UPA 1998: Capitalizing on Usability

The 7th Annual Usability Professionals' Association Conference was held in historic Washington, D.C., with programs to help attendees “capitalize” on your experience.

• Conference Dates: June 22-26 1998
• Location: Washington DC

• Government and Industry Day
• Keynote and Invited Speakers
• Special Events
• Presentations
• Workshops
• Tutorials

Keynote and Invited Speakers

• Keynote: Ben Shneiderman, The Golden Age of Usability
  Ben addressed the promotion of usability within our organizations as well as reaching outward beyond our traditional usability community to other design disciplines. The speech will range from insights on government policy issues through glimpses into the future of usability.
• Plenary Speaker: Walt Mossberg
  Walt Mossberg is the author and creator of the weekly Personal Technology column in The Wall Street Journal. In 1997, Newsweek magazine called him “a champion of the technology-befuddled Everyman” and “the most powerful arbiter of consumer tastes in the computer world today.”
• Invited Speaker - Laure Vertelney
• Invited Speaker – Lauralee Alben
• Invited Speaker - Thomas Erickson - Interaction Pattern Languages: A Lingua Franca for User Centered Design?
  A central challenge in user centered design has to do with its diversity.
  Designers, engineers, managers, marketers, researchers, and users all have important contributions to make to the design process. But, at the same time, they lack shared concepts, experiences, and perspectives. How is the process of design -- which, at its heart, requires communication, negotiation, and compromise -- to effectively proceed without some sort of common ground? In this talk, I want to suggest that an important role for the usability professional is to help design stakeholders construct such a common ground. I will draw upon work in urban design and architecture -- in particular the concept of Pattern Languages -- to illustrate one possible approach.

Special Events

• The conference included usability lab tours at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the American Management Systems (AMS) Center for Advanced Technology
• The Thursday evening dinner was at National Museum of Women in the Arts

Presentations

Testing Smart Products with 3D Paper Prototypes
Simo Sade, University of Art and Design, Helsinki
Simo Sade introduces a rapid, low-cost prototyping technique for interactive devices and their user interfaces. The presentation includes a case study. The attendees can use a 3D paper prototype.

A Case Study in Participatory Software Design and Development
Bob Torres, IBM Global Services
Tim Brown and Sarah Nichols, USAA
Participatory methods used successfully during development of a software suite under aggressive constraints for schedule, resource, user interface, and usability will be discussed and used during a UPA conference session.

Hardware Usability of Computer Peripherals
Matthew Clark and Bonnie Larson, Hewlett Packard
Techniques, tactics, and strategies related to the hardware usability of computer peripheral products.

When the Field is Far Afield: Multiple-Country Observations of Complex System Use
Lori Anschuetz and Deborah Hinderer, Tech-Ed
Janice Rohn, Sun Microsystems
This presentation reviews challenges in usability studies of complex systems with an international component, using examples from a contextual inquiry consisting of 24 sessions at seven sites in four countries.

Creating Usability “Champions” – A Case Study
Meghan Ede, Sun Microsystems
Increase your impact! Discussion, with take-home material, of a pilot program which increased usability skills and support in non-usability staff.

Windows to the Soul? What Eye Movements Tell Us About Software Usability
Steve Ellis, Lucent Technologies-Bell Laboratories
Jason Misner and Christopher Craig, University of Virginia
Does knowing the location and sequence of peoples' eye fixations on the screen help to design a better Web site or GUI? This presentation will describe how we track eye movements with an easy to use, unobtrusive device and explore ways of using the data to improve usability.

Getting the Most from Users Quickly: A New Method for Mass User Requirements Gathering
Wayne Ho and Jin Li, IBM Software Solutions Toronto Laboratory
Wayne Ho and Jin Li will lead a discussion based on our new user requirements gathering methodology. This new methodology will be described and contrasted with traditional techniques, and case studies from our recent experiences will be presented.

Comparative Evaluation of Usability Tests
Nigel Bevan, National Physical Laboratory, Scott Butler, Rockwell Software, Jurek Kirakowski, Human Factors Research Group, Dick Horst, Userworks, Erika Kindlund, Sun Microsystems, Rolf Molich (Moderator), DialogDesign
Six commercial usability labs have carried out a professional usability test of the same calendar program. The panel will discuss similarities and differences in process, results, and reporting.

