| Moving GM to #1 in online satisfaction: techniques for conducting quantitative benchmarking across hundreds of web sites and for prioritizing functionality based on user needs in differing geographies and markets | | BIBA | Full-Text | 1 | |
| Howard Tiersky; Curtis Songer | |||
| GM is the largest automaker in the world with a brand portfolio including
Chevrolet, Cadillac, Saab, Hummer, Pontiac, GMC, Saturn, Buick, Opel and
Vauxhall. In 2004, a JD Power consumer satisfaction study showed that 68% of
GM's US sites were below industry average and 2 were in the bottom 10%. An
initiative was undertaken to determine the key gaps driving this unacceptable
level of customer dissatisfaction. A comprehensive global user experience
benchmarking project was undertaken, followed by the development of a strategy
and various implementation projects.
In February of 2005 JD Power published their revised study which showed that GM had risen to #1 in customer satisfaction. This presentation will review the specific techniques used to heuristically assess over 125 web sites, including techniques for functional prioritization and analytics and will address specific findings of best practices among automotive web sites. The techniques presented are applicable across industries. | |||
| Diamond search: improving the user experience of buying loose diamonds online | | BIBA | Full-Text | 2 | |
| Maren Costa; Gianna Curran; Devraj Varadhan; Sylvia Olveda | |||
| Loose diamonds present several challenges to the e-commerce world:
1. Each loose diamond is a one-of-a-kind occurrence in nature.
2. Buying a loose diamond is frequently an intimidating, emotional, expensive,
high-commitment event. 3. Selecting the right stone is often a series of compromises over a series of interdependent parameter ranges. A customer may start with one or more relatively fixed parameter range, for example, price and/or carat weight, and he may be willing to compromise on other parameter ranges, for example color, cut, and/or clarity, in order to meet his goals. This case study examines the development and deployment of a dynamic, visual, usable, confidence-building, diamond search tool, and a user-centric, end-to-end online shopping experience for loose diamonds. | |||
| The Goldilocks Content Framework: identifying just-right information | | BIBA | Full-Text | 3 | |
| Jared M. Spool; Joshua Porter | |||
| Content is an essential part of any successful web site. However, little
work has been done to help designers understand how much content they need or
what that content should say.
Using a novel approach of analysing the conversations between users on discussion lists, the authors have determined there are essentially 14 types of content that form a framework of what users need. This initial look at the research results gives insights into the Goldilocks Content Framework and potentially gives designers a tool for planning, budgeting, and assessing the quality of content on their web site. | |||
| Improving color exploration and visualization on the ColorSmart by BEHR application | | BIBA | Full-Text | 4 | |
| Jay Joichi | |||
| This case study describes the challenges, planning process and final solution of a new release of a multi-channel (kiosk and web) application that helps users select, coordinate and visualize the colors of their painting project. The project ultimately came to focus on improving how users explore paint color and visualize those colors in rooms. | |||
| Messageboard topic tagging: user tagging of collectively owned community content | | BIBA | Full-Text | 5 | |
| Jane Murison | |||
| We have designed a feature for the BBC England (www.bbc.co.uk/england)
messageboard which allows users to tag their own conversations with words and
phrases. This introduces a faceted method of navigation around conversations to
complement the current structure. The messageboards' editorially imposed
top-down architecture is inflexible and does not consistently reflect the
content: users can't easily work out 'where the party's at'.This
'ethnoclassification' follows many of the same rules as http://www.flickr.com/
(photo collections) and http://del.icio.us/ (web link collections), where they
have been implemented very successfully. However, their content items are owned
by individuals, whereas our conversations and therefore the tags attached are
owned by a group.
This difference could create community politics, and we await our launch to see what behaviours and etiquettes emerge. We hope to see more 'informational' than 'personal' tagging, but expect a certain level of 'meta-debate'. We should have some results in time for DUX'05. | |||
| The paradox of the library: information architecture challenges in an interdisciplinary organization | | BIBA | Full-Text | 6 | |
| Abe Crystal | |||
| This paper discusses field research in an interdisciplinary public health organization with a small in-house library. The fieldwork revealed how users in the organization often ignored the library (a "formal" information system) in favor of "informal" information sources such as colleagues, search engines, and personal files. The fieldwork thereby inverted a design problem, shifting the focus from building a better information retrieval system to understanding and supporting the information ecology of the organization. The fieldwork demonstrates some of the complexities of information use in practice, and the challenge of designing formally structured information systems (such as libraries) that match how users employ information in their ordinary work practices. We argue that future design efforts could build upon users' "natural streams of information" to develop more effective information architectures and capabilities for supporting users' work. | |||
| Peers: a social network at Avenue A | Razorfish | | BIBA | Full-Text | 7 | |
| Tracy Cohen | |||
| Peers is a social networking application developed by Avenue A | Razorfish
for social and professional interaction between consultants within the User
Experience group. Peers provided access and insight into the thoughts, projects
and deliverables of the consultants in our group while truly building a sense
of community and fun.
This sketch reports on the findings of the prototype and the practical applications of a social network within an agency. With social interaction being a fundamental component of Internet 2.0, we were intent on exploring the opportunities for Social Media within the corporate domain. The result of the prototype and its success was the decision to roll out Peers 2.0 to the broader organization of 900+ consultants. | |||
| Guidelines are a tool: building a design knowledge management system for programmers | | BIBA | Full-Text | 8 | |
| Mike Kuniavsky; Srinivas Raghavan | |||
| This case study describes the creation of an internal design knowledge
management tool for web developers as a means to encourage user-centered
development practices. With a goal to shift a software development culture from
waterfall-style to user-centered practices, the repository of knowledge and
code is created as an incentive for programmers to create interfaces in a
user-centered and consistent way.
