received one of three online learning conditions on the ideal gas law with varying levels of interactivity (video, simulation, quiz). The participants took a pretest, interacted with their condition for a set time, then completed a posttest and a usability survey. An ANOVA was conducted on time, usability, and posttest transfer scores. A repeated measures ANOVA was conducted on pretest and posttest recall scores. There was no significance found for learning, usability, or time spent interacting with the online learning platform. Further studies should consider exposing participants to learning materials for longer periods of time.

This paper explores the technological systems used by Arizona State University’s Housing department during the course of 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 school years at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic which struck the state of Arizona. The COVID-19 epidemic is the largest pandemic in recent memory. It has affected all walks of life, from social economic damages, widespread panic and the rise of civil unrest. One of the most profound effects from this generation of students is the impact it has had in all levels of education from kindergarten to graduate school. The American education system has been heavily affected since the pandemic first started. Due to the lockdowns, traditional education practices such as in-person classrooms, class labs, and even the psychological impact of physical distancing has affected students’ educational experiences. This disruption has also greatly affected our college system. In response to problems such as the lockdowns, slow rate of infections per student, many colleges have made extensive use of technological aids, substitutes, and systems to combat the damage done to the education system. This resulted in switching of in-person course work to online based assignments and tests. The colleges response to the pandemic has not only been online, but in-person as well. ASU has adopted a variety of systems to track its students’ and employees’ health statuses. This is done via the use of the Daily Heath Check System (an application used by ASU to track the health of both students and faculty), and the use of randomized testing. This enabled the tracking and monitoring of the rate of infections within the ASU community. ASU has also installed hand sanitizer machines in every building as well as providing a supply of health and safety equipment to necessary staff. These systems, products, and preventative practices have been put into place for the protection of not only the students but employees of ASU. However, one key consideration about the adoption of these measures, is whether or not they are truly effective. One of the areas explored are the problems with the adoption of these systems and how they were implemented. Meaning that these systems adopted resulted in either less then successful outcomes or causing student displeasure towards the systems that were implemented.

Community-based policing and proactive policing are at the forefront of America’s efforts to improve policing. Research shows that data-driven policing, such as focusing efforts on crime hot spots, reduces crime not only in a certain area but in the overall community as well. However, each department may implement data-driven policing differently depending on the unique features of the department. To examine this, interviews and observations were conducted of the Arizona State University Police Department and the Scottsdale Police Department. The results suggest that university police and municipality police have different methods, strategies, and information flow when recognizing and responding to hot spots. On this basis, police departments should develop a plan tailored to their community. Further research is needed to determine how police departments can respond to hot spots using specific community traits.

Diabetes education has shown to improve diabetes health markers but there is a need for it to be more accessible Diabetes education in the form of Diabetes Self Education and Management (DSMES) could potentially utilize IT technologies, which have shown promise as a more accessible way to access healthcare and manage health. However, both these methods have not been optimized for the diverse population in the US. In particular, Chinese Americans are a growing minority group in America whose health needs such as diabetes type 2 are growing. As a cultural group, Chinese Americans have cultural characteristics that have been identified in the literature, which should be accounted for in the design of a technology-enabled DSMES program. This qualitative study aims to understand what ways Chinese Americans with type 2 diabetes are learning about and managing diabetes, as well as their technology usage. Themes such as cultural food importance, family roles, information acquisition, and attitudes and motivation emerged. Themes motivated the design implications and recommendations such as creating a more specified, culturally tailored Chinese food menu, integrated family features, and trackers with increased feedback. More research should be conducted to test the effectiveness of including these features in a technology-enabled DSMES program.