Browsing by Author "Maunder, Andrew James"
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- ItemOpen AccessAssessing the suitability of user centric design methods when applied in a developing world context(2010) Maunder, Andrew James; Marsden, GaryThe application of information and communication technologies to development (ICT4Dev) is widely believed to have the potential to improve livelihoods in developing regions. Within the field of HCI, it is recognised that user-centred design (UCD) methodologies need to be applied if ICT4Dev activities are to yield locally appropriate technologies. However, there is no overarching methodology or framework for the application of UCD within 4Dev design initiatives. This thesis sets out to explore which UCD methods best enable designers to work successfully outside their own contexts, what challenges arise and how UCD methodologies can be developed to support ICT4Dev designers. Two field studies were conducted, applying two UCD methodologies: An empathic and a technology probing approach. In each case the author designed an artefact, evaluated it in situ and reflected on the suitability of the design methods, tools and techniques employed. The design environments were the rural Eastern Cape Province and the township of Khayelitsha near Cape Town, both in South Africa. An empathic approach was found to have two major shortcomings: It was unable to overcome significant communication challenges and, partly as a result, it failed to identify major design problems until very late in the process. The major benefit of technology probing was its open-ended nature, which fostered user engagement and participation and yielded valuable design inspiration for future modifications of the probe. However, the emergent scenarios of use in the case of a technology probe were heavily influenced by the nature of the technology itself. We thus conclude that technology probing, while it has a valuable place in the ICT4Dev design toolbox, should be deployed in tandem with other techniques to ensure that important livelihoods problems are not overlooked.
- ItemOpen AccessX-Switch: An Efficient Multi-User Multi-Language Web Application Server.(2010) Nyirenda, Mayumbo; Suleman, Hussein; Maunder, Andrew James; Van Rooyen, ReinhardtWeb applications are usually installed on and accessed through a Web server. For security reasons, these Web servers generally provide very few privileges to Web applications, defaulting to executing them in the realm of a guest account. In addition, performance often is a problem as Web applications may need to be reinitialised with each access. Various solutions have been designed to address these security and performance issues, mostly independently of one another, but most have been language or system-specific. The X-Switch system is proposed as an alternative Web application execution environment, with more secure user-based resource management, persistent application interpreters and support for arbitrary languages/interpreters. Thus it provides a general-purpose environment for developing and deploying Web applications. The X-Switch system’s experimental results demonstrated that it can achieve a high level of performance. Furthermore it was shown that X-Switch can provide functionality matching that of existing Web application servers but with the added benefit of multi-user support. Finally the X-Switch system showed that it is feasible to completely separate the deployment platform from the application code, thus ensuring that the developer does not need to modify his/her code to make it compatible with the deployment platform.