| Building a History of the Blacksburg Electronic Village | | BIBAK | 1-6 | |
| John M. Carroll; Mary Beth Rosson; Andrew M. Cohill; John R. Schorger | |||
| We are developing a history of the Blacksburg Electronic Village community
network; gathering a broad spectrum of materials from and about the development
process. We are providing browsing and authoring access to these materials
through a World-Wide Web-based information system. The system is at once both
a tool for the technical work of developing design-history, and a highly
democratic forum for evolving a community-history. We believe this project
raises fundamental questions and possibilities regarding the concept of history
itself. Keywords: Design history, Design rationale | |||
| Supporting the Evolution of Design Artifacts with Representations of Context and Intent | | BIBAK | 7-15 | |
| Gerhard Fischer; Kumiyo Nakakoji; Jonathan Ostwald | |||
| The design of complex artifacts is essentially an evolutionary process that
requires collaboration among stakeholders. Domain-oriented design environments
(DODEs) support the evolution of artifacts both by individual designers and by
designers participating in long-term, indirect collaboration. DODEs provide
representations for generic and specific levels of context. This context
supports individual designers by making the information space relevant to the
current design intent, and long-term collaboration among designers by allowing
them to ground their communication around design artifacts. We demonstrate our
approach using the KID (Knowing-in-Design) system, articulate principles for
representations of context and intent, and discuss various approaches to
represent intent and context in design environments. Keywords: Domain-oriented design environments, Shared context, Explicit
representations for intent, Communication of intent, Evolution of design
artifacts, Knowledge-based information delivery, Long-term indirect
collaboration | |||
| Technology-Driven Design of Speech Recognition Systems | | BIBAK | 17-24 | |
| Catalina Danis; John Karat | |||
| End-users and application developers are increasingly considering use of
large vocabulary automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology for tasks that
involve entering large volumes of text into a computer. Interest is in part
fueled by the overwhelmingly positive reviews the technology is receiving in
the trade press and at major trade shows. While acknowledging the impressive
advances in ASR technology in recent years, critics nevertheless point out that
problems with ASR-enabled applications currently preclude them from being
broadly considered viable alternatives to keyboard input. In this paper, we
argue that to become a generally viable alternative to keyboard input, ASR
needs to undergo a transformation from a laboratory technology into a human
computer interaction (HCI) technique. That is, we must discover how the
technology should be used to support users engaged in productive work. We
propose that to bring this about, designers must engage in building
applications grounded in real work contexts now, even though the technology is
still at an immature stage of development. We call this approach
technology-driven design to emphasize our goal of advancing the technology in
our design activities. Not as apparent in this label, but of great importance
to our approach, is a commitment to the involvement of users in every aspect of
system design. Keywords: Speech recognition, Speech user interface, Design, Dictation,
Technology-driven design | |||
| Empowering Users in a Task-Based Approach to Design | | BIBAK | 25-31 | |
| Stephanie Wilson; Peter Johnson | |||
| This paper presents an approach to interactive system design known as
task-based design. The approach advocates a design process that is centred on
descriptions of the work tasks which users currently perform and will perform
in the future. It encompasses a design method, design representations and
design support tools. We discuss the motivations for the work and examine its
relation to other design paradigms such as model-based and scenario-based
design. The paper concludes with a discussion of current research involving
the application of participatory design techniques to the task-based design
paradigm. This is seen as a natural extension to the original work in which
users will participate in formulating descriptions of their work contexts and
in deriving artifact designs that will have consequences for those contexts. Keywords: Task-based design, Design methods, User interface design environments,
Participatory design | |||
| Requirements Rationales: Integrating Approaches to Requirement Analysis | | BIBAK | 33-42 | |
| Alistair Sutcliffe | |||
| An empirical study of requirements analysis techniques is reported. The
study used a ship board emergency application. Requirements were elicited by
presenting users with a prototype-simulation of a prospective design based on
preliminary analysis. This was combined with rationale based techniques for
structuring probe questions and a questionnaire to elicit user preferences.