Several experimental techniques are used in development of the tool. The process treats software developers as a user group and approaches the creation of design guidelines as if they were a product. In addition, the use of agile software development techniques, as driven by interaction and interface design, coupled with off-the-shelf blog software as a extensible, lightweight content management system makes this an experiment on multiple levels. Results about the success of the experiment are still pending, but the authors are optimistic. | |||
| Maintaining concentration to achieve task completion | | BIBA | Full-Text | 9 | |
| Ben Shneiderman; Benjamin B. Bederson | |||
| When faced with a challenging goal, knowledge workers need to concentrate on their tasks so that they move forward toward completion. Since frustrations, distractions, and interruptions can interfere with their smooth progress, design strategies should enable users to maintain concentration. This paper promotes awareness of this issue, reviews related work, and suggests three initial strategies: Reduce short-term and working memory load, provide information abundant interfaces, and increase automaticity. | |||
| The challenges and realities of merging online banks | | BIBA | Full-Text | 10 | |
| Abla L. Hamilton; Suzan Revah | |||
| The recent merger of Bank of America and Fleet Bank presented unique
challenges that arose from the effort to combine two online banking
applications. Different functionality and different navigation systems,
combined with different and sometimes conflicting business goals and
stakeholders' views, significantly impacted the user interface design process.
This study will focus on one particular project aimed at facilitating this transition (or merger), the Online Banking & Online Investing integration project. Employing user-centered design techniques, the project team was able to validate user-focused design decisions that contradicted the initial direction of the line of business. However, by collaborating with our business partners and stakeholders, we were able to determine and develop design compromises that supported business goals and ultimately provided an acceptable customer experience. | |||
| A process for incorporating heuristic evaluation into a software release | | BIBA | Full-Text | 11 | |
| Marilyn Hollinger | |||
| This paper describes a process for incorporating heuristic evaluations into
a software product release. The goal of the paper is to provide enough detail
and results to other design teams to assist them in developing their own
process for this activity.
The process took place over approximately one year. In all, 124 projects were reviewed, involving 1414 web pages, and identifying 5817 defects. Data is not yet available about the exact number of defects fixed, but it is expected to be well over 2000, as described below. The heuristics used in this process included how well the various pages integrated, how easy it was to accomplish tasks, conformance to style guidelines, and consistency in design, terminology, and layout. Some user testing was done on some of the projects that went through these reviews; the reviews complimented that testing. | |||
| Improving the usability of VeriSign® SSL certificate enrollment | | BIBA | Full-Text | 12 | |
| Krista Van Laan; Eva Jonshult | |||
| This paper discusses the methodology used to redesign the SSL Certificate
enrollment process for VeriSign, Inc.
Like many technology companies in which time to market is of critical importance, VeriSign's release schedules and fast response to customer requirements make it difficult to always devote needed time to design or usability-testing. It was necessary to institute processes that accommodate very tight schedules and frequent product releases. This was accomplished by conducting formal, by-the-book usability best practices on a flagship product, and then extracting what was learned from that for future use. The usability team employed research, iterative design, and usability testing to redesign the SSL Certificate Web pages to make them more intuitive and user-friendly. As a result of the new design, customer satisfaction and sales increased, and subsequent usability processes were derived. The enrollment design and practices became the standard for all other VeriSign product enrollments, for eight international sites. | |||
| Early and often: how to avoid the design revision death spiral | | BIBA | Full-Text | 13 | |
| David Cronin | |||
| A critical component to the success of an interaction design project is
close collaboration with clients or stakeholders. Without careful planning and
structure this type of collaboration can turn into a significant barrier to
project success. This paper discusses the strategies and methods Cooper have
adopted to get maximum benefit from clients' feedback and expertise while
maintaining creative momentum and achieving deadlines.
While many of these concepts have been explored and discussed throughout academic design and project management literature, as a Practice Study, this paper is concerned specifically with activities found to be useful in a consultancy environment. | |||
| Design of a telescope control system interface | | BIBA | Full-Text | 14 | |
| Timothy Hudson; Graciela González | |||
| A telescope control system interface provides a means of communication
between a telescope and its operator. This communication link has historically
been unfriendly to the average user, often relying upon very basic graphics,
text-based screens, or command-line interfaces.
In this paper, we present a design for the telescope control system interface using graphical technology. Specifically, we intend to code an application in C++ that employs the OpenGL application programming interface. By taking graphical tools often used for video games and applying them to our user interface, we are able to present information in an aesthetically pleasing manner that is intuitive, concise, and flexible. When fully implemented, our interface will allow operators to control a telescope precisely by using visual cues. | |||
| Viewing visual web site design in context | | BIBA | Full-Text | 15 | |
| Chris Roast | |||
| This paper describes a novel tool supported approach to the assessment of the visual design of websites. The tool is called GIST and is motivated by the desire to support designers in understanding the actuality of their product. The GIST concept addresses one facet of this problem by graphically analysing the pages of a site in the context of their concrete appearance and their relationship with other inter-linked pages. The result of this analysis can be visualized showing images of pages analysed and positioned so that their visual similarities and differences can be easily assessed. In preliminary trials a GIST prototype has proved to be of interest and value in design contexts that emphasise and value visual quality. | |||
| Gospel Spectrum | | BIBA | Full-Text | 16 | |
| Anh Dang | |||
| "God is in the details."In the world of design, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's
famous dictum regarding the importance of details in one's work has been the
mantra for designers in various professions from architecture to new media.
