HCI Midterm 1

"Design" (what is it?)

Has both narrow and broad meanings. Can connote the entire lifecycle process or just one process activity.

Hierarchical task inventory

Hierarchical task inventory (HTI) is the process of cataloguing and representing the hierarchical relationships among the tasks and sub-tasks that must be supported in the system design.

Rich personas

The detail of a persona has to be a rich part of a life story. It has to be specific and precise; this means lots of details that all fit together. Give your persona a personality and a life surrounded with detailed artifacts.

Scenario

A scenario is a design input in the form of a story about specific people performing work activities in a specific work situation within a specific work context, told in a concrete narrative style, as if it were a transcript of a real usage occurrence. Scenarios are deliberately informal, open-ended, and fragmentary narrative depictions of key usage situations happening over time.

Ideation

an active, creative, exploratory, highly iterative, fast-moving collaborative group process for forming ideas for design. With a focus on brainstorming, ideation is applied design thinking.

Domain-complex systems

Domain-complex systems are systems with high degree of intricacy and technical content in the corresponding field of work. Often, characterized by convoluted and elaborate mechanisms for how parts of the system work and communicate, they usually have complicated workflow containing multiple dependencies and communication channels. Examples include an air traffic control system and a system for analyzing seismic data for oil exploration.

Design perspectives

Ecological, interaction, emotional

Design paradigms

Engineering, human information processing (HIP), and phenomenological

Barriers

A barrier, in contextual modeling, is a problem that interferes with normal operations of user work practice. Anything that impedes user activities, interrupts work flow or communications, or interferes with the performance of work responsibilities is a barrier to the work practice.

Horizontal Prototype

A horizontal prototype is very broad in the features it incorporates, but offers less depth in its coverage of functionality.

Local Prototype

A local prototype represents the small area where horizontal and vertical slices intersect. A local prototype, with depth and breadth both limited, is used to evaluate design alternatives for a particular isolated interaction detail.

Social models

A social model is a diagrammatic description that captures the social aspects of the users' organizational workplace, including the overall flavor, philosophy, ambiance, and environmental factors as well as thought processes, mind-sets, policies, feelings, attitudes, concerns and influences, norms of behavior, attitudes, and pressures that affect users.

Step-by-step task interaction model

A step-by-step task interaction model contains a detailed description of task performance observed in users or as told by users.

Storyboard

A storyboard is a visual scenario in the form of a series of sketches or graphical clips, often annotated, in cartoon-like frames depicting the actions, states, and sequences of interaction flow between user and system.

Task Interaction Model

A task interaction model is a step-by-step description, including task goals, intentions, triggers, and user actions.

Task Structure Model

A task structure model is a hierarchical decomposition of tasks and sub-tasks showing what tasks are to be supported and the relationships among them.

Candidate personas

A variety of created personas which are created to represent different potential users. They are "candidates" to become the primary persona.

Work activity affinity diagram

A work activity affinity diagram (WAAD) is an affinity diagram used to sort and organize work activity notes in contextual analysis, pulling together work activity notes with similarities and common themes to highlight common work patterns and shared strategies across all users.

Interviews

Asking users/stakeholders questions and recording their responses. Collects data on "what users say"

Idea creation ("go" mode)

Idea creation is about the generation of new ideas and throwing them out for discussion and inspiration - not reviewing and judging them.

T Prototype

In a "T" prototype much of the design is realized at a shallow level (the horizontal top of the T), but a few parts are done in depth (the vertical part of the T). A "T" prototype combines the advantages of both horizontal and vertical, offering a good compromise for system evaluation.

Importance of UX in software development

It's very important.

Work artifacts

Items from the workplace and photos of them. Paper forms, templates, work orders, etc. Collected during site visits.

Rationale

Justification for user behavior, included on work activity notes. Also part of a requirement - "Users shall be able to (do blah) because we noticed blah"

Prototyping

One of the four basic process activities. Done in parallel and conjunction with design. It is when the design creates external representations of the design in their mind.

Analysis

One of the four basic process activities. Intended to understand the business domain, user work, and user needs. Includes contextual inquiry and contextual analysis, as well as the synthesis of design-informing models.

