PhD Oral Exam - Hamed Ayatollahzadeh Shirazi, Information and Systems Engineering

When studying for a doctoral degree (PhD), candidates submit a thesis that provides a critical review of the current state of knowledge of the thesis subject as well as the student’s own contributions to the subject. The distinguishing criterion of doctoral graduate research is a significant and original contribution to knowledge.

Once accepted, the candidate presents the thesis orally. This oral exam is open to the public.

Abstract

Human-centered design (HCD) aims to ground design in an understanding of users, yet its implementation encounters barriers. Existing studies document these barriers in particular settings but do not explain their recurrence, structural relations, or how implementation can be improved. This thesis addresses these gaps using Designics as the theoretical foundation, TASKS as the analytical framework, and Environment-Based Design (EBD) as the methodology.

A systematic review of 374 studies produced 103 barrier statements by comparing the affect, skills, knowledge, and environmental resource (ASK+R) conditions reported for four HCD workloads derived from ISO 9241-210 with each workload’s ideal ASK+R profile. Resource barriers accounted for 77.4% of supporting paper-occurrences, although knowledge and emotion barriers were more extensive in producing design solutions. Through Designics, HCD is interpreted as an idealized perception instrument introduced to resolve a prior design conflict. When its perceptual demands exceed available capability and environmental resources, resulting shortfalls constitute secondary conflicts, an account consistent with the synthesized evidence.

The secondary conflicts were reformulated as conflict interactions and modeled in an EBD-based Interaction Dependency Network. The analysis identified 98 dependency relations and 108 complete paths; Search Path Count prioritization retained 28 as structurally salient. Knowledge-category conflict interactions were prominent in transitional positions, a tendency that persisted under perturbation.

Applying EBD to one prioritized path yielded three candidate improvement directions concerning information and knowledge about users. These were assessed for perceptual yield, capability fit, and recursive consequence, and informed five Designics-oriented principles for HCD implementation. All improvement outputs are analytically derived and await empirical evaluation.