TICKET VENDING MACHINE FOR THE VISUALLY IMPAIRED PERSONS Master’s (one year) thesis in Informatics (15 credits) Baddar Rehmat Muhammad Ishfaq 2011:MAGI11 Title: <Ticket Vending Machine for the Visually Impaired Persons> Year: 2010 Author/s: <Baddar Rehmat, Muhammad Ishfaq> Supervisor: <Ann Lind> Abstract In the field of technology, every day new inventions are introduced in the society for promotion human beings life. By virtue of which all the citizens of society are facilitated according to their needs of life style. Most of the people from developed countries are benefited in all ways of life due to their nonstop efforts and struggle in the field of technology. However some are completely denied due to lack of awareness and lacking of technical education in the subject field. The handicapped people are not very well explored in each part of world, especially third world countries by the researchers. So we can claim it, for their weaknesses and so called interest to understand more about the handicapped people worldwide. To understanding about such people will provide us with opportunities to excel in the subfield. There is a big gap between the handicapped and society which causes to cut them off from society. This gap needs to be filled in, while carrying out researches in the desired fields. Our research area is related to ticket reservation machine for the visually impaired people, to make the process easy for them to buy ticket at their own from the ticketing machine. After studying different articles on the subject, it is proved that many inventions have already been done by researchers and others are in progress for helping out the handicapped people. We have presented screen prototypes of the interface of the ticketing machine for the visually impaired people. We collected many hardware devices as one kit which can be use in the machine for the visually impaired users. It will enhance their power of visual sense to perform tasks at their own. There are some principles to follow in building up any system for visually impaired or blind people. If followed these principles in true sense it will facilitate to make new interface designs for interaction with visually impaired or blind users in friendly way. In this way we can overcome the shortcomings between normal and visually impaired people, which will be a great achievement to serve the deprived people. Keywords: Visually Impaired People, User-Centered Design, Human-computer Interaction, Ticket Vending Machine or Ticketing Machine or Ticket Booking Machine, Ticket Reservation Machine, User Interface, Usability I Acknowledgements Ticket reservation machine is valuable addition in the field of informatics. We have put in our little efforts to explore and to develop new thoughts and ideas for up-gradation/improvement in the existence ticket reservation system for the visually impaired people. We would like to thank our supervisors Ann Lind for her dedicated, proper guidance and cooperation throughout the thesis. Our heartiest thanks and respect are for our colleagues for their valuable contribution and support during the empirical study. Borås March 2010 Baddar Rehmat and Muhammad Ishfaq II 1 INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................................1 1.1 BACKGROUND ......................................................................................................................................1 1.2 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM..................................................................................................................2 1.3 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY ....................................................................................................................2 1.4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS .......................................................................................................................2 1.5 TARGET GROUP ....................................................................................................................................3 1.6 DELIMITATIONS ...................................................................................................................................3 1.7 EXPECTED OUTCOME ..........................................................................................................................3 1.8 THE AUTHORS‟ OWN EXPERIENCE AND BACKGROUND..............................................................4 1.9 STRUCTURE OF THESIS .......................................................................................................................4 2 RESEARCH DESIGN ....................................................................................................................................6 2.1 RESEARCH PERSPECTIVE ...................................................................................................................6 2.2 RESEARCH STRATEGY ........................................................................................................................9 2.3 DATA COLLECTION PROCEDURES .................................................................................................. 10 2.4 DATA ANALYSIS PROCEDURES ....................................................................................................... 13 2.5 STRATEGIES FOR VALIDATING FINDINGS .................................................................................... 13 2.6 RESULT PRESENTATION METHOD .................................................................................................. 14 3. THEORETICAL STUDY ............................................................................................................................ 15 3.1 KEY CONCEPTS ................................................................................................................................... 15 3.2 SUBJECT AREAS RELEVANT FOR THE RESEARCH ...................................................................... 16 3.3 RELEVANT LITERATURE SOURCES ................................................................................................ 20 3.4 PREVIOUS RESEARCH........................................................................................................................ 20 3.5 SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT ................................................................................................................... 21 3.5.1 System Development Methodologies .............................................................................................. 21 3.5.2 Interactive Kiosk System ................................................................................................................ 22 3.6 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.............................................................................................................. 23 3.7 USER-CENTERED DESIGN ................................................................................................................. 24 3.7.1 Usability Engineering ..................................................................................................................... 28 3.8 HUMAN COMPUTER INTERACTION ................................................................................................ 30 3.8.1 Usability ......................................................................................................................................... 32 3.8.2 Actability........................................................................................................................................ 33 3.9 INTERACTION DESIGN PRINCIPLES ................................................................................................ 34 3.10 DESIGN PRINCIPLES............................................................................................................................ 36 3.11 GUIDELINES FOR PUBLIC INFORMATION KIOSK .......................................................................... 37 3.12 SHNEIDERMAN'S EIGHT GOLDEN RULES OF INTERFACE DESIGN ............................................ 39 3.13 SUMMARY OF THEORETICAL FINDINGS ....................................................................................... 40 3.14 ARGUMENTS FOR AN EMPIRICAL STUDY ..................................................................................... 41 4 EMPIRICAL SURVEY ................................................................................................................................ 43 4.1 PURPOSE .............................................................................................................................................. 43 III 4.2 SAMPLING ............................................................................................................................................ 43 4.3 THE INTERVIEWS ............................................................................................................................... 44 4.4 THE FIRST INTERVIEW ...................................................................................................................... 45 4.5 THE SECOND INTERVIEW ................................................................................................................. 46 4.6 THE THIRD INTERVIEW ..................................................................................................................... 46 4.7 THE FOURTH INTERVIEW ................................................................................................................. 46 4.8 THE FIFTH INTERVIEW .....................................................................................................................