Showing papers in "Interactions in 1999"

Design: Cultural probes

Abstract: A As the local site coordinator finished his introduction to the meeting, our worries were increasing. The group had taken on a glazed look, showing polite interest, but no real enthusiasm. How would they react when we presented them with our packages? Would disinterest deepen to boredom, or even hostility? Cultural Probes Homo ludens impinges on his environment: He interrupts, changes, intensifies; he follows paths and in passing, leaves traces of his presence everywhere.

Affordance, conventions, and design

Abstract: I was quietly lurking in the background of a CHI-Web discussion, when I lost all reason: I just couldn't take it anymore. " I put an affordance there, " a participant would say, " I wonder if the object affords clicking … " Affordances this, affordances that. And no data, just opinion. Yikes! What had I unleashed upon the world? " No! " I screamed, and out came this article. I don't know if it changed anyone's minds, but it brought the CHI-Web discussion to a halt (not what good list managers want to happen). But then, Steven Pemberton asked me to submit it here. Hope it doesn't stop the discussion again. Mind you, this is not the exact piece I dashed off to CHI-Web: it has been polished and refined: the requirements of print are more demanding than those of e-mail discussions.

Methods & tools: The activity checklist: a tool for representing the “space” of context

Abstract: I Introduction In recent years, specialists in human–computer interaction (HCI) have come to appreciate the importance of understanding the context in which computer-supported activities take place [1]. Such understanding directly affects design and evaluation by revealing what users are up to and how they might most effectively use a technology. The idea is to gain this understanding before the design process has progressed too far, or during evaluation, when openings for modifications and improvements to the technology exist. There have been several attempts to come up with tools and techniques to support taking context into account in the design and evaluation of computer technologies. These approaches include task analysis [6], participa-tory design [3], and contextual design [7], among others. However, contextual factors are notoriously elusive and difficult to pin down [5], so there is still a need for conceptual tools to deal with context at a practical level. The existing approaches to context are for the most part " bottom up " ones. They start with an empirical analysis of contextual factors and gradually develop concepts such as " task decomposition " [6], " future workshops " [3], or " flow models " [7], which later can be put in an appropriate theoretical framework. From our point of view, this " bottom up " or empirically-driven strategy can be complemented with a " top down " one, that is, starting with an abstract theoretical representation of context and then situating this representation in the reality of design and evaluation. Borrowing Brown and Duguid's well-known metaphor [5], we can say that if it is difficult to grapple with the " whale " of context by trying to get a firm grip on its specific parts, let's try a large net instead. In this paper we present a tool that is directly shaped by a general theoretical approach—activity theory [10, 11, 18]. Activity theory provides a broad theoretical framework for describing the structure, development , and context of human activity. In the 1990s, activity theory has been applied to problems of human–computer interaction by an international community of scholars and practitioners [1–4, 8, 9, 12]. Activity theory is framed by several basic principles (explained in the next section): hierarchical structure of activity, object-ori-entedness, internalization and–externaliza-tion, tool mediation, and development. These general principles help orient thought and research, but they are somewhat abstract when it comes to the actual business of working on …

Methods & tools: Playacting and focus troupes:: theater techniques for creating quick, intense, immersive, and engaging focus group sessions

Abstract: J Jeff Hawkins, the inventor of the PalmPilot, was said to have carried a small block of wood around in his shirt pocket as a prototype of the personal digital assistant his company was developing [6]. As various everyday situations arose, he would take out the block of wood and imagine how he would use the device. Hawkins was acting out the use of a new product within his everyday situations. His experiential context of use helped to frame and focus Hawkins's wants and needs, which in turn informed the design of the PalmPilot.

Computer-human interface solutions for emergency medical care

Abstract: Q Quality medical care depends on prompt, accurate recording, communication, and retrieval of patient data and medical logistics information. In emergency medicine, such information can make the difference between life and death because it enables better planning and scheduling of medical resources. A hospital can assemble the appropriate team of specialists and configuration of equipment so that they are ready as soon as the patient arrives if medical providers in the field inform the hospital of the patient's condition when they first encounter the patient.