Transcripts of the sessions were analysed for the type of questions asked,
answers received and the type of requirement captures. The scenario and
rationale techniques proved very effective in eliciting requirements, but style
of questioning may be an important effect. Recommendations are made for
requirements capture session using scenario based approaches. Keywords: Requirements analysis, Design rationale, Scenarios | |||
| A Framework for Developing Experience-Based Usability Guidelines | | BIBAK | 43-53 | |
| Scott Henninger; Kyle Haynes; Michael W. Reith | |||
| Reflecting the growing consensus that principles and methods for developing
effective interfaces are beginning to mature, usability design guidelines have
begun to proliferate. But current approaches to guidelines tend to either be
technology-centric, focusing on platform-specific interface widgets, or
abstract and general-purpose. At best, these general guidelines provide weak
support that is insufficient to support developers faced with specific
interface design problems targeted for specific user populations.
If the potential of usability guidelines as an interface design technique is to be fully realized, they need to be augmented with context-specific guidelines and examples that synthesize isolated guidelines into domain-specific solutions to design problems. In this paper, we present a method in which software development organizations can develop and evolve domain-specific guidelines based on the kinds of applications they develop. The method facilitates the process of determining when and how guidelines should be applied by tying guidelines to specific design cases and providing the means to match customer requirements to specific interface techniques that have proven effective for similar users and application domains. The concrete cases help designers interpret the guidelines, making them easier to comprehend and apply to the current design problem. We demonstrate these issues through Mimir, a case-based system that supports the refinement and location of relevant guidelines and cases. Keywords: Design methodology, Organizational memory, Usability guidelines, Case-based
reasoning | |||
| Towards an Integrated Organization and Technology Development | | BIBAK | 55-64 | |
| Volker Wulf; Markus Rohde | |||
| Nowadays organizations are seen as self-organizing social systems. To cope
with dynamics of a continuously changing environment they have to be able to
react flexibly. To support organizational change we will work out the concept
of integrated organization and technology development. This approach offers a
framework to deal with organizational and technological change jointly in an
evolutionary and participative way. We will investigate on methods to
organization development, work psychological guide-lines, approaches to
software development and tailoring in use. Based on these results we will
develop an integrated approach to organization and technology development. Keywords: Organisation development, Work psychology, Software development, Tailoring
in use | |||
| Facilitating Communication in Software Development | | BIBA | 65-73 | |
| Michael E. Atwood; Bart Burns; Dieter Gairing; Andreas Girgensohn; Alison Lee; Thea Turner; Sabina Alteras-Webb; Beatrix Zimmermann | |||
| Effective communication is critical to the success of a software development project. It factors into the productivity of individuals and organizations, and has particular impact when change occurs. Yet communication is generally left unsupported by the software development process and by the communication infrastructure. We address this issue in the context of two software development projects at NYNEX through a conceptual framework called Design Intent. There are three innovations in our approach. Design Intent encourages stakeholders to engage in active listening, enables stakeholders to collaboratively construct a consistent understanding of the development effort, and provides a communication infrastructure for stakeholders to share ideas and participate in discussions. | |||
| From Domain Modeling to Collaborative Domain Construction | | BIBAK | 75-85 | |
| Gerhard Fischer; Stefanie Lindstaedt; Jonathan Ostwald; Markus Stolze; Tamara Sumner; Beatrix Zimmermann | |||
| Domain-oriented systems offer many potential benefits for end-users such as
more intuitive interfaces, better task support, and knowledge-based assistance.
A key challenge for system developers constructing domain-oriented systems is
determining what the current domain is and what the future domain should be;
i.e. what entities should the system embody and how should they be represented.