But what if God is literally the detail? The Gospel Spectrum is an interactive application exploring the story of Jesus Christ, who many believe is the Son of God, based on the dissection of the Gospels, the four books in the Bible -- Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John -- that recount the story of Jesus' life from four different viewpoints. The Gospel Spectrum creates new insights on the narrative by employing principles of computational media and data visualization to deconstruct and then visually reconstruct the story. | |||
| Projective techniques for projection technologies | | BIBA | Full-Text | 17 | |
| Steve Portigal | |||
| To facilitate the development of a new home-entertainment device (a portable
projector with built-in speakers and a DVD player) we conducted in-home
interviews that explored home entertainment activities, presented a demo of a
rough prototype, and brainstormed with participants about future refinements.
Our research revealed that people use TV in a variety of ways, from special events to background noise. Although the device was intended only to support special event viewing (being brought out for special events and then stored when not in use) we found that the unrefined nature of the prototype led respondents to expect that the eventual product would support any and all of their TV usage modes. The critical recommendation was that if (as planned) the final product would not support those viewing modes, it must be crystal clear (through a consistent story of design, pricing, and features) how it can and can't be used. | |||
| Going more public: situated display design in a care setting through co-realisation | | BIBA | Full-Text | 18 | |
| Connor Graham; Keith Cheverst; Mark Rouncefield; Christian Kray | |||
| We describe findings from field work at a residential community care facility for ex-psychiatric hospital patients. The field work focused on distributed care-workers who looked after residents at the two sites forming the facility. We reflect on the process of co-realisation that verified our understanding of the setting and generated initial technology designs. This involved sharing scenarios descriptive of typical activity with care workers and presenting a demonstration of networked public display technology in use. We then illustrate how co-realisation both refined our understanding of care workers' work needs and informed us about how and where public display technology could be deployed. Finally, we present an initial design for a public display. | |||
| v4v: a View for the Viewer | | BIBA | Full-Text | 19 | |
| Mira Dontcheva; Steven M. Drucker; Michael F. Cohen | |||
| We present a View for the Viewer (v4v), a slide viewer that focuses on the needs of the viewer of a presentation instead of the presenter. Our design centers on representing the deck of slides as a stack embedded in a 3-D world. With only single button clicks, the viewer can quickly and easily navigate the deck of slides. We provide four types of annotation techniques and have designed a synchronization mechanism that makes it easy for the viewer to move in and out of sync with the presenter. We also supply alarms as a method for viewer notification. We evaluate our approach with a preliminary user study resulting in positive feedback about our design plus suggestions for improvements and extensions. | |||
| Damming the flood: monitoring streaming security event data using BlockTables | | BIBA | Full-Text | 20 | |
| Andreas Dieberger; Markus Stolze; Rene Pawlitzek | |||
| Security Event Monitoring is a tedious job where users stare at long tables of incoming security events indicating potential threats. Most of the events, however, are false alarms and the user has to find these and dismiss them. This paper talks about design changes in a security event monitoring tool, called the ZEC (Zurich Event Console) which, based on findings in a usability study and observations of how event monitors go about their job, are meant to make them more efficient. In particular, BlockTables are designed to make the inherent structure of event data more apparent. We also describe the design of a navigation feature which allows users to navigate the event table based on the inherent block structure exposed by the BlockTables. | |||
| The Visual Decision Maker: a recommendation system for collocated users | | BIBA | Full-Text | 21 | |
| Steven M. Drucker; Tim Regan; Asta Roseway; Markus Lofstrom | |||
| We present the Visual Decision Maker (VDM), an application that gives movie recommendations to groups of people sitting together. The VDM provides a TV like user experience: a stream of movie stills flows towards the center of the screen, and users press buttons on remote controls to vote on the currently selected movie. A collaborative filtering engine provides recommendations for each user and for the group as a whole based on the votes. Three principles guided our design of the VDM: shared focus, dynamic pacing, and encouraging conversations. In this paper we present the results of a four month public installation and a lab study showing how these design choices affected people's usage and people's experience of the VDM. Our results show that shared focus is important for users to feel that the group's tastes are represented in the recommendations. | |||
| Design of a neighborhood pathfinder | | BIBA | Full-Text | 22 | |
| Jeff Howard; Jodi Forlizzi | |||
| Everyone understands their city in a slightly different way. This project
seeks to leverage these differences by allowing people to share their
understandings and compile a visual social history of the city.
Most wayfinding systems are designed around a process of discovery, of locating a known destination within the environment. A more subtle proposition is that of exploration, a progressive uncovering of the environment centered around the creation of one's own pathways. This project seeks to allow people to more readily grasp the potential for pathmaking within their environment. It allows them to collaboratively map their neighborhood through a network of geotagged cameraphone images documenting shared landmarks. As people add their own photos to the system, the shared image of the city grows and reflects new connections. Encouraged to explore, even lifelong residents may begin to see their home with a greater sense of depth and understanding. | |||
| Development of a symbol system for use in the health care industry | | BIBA | Full-Text | 23 | |
| Jim Bolek; Jamie Cowgill | |||
| To assist people with Limited English Proficiency (LEP) to navigate health
care facilities in the United States, JRC Design led a nationwide design team
to develop an initial set of symbols for use on signage and printed materials.
These symbols would help to identify departments and procedures that are likely
to be encountered within such facilities.
