Doctoral Thesis Defense: Reem Alnanih

Speaker: Reem Alnanih

Supervisors: Drs. O. Ormandjieva,

Examining Committee: Drs. A. Agarwal, P. Grogono, S. Mudur, J.-M. Desharnais, R. Dssouli

(Chair)

Title: CON-INFO: A Context-based Methodology for Designing and Assessing the Quality of Adaptable MUIs in Healthcare Applications

Date: Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Time: 12:00 p.m.

Place: EV 1.162

ABSTRACT

Mobile technology is an integral part of the modern healthcare environment. The mobile user interface (MUI) serves as the bridge between the application and healthcare professionals. It is important that the physician be able to easily express his needs on the MUI and correctly interpret the information displayed. However, there are many challenges that face the designer in designing and developing context-sensitive MUIs in this environment. The adaptability of the MUI is considered to be one of the most important issues to address. 

In this thesis, we propose a new methodology for designing a context-based adaptable MUI for healthcare applications. This methodology offers a new approach to automated MUI context adaptation, and provides a solution for both the provider (designer) of the healthcare application and the consumer (physician). 

The proposed methodology is based on research contributions in four areas: (1) a new quality-in-use measurement model for evaluation purposes; (2) user stereotype modeling with a set of context descriptors, which formalize the domain expertise of the users; (3) context information modeling; and (4) use of the decision table technique to adapt the MUI features based on the context and the user stereotypes. The results of the formal studies reveal that our CON-INFO methodology for designing an adaptable MUI led to improvements to the current application and allowed researchers to test successive versions of the ‘final’ application.