Business: Strategic development of the usability engineering function

Abstract: business W Let's imagine that you have decided to act as the usability champion in your product development organization. Whatever your professional discipline and your current job, if your goal is to introduce usability engineering into a product development organization that does not currently practice it, you must view yourself first and foremost as a change agent. Whether you are a usability practitioner, engineer, technical writer, project manager, business manager, or marketer, you must function primarily as an agent of organizational change. Failing to take this view of your role will most likely result (and indeed often has resulted) in a failure to introduce usability engineering into your organization in a lasting, integrated way. All the technical skills, good intentions, and sound logic in the world will not necessarily cause organizational change. Understanding what motivates organizations and causes them to change is key. In my experience, there seem to be three distinct phases involved in establishing and evolving usability engineering to become a routine function in any software development organization: 1. Promotion 2. Implementation 3. Institutionalization In this column I offer thoughts and lessons from my own experience on how to successfully steer usability engineering through each of these phases. Promotion The first phase involves selling the organization on the very idea of usability engineering. Your focus here is influencing people. Your goal is to win the resources necessary to move into the next phase, implementing a usability engineering function. To do this, you need to ✱ Identify and address organizational obstacles to change, ✱ Exploit potential motivators, and ✱ Apply success factors. IDENTIFYING AND ADDRESSING ORGANIZATIONAL OBSTACLES TO CHANGE As you attempt to facilitate organizational change, it is important to understand the forces in your organization that work to maintain the status quo. Anyone who aspires to be a change agent must identify the obstacles particular to his or her organization and address them directly and specifically. Failing to do so will usually result in failure to effect the desired results. You must understand the obstacles to change in order to overcome them. Possible obstacles fall into several categories , including the following. ✦ Prevalent myths, beliefs, and attitudes , for example, the attitude that usability is not really critical or the belief that usability engineering means nothing more than usability testing. You must continually educate your organization to address these obstacles. ✦ Organizational incentives, for example , an …

Interacting in chaos

Abstract: In considering which research problems to work on next, one must consider the key uses for future computing technology. To such roles are the support of interpersonal communication and the management, analysis and synthesis of massive amounts of information. When one considers the Macintosh and the impact it has had on computing it is important to understand that it was fundamentally not a computing engine but a communications device. The medium for communication was paper rather than electronic but the Mac was and is all about creating paper artifacts for communication among people. Even today when one examines a software catalog for Windows or the Mac, more than 90% of the software offered is focused on internet or paper-based communications. There is very little that computes or calculates in the classical sense.

Design through matchmaking: technology in search of users

Abstract: business E Every designer knows the value of studying users to determine requirements for technology development. But how can you incorporate user domain knowledge " after the fact " into early design when a technology prototype already exists? We suggest a four-step matchmaking process to move from a design centered on technology to one centered on users. Our match-making process involves four steps: 1. Describing the capabilities of the technology, 2. Mapping those capabilities to associated work activities,

Design: Expressing experiences in design

Abstract: Good design has always been concerned with the whole experience of interaction. Although most people think that design is about what we see—the form, shape, proportion, color, and finish—the aesthetic value comes from the whole experience, including gesture and ritual, what we feel and hear, perhaps even what we taste and smell. When we are faced with the complex problems of designing modern products, services, and spaces, it is tempting to go back to the basic values of our aesthetic contribution, but if we just revert to beauty for its own sake, it seems a retrograde step. Working with complex products, systems of products, services, and interactive spaces has taught us how to design machine behavior and to understand more about cognitive psychology, anthropology, and sustainability. It has made us more skillful at designing experiences, gestures, and rituals. It has helped us to create appropriate expressions.

Design: Designing mobile phones and communicators for consumer needs at Nokia

Abstract: Have you ever wondered what makes mobile phones easy to use? These small devices pose interesting design challenges. The user interface design must map functions, such as saving or selecting phone numbers, to key presses in a way that will seem intuitive to users. The usability of both the handheld terminal and the associated telephony services depends on effective interaction methods and in general, novel ways of using multimedia in mobile communication. In addition, the key presses must be intelligible to different languages and cultural groups. The keys must also work in a variety of challenging physical settings. In a forthcoming book 1 on the design of information appliances, members of the user interface team at Nokia describe their process for designing mobile phones and other mobile communication devices. We have excerpted a portion of the chapter where the authors give us a glimpse into the future.