The goal was to have a set of common terms or "referents" with a translation pool of five or more languages, and their related symbols, available for use by medical and design professionals. The set now consists of twenty-eight (28) referents and symbols. This project was funded by Hablamos Juntos, a program of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. | |||
| infoscape: an online visual information landscape for collaborative design education | | BIBA | Full-Text | 24 | |
| Andrew Vande Moere | |||
| infoscape is an online collaboration environment developed for an undergraduate digital image design course, aimed to facilitate intuitive transfers of creative ideas between students without explicitly making this the goal of the processes involved. Self-initiated design propagation acts as a strong motivation to create quality design work through a process of continuous self-evaluation, by encouraging students to negotiate with peers. infoscape consisted of a patchwork of image fields which were assigned to individual students, collectively representing a geographical 'information landscape'. Students gradually designed their fields to visually represent abstract features detected within the corresponding physical reality. The game-like approach of fulfilling successive content levels towards a common goal provoked cooperative as well as competitive activities between students, as the challenge consisted of creating a uniform information landscape in which individual contributions stood out but field borders blended in. infoscape broke with some traditional educational practices, such as deadline-oriented assignments and plagiarism avoidance. | |||
| OpenD: supporting parallel development of digital designs | | BIBA | Full-Text | 25 | |
| Mark Meagher; Kate Bielaczyc; Jeffrey Huang | |||
| Learning from one's peers has traditionally played a significant role in the
education of design professionals. Grounded in the ideals of the atelier
tradition, design education is predicated on the open exchange of ideas and
constant critique of work in progress. Many of the most successful buildings
for design education incorporate an open plan to encourage this type of
interaction.
In recent decades the design schools have been transformed and enriched through the introduction of powerful new digital tools. Students and instructors are finding that buildings which once provided an ideal environment for the exchange and cross-fertilization of ideas in design studios are less effective when student work is stored digitally. This case study traces the development of OpenD, an online environment designed to support the transparent exchange of ideas in design studios where the majority of student work is produced digitally. | |||
| Teaching embodied interaction design practice | | BIBA | Full-Text | 26 | |
| Scott R. Klemmer; Bill Verplank; Wendy Ju | |||
| Increasingly, user experiences are addressing our interactions in the world -- the physical, the social, and the situated. This sketch presents our experiences introducing embodied interaction themes to a project-based Interaction Design studio course. We present and discuss examples of student-created designs, illustrating the relationship between these design methods, domains, and artifacts created. These in-the-world domains and methods appealed to budding interaction designers because it encouraged them to transcend the computer screen and design for the world at large. However, the challenge of effectively evaluating in-the-world interactions inhibited iteration. Balancing observation, craft, and evaluation was critical to project success, and we are exploring how to help students navigate these process tradeoffs. | |||
| Theories meet realities: designing a learning game for girls | | BIBA | Full-Text | 27 | |
| Carrie Heeter; Brian M. Winn; Darcy Drew Greene | |||
| Nongamers expert in interaction design, learning, girls and games, and art
teamed up with avid gamers versed in game design to create a fun science
learning game that teaches evolution, adaptation and the history of life on
earth to 8th and 9th graders.
Funded by the National Science Foundation, we strove to design a game with high fun value, great science, and great pedagogy that also was good for girls. Ideally the game would integrate learning and fun in new ways. Game design progressed through 50 versions across four quite different game concepts (Earth Zoo Ship, The Critter Card Game, The Tree of Life Game, and Life Preservers), informed by frequent playtesting as well as design team member input. Pedagogy, science, and fun often conflicted. Girls were harder to engage and motivate than boys. Version 50 playtested well and will be used in experimental research on playstyle, gender and learning. | |||
| Children's and parents' perception of full-body interaction and violence in a martial arts game | | BIBA | Full-Text | 28 | |
| Johanna Höysniemi; Perttu Hämäläinen | |||
| This paper presents a study of children playing a full-body-interactive
mixed-reality martial arts game. The user interface of the game is multi-modal
and unencumbered -- any number of simultaneous players can fight
collaboratively against the virtual enemies using body movements and voice.
The contribution of the paper is two-fold. Firstly, based on our observations, interviews, and an earlier study of the game with martial artists, we discuss the challenges of designing full-body exertion interfaces for children. Secondly, there are no previous studies of the combined effects of full-body interaction and violence, although interaction design for children and the effects of media violence are active fields of research. In this paper we propose that when assessing the level of violence in interactive media such as games, both user input and system output should be considered. The realism of user's actions and the audiovisual output both contribute to the overall realism of the user experience. | |||
| Designing opportunities to spark and nurture scientific inquiry in middle school girls | | BIBA | Full-Text | 29 | |
| Kristin Hughes | |||
| Our project, Click! Urban Adventure, was designed to immerse middle school
girls in an interactive, mixed-reality game that provides them with the tools
they need to learn discipline-specific science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics (STEM) skills. The 11 to 14 year old girls who participated in
Click! used the city as their game board and STEM components as their tools. As
part of the game, the girls take on the role of Click! Special Agents as they
think, talk and reason their way towards solving an environmental science-based
mystery.
Our research team worked carefully to reshape the conventional framework of formal education and apply it to the landscape of everyday experiences. Click! was designed to show middle school girls, often underrepresented in science and technology, that understanding the world through a scientific lens can be stimulating, relevant, contextual and rewarding [2]. | |||
| Incorporating guidance and rewards into a handheld-device user experience | | BIBA | Full-Text | 30 | |
| Robert Fabricant | |||
| frogdesign worked for three years on the development of the StressEraser, a handheld medical device for the consumer market. This product uses biofeedback to encourage deep breathing patterns that reduce stress and promote general health. The goal of this product is to become part of the user's daily routine. User research demonstrated the need for positive rewards and clear guidance to introduce users to the experience and reinforce regular patterns of behavior. frogdesign combined insights from exercise equipment and computer games in the development of the overall experience design. In so doing we achieved a novel approach that is a significant departure from the typical interface design for handheld devices, such as cellphones and digital cameras, which provide little guidance in their operation. By contrast, the StressEraser guides the user through a sequence of activities, providing strong encouragement to introduce and support the overall experience. | |||
| The SenseChair: the lounge chair as an intelligent assistive device for elders | | BIBA | Full-Text | 31 | |
| Jodi Forlizzi; Carl DiSalvo; John Zimmerman; Bilge Mutlu; Amy Hurst | |||
| The elder population is rising. In the United States, the number of those
needing assistance far exceeds the number of care facilities available to help
the aging population. This creates a great incentive to help elders remain
independently in their homes.
