Books by Gülşen Töre Yargın
Papers by Gülşen Töre Yargın
Behaviour and Information Technology, 2022
Virtual Assistants (VAs) are at the forefront of state-of-the-art interactions for smart technolo... more Virtual Assistants (VAs) are at the forefront of state-of-the-art interactions for smart technologies at home. The prospective users’ prior to use perception of such assistants is crucial to discover new possibilities for design and to be able to elicit positive user experiences. However, this has not been investigated in detail within family life in emerging contexts though demand for their ownership increases. This study scrutinises potential users’ initial perceptions about the prospective and anticipated uses of VAs within family life in Turkey, as an emerging context, through in-depth interviews with 15 families. During the interviews, the participant families watched publicly available videos of four different VAs to elicit their perceptions. Results reveal that prospective users’ perceptions and expectations focus heavily on VAs’ possible effects on the family well-being, besides the concerns about usability and issues related to privacy, safety, and security. While proposing VAs for home use in such an emerging market, their potential positive effects on the family well-being should be promoted whereas perceived negative effects should be resolved by considering smartness, personality and trust dimensions. The study reveals relationships between these dimensions and perceptions of and expectations about VA use in home context in an emerging market.
METU JOURNAL OF THE FACULTY OF ARCHITECTURE, 2017
Unit is a non-profit research unit which carries out user-centred design research studies. For mo... more Unit is a non-profit research unit which carries out user-centred design research studies. For more information about the unit, please visit utest.metu.edu.tr.
Fikir üretme ve ilham arama aktivitelerini içeren tasarımın ilk aşamaları, henüz deneyim kazanmam... more Fikir üretme ve ilham arama aktivitelerini içeren tasarımın ilk aşamaları, henüz deneyim kazanmamış tasarım öğrencisi için karmaşık ve zor bir süreçtir. Bu aşamada öğrencinin eğitimciler tarafından yönlendirilmesi çok önemlidir. Alanda, fikir geliştirmeye yönelik birçok yöntem ve yönlendirme bulunsa da bunların eğitimde etkili bir şekilde uygulayabilmeleri için, öğrencilerin bunları nasıl kullandığı ve algıladığının anlaşılması ve fikir üretme sürecine dair olumlu ve olumsuz deneyimlerinin öğrenilmesi gereklidir. Bu doğrultuda çalışma, stüdyo eğitiminde fikir üretme aşamasında öğrencilerin edindikleri bilgi ve deneyimlerin ve geliştirdikleri pratiklerin bu sürece olan katkısını öğrencilerin gözünden anlamayı amaçlamaktadır. Bu sayede, tasarımın başlangıç aşamalarının belirsizlik barındıran yapısı ile ilgili eğitimcilere ve eğitim müfredatına yol gösterici içgörüler oluşturulması hedeflenmiştir. Bu amaç doğrultusunda ODTÜ Endüstri Ürünleri Tasarımı Bölümünde [1] eğitimini sürdüren dört üçüncü sınıf ve dört dördüncü sınıf olmak üzere sekiz lisans öğrencisi ile, öğrencilerin daha önce gerçekleştirdikleri ikişer projeyi temel alarak, projelerdeki fikir üretme yaklaşımlarına ve deneyimledikleri problemlere odaklı yarı yapılandırılmış görüşmeler gerçekleştirdik. Görüşmeler esnasında, öğrencilerin stüdyo eğitiminde karşılaştıkları ve bilinçli olarak kullandıkları araçların yanı sıra, bilinçsiz olarak sürece katkısı olan ilham kaynaklarının da izini sürmeyi amaçladık. Araştırma sonuçlarına göre, öğrenciler fikir üretimine öncü olarak bilgi ve içgörü edinebilecekleri yöntemleri tercih ediyor, tasarım iş tanımının (design brief) özümsenmesine önem veriyor ve fikir üretme yöntemlerinin tasarım sürecinde doğru zamanda kullanılmasını bekliyorlar. Sonuçlar doğrultusunda, görsel kaynakların saplanmaya neden olmadan yaratıcılığı destekleyici bir şekilde kullanımı, özgünlük tanımı ve kullanılan kaynakların güvenilirliği gibi konularda, öğrencilere eğitimciler tarafından yönlendirmeler yapılması önerilmektedir. Bunların yanı sıra, öğrenciler eğitimcilerin yönlendirmelerini ve planlı olarak yapılandırılmış eğitim müfredatını yararlı bulsalar da genel yaklaşım ve arzu, eğitim sürecinde ilk aşamalarda teorik bilgilerin edinildiği sistematik bir eğitim almak, daha sonraki aşamalardaysa kendi pratiklerini gerçekleştirebilecekleri daha esnek bir eğitim sürecine geçiş yapmak yönündedir. Bu çalışma, ele aldığı kısıtlı katılımcı sayısı ile odak grubunun yaklaşımlarıyla ilgili öngörü oluşturma amacını taşıyan bir ön çalışma niteliğindedir.
