| dc.description.abstract | The goal of this thesis in general was to create a data visualization prototype for
a mobile application called RevmaRApp which is targeted towards the use by
people with rheumatoid arthritis conditions. The issues of accessibility of mobile
applications and especially mHealth [sic](Jovanov, 2006) are raised in this thesis
to represent a large section of the population who have impairments. The thesis
targets the use of universal design techniques and standards to create
accessible mobile applications. The literature review has suggested that there is
very small amount of research in the field of accessible design and development
of mobile applications. Therefore, this thesis focused on the efficiency of
customization options such as change of user interface elements in terms of
color, size etc. to make a mobile application more accessible. Another important
aspect is the applicability and availability of data sorting mechanism in the mobile
application and its effects on accessibility and universal design as well as
usability.
This thesis consisted of a prototype development phase and evaluation phase.
These two phases were iterative in nature since the main development
methodology was two-step methodology (unified methodology) (Billi et al., 2010)
which was combined with iterative cycles such as Scrum. The evaluation strategy
was also included in the initial phase of the thesis. Heuristic evaluation methods
(Vetere, Howard, Pedell, & Balbo, 2003) were utilized to provide expert opinions
combined with user testing information provided by the Norwegian Computing
Center. An experiment was also conducted at the later stage of the thesis to
understand the benefits and drawbacks of both prototypes and utilize this
knowledge for future improvements.
The first deliverable of this thesis was a universally designed prototype for data
visualization. The second deliverable of this thesis was the results from the
evaluations and experiment. The results showed that the new prototype was
more accessible and easy to understand as well as use than old prototype. The
data visualization technique used in the new prototype was easier to extract required data and review them as well. An experiment was conducted using
Cambridge simulation gloves to simulate the affects of arthritis on hands and
wrists using eighteen participants. The results from the experiment showed that
for a majority of tasks for the new prototype was discovered to be significantly
better than the old prototype. A semi-structured interview conducted after the
experiment also reinforced the finding of the experiment through explanations
and descriptions from the participants which shed some light on their preference
for new prototype over the old one. However, there are still some improvements
which are necessary to create a more accessible prototype. There are still some
screen reader compatibility issues for the new prototype which needs further
improvements, there are several issues regarding the multimodal means of
communication such as speech input, use of tactile keyboard etc. Although the
results from the experiment showed that the new prototype had significant
benefits over the old one, it is still felt necessary that the use of real users along
with a larger number of participants can provide more concrete evidence. | en_US |