Our group is exploring how robotic technology, designed in forms as familiar as home appliances, might be used to assist elders and those who provide care. We have designed the SenseChair, an intelligent assistive lounge chair that brings assistive technology to elders in a comfortable and familiar fashion. The SenseChair takes information about a sitter's behavior and the environment and provides information ranging from ambient displays to explicit notification. It serves as a research platform to understand how we can help elders stay independently in their homes, and offer them physical, social, and emotional support. | |||
| Writing the BoK: designing for the networked learning environment of college students | | BIBA | Full-Text | 32 | |
| Paul Burke; Sue Nguyen; Pen-Fan Sun; Shelley Evenson; Jeong Kim; Laura Wright; Nabeel Ahmed; Arjun Patel | |||
| Some believe that the fundamental pedagogy of foreign language instruction
has existed for hundreds of years. [40] That said, converting a class from a
traditional course to an online solution cannot be as simple as posting a
textbook online and offering periodic subject tests because it does not
correctly model the traditional language learning experience. It removes the
community-driven interactions of a classroom.
Language is acquired through a combination of reading, writing, speaking and listening. Students need a variety of individual and community-based activities in all of these categories to internalize the subject matter. Course material must be parsed using these categories and distributed in ways that support the active, collaborative lifestyles of today's students. This will enable students to learn from wherever they are whenever time is available. On the other end, instructors should be able to monitor all student activity that pertains to the learning experience to assess student performance. These are some of the key principles for BoK, a subscription-based, community-maintained model for second-language learning and instruction. | |||
| A foundation for emotional expressivity | | BIBA | Full-Text | 33 | |
| Anna Ståhl; Petra Sundström; Kristina Höök | |||
| To express emotions to others in mobile text messaging in our view require designs that can both capture some of the ambiguity and subtleness that characterizes emotional interaction and keep the media specific qualities. Through the use of a body movement analysis and a dimensional model of emotion experiences, we arrived at a design for a mobile messaging service, eMoto. The service makes use of the sub-symbolic expressions; colors, shapes and animations, for expressing emotions in an open-ended way. Here we present the design process and a user study of those expressions, where the results show that the use of these sub-symbolic expressions can work as a foundation to use as a creative tool, but still allowing for the communication to be situated. The inspiration taken from body movements proved to be very useful as a design input. It was also reflected in the way our subjects described the expressions. | |||
| Designing an Arabic user experience: methods and techniques to bridge cultures | | BIBA | Full-Text | 34 | |
| Hala Hemayssi; Elyse Sanchez; Robert Moll; Charles Field | |||
| An effective Arabic user experience can be designed employing a strategic approach to handling the unique aspects of the language and culture. Distinctive issues in Arabic challenge non-speakers of the language. The cultural is tightly woven with the linguistic. Successful design must accommodate the traditions and expectations of Gulf Arabic users and feel right in the context of their tasks and limitations. Essentially, User Experience designers function as "cultural translators."In creating two versions each of two successful custom applications, Pathfinder developed insights in designing for Arabic cultures. A primarily English-speaking team designed effective layouts supporting both English and Arabic speakers. By defining a disciplined approach to naming and translation and consulting with an Arabic expert, terms could be chosen that would be meaningful to both cultures. Additionally, Arabic visual patterns, preferred colors and clear icons were built into the design to appeal to Arabic users. | |||
| Defining cultural identities using grammars: an exploration of "cultural languages" to create meaningful experiences | | BIBA | Full-Text | 35 | |
| Ashwini Asokan; Jonathan Cagan | |||
| Designing for different cultures across the world or different user groups requires sensitivity to the existing 'cultural languages' within those groups. We can define these 'languages' as connections between the way people behave, the things they use, traditions, beliefs and value systems. This paper demonstrates how these cultural factors impose constraints on the way people move and interact, and how these factors influence the form of products. In this paper, we have developed a method called movement grammar to capture how people express emotion through movement and interaction. The movement captured is then embedded in the design of forms using shape grammars, enabling artifacts to serve as the voice of personal expression and cultural identity. The cultural research methods along with the grammars show how the complete cultural context of a user can be extracted and applied. This enables us to enrich their experiences with valuable services and products. These methods are substantiated with examples from the Indian culture. | |||
| An exploration in interface design for the Chinese migrant worker population | | BIBA | Full-Text | 36 | |
| Neema Moraveji; Rania Ho; David Huynh; Leizhong Zhang | |||
| This sketch aims to better understand the process of designing products that fit the Chinese cultural framework, and keep attuned to China-specific design issues by addressing a specific social concern facing modern China. This project targets migrant working mothers living in China's urban centers and proposes a system for them to communicate with their children who remain at home in rural villages. A specific design problem is used as a vehicle to uncover more fundamental and broadly-applicable issues of designing for the Chinese. A design sketch of this system is presented, as are the more fundamental issues that our design process uncovered. These issues include difficulties in Chinese character input, interfaces on a Chinese scale, and the Chinese people's sense of privacy. | |||
| SynchroMate: a phatic technology for mediating intimacy | | BIBA | Full-Text | 37 | |
| Martin R. Gibbs; Frank Vetere; Marcus Bunyan; Steve Howard | |||
| By and large interaction design has been concerned with information exchange -- technologies for the collection, processing and transmission of informational content. This design sketch discusses preliminary ideas about an alternative way to think about interactive technologies -- phatic technologies -- that are less concerned with capturing and communicating information and more about the establishment and maintenance of social connection. Drawing on insights and inspiration gleaned from a recent field-based study of the role of interactive technologies within intimate relationships we outline our preliminary ideas concerning technologies to support phatic interaction. Using the materials collected during our fieldwork as design inspirations, we developed design sketches for phatic technologies intended to support playful connection between intimates. One of these sketches -- SynchroMate -- is presented. SynchroMate is a phatic technology designed to mediate intimacy by affording serendipitous synchronous exchanges. | |||
| Creating a user experience culture at a non-software company | | BIBA | Full-Text | 38 | |
| Brenda Leadley; Haunani Pao; Sara Douglas | |||
| We propose a case study outlining our efforts to create a user experience
culture at a mid-sized financial services company. Four years ago there were no
web application interface standards, only individual software engineers without
usability backgrounds, working in different areas of the company. Every
application looked and behaved differently!
