Lab 5 Presentation by Group 3 Amir Chamsaz, Fredric Svensson and Kadri-Ann Valgeväli
Chapter 5
Question: "As per Chapter 5, the medical community has paramedics, nurses, and physician's assistants to help with the range of activities. For the company's strategy, it is required to need to build a similar set of facilities to create a proactive organization to ensure routine usability. How and what aspects should a company consider to make such a proactive organization? " Group 13
Answer 1(2): Need to be considered: Make sure that the team as a whole possesses the necessary knowledges. Getting the right people is critical, make sure that they together can perform the roles below. team members can take on many roles. Even self managed team need a leader since otherwise one will emerge. The role of the leader depends on the group and task. Bring together people from different disciplines to increase creativity. What are the roles? Vary between organizations, below you can see some important roles in UCD team listed by IBM. UCD Team Lead - Overall responsibility responsibility of UCD. User Experience Design Lead - Total user experience design responsibility in project. Visual and industrial designer - Responsibility for the overall appearance ... HCI Designer - Responsible for specifying the task flow, interaction design ... User assistance architect - Responsibility for specifying the underlying technology required... Marketing specialist - Specifies the target market, user audience ... Service support specialist - Specifies what support that should be delivered. Internationalization & terminology specialist - Ensure international audiences needs been addressed by the offering. User research specialist - Interpret UCD studies carried out in the project ...
Answer 2(2): Common mistakes by organizations pointed out by IBM: Miss to see the need for experts such as: Human factors specialists - Represent the human factor in design Think they only need Visual designer . Visual designer - focus on visual communication and presentation Think they only need Human factor specialist . Marketing - Specifies the target market, user audience ... Have inappropriate UCD project leaders. Visual design or Human factors skills Expect people that don't have these skills to pick them up . Hire individuals with these skills but insufficient training or experience . Do not have multidisciplinary design team.
References: "Building a Team for User-Centered Design" by Carol M. Barnum Professor of Technical Communication Southern Polytechnic State University 1100 S. Marietta Pky Marietta, GA 30060 cbamurn@spsu.edu "Beyond human-computer interaction 2nd Edition" by Roger, Preece and Sharp "https://www-01.ibm.com/software/ucd/ucd.html " "http://www.eaap.net/humanfactorsspec/ " "http://www.hcirn.com/jobs/asia/ideo.php "
Question: "In chapter 5 it is mentioned that it is not good to have a group of usability staff working on fixing bad designs. Why is this approach guaranteed to fail? Many companies don't have so many usability staff, so it is impossible to forward the task. Maybe one can forward it to developers, but doesn't the usability staff still have to redesign first? " Group 8
Answer: I have not found any material that explained why it is a bad idea to have the approach mentioned in the papers. but... Yes, it would have been a b ad idea to forward the designing to the developers since they know nothing, or just the basics of usability. Small organization Even if your company not are big enough to have specific team member for each role, you may have multi-disciplinary design by using one of the principles in ISO 13407 that states that different team members can take on multiple roles .
References: Chapter 7. Methodology from Lab 5 "Beyond human-computer interaction 2nd Edition" by Roger, Preece and Sharp https://www-01.ibm.com/software/ucd/ucd.html
Chapter 7
Standard and non-standard methods
Question: "Chapter 7 says that you need a standard methodology for usability work. However, most projects differ from each other to a large extent and they have different needs. This can mean that the standard method needs to be changed more or less to suit each project. How can you keep the standard methodology flexible enough to meet the different needs for the different projects, without adding too much work for customization , and are there situations where standard methodologies are not efficient?" Group 7
Answer: The methodolgy chosen by the company should be flexible enough to fit for the different project within the company. If you find that the existing standard methods not fit the situation of the company, then it will probably be better to select another one. If the company find a standard method to not fit the company's context, then then company have three choices when choosing method: Customize the the method for this specific context. + Might require little work, but give a customized product. - Might be costly. - Might require a lot of time. Find another method that better suit the organizational need. + Require little or no customization. - Probably not customized to perfectly fit your organization. Develop a new method . + Get a perfectly customized method. - Might be costly. - Might require a lot of time. - The method have not been used by other organization.
Question: "Standard vs. non-standard methods CH7 How do you choose between those two. To get a balance between amount of time being spent and how creative this process can get. Some info can be found in the start of chapter 7." Group 10
Answer: Benefit with standard methods Make sure that critical steps for making a product usable not are missed . Ensures that all project follows a s tandard level of quality . Wide international acceptance . If you for instance say that your Form-filling dialogues follow the recommendations of "ISO 9241-17 (1998)", then this might be a good way to communicate the usability to customer . Helps the i nexperienced designer . Benefit with non-standard methods Might be more customized to your organization.
References: "Chapter 7. Methodology" http://www.iso.org/iso/about/discovers-iso_who-standards-benefits.htm http://www.usabilitypartners.se/usability/standards.shtml http://www.cs.chalmers.se/Cs/Education/Courses/mdi/2008/lectures/DesignKnowledge.pdf
Question Group 2 According to Chapter 7 (P.2), “technology needs to be focused on serving the user”. If we take the example of a company applying the technical-centered solution (design technical solution , then design interface on top of it), how to help it switching to the new way: user-centered solution (design interface first, then design technical solution to fit it)? What are the main aspects to change in first without creating an unstable situation?
Answer You need a whole new development process The methods have to be interwoven with proper communication and handoffs between the different types of development staff. Schaffer method::The Plan Evaluation and Structure Phase:: Evaluate Current Applications: "In this first step, you evaluate any existing applications and identify potential improvements. If the planned design is a revision of an existing application, you need to review and usability test the existing design. Reviewing the existing design helps you identify areas that need special emphasis during redesign"
Question Do you think it is possible to implement Schaffer method in the context of an agile software development process such as Scrum? If not, can you give an example of methodology which could be applied in such a context? (Chapter 7)
Answer 1. Software development methodologies have a different prospective from user-centered design methodology. "These methods identify business and technical functions and database design and middleware in progress, before the user tasks and actions are identified and taken into account." Schaffer method explained in chapter 7 is an example of a UCD method based on the best practices for optimizing user experience 2. However, according to HFI: Schaffer method easily fits in with Software development life cycle (SDLC) methods such as RUP
Question In Chapter 7, “The Plan Evaluation and Structure Phase” part (P.5). It is said to “evaluate any existing applications and identify potential improvements”. This sounds really suitable for companies already working on design process. If I am creating a startup aiming to launch a completely new product, how to manage this part when I almost start from scratch? Is it possible to replace this evaluation by another step, so that I will still have some useful reference aimed by this phase?
Answer If the planned design is a revision of an existing application, you need to review and usability test the existing design. Review related solutions Keep in mind the purpose: identify the areas which need special emphasis illustrates the impact of usability problems on the business to convince stakeholder
Question Group 9 Chapter 7 mentions the Schaffer Method: Is there any case study of a practical application of this method in detail ? Can we identify some drawbacks ?
Answer Schaffer method is HFI's Design Methodology and HFI has recieved the following feedbacks
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