* Starting from Need* Evolution of the Toyota Production System* Further Development* Genealogy of the Toyota Production System* The True Intention of the Ford System* Surviving the Low-Growth Period

Toyota production system : beyond large-scale production

Cognitive engineering

Brian Thompson is a Senior Nutrition Officer at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). FAO is an intergovernmental organization, it has 191 Member Nations, two associate members and one member organization, the European Union. As a knowledge organization, FAO creates and shares critical information about food, agriculture and natural resources in the form of global public goods. FAO plays a connector role, through identifying and working with different partners with established expertise, and facilitating a dialogue between those who have the knowledge and those who need it. By turning knowledge into action, FAO links the field to national, regional and global initiatives in a mutually reinforcing cycle. Its mandate is to raise levels of nutrition and standards of living. What is the size of the malnutrition problem and what regions are most affected? There are persistently high levels of undernutrition. Nearly 870 million people in the world go to bed hungry (1 in 8 people) according to the recently released report of The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2012 (SOFI) and 2 billion have some form of micronutrient malnutrition – this constitutes a crime against humanity and is a responsibility for all of us. Prevalence of undernourishment in developing countries has declined over the past two decades, from 23 to 15 percent. In terms of total numbers in 1990– 92, around 980 million individuals were estimated to be undernourished. The number dropped to 901 million in 1999– 2001, to 885 million in 2006–06 and to 852 million in 2007–09. The financial crisis, economic downturn, persistent food price volatility, drought and other repercussions of climate change since 2006–08 may have prevented any further significant improvements in the number of people who are undernourished in developing countries since then. Africa has by far the highest prevalence, at around 23 percent in 2010–12 but though it is down from what it was in 1990–92 (27 percent) the numbers have risen from 175 million to 239 million with nearly 20 million added in the past four years. In subSaharan Africa, the modest progress achieved in recent years up to 2007 was reversed, with hunger rising 2 percent per year since then. In Asia, both prevalence and numbers dropped over the same period from 24 percent (739 million) to 14 percent (563 million). Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) boasts the lowest rate of undernourishment (8 percent) among developing country regions but the rate of progress has slowed recently. Countries considered as leastdeveloped countries and lowincome economies have the highest prevalence rates of all around 30 percent but down from the 40 percent levels of twenty years ago.

Interview ラン・ラン

by J. Biggs and C. Tang, Maidenhead, England,
Open University Press, 2007, 360 pp., £29.99, ISBN-13: 978-0-335-22126-4

Teaching for quality learning at university

Context: In recent years, many usability evaluation methods (UEMs) have been employed to evaluate Web applications. However, many of these applications still do not meet most customers' usability expectations and many companies have folded as a result of not considering Web usability issues. No studies currently exist with regard to either the use of usability evaluation methods for the Web or the benefits they bring. Objective: The objective of this paper is to summarize the current knowledge that is available as regards the usability evaluation methods (UEMs) that have been employed to evaluate Web applications over the last 14years. Method: A systematic mapping study was performed to assess the UEMs that have been used by researchers to evaluate Web applications and their relation to the Web development process. Systematic mapping studies are useful for categorizing and summarizing the existing information concerning a research question in an unbiased manner. Results: The results show that around 39% of the papers reviewed reported the use of evaluation methods that had been specifically crafted for the Web. The results also show that the type of method most widely used was that of User Testing. The results identify several research gaps, such as the fact that around 90% of the studies applied evaluations during the implementation phase of the Web application development, which is the most costly phase in which to perform changes. A list of the UEMs that were found is also provided in order to guide novice usability practitioners. Conclusions: From an initial set of 2703 papers, a total of 206 research papers were selected for the mapping study. The results obtained allowed us to reach conclusions concerning the state-of-the-art of UEMs for evaluating Web applications. This allowed us to identify several research gaps, which subsequently provided us with a framework in which new research activities can be more appropriately positioned, and from which useful information for novice usability practitioners can be extracted.

Usability evaluation methods for the web: A systematic mapping study

http://kth.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:527675/FULLTEXT01.pdf

Heuristic evaluation: Comparing ways of finding and reporting usability problems

Agile software development processes are becoming more common, but this does not mean that the user perspective in the development is catered for. It has its challenges to integrate the users’ aspects in Scrum projects in practice. In order to better understand these challenges we have interviewed IT professionals using Scrum focusing on four different areas: responsibility for the user perspective, emphasis on usability and user experience through documentation, usability activities with users and the organisational and contextual settings for emphasizing the user perspective. Results show that the responsibility for the user perspective is unclear in Scrum projects, and that often the user perspective is neither discussed nor described in the projects. However, the user perspective is often present through informal feedback used to understand the context of use and inform design for example. Finally the paper presents implications for working with the user perspective in Scrum projects.

/pdf/existing-but-not-explicit-the-user-perspective-in-scrum-3m5vpf0j4g.pdf

Existing but not explicit - The user perspective in scrum projects in practice

Two project management approaches, Agile and Lean, have increasingly been adopted in recent years for software development. Meanwhile, in the field of human–computer interaction (HCI), user experience (UX) has become central in research and practice. The new hybrids between the two fields—Agile UX and Lean UX—were born a few years ago. As Agile, Lean, and UX have different principles and practices, one can query whether the couplings are well justified and whether Agile or Lean is more compatible with UX work. We have conducted a conceptual analysis and tended to conclude that Lean instantiated as Kanban fits UX work better than Agile instantiated as Scrum. To explore further our claim, we performed a secondary data analysis of 10 semistructured interviews with practitioners working with Scrum and Kanban in different sectors (Study 1). This study enabled us to gain insights into the applications of the two processes in real-life cases, their strengths and weaknesses, and factors influencing the practicali...

Whose Experience Do We Care About? Analysis of the Fitness of Scrum and Kanban to User Experience

The main features of the Scrum process are intense communication between different stakeholders, and rapid feedback based on regular delivery of working software. The integration of traditional use...

Informal feedback rather than performance measurements – user-centred evaluation in Scrum projects

In this paper a study on a web based tool is described that is used to keep track of attendance and work schedules by employees and managers in large companies. Ten users particpated in a think aloud test measuring the usability of a new version of the software and the user experience was measured before and after each user test. The user experience results show that the group of questions that measure the personal growth of the user got the lowest scores for this product, but pragmatic attributes, hedonic identification and attraction got much higher scores. It is not surprising that pragmatic issues get high scores for a task oriented software like this one, but it is an interesting result that the users value highly the attraction and hedonic identification. Author Keywords User experience, usability, think-aloud, user testing.

/pdf/measuring-the-user-experience-of-a-task-oriented-software-4375ulh5sa.pdf

Marta Larusdottir

Papers

Heuristic evaluation: Comparing ways of finding and reporting usability problems

Existing but not explicit - The user perspective in scrum projects in practice

Whose Experience Do We Care About? Analysis of the Fitness of Scrum and Kanban to User Experience

Informal feedback rather than performance measurements – user-centred evaluation in Scrum projects

Measuring the User Experience of a Task Oriented Software