Our solution was to build a design standards website, increase knowledge and awareness of user experience concepts, drive a standard methodology and decrease the amount of development time through comprehensive HTML and JSP tag libraries. We started monthly presentations to share usability and industry knowledge across divisions. We developed training and tools for our business analysts and developers. Our presentation will wrap up with key successes, lessons learned and a discussion of where we are today, especially in regards to distributed design teams, and how we now interact with vendors and business processing outsourcing efforts. | |||
| Active capture design case study: SIMS faces | | BIBA | Full-Text | 39 | |
| Ana Ramírez Chang; Marc Davis | |||
| We present a design case study for the SIMS Faces application. The SIMS Faces application is an Active Capture [1] application that works with the user to take her picture and record her saying her name for inclusion on the department web page. Active Capture applications are systems that capture and direct human action by working with the user, directing her and monitoring her progress, to complete a common goal, in this case taking her picture when she is smiling and looking at the camera. In addition to producing a working Active Capture application, the project also included studying the design of Active Capture applications. The team conducted an ethnographic study [2] to inform the design of the interaction with the user, prototyped a set of tools to support the design process, and iterated a design process involving bodystorming, a Wizard-of-Oz study, the prototyped tools, and a user test of the implemented application. | |||
| Inspired innovation: how Corel is drawing upon employees' ideas for user focused innovation | | BIBA | Full-Text | 40 | |
| Jennifer Fraser | |||
| There was a growing sense at Corel Corporation that we were losing touch
with our tradition of innovation. In response, a team of people was brought
together to look at how to empower every member of the department to contribute
to the release of innovative, highly successful, and profitable products.
As a result, the following were developed: iFocus: a repository for information to educate and focus employees on the needs of the target markets; iCapture: a tool for collecting employees' ideas that requires the ideas be expressed in terms of their benefits to the customer; and iCouncil: a group of people that manage the ideas submitted into iCapture and prepare them for harvesting by the product design teams. This system is currently being used and ideas from iCapture are being tracked as they make their way through the product development process to possible implementation in the products. | |||
| Designing for a collaborative industrial environment: the case of the ABB Powerwall | | BIBA | Full-Text | 41 | |
| Daniel Fallman; Mike Kruzeniski; Mattias Andersson | |||
| This paper presents the design of a collaborative interface for highly
automated, industrial environments. The resulting system, the ABB Powerwall,
consists of large, shared interactive displays and several personal mobile
information technology devices. On-site service technicians can seamlessly move
information back and forth from their mobile devices to the shared display. The
system supports various kinds of collaborative work, including making
annotations; browsing for information; and visualizing blueprints and
three-dimensional representations of products and torrents.
The design vision has been to provide end users with an unobtrusive way of sharing information, discussing problems and issues with others in front of a large collaborative screen, and the chance of socializing and learning from each other. Located strategically in the specific environment for which it has been designed, the ABB Powerwall is intended to become a natural gathering point that increases interaction, afford gathering, discussions, collaboration, small talk, socializing, and community-making. | |||
| Customer driven innovation: Quicken® Rental Property Manager | | BIBA | Full-Text | 42 | |
| Suzanne Pellican; Matt Homier | |||
| In an effort to find and solve new unmet customer needs, the Quicken Personal Finance Group (QPFG) embarked on a mission to create innovative new products that would truly make a difference in people's lives. Quicken Rental Property Manager is the first of these products and the first "version 1.0" outside of Quicken Personal Finance Software to be released from the Quicken group in a decade. This paper will focus on how the team blazed a new trail within an organization that is facing the challenge of a maturing financial software market, and was entrenched in twenty-one years of legacy processes and mindsets. Specifically, how the team: * used customers to identify and define the innovation * developed new processes for gathering user feedback throughout the project * successfully designed a simple, intuitive, easy-to-use customer experience * successfully delivered on the organization's challenge | |||
| New media design for cultural institutions | | BIBA | Full-Text | 43 | |
| Jerry Watkins; Angellina Russo | |||
| Community co-creation programs are increasingly used by cultural institutions in an attempt to draw new audiences to their collections. By providing engaging interactive experiences in partnership with the community, institutions may well increase their audience numbers in the short term; but to optimize the viability and longevity of such programs, institutions and designers should consider the integration of strategic design methods with curatorial processes in order to reconsider the capture, display and promotion of collections and/or exhibitions. This case study uses a project from the State Library of Queensland, Australia to showcase a human computer interaction-derived design method developed by the authors to ensure a strategic response to community co-creation initiatives. Using a variety of media, the new Multi-Platform Communication Design method has enabled the design of web-based distribution; a community and a facilitator's training program; and the development of a mobile multimedia laboratory. This paper details the design method by which these multiple communication platforms were developed and implemented to achieve successful project delivery. | |||
| Design-led passenger environment and passenger experience. | | BIBA | Full-Text | 44 | |
| Roberto Palacín | |||
| This paper sets the scenario for the need of design-aid tools to help designers understand and communicate the end-user perception of comfort. In this particular case, the railway passenger environment and passenger experience. A brief background on the railway passenger environment and experience is given, focusing on the issue of passenger comfort and what he or she perceives as comfort as well as an outline of existing techniques to measure comfort. The possibilities of using techniques currently applied to other transport modes but not applied to railways such as Kansei Engineering (automotive) are also outlined. Finally, the research methodology is described together with the next steps. | |||
| The mobile storefront: let your fingers do the shopping | | BIBA | Full-Text | 45 | |
| Annette Wagner | |||
| The Mobile Storefront Case Study is a view into a project to dramatically
improve the retail user experience for shopping and purchasing ringtones,
games, pictures, and other content on handsets. The project was inspired by use
cases, vision demos, and the pain points experienced by customers.