EPSS Strategies to Improve Software Interfaces: A Case Study
Donna Timpone, UserEdge
This session describes EPSS (Electronic Performance Support System) strategies and alternatives to improve software usability without modifying the interface or application code.

Bring the Customer Back Alive: Integrating Market Research into Product Design
Jeff Rubin, JRA – The Usability Connection
Market research of technology products and services is often evidenced by stale, overused techniques, obtuse reports, and the inability to translate the research into improved products. This session will describe how usability professionals can help revitalize early market research with imaginative techniques and transform existing market research into useful, usable design specifications. Also how to dissolve the often invisible, but intractable wall between the Marketing and Development organizations.

Stories from the Living Room: In-home Visits with WebTV Users
Kate Gomoll and Ellen Story, Gomoll R & D
Lyne Plamondon and Julia Schiff, WebTV Networks
Learn about the techniques we used to study WebTV users in their homes – including how we used photographs, told stories, and gathered longitudinal data with hand-held tape recorders.

Unpacking Strategic Usability: Corporate Strategy and Usability Research
Stephanie Rosenbaum, Tec-Ed
Janice Rohn, Sun Microsystems
Judee Humburg, independent consultant
This presentation summarizes a CHI 98 workshop: what usability practitioners did to integrate usability research into their companies' strategic planning and business development, the methods they used, and how well their efforts worked.

Analyzing Usability of a Web Site through Server Logs, User Profile Data, and Online Questionnaire Responses
Laurie Kantner, Tec-Ed
Pros and cons of reconstructing Web-site usage episodes from server logs and tabulating the data with corresponding user profile and opinion data to form usability conclusions.

Darwinian Design
Jared Spool, Tara Scanlon, and Carolyn Snyder, User Interface Engineering
We’ve observed that users and software products each go through their own evolutionary processes. While you can’t control evolution, if you understand the forces of nature that are at work, you can design a product that will be more competitive.

Specialists or Generalists – How Organizations Structure Usability Work
Tom Dayton, SunSoft, Kathryn Tournat, Bellcore, Marty Gage, Fitch, Michael Muller, Independent Consultant
Jackie Huffman, NCR
We examine the issues of organizing usability work for a project by assigning “generalists” (one person does all the usability activities) or “specialists” (different individuals do different activities).

Workshops

Designing the Future: Field Studies for New Products
Jean Scholtz, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Ginny Redish, Redish & Associates
Joann Hackos, Comtech Services
In this workshop we'll discuss methods for gathering information in the field for innovative products. We'll discuss whether the traditional methods of doing field studies need to be changed for this type of work and if so, what those changes should be. We'll discuss how deliverables from this type of work might differ from traditional field study deliverables and how to best communicate information to designers and corporate decision makers. We'll also discuss possible cost-benefit analyses that corporate managers might want to see to before approving such work.

Managing and Documenting UI Design Work
Paul McInerney, IBM Canada Ltd.
The objective of this workshop is to share best practices for (1) managing the UI design work (i.e. dividing the task of “design the UI” into an orderly and systematic set of steps) and (2) documenting the UI design so that people can review/evaluate it and programmers can build it.

Discovering Design Patterns for Interactive Systems
George Casaday, Marcam Solutions A design pattern combines a problem and proven solution. For example, identifying accelerator keys on menus solves the problem of users learning accelerators without training. A pattern documents the problem-solution pair in a usable format so that it can be adapted for varied situations. Experience in other disciplines – architecture, software engineering – shows that patterns must be obtained from actual experience and validated by multiple experts. This workshop is a focused effort by interactive systems designers to pool their experience to identify, validate, document, and publish the design patterns they use.

Implementing Remote Usability Evaluations
Ron Perkins, Design Perspectives

The objective of this workshop will be to share ideas and tools for remote evaluations using the Internet. As a follow on to the successful workshop last summer, we will focus more on how to better implement the various types of remote testing rather than what it is or why to do it. In addition, we will share techniques that make remote testing work well and look for ways to make it more effective.