This study investigates the emerging effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the user experience rese... more This study investigates the emerging effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the user experience research (UXR) practices by a systematic review of the grey literature focusing on remote UXR experiences. We reviewed 49 selected blog posts which share content about post-pandemic UXR experiences, and subjected them to content analysis. The findings show that the majority of the online discussions of the UXR community evolve around the types and methods of research with an apparent focus on moderated user research and user interviews. Equally common, step-by-step research methodology has been under scrutiny by the UXR professionals, such as concerns and practical tips regarding how research is planned, conducted, how findings are analysed and insights are generated based on the specific conditions of the pandemic. Other findings include debates and discussions about remote collaboration, trustworthiness of the research, wellbeing and empathy for others, and opportunities of remote UXR duri...
Proceedings of the 2011 Conference on Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces - DPPI '11, 2011
International Journal of Technology and Design Education, 2021
The rapid growth of the user experience (UX) field has brought efforts to meet the increasing dem... more The rapid growth of the user experience (UX) field has brought efforts to meet the increasing demand for specialists by welcoming professionals from diverse disciplines, including industrial design (ID). UX field offers ID graduates extended professional possibilities, potentially appeasing the challenging conditions of the ID job market in Turkey. Although there are some educational efforts on getting prepared for a career in UX, how ID students perceive such a career path has not been investigated. For this purpose, this paper presents a survey study conducted with senior ID students to understand their perspectives regarding the likelihood of a career in UX. The findings outline the extent and reasons of their interest in UX, benefits of their educational background, and perceived readiness and individual efforts towards building a UX career. We discuss the potentials of ID background for UX, and present implications for design education and practice to better prepare students for a career in UX.
Design Studies , Sep 2018
Töre Yargın, G., Moroşanu Firth, R., and Crilly, N., User requirements for analogical design supp... more Töre Yargın, G., Moroşanu Firth, R., and Crilly, N., User requirements for analogical design support tools: Learning from practitioners of bio-inspired design, Design Studies (2017), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2017.11.006
When designers develop biologically-inspired design (BID) solutions, they are engaging in a process of analogical design. Software tools have been developed to support analogical design processes, presenting designers with information to help in the construction of useful analogies. However, the requirements for such tools have not been explicitly informed by accounts of practitioners' experiences. To address this, interviews were conducted with 14 expert practitioners in BID to understand how they find and apply cross-domain analogies. Three main themes emerged from the analysis: (1) the skill sets of individual practitioners; (2) the ways they work as part of an interdisciplinary team; and (3) their orientations to biology. These themes present opportunities and challenges for developing analogical design support tools.
METU Journal of the Faculty of Architecture
Design activity can be hindered by several communication barriers that exist between the designer... more Design activity can be hindered by several communication barriers that exist between the designer and other stakeholders. To overcome these barriers, designers can utilise user-research outputs. In this regard, designers look to user-research results to inspire decisions by providing interpretable outputs, to guide decisions by pointing out possible directions and supporting their arguments and providing justification for their decisions for the persuasion of others. These impacts can be achieved if user research findings are communicated effectively to designers. In this paper, an interactive information system is introduced that has been developed for delivery of the results of user research. The core function of the system is to provide inspiration and guidance to designer, while also assisting them in justifying their decisions. After presenting such a system, the aim is to discuss the requirements for communication of user research that can be considered while designing future communication media. Positive feedback has been received from the collaborating firm, which used the system, regarding how the system provides guidance through successful conveyance of multi-dimensional data.
Artificial intelligence for engineering design analysis and manufacturing, 2015
Töre Yargın, Gülşen and Nathan Crilly. "Information and interaction requirements for software too... more Töre Yargın, Gülşen and Nathan Crilly. "Information and interaction requirements for software tools supporting analogical design." Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing 29.02 (2015): 203-214.
One mode of creative design is for designers to draw analogies that connect the design domain (e.g., a mechanical device) to some other domain from which inspiration is drawn (e.g., a biological system). The identification and application of analogies can be supported by software tools that store, structure, present, or propose source domain stimuli from which such analogies might be constructed. For these tools to be effective and not impact the design process in negative ways, they must fit well with the information and interaction needs of their users. However, the user requirements for these tools are seldom explicitly discussed. Furthermore, the literature that supports the identification of such requirements is distributed across a number of different domains, including those that address analogical design (especially biomimetics), creativity support tools, and human–computer interaction. The requirements that these literatures propose can be divided into those that relate to the information content that the tools provide (e.g., level of abstraction or mode of representation) and those that relate to the interaction qualities that the tools support (e.g., accessibility or shareability). Examining the relationships between these requirements suggests that tool developers should focus on satisfying the key requirements of open-endedness and accessibility while managing the conflicts between the other requirements. Attention to these requirements and the relationships between them promises to yield analogical design support tools that better permit designers to identify and apply source information in their creative work.