This design case study details a design solution to enhance the user experience that results in changes to the information architecture and navigation model. Usability study results and lessons learned include ideas on how much content is needed to make the testing feel real to subjects as well as how the design fared with users in a live setting. | |||
| Augmenting the city: the design of a context-aware mobile web site | | BIBA | Full-Text | 46 | |
| Jesper Kjeldskov; Jeni Paay | |||
| We present the design of "Just-for-Us" -- a context-aware web site for mobile devices augmenting the social experience of the city. Informing design, field studies of social groups' situated social interactions were carried out in a new civic space in Melbourne, Australia followed by paper prototyping and implementation of a functional mobile web site. The produced solution augments the city through web-based access to a digital layer of information about people, places and activities adapted to users' physical and social context and their history of social interactions in the city. The system was evaluated in lab and field, validating the fundamental idea but also identifying a number of shortcomings. | |||
| A collaborative digestion and design game for community and technology exploration | | BIBA | Full-Text | 47 | |
| Stephen Viller; Margot Brereton; Fiona Redhead; Jeff Axup | |||
| In this paper, we present interim results from the Communities and Place project, which is exploring methods for understanding communities in a variety of contexts, and how to inform the design of technology to support them. We report on our experience with adapting an existing game-based approach for working with video as a resource in participatory design processes. Our adaptations allow the approach to be used with diverse data arising out of the different communities we are engaged with, and different design traditions we approach the problem from, leading to the formation of common design themes to inform our future work on this project. | |||
| Interactive drama and user centered product concept design | | BIBA | Full-Text | 48 | |
| Tomi Kankainen; Vesa Kantola; Katri Mehto; Sauli Tiitta | |||
| We combine the skills of designers and theater professionals in a
methodological project, in which user-centered design and drama methods are
simultaneously applied to study the same user group. One of the goals is to
develop a set of design tools, with which user experience and group dynamics
are revealed simultaneously, and to establish a design process based on these
findings.
We will compare the results produced by traditional User Centered Product Concept Design (UCPCD) [9] and drama methods by conducting research in parallel using both approaches. | |||
| Designing speculative household cleaning products for older adults | | BIBA | Full-Text | 49 | |
| Susan P. Wyche | |||
| Aging in place is a high priority for today's elderly population, but little
is known about how age affects mundane domestic activities. To make older
adult's desire a reality, design researchers must continue to understand
elders' needs and design products that respond to them.
Presented is a human-centered approach to designing cleaning products. The project resulted in: 1) an initial understanding how aging changes older adults' ability to clean their homes and 2) a collection of speculative cleaning products that demonstrate how greater empathy for elderly users can motivate innovative design. | |||
| Redesigning and redefining the AOL mail UI for millions of users | | BIBA | Full-Text | 50 | |
| Jeff Gothelf; Kiki Ross; Meghan Cesario | |||
| In the 1990's AOL brought the Internet out of the Pentagon and Universities
and into the homes of millions. For over a decade, AOL saw great success,
fostering its members from Internet infancy into Internet adolescence.
Recently, AOL has experienced "empty nest syndrome" as its membership matures into Internet adulthood with advanced needs and expectations. In an effort to retain its current user base and expand it in the future, AOL has been challenged to re-engineer its design philosophy from the coveted "walled-garden" into an ala-carte suite of products. Nowhere is this manifested more than in AOL Mail. Originally an exclusive tool targeted at the nascent Internet audience, its focus has shifted to provide and innovate on the tools made standard by stand-alone products in response to AOL's changing user-base and business goals. | |||
| Middle-out design | | BIBA | Full-Text | 51 | |
| Audrey Crane | |||
| In 2004, Dubberly Design Office (DDO) was contracted by "HandScript" to
design a product that enables physicians to enter orders on a handheld device.
