Tutorials

Customer-centered design is facilitated and design communities are connected and empowered when the users' requirements, needs, desires, motivations, limitations, and environments are articulated in scenarios. Historically stories have connected communities of interest. This tutorial explores the role of scenarios in design and evaluation of products that meet user needs.

PARTICIPANT KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE EXPECTED

Knowledge and pre-requisites for participants: This tutorial is primarily for those who have a basic understanding or experience with usability techniques and are interested in how these techniques may be applied within the design framework of scenarios. The participants may have academic or practical experience with usability engineering or have some experience in product development that involves customer-centered design or usability evaluations.

This tutorial will discuss the use of scenarios in usability testing, but will not go into the specifics of setting up, conducting, analyzing, and reporting a usability test.  This tutorial will show how contextual, demographic, or marketing information may be used in developing personas, tasks, and scenarios, but will not go into the process of gathering, analyzing, or reporting this kind of data.

This tutorial will show how to use scenarios and claims analysis to assess designs and prototypes, but it will not go into the details of how to convert requirements to designs or how to develop prototypes.

GOALS FOR THE SESSION:

Participants who attend this tutorial will:

• Be able to use scenarios to communicate goals, requirements, and design rationale among the team and connect the diverse communities that are needed for a project to be successful.
• Be able to use scenarios in the assessment of competing products.
• Be able to use scenarios as a design principle in developing alternative solutions.
• Be able to employ claims analysis to evaluate alternative design solutions.
• Be able to use the Dump ‘n Clump method to clarify goals, expectations, and requirements at critical stages of a project.
• Be able to conduct a scenario-based team usability walkthrough of a prototype or product.
• Know how scenarios are used to effectively develop customer-centered designs, evaluate one or more designs, and communicate design issues among the design team and external partners.

HOW THIS TUTORIAL WILL BE CONDUCTED

Tone: The tutorial instructors enjoy dynamic interaction with the participants. The sessions are structured to encourage interaction between the instructors and the participants as well as between the participants themselves.

Presentations/ Discussions : Using prepared slides, captured examples, and live examples drawn from the internet, the presentations and discussions are geared to encourage participants to ask questions and share experiences related to the topic.

Exercises: Much of the tutorial consists of exercises that are focused on a real-world product in which the participants play the roles of designers, managers, and usability engineers. The exercises are designed so that each participant contributes, individually, as a member of a small group, and as a member of the large group.

Sharing Experience: Both instructors actively participate in every component of the tutorial, sharing their individual and collective experiences by way of examples, commentary, coaching, and asking and answering questions.

Created Artifacts: Participants will develop written descriptions of personas using posit-notes and flip charts. They will create concrete lists of design issues using post-it notes and flip charts. They will individually draft and then share (on posit notes and flip charts) problem scenarios and design scenarios. They will cooperatively develop written claims analysis of key issues within scenarios on flip charts. They will develop and employ scenarios and execute a team usability walkthrough of a web-based application.

Learning Styles: All of the exercises are designed to engage multiple learning modalities (composing, reading, analyzing, evaluating, and reporting, as well as role playing).

TUTORIAL SCHEDULE WITH TIME ALLOCATION

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF TUTORIAL

Customer-centered design is facilitated and design communities are connected and empowered when the users' requirements, needs, desires, motivations, limitations, and environments are articulated in scenarios. Historically stories have connected communities of interest. “Scenario-powered design and evaluation” explores the role of scenarios in design and evaluation of products that meet user needs.

Introductions:

The tutorial opens with introductions of the participants and the instructors. The participants break into design teams. For the rest of the tutorial the participants will act (role play) as the members of the design team responsible for developing the product . (15 minutes)

What is a scenario?:

The participants are presented with an outline of how scenarios are used in the product development life-cycle. This includes how scenarios facilitate and empower communications among the design team and its partners that are needed to make a successful product. Scenarios connect communities of interest the way that stories have historically connected and communicated values in cultures. This includes simple scenarios, examples, and the framework for using them in design. (20 minutes)

Premise for the tutorial exercises:

The plan for the day is presented. A real-world product concept (such as a web site for a university) is introduced and the participants identify the roles needed to design and evaluate the product. ( 5 minutes )

Dump ‘n Clump (Issues Identification and clarification):

The first activity that the “design team” undertakes in the development of the product is to determine the usability tasks related to their product. The participants are introduced to a powerful tool for extracting requirements and expectations called “Dump ‘n Clump” (5 Minutes). This is a variation of the Group Elicitation Method. Using this newly learned method, the “design team” then conducts their own Dump ‘n Clump to define the usability tasks for their product (35 minutes)

Personas:

The second activity for the “design team” that is often done in conjunction with the issues identification is to develop a set of personas (sketches of the prototypical end users) of users of their product. Prior to break time the participants are presented with the concept of personas and given a template for creating personas. (10 minutes).

