Device: Electricity Smart Meter
You are developing a electricity smart meter for use in the home to help households control their energy consumption.
The meter has to be installed by an electrician (does not have to be a power company employee), but then needs to be initialized by calling the power company to activate it.
Once installed, the homeowners/occupants can interact with the smart meter wirelessly via a mobile app to view their electricity consumption data.
If you feel that you need any additional information beyond the information provided above to complete the assignment, feel free to make assumptions. Ensure you list these assumptions in your submission document.
Assignment: Develop an ID plan
In this assignment, you will develop and ID plan by following the steps outlined below:
1. Identify the all the primary and secondary users of the electric smart meter. Also identify at least three tertiary users (i.e., stakeholders) of the electric smart meter.
2. Define the key product-related goal or task for each of the users you identified, (i.e., 1 goal per user.)
3. Write a user profile for your primary user that identifies the key relevant characteristics that might influence your product’s design
• See the last page in this document for a sample/template to use as a starting point. Feel free to expand or add other criteria as needed.
• If you have more than one primary user, just pick one.
4. Define the expected use environment for each user. Make sure to note any unique aspects of the use environment that could be an important consideration of your design.
5. Detail how you will gather needs and develop requirements (i.e., how will you conduct user research?)
• Include details such as: the techniques (e.g., interviews, field research) you will use for each type of user and how many users you will talk to/observe.
• In a nutshell, explain to me how you will become expert enough to effectively write the requirements.
6. Define how many design, prototyping, and evaluation (usability test) cycles you anticipate. Provide rationale to explain your thinking.
7. Define the 1-3 high-level usability goals, per each primary and secondary user, that you will use to evaluate your design
• Remember, your usability goal needs to contain the following aspects: Effectiveness, Efficiency, Safety, Utility.
• Example from this week’s lecture: “100% of all primary users able to input their current biomarkers accurately into the app to calculate their meal plan within 2 minutes.”
Submission
To submit your assignment, provide numbered responses to each of the numbered steps on the previous page in an electronic file.
For example:
1. <list your users>
2. <list the goals per user> 3. <provide the user profile> …and so on.
Save that file as a PDF and submit via Blackboard.
The assignment is due on Monday, 2/6 at 6PM.
Sample User Profile: Person with Diabetes
The primary intended users people with diabetes who require Basal insulin administration for the maintenance of normal glucose homeostasis.
The following personal characteristics are those that would or could affect interactions with device use.
• Age: users will range between 12 years to 65+ years
• Similar device experience: In general, users may have a range of previous experience with mobile medical applications. Users may also have a broad range of experience in managing diabetes such as interpreting BG measures in the context of other related variables including insulin administration.
• Specialized education or knowledge: All users are expected to have received training by their healthcare professional on taking insulin according to their healthcare professional’s prescribed instructions.
• Vision: Users may have a range of comorbid eye conditions and disease states which may result in functional vision impairment including retinopathy, color blindness, macular degeneration, cataracts, and glaucoma. In addition, aging populations undergo a variety of vision changes during their later years. These factors may impact several visual characteristics of a user interface including, but not limited to, visual acuity, visual accommodation (or focus), color detection, contrast detection, glare, illumination, motion perception, and useful field of view. Approximately 8% of users (mirroring the general US population) likely has some form of color deficient vision (colorblindness).
• Hearing: Physical damage and age-related hearing changes might influence a user’s interaction with the user interface
• Tactile Sensitivity: Tactile sensitivity is affected by diabetic neuropathy, which is expected to be common among users. Agerelated changes to a user’s haptics (or sense of touch) may influence use in various ways including, but not limited to, haptic control, proprioceptive perception, temperature perception, and/or vibration perception.
• Cognitive Abilities: Cognitive abilities tend to decline with advancing age and may result in a number of unique challenges with respect to older adult users. Users may be impacted by diabetes-related cognitive factors such as cognitive impairment and/or confusion caused by hypoglycemia.
• Mental and Emotional State: Patients might have diabetes-related distress. An individual’s concerns and diabetes selfmanagement tasks, which influence this distress, can vary and often change focus throughout the progression of the disease.
• Hand Size and Function: Users with diabetes often develop neuropathy and autoimmune arthritis (i.e., rheumatoid arthritis) in older age, which leads to weakness in the hands and may influence the ability to grip or hold mobile devices.
• Physical Dexterity, Flexibility and Coordination: Dexterity can be affected by neuropathy, which is expected to be a common comorbidity for users. Additionally, older users may experience dexterity and coordination decreases associated with age.