HandScripts' engineers had been working for a year on an alpha prototype and would continue development during the design of the beta. HandScripts' physicians were supplying content using a tool that mimicked an early interface for the product and enjoyed their roles as designers. The client had a limited budget and needed usability questions answered immediately. As in many design projects, there was not time for a top-down or bottom-up design process. DDO had to work "middle-out". This case study describes how DDO borrowed the software quality assurance cycle and applied it to managing interaction design -- resolving both large conceptual questions and detailed, screen-level questions. This "middle-out" approach used a familiar process to achieve fast, quality work. | |||
| Office central | | BIBA | Full-Text | 52 | |
| Nicole Yankelovich; Mike Wessler; Jonathan Kaplan; Joe Provino; Nigel Simpson; Karl Haberl; Justin Matejka | |||
| Using Office Central, remote workers can "advertise" their presence in public spaces within offices, such as break areas, lounges or cafeterias. The design concept is to encourage informal, unplanned interactions between remote workers and those who pass through the public spaces. In this prototype installation at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA, we set up a lounge area with an Office Central picture window display (Figure 1). The local people in the lounge, wearing RFID tags for identification, could chat informally with remote people using a high-fidelity, CD-quality audio channel. The virtual meeting places included audio and video content, designed to be experienced jointly by the local and remote people. Some content was also tailored to the local people, updating as they approached the picture window display. | |||
| Nokia sensor: from research to product | | BIBA | Full-Text | 53 | |
| Per Persson; Younghee Jung | |||
| In May 2005, Nokia Sensor application became available to the public (www.nokia.com/sensor). This new mobile software allows mobile phone users to communicate within short-range distance via Bluetooth wireless technology without going through network operator. Creating the personal identity expression is at the core of Sensor. From there, Sensor users can discover each other's identity expressions and utilize a number of communication features as long as they are within the range of Bluetooth. This paper presents the process through which Sensor came about, through design exploration, iteration through prototypes, user trials on prototypes and finally the product creation process. Based on this process, a set of general design principles for this kind of mobile software were proposed and validated. Managerial, business-related and technical issues encountered during the various phases are also described. | |||
| Mobile computing in high-end retail | | BIBA | Full-Text | 54 | |
| Ann Supawanich; Jenica Rangos; Jeanine Harriman; Garrick Schmitt | |||
| As mobile computing becomes increasingly popular in the fashion retail industry, challenges emerge pertaining to usability, system tailoring, and enhancing the manager-client user experience. These issues were addressed at LA Promotion by a team that conducted ethnographic-style observational research, interviewed stakeholders and conducted a usability audit of LA Promotion's various systems. The team translated their observations into a series of recommendations, requirements and first prototype. This prototype focuses specifically on enhancing the mobile device used by managers as they guide clients through their LA Promotion experience. | |||
| Meeting in quiet: choosing suitable notification modalities for mobile phones | | BIBA | Full-Text | 55 | |
| Daniel Fallman; Björn Yttergren | |||
| This project starts out from one of those awkward moments when one's mobile
phone sets off with a loud noise in situations one would definitely not want it
to; e.g. at the opera or in an important meeting. The design challenge is how a
mobile phone, as a computer device that appears in several different human
contexts, could come to adapt its behavior to the situation. Is there a way for
a mobile phone to know, or at least have a clue, which notification modality
would be the most appropriate?
Our prototype design detects if a user is within a certain distance from another user. If so, the two users' mobile phones automatically set up an ad-hoc network and exchange information about notification modality. It makes use of a near-field communication technology using magnetic fields rather than traditional radio waves. | |||
| Smart card product development in an internet-based CRM environment | | BIBA | Full-Text | 56 | |
| Pat O'Brien; Laith Murad; Simon Gibbs; Richter Rafey | |||
| Smart cards have been successfully deployed in Europe and Asia. The European
Community considers them imperative and is funding 65 card development
projects. In the US, however, the cards hold less interest and have been less
successful.
Technology diffusion research indicates social learning is critical to adoption. A small cadre of early adopters, through visible daily use of new products, creates a perception among other consumers that new products are beneficial and desirable. This study developed and deployed the Sony Wave Smart Card, a Sony FeliCa-based technology smart card Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application. The study involved US early adopters, 30% of whom adopted and sustained use of the card for six months. These early adopters appear prepared to seed the market. The paper describes the product development and research methods used in this study and the potential to deploy the product into a high density social environment with desirable applications to stimulate broader adoption. | |||
| Mobile essentials: field study and concepting | | BIBA | Full-Text | 57 | |
| Jan Chipchase; Per Persson; Petri Piippo; Mikko Aarras; Tetsuya Yamamoto | |||
| Mobile essentials refers to the objects most people consider essential and carry most of the time whilst out and about. This paper describes a cross-cultural field study of what people consider to be mobile essentials, how those mobile essentials are carried and problems typically encountered. Through careful field observations and in-depth interviews of 17 participants in four cities, transitions between different situations turned out to be critical moments in which mobile essentials took on specific value, but also created problems of forgetting and loss. This paper introduces the notions of Center of Gravity, Point of Reflection and the Range of Distribution to describe user behaviours. Based on the study findings nine product concepts related to mobile essentials were developed, one of which is presented in this paper. | |||
| Typography for mobile phone devices: the design of the QUALCOMM sans font family | | BIBA | Full-Text | 58 | |
| Jared Benson; Ken Olewiler; Nancy Broden | |||
| In September 2004 Punchcut worked with QUALCOMM to develop a typographic
strategy with respect to QUALCOMM's custom user interfaces within its mobile
operating system and applications. The strategy's first tangible expression was
the design of a custom family of sans serif fonts to be used in current and
future QUALCOMM mobile user interfaces.
The four month project entailed assessing the impact of mobile devices on digital typography, identifying key requirements that would guide the design and application of QUALCOMM's custom interface font family, designing to meet business and customer needs within tight technical constraints, and testing to validate design decisions. The demand for custom fonts will increase apace with the desire to deliver more content and increasingly customized experiences on mobile devices. Significant user research on font usage and the impact of typography in the mobile user experience will be required to guide informed, user-centered font design. | |||
| The iterative design and study of a large display for shared and sociable spaces | | BIBA | Full-Text | 59 | |
| Shahram Izadi; Geraldine Fitzpatrick; Tom Rodden; Harry Brignull; Yvonne Rogers; Siân Lindley | |||
| We explore the design opportunities presented by situating large interactive
displays outside of the workplace, within shared and sociable spaces such as
common areas at universities and conferences, cafes, and hotel foyers. We seek
to provide a better understanding of this design space by charting the
iterative design of an interactive large display system called Dynamo.
Dynamo has been designed to enable the sharing and exchange of a wide variety of digital media. We report on how the interaction metaphors were designed and refined upon in-lab and in-situ studies. We also study how an existing community uses this technology within their own established setting. Qualitative and quantitative analysis shows that the system was used extensively in a variety of ways, including sharing of photos, video clips, and websites, and for facilitating social interaction and collaboration. We conclude with recommendations for designing large display systems for shared and social spaces. | |||