Design

One of the four basic process activities. It includes redesign for the next version of the product, and includes design ideation and sketching.

Business role

One of the three major roles in an organization. Concerned with the subject matter of that work domain. Often experts in the field for which you are designing. Tend to think of the product in terms of what it can do - how comprehensively it accounts for business needs.

Software/development role

One of the three major roles in an organization. Thinks of product in terms of reliability, code readability, feature set.

Presence

Presence of a product is a kind of relationship with users in which the product becomes a personally meaningful part of their lives.

Interaction perspective

The interaction design perspective is about how users operate the system or product. It is a task and intention view, where user and system come together. It is where users look at displays and manipulate controls, doing sensory, cognitive, and physical actions.

Evaluate

The last basic process activity. When the designer sees if they achieved the UX targets and metrics to ensure that the design "meets usability and business goals"

Physical model

The physical model gives the roles, activities, and artifacts of other models a physical setting, showing the physical environment as it supports (or not) the work. The physical model shows physical dimensions of the work spaces, buildings, walls, rooms, workstations, all physical equipment, and collaboration spaces, but does not have to be an exact to-scale floor plan. The physical model includes computing and communications and other work devices, for example, copy machines, telephones, FAX machines, printers, and network connections.

Think aloud technique

The think aloud technique is a qualitative data collection technique in which user participants verbally externalize their thoughts about their interaction experience, including their motives, rationale, and perceptions of UX problems. By this method, participants give the evaluator access to an understanding of their thinking about the task and the interaction design.

Locus of influence in an organization

Traditionally three major roles in an organization: business role, design or "creative" role, and software or development role. Each has their own skills, perspectives, and biases.

Deductive reasoning

Used to extract requirements from the WAAD. Top-down logic - moves from the general to the particular.

Usefulness

Usefulness is the component of user experience to which system functionality gives the ability to use the system or product to accomplish the goals of work (or play).Design:

Interaction design

the design of interactive products and services in which a designer's focus goes beyond the item in development to include the way users will interact with it.

Observations

Watching users in their natural environment. Collects data on "what users do".

Tradeoffs

Where a design choice has to be made that would favor one persona but hurt another. In this case, favor the primary persona.

Work Activity Theory

Work activity theory in HCI stemmed from a democratic movement that flourished in Scandinavia during the 1980s. It emphasized human labor and human activities as complex, goal-directed and socially situated phenomena mediated by tool usage.

Current situation

Work as it is currently done

Envisioned situation

Work as we believe it should/could be. Informed by design-informing models.

System concept statement

a concise descriptive summary of the envisioned system or product stating an initial system vision or mandate; in short, it is a mission statement for the project.

Participatory Design

a democratic process for design entailing user participation in design for work practice. Underlying participatory design is the arguments that users should be involved in designs they will be using, and that all stakeholders, including and especially users, have equal inputs into interaction design.

Design Ontology

a description of all the objects and their relationships, users, user actions, tasks, everything surrounding the existence of a given aspect of a design.

User personas

a persona, as used in contextual data representation and interaction design, is a hypothetical but specific "character" in a specific work role, with specific user class characteristics. As a technique for making users real to designers, a persona is a story and description of a realistic individual who has a name, a life, and a personality, allowing designers to limit design focus to something very specific.

User models

a set of models that define who the users are, including everything about work roles, sub-roles, user class definitions, and personas.

Work activity

comprised of sensory, cognitive, and physical actions made by users in the course of carrying out the work practice.

Model-driven inquiry

contextual data gathering is informed by knowledge and expectations from experience, intelligent conjecture, and knowledge of similar systems and situations. The idea is to be more efficient by using what you know, but it comes at the risk of missing data due to biases.

Usability engineering

the expertise needed to achieve usability

Data-driven inquiry

led entirely by the work activity data as is presents itself, forestalling any influence from the analyst's own knowledge, experience, or expectations. The idea is to avoid biases in data collection.

Work activity data

notes taken during field visits/interviews of users/work environment - observations and answers to inquiries. Essentially, just raw notes on things you learned.

Design-thinking paradigm

same thing as the "phenomenological matrix". brings a vision of the desired user experience and product appeal and how the design of a product can induce that experience and appeal. motivated by a desire to "reframe usability practice."