Determining an appropriate domain model is challenging because domains are not
static entities that objectively exist, but instead they are dynamic entities
that are constructed over time by a community of practice. New software
development models and new computational tools are needed that support these
communities to create initial models of the domain and to evolve these models
over time to meet changing needs and practices. We describe a specific
software development model and computational tools that enable domain
practitioners to participate in domain construction processes. Keywords: Software design, Domain-oriented design environments, Design, Domain
modeling, Domain construction | |||
| Applying Design Methodology to Software Development | | BIBAK | 87-95 | |
| Jonas Lowgren | |||
| Professional software development, and specifically the external design of
interactive systems, suffers from a tension between the normative development
models being prescribed and the actual design work being performed. This
tension manifests itself in, e.g., recurring problems with fluctuating
requirements. I argue that this tension can be understood as the clash of two
views on external design work: the engineering design and the creative design
perspectives. To explain the tension and to lay a foundation for new ways to
structure software development, I seek to apply critical insights and concepts
from design methodology -- the theoretical framework for creative design. The
result is a development process in which external design is separated from
internal design and construction. The external design work consists of
conceptual, constitutive and consolidatory steps. The process shares some
characteristics with participatory design, but the designer's expertise is
recognized and identified. Keywords: Design methodology, Professional software development, External design,
Creative design | |||
| A Framework for Describing and Understanding Interdisciplinary Interactions in Design | | BIBAK | 97-103 | |
| Catherine M. Burns; Kim J. Vicente | |||
| Today's design environments are highly constrained and projects are often
worked on by designers from different domains. This paper describes a
framework, based on the work of Rasmussen (1990), for examining these design
processes in terms of design movements through levels of constraint and across
design domains. The different design domains are defined by different
disciplines. This framework was developed to assist in the analysis of a field
study of the design of a nuclear power plant control room. The general
structure of the framework is explained and then is used in five design
scenarios to demonstrate its utility. Keywords: Interdisciplinary design, Design constraints, Design process, Design studies | |||
| A Preliminary Study of the Relationship Between Industrial Design and Engineering Design | | BIBA | 105-114 | |
| W. P. Holmes; M. A. Azam; P. C. Hills | |||
| This project is being conducted at the Coventry University Centre for
Integrated Design (CUCID) and is supported by the Coventry University Research
Fund.
The aim of this research is to improve the communication links between the fields of industrial design and engineering design. This paper presents an initial study of the two fields, beginning with set definitions of design. There then follows a brief discussion of design function and the design process. Industrial design and engineering design are then separated and different definitions of both fields are highlighted. Both design processes are discussed and models for each are presented. The final section of the paper examines the relationship between the two fields which enables a combined process model to be derived. Conclusions and proposals on more efficient linking of the two fields are presented which will lead to a greater understanding of the two fields and which will identify further areas fruitful for research. | |||
| An Applied Ethnographic Method for Redesigning User Interfaces | | BIBAK | 115-122 | |
| Anne Rose; Ben Shneiderman; Catherine Plaisant | |||
| Methods for observing software users in the workplace will become
increasingly important as the number of people using computers grows and
developers improve existing systems. Successful redesigns rely, in part, on
complete and accurate evaluations of the existing systems. Based on our
evaluation experience, we have derived a set of practical guidelines to be used
by designers in preparing for the evaluation, performing the field study,
analyzing the data, and reporting the findings. By providing a general
framework based on ethnographic research, we hope to reduce the likelihood of
some common problems, such as overlooking important information and
misinterpreting observations. Examples from our ongoing work with the Maryland
Department of Juvenile Justice are used to illustrate the proposed guidelines. Keywords: Ethnography, Anthropology, Participant observation, Design methods,
Redesign, Evaluation, User studies | |||
| Combining Programming Languages and Direct Manipulation in Environments for Computational Science | | BIBAK | 123-130 | |
| Eric Blough; Michael Eisenberg | |||
| Creating computational environments for scientists presents an unusual
challenge to software designers. Computational scientists have the skills and
motivation to explore models via programming, yet also have highly-developed
qualitative visual skills (e.g., interpretation of plots). Unfortunately,
software designers have traditionally considered programming and
point-and-click interfaces to be mutually exclusive. We propose instead that
the most expressive computational environments for scientists are those in
which programming and direct manipulation are both present, each supplementing
the other. We present several broad themes of interface-language integration,
illustrating them with three prototype applications that we are developing to
support specific research areas of computational science; and we extend these
themes into promising paths for future exploration. Keywords: Interactive programming environments, Computational science, Programmable
applications, Direct manipulation | |||
