Existing domestic products are designed to suit the needs of a particular user group. These target groups are often very large and general, like a television set for everyone between the age of 8 and 80. But in a few cases, the target groups are relatively specific, like the Barbie Sing with Me karaoke machine for girls between 3 and 8 years old who are fond of Barbie. Buying a product designed for your specific target group can be very exciting at that moment. However as time passes, people change as well as their interests. The alternative, buying a product designed for a more general audience is less subject to changing fashion, but is also less fun and often more difficult to use.

Skinning technology aims at taking away this dilemma. Skinnable products have a chameleon-like ability. They allow their users to change the product appearance —the skin. Users can download a new skin, while keeping their old software and hardware. Skinning technology is already used in some computer applications. For instance, users of Microsoft Media Player can go online and choose from more than 60 different skins to transform their movie and music player. They can choose from themes such as: Harry Potter, Israel, Science, Spider-Man, Terminator 3, and Zen Garden. Besides skins for popular themes, the technology can also be applied for users with special needs (e.g. large font size for visual impaired, or specific letter colours for dyslectic users). 

For skinning technology to be effective, product designers need an accurate and up to date picture of their audience. They have to identify different user groups and understand their needs and behaviour. An unobtrusive way to gather this information is to automatically log the actions of users when they use their products. Initiatives such as the Connected Home and household wireless networks allow companies to capture online data from large user groups in the home setting. The major challenge therefore is to efficiently analyse these large data sets, and to extract informative user profiles.

We have developed an e-learning environment which  simulates meets of a BioEthical Committee which students have to chair. With this interactive environment we hope to overcome barriers traditional teaching approaches have when engaging students with ethical issues.

The first main conclusion drawn from this research is that LPT indeed provides a basis for empirical evaluation of the user interface on different layers, which strengthens the claim that this theory can be applied in the area of user-system interaction. The second main conclusion is that the usability of a component can be affected by other components. This means that the usability of the entire product can not be predicted solely on the usability of the individual components. Inconsistency and mental effort are factors that allow one component to reduce the users' ability to control another component.

My Ph.D. thesis is online available (just send me an email if you are interested in a printed copy of the thesis).