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Tom Dayton, Al McFarland, and Joseph Kramer
Bellcore, Piscataway, New Jersey
email: tdayton@acm.org mcf52@aol.com jkramer@bellatlantic.net
ABSTRACT
This chapter sketches out The Bridge, a comprehensive and integrated methodology for quickly designing object-oriented (OO), multiplatform, graphical user interfaces (GUIs) that definitely meet user needs. Part 1 of The Bridge turns user needs into concrete user requirements represented as task flows. Part 2 uses the Task Object Design (TOD) method to map the task flows into task objects. Part 3 completes the bridge by mapping the task objects into GUI objects such as windows. Those three parts of the methodology are done back-to-back in a single, intense session, with the same team of about five participants (notably including real users) working at a small round table through several consecutive days. The methodology is unusual in its tight integration not only of its explicit steps, but also of several pervasive techniques and orientations such as Participatory Analysis, Design, and Assessment (PANDA) methods that involve users and other stakeholders as active collaborators. This chapter describes both the underlying portions and the explicit steps of this bridge over the gap between user needs and GUI design.
1. INTRODUCTION
Traditionally, designing the fundamentals of OO GUIs to meet user needs has been done seemingly by magic. There have been methods for the surrounding steps gathering user requirements before, and polishing the fundamental design after. However, there have been few if any systematic ways to step over the gap in between. Some concrete examples: Once the users task flows are designed, how does the designer decide which of those flows data elements are to be represented as entire windows and which merely as object attributes within the client areas of those windows? How should users navigate between windows? Style guidelines help decide the exact appearance of a menu in a window, but how does the designer decide which user actions need to be represented at all, which windows they should be in, and whether to represent them as menu choices or buttons? This chapter describes how to bridge that gap between user requirements and OO GUI design by using task objects in a participatory methodology we call The Bridge. Arguments for the value of methods any methods in human-computer interaction work are in Karat and Dayton (1995) and Dayton (1991). The Bridge methodology is an example of a very practical way to apply the philosophy of advancing human-computer interaction by actively cultivating eclecticism (Dayton, 1991).
At the beginning of 1994, Dayton and McFarland synthesized this methodology for fundamental GUI designing and used the methodology in several high-pressure software development projects in several companies over the next year. Most of the components of this approach were not new. What was new was the combination of those components into a comprehensive and integrated methodology for end-to-end GUI designing. Kramer then joined the team, which (with many other people, including design session participants) continued to apply the methodology to dozens of projects in several companies, and to refine and extend the methodology. The methodology has been used in many commercial GUI development projects in big and small companies from areas such as telecommunications, finance, software development, and air travel; projects whose lives from conception to delivery ranged from 3 months to 3 years; and projects whose total development staff sizes ranged from four to hundreds.
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