Conference Presentations by Gülşen Töre Yargın
The last two decades have given a new lease of life to the interpretation of users' interactions ... more The last two decades have given a new lease of life to the interpretation of users' interactions with products in human-computer interaction (HCI) and design domains. As a fast growing field, user experience (UX) brought along multifarious endeavors to frame this new field's definition and components. In the midst of this burgeoning field, many design related domains started to embrace the terms experience, services, and systems rather than a mere product focus. Academia's efforts to define what UX really is, influenced the practice by trying to investigate how UX can be put in action. Hence, growing demand from industry created a need for fully trained and specialized UX designers, turning the attention back again to academia. Although one of the most critical components of UX is research to understand users, their interactions, environments, and even the invisible factors; selecting and applying appropriate methods and tools are of high challenge due to concomitant dependence of experiences on subjective perceptions, contextual ties, and timewise conditions. In this light, we have devised a course to be integrated into design education at graduate level with the aim of teaching how to comprehend, interpret, and communicate UX to present input for the design process with a special approach. The particular approach is "modelling UX" because designing for experience and evaluating the success of design output, as well as bethinking scientific improvements and improving the practice, entail investigating experiences with opportune research methods. After delineating background for devising a UX course, this paper dwells on the objectives, content, structure, and outputs of our course; which would be a scaffolding resource for efforts to integrate UX research into design education.
This paper presents user experience (U) modelling as an educational goal, outlining and grounding... more This paper presents user experience (U) modelling as an educational goal, outlining and grounding on the growing need for trained U professionals and opportunities for expanding design expertise in this direction; and emphasises the importance of developing a sustained teaching agenda to address the requirements of the contemporary professional practice. After an overview of use and types of models in U , we offer U modelling as a teaching tool to equip design students with the theoretical and applied knowledge and skills relevant in user experience research (U) and design process. rom this point of view, we demonstrate how we utilised U modelling in graduate level industrial design education and illustrate examples from student works. We discuss applications of this approach by offering the use of modelling as a tool for analysing and communicating user experiences, as well as an apparatus to shape the process of transferring user insights into design implications.
DRS Learn X Design 2019: Insider Knowledge, 2019
This paper presents user experience (U) modelling as an educational goal, outlining and grounding... more This paper presents user experience (U) modelling as an educational goal, outlining and grounding on the growing need for trained U professionals and opportunities for expanding design expertise in this direction; and emphasises the importance of developing a sustained teaching agenda to address the requirements of the contemporary professional practice. After an overview of use and types of models in U , we offer U modelling as a teaching tool to equip design students with the theoretical and applied knowledge and skills relevant in user experience research (U) and design process. rom this point of view, we demonstrate how we utilised U modelling in graduate level industrial design education and illustrate examples from student works. We discuss applications of this approach by offering the use of modelling as a tool for analysing and communicating user experiences, as well as an apparatus to shape the process of transferring user insights into design implications.
It is commonly accepted that user research has crucial benefits for the design process including ... more It is commonly accepted that user research has crucial benefits for the design process including its contribution to innovation processes. In order to lead innovation through user research, besides the content of the research, it is important that the delivery should be done effectively so that design strategies that result in innovation can be adopted in the design process and the findings can guide designers to create novel outputs. This paper aims to discuss the requirements for user research delivery that aids in innovative design processes on the basis of an information system that is designed for communicating the findings of user research regarding automotive design.
Integration of technological features, such as navigation and information displays, automation of... more Integration of technological features, such as navigation and information displays, automation of manual controls and digitalization of displays, into the public bus can be promising in terms of providing solutions for the critical contextual problems of bus drivers, such as undesired interactions with passengers and increased cognitive workload caused by the necessity of checking time frequently for complying with the schedule. However, if these systems are not accepted by bus drivers, the solutions they provide become useless and they may even constitute critical threats for safety. Therefore, in this paper the aim is to investigate bus drivers' views towards technology integration in the bus, to provide technological functions, which correspond better to their needs. To achieve this aim, (1) drivers' attitudes towards general technology, (2) their attitudes towards current technology integration in the bus dashboard, and (3) degree of involvement with the current technological products were questioned with a structured questionnaire that was delivered to 30 respondents in interview format. The paper outlines the findings of the study by describing bus drivers' attitudes towards technology, identifying design features that lead to perception of technology in the dashboard, and making associations between the drivers' characteristics and their attitudes towards technology integration.
