Human-Centered Design

Human-Centered Design (HCD) is an approach to problem-solving, commonly used in design and management frameworks that develops solutions to problems by involving the human perspective in all steps of the problem-solving process. Human involvement typically takes place in observing the problem within context, brainstorming, conceptualizing, developing, and implementing the solution.

Human-Centered Design according to ISO 9241-210:2019 is an approach to interactive systems development that aims to make systems usable and useful by focusing on the users, their needs and requirements, and by applying human factors, and usability knowledge and techniques. This approach enhances effectiveness and efficiency, improves human well-being, user satisfaction, accessibility, and sustainability; and counteracts possible adverse effects of use on human health, safety, and performance. 

Human-Centered Design has its origins at the intersection of numerous fields including engineering, psychology, anthropology, and the arts. As an approach to creative problem-solving in technical and business fields its origins are often traced to the founding of the Standford University Design Program in 1958 by Professor John E. Arnold who first proposed the idea that engineering design should be human-centered. This work coincided with the rise of creativity techniques and the subsequent design methods movement in the 1960s. Since then, as creative design processes and methods have been increasingly popularized for business purposes, human-centered design is increasingly referred to simply as "Design Thinking".

Built-Environment

The term built environment refers to the human-made surroundings that provide the setting for human activity, ranging in scale from buildings and parks or green space to neighborhoods and cities that can often include their supporting infrastructure, such as water supply or energy networks. The built environment is a material, spatial, and cultural product of human labor that combines physical elements and energy in forms for living, working, and playing. It has been defined as “the human-made space in which people live, work, and recreate on a day-to-day basis”. (wikipedia)

The “built environment encompasses places and spaces created or modified by people including buildings, parks, and transportation systems.” In recent years, public health research has expanded the definition of built environment to include healthy food access, community gardens, walkability, and bikability. (IELTS International.com)

A built environment is developed in order to satisfy residents' requirements. Human needs can be physiological or social and are related to security, respect, and self-expression. People want their built environment to be aesthetically attractive and to be in an accessible place with a well-developed infrastructure, convenient communication access, and good roads, and the dwelling should also be comparatively cheap, comfortable, with low maintenance costs, and have sound and thermal insulation of walls. People are also interested in ecologically clean and almost noiseless environments, with sufficient options for relaxation, shopping, fast access to work or other destinations, and good relationships with neighbors.

System-Integration

System Integration is defined in engineering as the process of bringing together the component sub-system into one system (an aggregation of subsystems cooperating so that the system is able to deliver the overarching functionality) and ensuring that the subsystems function together as a system, and in Information Communication Technology as the process of linking together different computing systems and software application physically or functionally, to act as a coordinated whole.

The ICT system integrator integrates discrete systems utilizing a variety of techniques such as computer networking, enterprise application integration, business process management or manual programming.

System integration involves integrating existing, often disparate systems in such a way "that focuses on increasing value to the customer" (e.g., improved product quality and performance) while at the same time providing value to the company (e.g., reducing operational costs and improving response time). In the modern world connected by Internet, the role of system integration engineers is important: more and more systems are designed to connect, both within the system under construction and to systems that are already deployed.

Potential applications of the IoT for the built environment are many and various, fitting into almost all activities done by persons, organizations, and the community as a whole. Libelium (2014) has released the document “Top 50 Internet of Things Applications”. Based on Libelium (2014), here is an overview of the applications used in the built environment:

Domotic and home automation: Energy and water use (energy and water supply consumption monitoring to obtain advice on how to save cost and resources), remote control appliances (switching on and off appliances remotely to avoid accidents and save energy), intrusion detection systems (detection of window and door openings and violations to prevent intruders), art and goods preservation (monitoring of conditions inside museums and art warehouses).

Smart cities: Smart parking (monitoring of parking spaces availability in the city), structural health (monitoring of vibrations and material conditions in buildings, bridges, and historical monuments), noise urban maps (sound monitoring in bar areas and centric zones in real-time), electromagnetic field levels (measurement of the energy radiated by cell stations and WiFi routers), traffic congestion (monitoring of vehicles and pedestrian levels to optimize driving and walking routes), smart lighting (intelligent and weather-adaptive lighting in street lights), waste management (detection of rubbish levels in containers to optimize the trash collection routes), smart roads (intelligent highways with warning messages and diversions according to climate conditions and unexpected events like accidents or traffic jams).

Smart environment: Forest fire detection (monitoring of combustion gases and preemptive fire conditions to define alert zones), air pollution (control of CO2 emissions of factories, pollution emitted by cars), snow level monitoring (snow level measurement to know in real time the quality of ski tracks and allow security corps avalanche prevention), landslide and avalanche prevention (monitoring of soil moisture, vibrations, and earth density to detect dangerous patterns in land conditions), earthquake early detection (distributed control in specific places of tremors).

Smart water: Potable water monitoring (monitor the quality of tap water in cities), chemical leakage detection in rivers (detect leakages and wastes of factories in rivers), swimming pool remote measurement (control remotely the swimming pool conditions), pollution levels in the sea (control real-time leakages and wastes in the sea), water leakages (detection of liquid presence outside tanks and pressure variations along pipes), river floods (monitoring of water level variations in rivers, dams, and reservoirs).

Smart metering: Smart grid (energy consumption monitoring and management), tank level (monitoring of water, oil, and gas levels in storage tanks and cisterns), photovoltaic installations (monitoring and optimization of performance in solar energy plants), water flow (measurement of water pressure in water transportation systems), silos stock calculation (measurement of emptiness level and weight of the goods).

Security and emergencies: Perimeter access control (access control to restricted areas and detection of people in nonauthorized areas), liquid presence (liquid detection in data centers, warehouses, and sensitive building grounds to prevent breakdowns and corrosion), radiation levels (distributed measurement of radiation levels in nuclear power stations surroundings to generate leakage alerts), explosive and hazardous gases (detection of gas levels and leakages in industrial environments, surroundings of chemical factories, and inside mines).

Retail: Supply-chain control (monitoring of storage conditions along the supply chain and product tracking for traceability purposes), NFC payment (payment processing based on location or activity duration for public transport, gyms, theme parks, etc.), intelligent shopping applications (getting advice in the point of sale according to customer habits, preferences, presence of allergic components for them, or expiring dates), smart product management (control of rotation of products in shelves and warehouses to automate restocking processes).

References

Wikipedia, Human-Centered Design

ISO 9241-210:2019, Ergonomics of human-system interaction Human-centred design for interactive systems

Institute for Human Rights and Business, Framework for Dignity in Built Environment

Wikipedia, System Integration

A. Kaklauskas, R. Gudauskas, Start-Up Creation, 2016, Intelligent decision-support systems and the Internet of Things for the smart built environment