UX/Design role

tends to prioritize user needs and experience over all other factors.

Engineering paradigm

the HCI engineering paradigm prescribed starting with an inventory of the functionality envisioned for a new system and proceeding to build an interaction design of the best quality possible given available resources.

Emotional impact

the affective component of user experience that influences user feelings. Emotional impact includes such effects as pleasure, fun, joy of use, aesthetics, desirability, pleasure, novelty, originality, sensations, coolness, engagement, novelty, and appeal and can involve deeper emotional factors such as self-expression, self-identity, a feeling of contribution to the world, and pride of ownership.

System Ecology

the context provided by the surrounding parts of the world with which it interacts.

Work activity notes

A work activity note is used to document a single point about a single concept, topic, or issue as synthesized from the raw contextual data. Work activity notes are stated as simple and succinct declarative points in the user's perspective.

Work environment models

A work environment model is a model that defines the milieu in which work gets done, including constraints and artifact and physical models.

Work roles

A work role is defined and distinguished by a corresponding job title or work assignment representing a set of work responsibilities. A work role usually involves system usage, but some work roles can be external to the organization being studied.

Artifact Model

An artifact model is a representation of how tangible elements (physical or electronic) are used and structured in the business process flow of doing the work.

Artifact model

An artifact model shows how tangible elements (physical or electronic) are used and structured in the business process flow of doing the work. A collection of artifacts organized for analysis and use.

Iteration

An iterative process is one in which all or part is repeated for the purpose of exploring, fixing, or refining a design or the work product of any other lifecycle activity. It is the "wash, rinse, and repeat" characteristic of HCI.

Design-informing models (DIMs)

Design-informing models are not building blocks that appear directly in a design but are artifacts that embody, drive, inform, and inspire the design. They are design-oriented constructs, such as task descriptions or user personas, that turn raw data into actionable items as design ideas, as elements to consider or take into account in the design.

Sticky personas

Personas need to get lots of visibility, and their personalities need to be memorable or "sticky" in the minds of those who encounter them (Nieters, Ivaturi, & Ahmed, 2007). To this end, UX teams have created posters, trading cards, coffee mugs, T-shirts, screen "wallpaper," and full-sized cardboard stand-up figures to bring their personas alive and give them exposure, visibility, and memorability to keep them on the minds of all stakeholders.

Phenomenological Aspects of Interaction

Phenomenological aspects (deriving from phenomenology, the philosophical examination of the foundations of experience and action) of interaction are the cumulative effects of emotional impact considered over the long term, where usage of technology takes on a presence in our lifestyles and is used to make meaning in our lives.

UX-SE success components

Regular, routine communication; coordination to avoid effort duplication, synchronization to keep each other in sync, dependency and constraint enforcement to make sure everyone is operating from the same requirements, anticipating change (x design requirement will cause z software change)

Primary persona

The candidate persona which is the single best design target, the persona to which the design will be made specific.

Ecological perspective

The ecological design perspective is about how the system or product works within its external environment. It is about how the system or product is used in its context and how the system or product interacts or communicates with its environment in the process. This is a work role and workflow view, which includes social interaction and long-term phenomenological aspects of usage as part of one's lifestyle.

Emotional perspective

The emotional design perspective is about emotional impact and value-sensitive aspects of design. It is about social and cultural implications, as well as the aesthetics and joy of use.

Work domain

The entire context of work and work practice in the target enterprise or other target usage environment.

Human-information processing (HIP) paradigm

The human informationTatar processing approach to HCI is based on the metaphor of "mind and computer as symmetrically coupled information processors" (Tatar, Harrison, & Sengers, 2007). This paradigm, which at its base is about models of how information is sensed, accessed, and transformed in the human mind and, in turn, how those models reflect requirements for the computer side of the information processing

User classes

a description of the relevant characteristics of the user population who can take on a particular work role. User class descriptions can include such characteristics as demographics, skills, knowledge, experience, and special needs—for example, because of physical limitations.

Flow model

a diagram giving the big picture or overview of work, emphasizing communication and information flow among work roles and between work roles and system components within the work practice of an organization.