Customer connection creates a winning product: building success with contextual techniques

Abstract: 51 i n t e r a c t i o n s. .. j a n u a r y + f e b r u a r y 1 9 9 9 a r t i c l e from the management level to the development teams. Einstein said, \" Love is a better teacher than duty. \" Likewise for developers' adoption of new techniques. In Hewlett Packard's (HP) Enterprise Systems Group (ESG), contextual techniques have been used by developers to understand product requirements for 5 years at the product and lab levels. In ESG's Unix Development Lab (UDL), HP has trained more than 50 engineers in contextual inquiry and data modeling and more than 20 engineers and managers have completed InContext's full Contextual Design Series [1]. This article describes the experience of HP's Ignition team and its successful delivery of a new product, Ignite-UX, using a combination of contextual, usability, and standard software development methods. The customer acclaim and success of the Ignite-UX product have contributed to ESG's decision to apply even more contextual design methods in a recent division-wide initiative [2]. Opportunity In 1996, the Ignition team faced the challenge of developing the next generation of tools for installation and deployment of the HP-UX operating system. This product would help System Administrators quickly and easily install and update HP workstation and server systems with custom configurations. With this effort, the team was to replace two existing , similar products with a single new product to reduce development and resource costs. These existing products served different customers with slightly different work goals and T High-speed connections such as cable modems will let content producers add video, sound and 3-D to Web sites to offer…what? Nobody knows, but it's sure to transform the medium. This curious quote appeared in USA Today during CHI'98 as we prepared for our SIG session on \" Success with Contextual Techniques. \" As product designers, we are in the business of changing how people work through the purposeful application of new technology, not just the transformation of technology itself. Creating products that fit how people work requires a shift from a technology-centered development practice to a customer-centered design culture. This article describes the successful application of contextual techniques in a real-world software development organization. The success of the resulting product success was clearly linked to the use of these techniques and has contributed …

Information in space: explorations in media and architecture

Abstract: T Introduction The story begins with a new building for a broadcasting organization in the Netherlands. In June 1997, VPRO, a Dutch radio and television broadcasting company, formerly located in 13 buildings throughout Hilversum (a city that is home to most of the Dutch broadcasting industry), moved to a single new building, designed by MVRDV, a Dutch architectural office. For the first time in its history, all of VPRO's departments were together under one roof. This greatly affects the way in which people work together and communicate with each other. In 1996, the move to the new building was the talk of the town in all the villas. At that time, VPRO's new media department, VPRO-Digitaal, was developing an internal information architecture that addressed issues of collaboration in the context of media production. This prompted a discussion about the similarities and differences between media design and architecture. If both disciplines address similar issues, such as processes of collaboration or the expression of identity in a work environment, shouldn't they work together more than they currently do in common practice? The Berlage Institute (a postgraduate laboratory of architecture in Amsterdam) became involved in the discussion, and soon the idea for a joint \" master class \" involving media designers and architects was born to further investigate these issues. Students and professionals from media, architecture, and related fields got together for 2 weeks and investigated possible connections between information and space, between the world of information and ideas and the world of objects, buildings, and spaces. One of the outcomes of the workshop was Media and Architecture [6], which features a discussion between Bart Lootsma (an architecture critic) and me (a media consultant) about possible relationships between media and architecture. Much of what follows here is based on parts of that book. All photographs in this article are of the new VPRO building. where technology meets culture. The disciplines of both architecture and media design are constantly rethinking and transforming themselves. The impact of information and communication technologies on our culture is a shared concern. Where are you when you are involved in a conversation using a mobile phone on a train? Processes of communication are no longer connected to fixed places and moments. They alter our sense of \" where we are \" and \" who we are. \" How will the new forms of electronic communication affect spatial relationships in …