| Designing Deeper: Towards a User-Centered Development Environment | | BIBA | 131-142 | |
| Keith A. Butler | |||
| We describe our work on a User-Centered Development Environment (UCDE). UCDE is based on emerging, object-oriented software technologies, and its purpose is to investigate how software development can function as an extension of business process improvements. We focus on a method to develop business-oriented components (BOCs). BOCs are software objects that model business rules, processes, and data from the end-user's perspective. They have a clear mapping to the process which they are intended to support, and provide function and data that are reusable in tasks throughout that process. We report preliminary cost-benefit data from construction of applications by assembling BOCs in a model-view-controller environment. | |||
| Learner-Centered System Design: HCI Perspective for the Future | | BIBAK | 143-147 | |
| Mark Guzdial; Yasmin B. Kafai; John M. Carroll; Gerhard Fischer; Roger Schank; Elliot Soloway; Ben Shneiderman | |||
| User-centered system design (Norman & Draper, 1986) taught the HCI community
to address users and their needs, but the community has learned that the needs
of users are not a constant. Learner-centered design draws attention to the
changing needs of users (both students and professionals) as they gain
expertise and how these changes need to be reflected in the interface. The
panelists will help in defining how interface design must be tailored to
support users as learners with case studies of their experiences in designing
adaptive and adaptable interfaces for learners. Keywords: User-centered system design, Learner-centered design, Diversity, Education,
Software-realized scaffolding | |||
| A Method for Analyzing Team Design Activity | | BIBAK | 149-156 | |
| Antonio Carlos Pereira Maia; Carlos Jose Pereira de Lucena; Ana Cristina Bicharra Garcia | |||
| Design is a complex activity that has been the focus of substantial research
work. Alone or in groups, designers create, develop, refine, analyze and
document their conceptualization of a product. Many research projects have
proposed methods for observing the design activity. These methods vary from
simple documentation analysis to video tape analysis.
Although video tape technology has been in use for many years to record design activity, systematic methods have not been developed to analyze video data. This paper presents a method for analyzing team design activity recorded in videotapes. The purpose of the method is to reduce the subjectivity of video data analysis. Our study has been developed in the domain of collaborative software design. The design activity of a multi-disciplinary group including from five to eight people was videotaped and has been analyzed. The team was involved with the design of an educational software system using the approach of decision making meetings. The analysis focused on the dynamics of the interactions among people involved in the design activity. This study is based on the belief that the interactions established among designers will provide important insights for a better understanding of design practice. Keywords: Design activity analysis, Empirical studies of design practice,
Collaborative design, Software design, Design rationale | |||
| Analysis of Gestures in Face-to-Face Design Teams Provides Guidance for How to Use Groupware in Design | | BIBAK | 157-166 | |
| Mathilde M. Bekker; Judith S. Olson; Gary M. Olson | |||
| Many phases of design projects are done in groups. Communication in these
groups is naturally supported through a variety of gestures. We catalog four
types of gestures that people use when engaged in design (kinetic, spatial,
pointing, and other), and overlay it with the purpose of the design subtask, --
design, meeting management, and other. From this and other observations, we
list recommendations for supporting this kind of communication in settings
which have technology support, either face-to-face with group editors (where
people do not necessarily see the same thing at the same time), and remote work
(where people see neither the same view of the object nor a full room view of
the other participants). Keywords: Group design, Gesture, Support for design, Remote work | |||
| Inference Bear: Designing Interactive Interfaces through Before and After Snapshots | | BIBAK | 167-175 | |
| Martin R. Frank; Piyawadee "Noi" Sukaviriya; James D. Foley | |||
| We present Inference Bear ("An Inference Creature based on Before and After
Snapshots") which lets users build functional graphical user interfaces by
demonstration.
Inference Bear is unique in its use of a domain-independent reasoning engine. This approach has several advantages over systems that are closely tied to their domains. Most notably, Inference Bear reasons about a class of relationships that is defined by their computational complexity while rule-based systems are limited to reasoning about the class of relationships that the designer foresaw when building the system. However, it is also more difficult to design domain-independent demonstrational systems that are as easy to use as their domain-specific counterparts. The paper addresses this issue, and other issues relating to domain-independence. Keywords: Rapid prototyping, Human-computer dialog specification, Programming by
demonstration | |||
| Deceived by Ease of Use -- Using Paradigmatic Applications to Build Visual Design Environments | | BIBAK | 177-188 | |
| Kurt Schneider; Alexander Repenning | |||
| Application frameworks for visual design environments usually offer a wide
range of features and easy-to-use mechanisms to develop applications. We
observed that sometimes those features deceive application designers: Tempted
by the desire to make rapid progress, designers go into too much detail about
easy things too early in the process, like graphical representations. After
the easy-to-use mechanisms have been exploited, they find themselves stuck and
frustrated. Premature design decisions made during the feature-driven phase
can corrupt application system architecture or require abandonment of much
work. Extensive rework endangers project success.
