UMD Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3

New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

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2014 - 20183

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    ANALYZING USER TRADEOFFS FOR ENCRYPTED EMAIL SERVICES
    (2018) Lynton, Ciara; Papamanthou, Charalampos; Electrical Engineering; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Securing online communication, especially in email settings, is challenging. End-to-end encryption achieves maximal security; however, introducing search capabilities is complicated, potentially making it impractical for email. One option is to locally decrypt and index emails to incorporate search, but this requires significant client-side storage. Encryption that is searchable at the server-side limits local storage, but requires other compromises as well. This thesis presents a study using conjoint analysis to understand user tradeoffs related to email features in order to propose a solution for providing usable, yet secure, email service. The results suggest that while it is ideal to have maximum privacy, users rely heavily on the features present in standard insecure email services. Furthermore, with about half of the participants reporting local device storage as a concern, searchable encryption could be a feasible secure email service solution for some users.
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    EXPLORING WEB CONTENT STRATEGY CURRICULA AND BUSINESS PRACTICES IN INFORMATION SCIENCES
    (2016) Gates, Laura Allison; Lawley, Katy N; Library & Information Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This exploratory study seeks to understand the knowledges, skills, abilities, and other characteristics (KSAOs) within web content strategy. In 2009, the IA Summit officially recognized the discipline of web content strategy; however, discussions on web content strategy date back to as early as 1996 in the early days of the internet. Academia and industry have been working within web content strategy but focus on different subject areas. Industry, for example, has over six working definitions for web content strategy that complement and conflict with one another. Academia instead focused on how to separate software code from content. To determine what KSAOs aligned between academia and industry, course syllabi and job advertisements were collected and coded against formal definitions of KSAOs and a KSAO node framework. Additionally, instructors and professionals were surveyed to provide additional insight on web content strategy KSAOs. The study found that while there were several KSAO nodes in agreement between industry and academia, survey results alluded to where there is room for KSAOs to improve.
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    Form And Function Glucometer Evaluation For Specialized Populations
    (2014) Santos, Luis Samai; Vaughn-Cooke, Monifa; Mechanical Engineering; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Patient self-management technologies (glucometer, blood pressure monitor, etc.) are a critical component of chronic disease care. Although these technologies are intended to support patient activities, low device usability can produce design imped-iments that may negatively impact patient adherence and hence treatment outcomes. In particular, patients with disabilities, who are the majority of the chronic disease population, are typically excluded from medical device usability studies required for FDA approval. This study aims to develop a usability method to: 1) evaluate patient self-management technology and 2) inform design decision making for disabled pa-tients. The study will focus on handheld device use (glucometers) for diabetic patients with mobility and vision impairment. An initial expert usability analysis was per-formed for 13 glucometers to determine the design features that are most problematic for disabled users. The usability analysis informed the design of an experiment to test disabled user performance and satisfaction for several meter interaction tasks. Com-mon diabetes disabilities were simulated in healthy subjects through the use of glasses (retinopathy, glaucoma) and gloves (arthritis, neuropathy) to evaluate the experimental protocol prior to future testing in the actual disease population. Results suggested a preference of participants for large text, large protruding buttons, and contrast color between case and buttons to facilitate locating buttons. Future studies will integrate the disabled diabetic population in the data collection and integration of these results in the design of a new glucometer. This work can inform regulatory guidelines for usability testing with disabled patients and the patient-centric design practices of medical device manufacturers.