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forUse: The Electronic Newsletter of Usage-Centered Design #25 | September 2002 |
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Contents: || 1. Events: "Wow! What a conference!" = = = = = 1. Events: "forUSE 2002 was a blast!" "Best conference I ever attended." "Loved it! Gave me lots to think about." "I learned something from every session I attended. Great atmosphere and people." If you weren’t in Portsmouth last week, you missed one terrific gathering! Through a mix of miracles, late-nighters, and help from our friends, we managed to pull off 4 days packed with 33 lively and informative events. By the end of the week we were all exhausted, but from all accounts it was worth the effort. Not only were the sessions rich and engaging, but the non-stop hallway and dinner discussions generated a fantastic "buzz." Buoyed by the unanimous enthusiasm, we are already planning forUSE 2003. It was a community effort all the way. Our two volunteers, Karen Shor and Gayle Sanders, started off Sunday with a test of fire, helping us register nearly 30 people for pre-conference tutorials in 15 minutes flat. Throughout the week, they staffed the desk, monitored rooms, and filled in where needed. Three of our Consulting Associate--Helmut Windl, Ron Pinder, and Dave Schofield--pitched in with audio-visual support and all-around wrangling. Thanks to them, sessions started on time and with the projector in focus. Thanks to all the speakers, panelists, and attendees it was a great week for us, too. The presenters not only got their materials to us in time for inclusion in the Proceedings and the Conference CD-ROM, but they followed through with engaging and instructive presentations that kept people talking between sessions and on into the night. One conference-hopping speaker said forUSE 2002 was not only better organized but had better content than IFIP, which was running in Canada the same week! 2. Resources: Catching up on What You Missed. "Kudos on the CD, session [and] conference materials. Great for the sessions I couldn’t sit in on. Great to take back to the office." John Glasgow, attendee. You, too, can read the papers and see the slides John was talking about just by getting your own copy of the conference materials. The complete package (www.foruse.com/2002/package.jpg) includes: * Conference Proceedings – a handsome, professionally
edited, 484-page perfect-bound The special conference discount price to newsletter subscribers is no longer available. The price of the entire package is $150. To get details and order, click here. 3. Modeling: Supporting Performance and Workflow Heads still spinning from the conference, 13 die-hard professionals turned out for the post-conference Master Class with Lucy Lockwood and Larry Constantine. We reviewed design work, wrestled with organizational challenges, and tackled advanced questions in modeling and design. Among these were questions about modeling workflow and performance support. In performance-centered design, the system is designed to facilitate performance of tasks, often through guidance that helps lead users through complex procedures. To design for performance support, how do you model workflow in a task-case model? How do you represent in the model the need for the support of task performance? When tasks fall into a necessary order because of a simple chain of dependencies, the accepted or "traditional" way to model the workflow is through preconditions. If task C follows task B, which follows task A, then task case A is a precondition of task case B, and task case B is a precondition of task case C. We model these in a precondition clause within each task case and show a labeled connection on the task map. Modeling workflow through preconditions on the task cases covers only a restricted set of situations--those in which the sequence is linear and fixed by necessary and immediate constraints on the order in which tasks can be performed. Where the workflow is flexible or depends on varying conditions, a chain of preconditions will not work. Attempts to shoehorn the general problem into this special solution would lead to nonsense like "conditional preconditions." In the Master Class, Consulting Associate Helmut Windl suggested another, more flexible, approach using composition to create task cases that represent the combined workflow to be supported. If tasks A, B, and C can be combined into a more complex composite task D, we model task case D with a narrative that includes references to task cases A, B, and C in whatever arrangement is entailed by the workflow. The composite task case can make use of a variety of available constructs to express the workflow among tasks A, B, and C, including partial ordering of tasks ("in any order do"), optional use ("optionally do") and conditional inclusion ("if...then do"). Even where the workflow is simple enough to be covered by a chain of preconditions, the approach of modeling through task-case composition has advantages. In particular, the composite tasks are directly represented in the task model, clarifying the way in which the system being designed must support performance of such specific tasks and clarifying the job of the designer. Helmut has promised more on these issues in a future white paper. 4. Process: X-Game Lessons in Group Process and Abstraction You have 15 minutes to identify, prioritize and model the user roles for a new digital watch. You have 15 minutes to design an easy-to-use scheme to support 28 tasks with only 4 buttons. You have 15 minutes for the visual design of a set of interrelated glyphs to show the status of programming projects for remotely-controlled robots. The pressure is on. This is the chance for you and your teammates to show your stuff. The Interaction Design Open X-Games, held on Tuesday evening of the forUSE 2002 conference, pitted 6 teams against the clock and each other in tests of modeling and design prowess under pressure. It was a flat-out, no-holds-barred competition. With teams using every conceivable technique to take the lead--including a bit of thievery--Lucy at one point quipped that she had no idea interaction design could get so ugly! Just as the somewhat artificial challenges of the Americas Cup or the Sydney-to-Hobart race provide lessons for sailboat designers and weekend sailors alike, the X-Games yielded some lessons for modelers and designers working on real-world problems. One lesson is to stay tuned into how the physical arrangements and setting in which people are meeting shape the interaction. In eXtreme Programming, stand-up meetings help keep participants focused and discussions brief. If you want to maximize the performance of your team, you may need to be ready to make changes on the fly. When one of the Open X-Game teams was supposed to be brainstorming but kept getting caught up in discussion and debate, our Kiwi colleague Robert Biddle suggested they turn their backs on each other and continue while facing outward. The tactic succeeded in killing the debate without staunching the flow of ideas. Biddle--who at one point was seen imitating Larry Constantine pounding his beeping alarm watch into silence and later demonstrated the proper cricket overhand technique for stochastic decision making (you bowl the wad of paper at the list!)—walked away with the individual prize for "Best Extreme Style." We were also struck by how small differences in the use of materials sometimes created big advantages when the heat was on. While teams were still brainstorming user roles, it didn’t matter much how or in what form their ideas were recorded. Once teams started to refine their models and prioritize roles, the teams who had brainstormed directly onto index cards were at a big advantage over those using flipcharts. It was much faster and easier to shuffle and rearrange cards than to edit and recopy flipchart lists. The side-by-side competition also furnished a vivid demonstration of the advantages of abstraction. Teams who stuck to concrete categories--such as market segments or target consumers--when modeling users, struggled when it came time to prioritize. In the absence of survey data or market research, it is all but impossible to know how common "amateur runners" might be compared to "frequent fliers." On the other hand, it is self evident that the "clueless clock-checker" or some other abstract variant of the basic casual watch user is the most common user role. The winning team of Jeff Patton, Chris Chandler, Marta Larusdottir, Ebba Hvannberg, Janet Naylor, and Mark Hertel used various agile techniques--including stand-up meetings, index cards, and abstraction--to help take the lead and win first place. Congratulations! 5. Training: A Week with Larry and Lucy The November 11-15 class in usage-centered design is already starting to fill up. Register now and save up to $500 (details at http://foruse.com/seminars/). = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Constantine & Lockwood, Ltd. FAX: +1 978 948 5036 Please send [ ] copies of the forUSE 2002 Complete Conference Package at $100 each plus shipping and handling (see below).
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