Using the cognitive walkthrough for operating procedures

Abstract: Y Your system's interface is great. The users love it. But if they don't use it correctly, bad things could happen. Maybe people's lives are at stake. So you add a set of operating procedures for users to follow in order to ensure that the outcomes are good. Generating plants, hospitals, and aircraft cockpits are examples of settings in which procedures are used to reduce risks to extremely low levels. For instance, air-traffic controllers have many procedures, including standard time intervals and a spatial pattern for visually scanning their screens. Or maybe you've developed a kiosk interface for the general public, perhaps to charge fees at a parking garage. The kiosk has step-by-step instructions for use stenciled on its front. Of course, even if things go terribly in following the instructions, no one will get hurt. But the garage owners could lose customers if they keep getting frustrated or lose money, and if people tend to get confused while using the system, an increasingly long line of waiting patrons may show their impatience. The step-by-step instructions constitute an operating procedure, and you hope you've got a good one. So how, absent extensive late-process usability testing, can you improve your system's operating procedures so that safety and effectiveness are increased? Jonathan Grudin observed [3] that the user's interface to a computer does not consist of only the hardware and software. From the user's point of view, the interface includes an assortment of associated elements in the context of use, including documentation , training, and advice from colleagues. From this perspective, you can view the interface of a computer as including the usual screens, buttons, and knobs, as well as other users present, training received, documentation provided, and operating procedures prescribed. Indeed, it turns out that the guiding of users through their interactions in a computer interface can largely be allocated either to the interface itself or to a set of associated procedures. This is what Guy Boy [1] called the interface-procedure duality. To take a simple example, if the stenciled instructions on the garage kiosk were displayed on a computer screen, it would ordinarily be considered part of the computer interface. Consider designing procedures and documentation for a new, text-based air-traffic 32 control communications system for aircraft to complement the current voice-based system. Figure 1 is an example of a typical draft procedure that I developed for this kind of \" …

HCI standards: a mixed blessing

Abstract: There's a lot more than that to using standards and guidelines for human–computer interaction (HCI) design. Such guides are a mixed blessing and could even be a mixed curse. Here are a few things it might help you to know. Why do we want to use HCI standards in the first place? The obvious answer (surprise!) is to standardize the look and feel of a user interface. We certainly want to standardize the various windows and dialog boxes of a single product , and we may also want to standardize the interfaces of multiple products or systems that people may be using. In addition, we may want to standardize to some extent across all products for a single platform such as Macintosh, Windows , or Motif. Standardization facilitates learning and reduces errors by taking advantage of knowledge the users have gained from other products or from other parts of your product. There are a few less obvious answers as well to this question of the benefits of HCI standards. \" Incorporate human factors research and \" best practice \" in HCI. A large body of empirical research exists on the usability of specific HCI design features, and many recommendations have emerged from these findings and been incorporated into standards documents. Some of these are based on human physical characteristics, especially vision. Most are based on cognitive characteristics—how people process information: perceiving, thinking, learning, understanding, decision making, and so on. A few recommendations are based on affective characteristics—how people feel and react: preferences , excitement/entertainment, aesthetics, and so on. See the sidebar to this article for examples of recommendations based on these three types of factors. \" Smooth the HCI design process. Reduce the number of look-and-feel decisions that have to be So you're on a new software project and it's your job to design the user interface. Ah well, you'll just get the Windows Style Guide and take it from there.

Maypole highlights: image makers

Abstract: Helsinki and Vienna had a lot of fun using our prototype " pictorial communicator " for a few weeks. They came up with a few creative applications of their own. We take a look at some of the results. 12 hat do family members do when they have a simple, efficient instrument for sending one another digital pictures? What will they use it for? The Maypole team developed four prototype wireless devices to make this possible and subjected them to an extensive user trial. Four youngsters (aged 10 to 12) from a scouting club in Helsinki, Finland, tried out the devices for 4 weeks. A family from Vien-na, Austria, with four children aged 8 to 15 and a grandmother, tested the prototypes for 3 weeks. Before, during and after the field trials, Maypole's researchers interviewed the users individually and in groups. In order to focus the interviews, they studied the messages that were sent. At first, the users snapped mostly inanimate objects just to get the hang of the controls. Gradually they started sending visual W MP field trials p.

Mission-critical web applications: a seismological case

Abstract: \" Large databases organized and offered online for remote accessing, integrated through meaningful links among data; \" Freshly defined, working metaphors to map traditional methods into the new information technology environments. Interaction through an interface that (1) is user-friendly, offering easy interaction to general users who very often remain permanent novices with respect to the data accessed and the technologies used; (2) is user-centered , referring to the user's traditional paradigms and to his or her daily work This situation, in which many resources are available but can be exploited only with great difficulty, has motivated researchers and practitioners of automatic data management to look more closely at data mining and knowledge discovery in databases [1] and at collabo-rative approaches to both scientific discovery [20] and information exploration [16]. We believe that successful and outstanding contributions require collaboration among researchers in different disciplines, each of whom has a different part to play in preparing a synergic mixture of