After the break the “design team,” as individuals, develops a set of personas for their product. Then they introduce and discuss some of the personas that they created. (25 minutes)

Scenario-based Team Usability Walkthrough, an evaluation and communication method:
The participants are introduced to very effective evaluation/communication means that design teams use to explore, identify, and communicate design issues. This is a Scenario-based team usability walkthrough. The “design team” now conducts a usability walkthrough of a live competing application (real web-base application) to the product that they are building. They role-play the personas and the associated task scenarios. The rest of the team functions as evaluators with groups identified to observe and record specific issues. (75 minutes)

After lunch Scenarios and Design Scenarios are discussed in more detail.

What are scenarios?:

The participants are presented with the common elements that comprise a scenario. They discuss and examine the kinds of scenarios used in the design and evaluation of an effective product. They are provided with examples and a template for developing scenarios. (40 minutes).

Problem scenario creation:

As a “design team” they develop a set of problem scenarios for their product for the set of personas that they developed earlier. They do this as individuals and then discuss them as a group. (25 minutes).

Design scenario creation:

The process for writing design scenarios for a set of the problem scenarios they just finished is presented. Several design scenarios are developed and discussed. (25 minutes).

Claims Analysis as a tool:

The “design team” breaks into small groups and performs a claims analysis on alternative design issues from these design scenarios. They select one of the alternatives based on their analysis. (60 minutes).

Scenarios in the product life-cycle:

(30 minutes).

Putting Scenarios to work for you:

Scenario-Powered Design and Evaluation closes with an interactive discussion of how the participants may best employ scenarios in their own environments and design processes. (30 minutes)

SPEAKERS BIOS

Gene Lynch

Principal

Design Technologies, Inc.

Gene Lynch has 15 years experience consulting on usability and product design and 16 years industry experience in product development and in leading the research, development, and implementation of a 3-phased customer-centered design process for interactive products. He is experienced in tailoring these processes to specific product and organizational needs.

Prior to the founding of Design Technologies, Dr. Lynch was the Director of Tektronix Design Technology Laboratory, where he was responsible for Corporate Customer-Centered Research & Design, Software Tools, Software Process Improvement Program, and Corporate Industrial Design. Dr. Lynch holds patents in graphical input devices and video information control.

He chaired the ANSI/HFS 100 Committee, Co-Chaired CHI'90, and has been a frequent technical contributor to the CHI and UPA conferences as author, presenter, panelist, tutorial instructor, workshop leader and participant. He was a technical co-chair for CHI '92, and was ACM/SIGCHI's Vice-Chair for Conferences from 1993-1998.

Gene holds a Ph.D. in Engineering from the University of Notre Dame.

Susan Palmiter

Principal

Design Technologies, Inc.

Susan Palmiter has 11 years experience consulting with start-up firms to Fortune 100 corporations in the areas of user interface design, customer requirements definition, product planning, usability walkthroughs and testing, process improvement, and competitive analysis. Her latest interests include the use of scenarios and design rationale to both inform and communicate the customer informed design throughout the product lifecycle.

She holds a BS in Computer Science from Ohio State University and an MS and PhD in Human Factors Engineering from The University of Michigan. 

Susan is a contributing member to the ACM's SIGCHI (Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction), UPA (Usability Professionals' Association), and the local CHIFOO (Computer-Human Interaction Forum of Oregon). She has numerous publications related to Human Computer Interaction.

Prior to the founding of Design Technologies, Dr. Palmiter worked in the Customer-Centered Research & Design Group in Tektronix Laboratories. While there, she was awarded the 1993 Tektronix President's Award for the customer-centered methods she developed and championed to inform product designs that are successful in the marketplace.