Paradigmatic applications can help to bridge the gap between application framework features and intended application -- better than manuals or additional features can. As examples and sources for reusable components, this special kind of exemplary applications directs the attention of designers to higher-level building blocks and helps them to avoid premature feature exploitation. We characterize paradigmatic applications and describe their impact on the design process. Keywords: Application framework, Visual design environment, Analogies, Examples,
Design process | |||
| Self-Disclosing Design Tools: A Gentle Introduction to End-User Programming | | BIBAK | 189-197 | |
| Chris DiGiano; Mike Eisenberg | |||
| Programmable tools for design offer users an expressive new medium for their
work, but becoming acquainted with the tool's language can be a daunting task.
To address this problem, we present a framework for the design of
self-disclosing tools which provide incremental, situated language learning
opportunities for designers in the context of authentic activity. By way of
example, we present Chart 'n' Art, a programmable application for the creation
of graphs and information displays. Chart 'n' Art employs a wide variety of
self-disclosure techniques whose purpose is to introduce users to the system's
"domain-enriched" dialect of Lisp. Keywords: End-user programming, Learning | |||
| OBSM: A Notation to Integrate Different Levels of User Interface Design | | BIBAK | 199-205 | |
| Birgit Kneer; Gerd Szwillus | |||
| The development of user interfaces has to take into account different design
aspects at the same time or in subsequent development phases. Single aspects
are supported by dedicated specification languages and techniques -- a unifying
representation, however, does not exist. This situation forces the designer to
perform complex transitions between different views. We propose a
specification technique, which covers different aspects of user interface
development in a coherent notation. It is based primarily on the paradigm of
object-orientation, constraints, a representation of interaction sequences, and
temporal relations. Keywords: User interface design, Visual modelling, Model-based user interfaces,
Object-oriented systems, Constraints, Task analysis, Dialogue specification | |||
| Designing Complex Systems -- a Structured Activity | | BIBA | 207-217 | |
| Gerrit C. van der Veer; Johannes C. van Vliet; Bert F. Lenting | |||
| This paper concerns the development of complex systems from the point of view of design as a structure of activities, related both to the clients and the users. Several modeling approaches will be adopted for different aspects of design, and several views on design will be integrated. The proposed activity structure is based on teaching design practice, and will be illustrated by examples from design courses for university students and for practitioners in industry. | |||
| A Formal Technique for Automated Dialogue Development | | BIBAK | 219-226 | |
| Gregory D. Abowd; Hung-Ming Wang; Andrew F. Monk | |||
| A number of notations exist by which a designer can specify the behavior of
a human-computer interface in relatively formal terms. In this paper we show
how many of the dialogue specifications described using these notations are
amenable to automated analysis to detect potential problems such as user
actions that are never enabled or have effects that are hard to reverse. In
many situations, a dialogue specification can be thought of as a finite state
machine in which the transition between states is signalled as an event from
the user or system. The trouble with this state transition model is that
states quickly multiply presenting two problems to the analyst: (i) how to
easily describe all of the possible dialogue states and state transitions; and
(ii) how to analyze a very large STN. This paper reviews possible solutions to
both of these problems. A tabular interface to Olsen's Propositional
Production System is described and goes some way towards solving the
descriptive problem. This representation is also useful for simulating
requirements scenarios in a validation exercise. For the analytic problem, we
make use of finite state model checking technology that allows for automated
analysis of very large state machines. We demonstrate how eight categories of
dialogue verification properties can be analyzed with this approach. Together,
dialogue simulation and automated verification leads to a more complete
analytic framework for dialogue development. Keywords: Dialogue design method, Simulation, Automated verification, Formal methods,
Model checking | |||
| An Integration of Scenarios with their Purposes in Task Modeling | | BIBAK | 227-235 | |
| Hermann Kaindl | |||
| Requirements capture and task modeling are very important but insufficiently
supported parts of interaction design. In particular, promising approaches
using scenarios have been proposed, but these are often viewed in isolation.
