Virtual User Concept for

Inclusive Design

of Consumer Products and

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2nd International Conference of AEGIS,

29.11.11 – 30.11.11, Brussels

of Consumer Products and

User Interfaces

Pierre T. Kirisci, University Bremen

BIK - Institute for Integrated ProductDevelopment

VICON Consortium

Project partners

¤ Universität Bremen (Germany)

¤ Fraunhofer FIT (Germany)

¤ DORO AB (Sweden)

ARCELIK (Turkey)

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¤ ARCELIK (Turkey)

¤ RNID - Royal National Institute for the Deaf (UK)

¤ NCBI - National Council for the Blind of Ireland (Ireland)

Project figures

¤ Start 1.1.2010

¤ Duration: 30 months

¤ Budget: 3.14 mio. €

¤ Funding by the European commission: 2.4 mio. €

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¤ Funding by the European commission: 2.4 mio. €

¤ Challenge 7. ICT for independent living, Inclusion & Participatory governance

¤ Objective ICT-2009.7.2 Accessible and Assistive ICT

¤ Small or medium-scale focused research project (STREP)

Introducing the Project - Motivation

¤ The needs of people with physical or sensory impairments are

generally not well considered when designing user interfaces (UIs)

for mainstream consumer products.

It is difficult for mainstream manufacturers to have a detailed

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¤ It is difficult for mainstream manufacturers to have a detailed

understanding of these needs and how to design for them.

¤ The audience for VICON are people who

have age-related (mild to moderate)

impairments (age-related hearing loss,

macular degeneration, etc.) rather than

those with profound impairments.

Introducing the Project – Vision

¤ The VICON vision is to support the development of accessible

consumer products by creating a virtual user model for use in

design and evaluation.

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¤ The virtual user model will accompany

the entire design process and support the entire design process and support

the client throughout, so that the needs

of this audience are addressed at

every stage of the development

process:

¤ Sketch,

¤ Design,

¤ Evaluation.

Introducing the Project - Challenge

¤ Number of functions to be controlled by User Interfaces has increased significantly

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VICON Concept

(Virtual User Concept) 7

Virtual User

Model (VUM)

Interact

Evaluate

Design

VIRTUAL WORLDSpecify

Real-Time

Accessibility

Needs

Evaluate

Inclusively Designed

Consumer Products

And User Interfaces

FeedForward

Interact

Integrate

REAL WORLD

VICON Approach8

¤ Supports Sketch phase by determining qualitative and quantitative user interface recommendations

¤ Supports design phase by linking product designs to model recommendations (design automation)

¤ Supports virtual evaluation and product tests by linking of context elements to existing digital human models

Thanks for listening!

Pierre Taner Kirisci

University Bremen

BIK - Institute for Integrated Product

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BIK - Institute for Integrated Product

Development

kir@biba.uni-bremen.de

www.vicon-project.eu

www.inclusiveproducts.eu

This research was conducted on behalf of the VICON project which is funded by the European Commission.