Tutorials

Variations on a Theme: Card-based Techniques for Participatory Analysis and Design - Michael Muller, Independent Consultant, Tom Dayton, SunSoft and Daniel Lafrenière, GESPRO Informatique

This tutorial provides hands-on experience with three card-based techniques for participatory analysis and design: CARD (Collaborative Analysis of Requirements and Design); CUTA (Collaborative Users' Task Analysis); and TOD (Task Object Design). Because our techniques are highly user-accessible, they have been applied successfully in commercial settings for analysis of work, design of user interfaces, and evaluation of systems. In the tutorial, participants gain hands-on experience with all three techniques through a series of mini-workshops. We then compare the techniques, and discuss them within the larger space of participatory practices in the software lifecycle

Field Studies: The Personal Touch - Kate Gomoll, Gomoll Research & Design, Inc. and Eric Bond, M&I Data Services

This course covers the basics of how to plan and conduct a field study, how to do a detailed task analysis, and how to conduct contextual interviews. It includes creative ideas for collecting and using data, as well as tips for planning and conducting the visits. You will have the opportunity to ask questions, discuss methods, and exchange experiences. The instructor will present a case study example, and there will be several exercises designed to give you practice using the technique

Measuring Usability - Ian Curson, Nigel Bevan, National Physical Laboratory

This tutorial explains the benefits of measuring usability as part of a user-centered design process, and introduces the participants to methods developed by the European ESPRIT MUSiC (Measurement of Usability in Context) project. The tutorial includes class exercises to apply the methods to case studies.

The tutorial explains how usability can be operationalized as the prime quality goal for a business system: to provide quality in use. Participants will learn how to choose and apply appropriate cost-effective methods and tools in commercial projects at different stages of development, and how the methods relate to business goals.

Designing Usable Web Sites  - Pawan R. Vora, U S WEST Communications

This tutorial will focus on the following:

1. Human factors methods for designing Web sites spanning all stages of Web site development: planning, analysis, design, usability testing, implementation, and maintenance.
2. Design of Web sites for all users, including those with special needs.
3. Difference in designing informational Web sites and Web applications.
4. Use of recent technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets, Dynamic HTML, and eXtensible Markup Language (XML) in Web site designs.

Conducting Surveys - Don Zimmerman, Colorado State University

Usability professionals can use surveys to learn more about product users, to screen potential usability participants, and to gather data during protocol analysis sessions. Tutorial participants will learn how to plan surveys; develop questionnaires; design questionnaires; select population lists; pull samples; build codebooks; code, analyze, and interpret data; and avoid the major pitfalls. They will practice writing and critiquing questions, sampling techniques, and interpreting data. Participants will receive a handbook and bibliography.

Software Usability Lifecycle: A Tutorial on Techniques, Technologies, and Pitfalls  - Michael Faoro, Virginia Hill, Susan Kahler, Lynn Percival, Thyra Rauch, Sarah Redpath, Rebecca Schaller, and Dave Schell, IBM Corporation

This tutorial will take a lifecycle perspective on the key aspects of software product usability, distilling the experience of the authors over a number of years and product types into a set of topics useful to intermediate and advanced users. Topics include team building, buy-in, task analysis, product personality, product vision, shared design specifications, prototyping and evaluation, with an emphasis on design aspects. Pitfalls will be identified and hands-on exercises will be used to reinforce understanding of most topics.

Consulting Skills for Usability Professionals: Enhancing Successful Client Relationships - Derek Millard, Derek Millard Associates and David J. Gilmore, IDEO Product Development

Usability professionals frequently find themselves in internal or external consultant roles – situations without direct control but where you want to make a difference. Consulting is framed as delivering your expertise into a client – impacting the client in a way the client values AND your expertise is well used. This participative tutorial focuses on the “how to's” of successful client relationships. A model for the consulting process and an inventory determining your preferred consulting approach are included. Strategies for situations where there is a mismatch of expectations are explored and positive ways of dealing with resistance are practiced.

Practical GUI Screen Design: Making it Usable - Cliff Wilding, The Hiser Group

There is much more to designing usable GUI screens than making them look good. The way a screen looks should tell the user how to interact with it, and what behavior to expect. In this full day tutorial you will examine the principles of turning user knowledge into good screen designs, including visual communication, the bridge between the look and the feel of the user interface. Examine layout techniques, including color, fonts and symbols, and learn the principles of creating easy-to-use software and interactive new media productions. The tutorial is very much hands-on with exercises – you will put the skills you learn into practice.