Virtual User Concept for Inclusive Design of Consumer Products and User Interfaces

Abstract

Many research projects have identified three major obstacles to a broad implementation of Design for All: lack of awareness among users, designers and suppliers, technical feasibility and commercial viability. Mainstream manufactures do not have a detailed understanding of the needs of people with disabilities. This paper presents an approach to use standards-based Virtual User Models that covers mild and moderate disabilities to support designers in understanding these needs. This approach consists of a virtual laboratory with three design phases to allow designers to plan and evaluate the user interfaces of their products. We review here the state of the art and present our Virtual User Model as a mixture of human and environment context.

Developing a semantic user and device modeling framework that supports UI adaptability of web 2.0 applications for people with special needs

“…Their particular impact on the application behavior or concrete interface rendering depends on the subsequent accumulation and interpretation by the adaptive system. For instance, [18] presents a virtual human model suitable to the development of products in CAD environments.…”

Supporting Inclusive Design of Mobile Devices with a Context Model

“…Fig. 3 provides an overview of the underlying concept -at first introduced in (Kirisci, Klein et al 2011) and (Mohamad, Velasco et al 2011) -emphasizing the interplay between the virtual and real world.…”