Introduction to special section on contextual design

Abstract: 30 i n t e r a c t i o n s. .. j a n u a r y + f e b r u a r y 1 9 9 9 C Customer-centered design involves organizational change. Organizational change is not easily embraced, but it is necessary in order to make good products that support the customer. Companies involved in product development and in information technology are moving from being technology driven to being customer driven—ensuring that what they ship improves people's work and lives. Accompanying this shift in attitude is the need for requirements and design techniques that successfully incorporate customer data into the product development process. The increasing willingness to try new things makes change possible. Although development teams, marketers, business analysts, and managers are ready for a customer centered process, introducing change means changing an organization's habits and culture. Sometimes it means just trying to slow down the relentless drive of an organization to ship \" something \" by a given date. Changing processes means intervening in everyday practice to think about what you are doing and to choose what you want to do in the design space. Even people who want to try something different may find it challenging to achieve customer-centered design. Contextual Design is a set of steps to achieve customer-centered design in organizations. It was developed over the last 11 years by working with real development teams to put together a process that can work for customers, for the design, and for organizations. It gives organizations and designers an explicit way to gather, interpret, and design from customer data within the constraints of organizations. I and others have taught, coached, preached, and trained leaders in contextual techniques, sometimes knowingly and sometimes through papers and attendance at seminars. These professionals are out there moving their organizations toward practical customer-centered processes. like any \" general \" description of a method, is an idealized model of the process itself. How Contextual Design shows up on any project, even when we lead it, depends on the focus and goals of that project, its resources, its schedule, and its culture. Even if Contextual Design were the perfect method of defining customer-centered systems, getting real people in real organizations to change their practice is always difficult. Everywhere I go I am asked by software development professionals how they can get customer-centered techniques going in their organizations. …

Bringing participatory design to practical application: the interrelation between LCD projection, facilitation, and participatory design

Abstract: Typically, technical support for groups is discussed in terms of Group Decision Support Systems and Group Support Systems. Nevertheless, the diffusion of these technically sophisticated systems is rather low. This paper fertilizes a simpler technology for participatory design purposes namely LCD-projectors. LCD-projectors are used to project the content of a monitor on the wall to make it visible to all participants. A severe number of concrete projects – in which this technology was used on a professional basis – allow for an empirically profound presentation of the benefits of LCD-projection. As it is shown, LCD brings substantial advantages in terms of cost, time, structuring, and participation. Practical issues of application are discussed in detail.

Business: penny-wise, pound-wise: making smart trade-offs in planning usability studies

Abstract: business W When you are doing usability or other user studies, reality always imposes constraints—on time, on personnel, or on money. The issue is not whether to make trade-offs, but, rather, how to make them so that your usability efforts are truly cost-effective. Beware of expediency as a basis for decision making. We have seen situations where cutting the wrong corners in the interest of sometimes relatively small, apparent savings undermined the value of the rest of the sizable investment in a project. You don't want the value of your study compromised by skimping on one area, especially if other trade-offs might have yielded bigger savings.

Stories & scenarios: pix pals

Abstract: The photos clinched the relationship, made it real,” says Bailey. “The children almost felt they were face to face.” And for many of them, photography itself became a road to self-discovery. Bailey came to the idea while working as projects organizer for The Photographers’ Gallery in London. After the Richard Atkins Primary School in Brixton, London, expressed interest, she found three committed partners— the DRIK Photo Library in Dhaka, the Shootback Project in Nairobi, and the J Team Youth Center in Cape Town. Each exchange was unique. To begin with, there were the vastly different cultural, social and economic realities faced by each group. Many of the children outside London struggled with poverty, homelessness or horrific pollution. “In London the children talk about Nintendos,” says Bailey. “In Nairobi they talk about extreme hardships, and ways of overcoming them.” Camera skills varied, from the enthusiastic (London and Cape Town) to the budding professional (Nairobi and Dhaka). Whatever their skills, the personalities and concerns of the children blazed through the What’s the fastest way of cutting through barriers of

Disabling Health Systems

Abstract: The health system, based on narrow norms, disables via systems, structures, curriculum and notions of health. The wisdom of people with disabilities, carers and experienced providers can be drawn upon to provide ways forward. There are also particular challenges for health and welfare providers in determining what constitutes quality. (non-author abstract)