In studies regarding bus drivers' workstation design, physical and cognitive ergonomics related i... more In studies regarding bus drivers' workstation design, physical and cognitive ergonomics related issues of driving are handled widely. However in order to maintain well-being of bus drivers, emotional issues should also be taken into account.
In many of the design cases designers may not have the required knowledge about users' needs, and... more In many of the design cases designers may not have the required knowledge about users' needs, and it may be difficult to empathize with users. In order to meet the needs of users, designers should gain knowledge about them, and users can be consulted to elicit their tangible and emotional needs. However the users may have difficulties in expressing their needs or they may not be aware of them. This paper presents a method called user workshops, which investigates tangible and emotional user needs by letting them imagine and express a usage context and design problems, and to experience a concept development process.
Thesis by Gülşen Töre Yargın
iv I hereby declare that all information in this document has been obtained and presented in acco... more iv I hereby declare that all information in this document has been obtained and presented in accordance with academic rules and ethical conduct. I also declare that, as required by these rules and conduct, I have fully cited and referenced all material and results that are not original to this work. Name, Last name :
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Books by Gülşen Töre Yargın
Papers by Gülşen Töre Yargın
When designers develop biologically-inspired design (BID) solutions, they are engaging in a process of analogical design. Software tools have been developed to support analogical design processes, presenting designers with information to help in the construction of useful analogies. However, the requirements for such tools have not been explicitly informed by accounts of practitioners' experiences. To address this, interviews were conducted with 14 expert practitioners in BID to understand how they find and apply cross-domain analogies. Three main themes emerged from the analysis: (1) the skill sets of individual practitioners; (2) the ways they work as part of an interdisciplinary team; and (3) their orientations to biology. These themes present opportunities and challenges for developing analogical design support tools.
One mode of creative design is for designers to draw analogies that connect the design domain (e.g., a mechanical device) to some other domain from which inspiration is drawn (e.g., a biological system). The identification and application of analogies can be supported by software tools that store, structure, present, or propose source domain stimuli from which such analogies might be constructed. For these tools to be effective and not impact the design process in negative ways, they must fit well with the information and interaction needs of their users. However, the user requirements for these tools are seldom explicitly discussed. Furthermore, the literature that supports the identification of such requirements is distributed across a number of different domains, including those that address analogical design (especially biomimetics), creativity support tools, and human–computer interaction. The requirements that these literatures propose can be divided into those that relate to the information content that the tools provide (e.g., level of abstraction or mode of representation) and those that relate to the interaction qualities that the tools support (e.g., accessibility or shareability). Examining the relationships between these requirements suggests that tool developers should focus on satisfying the key requirements of open-endedness and accessibility while managing the conflicts between the other requirements. Attention to these requirements and the relationships between them promises to yield analogical design support tools that better permit designers to identify and apply source information in their creative work.
Conference Presentations by Gülşen Töre Yargın
Thesis by Gülşen Töre Yargın
When designers develop biologically-inspired design (BID) solutions, they are engaging in a process of analogical design. Software tools have been developed to support analogical design processes, presenting designers with information to help in the construction of useful analogies. However, the requirements for such tools have not been explicitly informed by accounts of practitioners' experiences. To address this, interviews were conducted with 14 expert practitioners in BID to understand how they find and apply cross-domain analogies. Three main themes emerged from the analysis: (1) the skill sets of individual practitioners; (2) the ways they work as part of an interdisciplinary team; and (3) their orientations to biology. These themes present opportunities and challenges for developing analogical design support tools.
One mode of creative design is for designers to draw analogies that connect the design domain (e.g., a mechanical device) to some other domain from which inspiration is drawn (e.g., a biological system). The identification and application of analogies can be supported by software tools that store, structure, present, or propose source domain stimuli from which such analogies might be constructed. For these tools to be effective and not impact the design process in negative ways, they must fit well with the information and interaction needs of their users. However, the user requirements for these tools are seldom explicitly discussed. Furthermore, the literature that supports the identification of such requirements is distributed across a number of different domains, including those that address analogical design (especially biomimetics), creativity support tools, and human–computer interaction. The requirements that these literatures propose can be divided into those that relate to the information content that the tools provide (e.g., level of abstraction or mode of representation) and those that relate to the interaction qualities that the tools support (e.g., accessibility or shareability). Examining the relationships between these requirements suggests that tool developers should focus on satisfying the key requirements of open-endedness and accessibility while managing the conflicts between the other requirements. Attention to these requirements and the relationships between them promises to yield analogical design support tools that better permit designers to identify and apply source information in their creative work.