Affinity Diagram

a hierarchical technique for organizing and grouping the issues and insights across large quantities of qualitative data and showing it in a visual display, usually posted on one or more walls of a room.

Design thinking

a mind-set in which the product concept and design for emotional impact and the user experience are dominant. It is an approach to creating a product to evoke a user experience that includes emotional impact, aesthetics, and social- and value-oriented interaction. As a design paradigm, design thinking is an immersive, integrative, and market-oriented eclectic blend of art, craft, science, and invention.

Usage models

a set of models that define how work gets done, including flow models, task structure models, and task interaction models. include flow models, task models,

Lifecycle

a structured framework consisting of a series of stages and corresponding activities—such as analysis, design, implementation, and evaluation—that characterize the course of evolution of, in this context, the full evolution of an interaction design or a complete system or product.

Legacy System

a system with maintenance problems that date back possibly many years.

Usage scenarios

a task description technique that offers powerful tools for gaining insight about user needs and activities, supporting almost every phase of the interaction design lifecycle. Extracted from actual data.

Data bin

a temporary repository—for example, a labeled pile of notes on a table—to hold data—raw contextual data at first and, later, synthesized work activity notes. Each bin corresponds to a different data category or contextual data topic.

Designing with personas

a tool for controlling the instinct to cover everything in a design, including all the edge cases. Creates different types of users with narratives to help overcome conflicts of needs of different users.

UX

an almost ubiquitous term that we use to refer to most things that have to do with designing for a high quality user experience. So this means we will use terms like the UX field, UX work, a UX practitioner, the UX team, the UX role, UX design or UX design process.

Contextual inquiry

an early system or product UX lifecycle activity to gather detailed descriptions of customer or user work practice for the purpose of understanding work activities and underlying rationale. The goal of contextual inquiry is to improve work practice and construct and/or improve system designs to support it. Contextual inquiry includes both interviews of customers and users and observations of work practice occurring in its real-world context.s

Ethnography

an investigative field rooted in anthropology. Set of techniques designed to deeply understand a group of people, often involving observation and interviews.

Design thinking as a discipline

approach to creating an experience that includes emotional impact, aesthetics, and social- and value-oriented interaction. The design of the product concept and design for emotional impact and the user experience comes first; it is a design-driven process.

Task model

ask models represent what users do or need to do in the work practice and work environment, using system or not. Task models include both task structure and task interaction models. The primary task structure model is the hierarchical task inventory, similar to the idea of hierarchical task analysis.

Requirements

inputs driving the design process and helping to determine its features and the look, feel, and behavior of the interaction design. These requirements are used as a checklist to ensure that they are covered in the design, even before any UX evaluation.

Task analysis

the investigation and deconstruction of units of work. It is the process of representing the structure of these units plus describing how they are performed, including goals, steps, and actions.

User interface

the means by which the user and a computer system interact, in particular the use of input devices and software.

Work practice

the pattern of established actions, approaches, routines, conventions, and procedures followed and observed in the customary performance of a particular job to carry out the operations of an enterprise. Work practice often involves learned skills, decision making, and physical actions and can be based on tradition, ritualized and habituated.

Usability

the pragmatic component of user experience, including effectiveness, efficiency, productivity, ease-of-use, learnability, retainability, and the pragmatic aspects of user satisfaction.

Work

the set of activities that people undertake to accomplish goals. Some of these activities involve system or product usage. This concept includes play, if play, rather than work per se, is the goal of the user.

Contextual analysis

the systematic analysis—identification, sorting, organization, interpretation, consolidation, and communication—of the contextual user work activity data gathered in contextual inquiry, for the purpose of understanding the work context for a new system to be designed.

User experience

the totality of the effect or effects felt by a user as a result of interaction with, and the usage context of, a system, device, or product, including the influence of usability, usefulness, and emotional impact during interaction, and savoring the memory after interaction.

Vertical Prototype

vertical prototype contains as much depth of functionality as possible in the current stage of the project, but only for a narrow breadth of features.

Requirements extraction

walk the WAAD, switch from inductive to deductive reasoning (e.g. move from user need to feature)

Human-computer interaction

what happens when a human user and a computer system, in the broadest sense, get together to accomplish something