We complement scenarios with their purposes, and explicitly represent and use
relationships between them in task modeling. More precisely, we link scenarios
(viewed as behavioral requirements) with functional requirements that describe
the purposes of the scenarios. In addition, these scenarios can have functions
attached that are required to make the desired behavior happen. We have
applied our approach in real-world projects, and our experience suggests the
usefulness of this approach. Essentially, it helps to achieve a more complete
and consistent definition of the requirements and the task model. Keywords: Scenario-based design, Requirements capture and documentation, Formal
notations, Design support tools and environments | |||
| Using Scenario-Based Designs to Review User Interface Changes and Enhancements | | BIBA | 237-246 | |
| Traci Royer | |||
| When major portions of a software application's user interface change, using
a scenario-based design document is an effective method to design and review
those changes.
However, when descriptive and functional design documents are reviewed, the group of reviewers may have difficulty determining whether the design makes sense and how the features will be used. | |||
| Using Schematic Scenarios to Understand User Needs | | BIBAK | 247-256 | |
| Colin Potts | |||
| Scenarios are narrative descriptions of interactions between users and
proposed systems. The concreteness of scenarios helps users and designers
develop a shared understanding of the proposed system's functionality; but
concreteness leads to a potentially unbounded number of scenarios for a system.
To help designers develop a limited set of salient scenarios, we propose a
schema similar to story schemata. Like stories, scenarios have protagonists
with goals, they start with background information already in place, and they
have a point that makes them interesting or tests the reader's understanding.
The scenario schema provides a structural framework for deriving scenarios with
slots for such teleological information. Scenarios are derived from a
description of the system's and the user's goals, and the potential obstacles
that block those goals. In this paper, we describe the scenario schema and a
method for deriving a set of salient scenarios. We illustrate how these
scenarios can be used in the analysis of user needs for a multi-user office
application. Keywords: Scenarios, Goal refinement, User requirements | |||
| The Evolution of Useful Things | | BIBA | 257 | |
| Henry Petroski | |||
| Artifacts evolve from artifacts, and understanding how this happens provides
insights into the design process. Furthermore, since all artifacts share the
common characteristic of having been designed and developed, any single
artifact has the potential to reveal to us general principles of design. The
conception and development of complicated objects and devices tend to be masked
with detail, however, and so the essence of technological evolution can be more
directly revealed through simpler artifacts.
The paper clip appears to be among the simplest of things, and yet it provides a rich and rewarding case study into the nature of invention and design. This lecture traces the cultural and patent history of the paper clip over the past century or so and derives from it principles that are relevant to the design and evolution of all artifacts. Patents spanning a century reveal timeless features of the inventive process that serve as guides to understanding the design and evolution of technologically much more complex devices, systems, and processes. | |||
| Designing in a Design Community: Insights and Challenges | | BIBAK | 259-263 | |
| Ernesto G. Arias | |||
| This presentation critically focuses on an experience gained from
interactions between practice and research on designing complex artifacts (such
as cities) in the communities of physical design over 25 years. Grounded on
this experience, insights and issues which have emerged over time will be
shared to form the basis for the arguments that: "design can never be static
over time," and for the "dream of a common language". These arguments in turn
are offered as suggestions which may be useful in thinking about design support
systems beyond existing rhetoric (reflection in action, participatory design,
etc.) to support design as a CREATIVE PROBLEM SOLVING AND LEARNING PROCESS WITH
INNOVATIVE PRESCRIPTIVE OUTCOMES AS ITS GOAL. To this end, it is argued that:
creativity is fundamental in design; time effects and affects complex
artifacts; the origins of conflict; and dreams of computational simulations and
games and of a common Language. The conclusion moves toward designing the
design community by offering some future directions and challenges to think
about the DIS community. Keywords: Creativity, Conflict, Design client, 3-D decision simulation games | |||