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4.8. SCHOLTZ AND SALVADOR (CHAPTER 9)
Scholtz and Salvador have developed a framework called Systematic Creativity, which can be used throughout the entire development process. This allows not only design issues, but also development questions and usability issues to always be traced back to product requirements. This technique also demonstrates how conflicting requirements from users and marketing and technological constraints can be quickly identified. The general context in which this framework was developed was a corporate mission to produce products (based on new technology) that would enhance the home and professional lives of users. Thus, the challenge for Scholtz and Salvador was to produce requirements and designs for products not currently on the market. An additional challenge facing them was that their customers were usually not actual end users. In the case of corporate products, customers were the Information Technology groups in the corporation, not the final corporate workers, who would actually use the product. Home products were marketed to computer manufacturers who would bundle some form of the software on their new hardware. All of these constraints required a design methodology that would allow effective communication among design team members and that would facilitate minimal time to market in order to take advantage of a small window of opportunity.
The Systematic Creativity framework is discussed in the context of a revision of an application that allowed users to collect and read news stories on-line. Although the first version of the application had been available for some time, the functionality being added was quite different from what was available previously, and there was great concern about how this functionality should be represented. With the Systematic Creativity framework, design activities begin with the development of product goals and a definition from a marketing point of view. Designers then work closely with potential users to determine the work related goals this product could support. Designers also identify both the obstacles users face in their current work tasks and the facilitators that are present to assist them to accomplish their goals. The information gathered from users is then merged with the marketing information to form a set of prioritized goals that the product will support.
The specific interface design phase is begun using the supported goals as well as the actions and objects that will enable those goals. The enabling objects and actions are then used to generate and evaluate potential metaphors that will convey the appropriate information to users through an interface. Low-fidelity prototypes are then generated and evaluated by comparing the new user tasks with the current user tasks. All tasks, actions, and objects can be traced back to the user goal or goals that they support. This helps designers, implementors, and usability engineers to evaluate the effect of high- and low-level changes throughout the development cycle.
4.9. SIMPSON (CHAPTER 10)
Simpson emphasizes two particular techniques that he has developed to help bridge the gap, the UI War Room and the Design Prism. The context in which the War Room was developed was a computer-aided software engineering tool and that for the Design Prism was an application for computer control of processes in a nuclear power plant. The UI War Room is a dedicated room used for interface design. User requests (capabilities they would like) and user objects (those objects mentioned in descriptions of their work) are extracted from user task analyses. These are written on cards and pasted on to separate walls, where they can be easily modified, and re-organized to reflect the emerging understanding of designers. A third wall in the UI War Room contains a white board that can be used for reflection and brainstorming.
The fourth wall of the UI War Room is used to place rough sketches (low-fidelity prototypes), which can easily be compared to the user requests and objects to make certain that design ideas are capturing the important aspects of the users work. These are produced after the user objects have been organized in diagrams showing their relationships. Having a wall on which to place the sketches helps to encourage a variety of alternative design ideas from which to choose, as the design is refined.
The Design Prism draws on the notion of subdividing the user objects and functions identified in the UI War Room into four mutually exclusive and exhaustive categories: user information, objects, goals, and actions. The relationships among members of each category are then specified. Low-fidelity prototypes (in the form of sketches) are then constructed from each perspective, and finally, those are consolidated into one coherent design.
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