User Centered Design April 1-3, 2009 Joshua Ganderson Laura Baalman Jay Trimble

User Centered Design Develop products that meet user needs, solve real problems, reduce frustration, increase productivity Understand users, tasks, goals Drive development by user needs, not technology needs UCD is a PDS function Close collaboration with engineering node (EN) PDS Senior Review - ARC UCD

UCD Roles Consulting (nodes) UCD Team analyzes a domain, tool or web site Provides recommendations Customer, e.g. a node, uses recommendations as needed Implementation done by customer Full Service UCD team conducts analysis, builds design (with users/customers), builds the product in whole or in part Examples Home page – implementation in collaboration with JPL Hosted tools – implementation by UCD team PDS Senior Review – ARC UCD

UCD at Work PDS Senior Review - ARC UCD Observations often reveal vast discrepancies between what people say they do, and what they actually do. --Don Norman

UCD Process PDS Senior Review – ARC UCD

What Is User Centered Design UCD is a design process that leverages the user to create an optimal experience. Key Elements of the process are: User Involved – Users are participatory members of the design process Iterative – Rapid prototyping is used heavily to explore and validate interfaces and their effectiveness with users Experience Oriented – Considers user context, user goals and purpose, elements required to achieve goals and how to craft an optimal experience that achieves user goals

UCD, Tool Dev & PDS MC Requirements Top Level Definition (Level 4) – A top level definition of a tool is required to have approval prior to development. Detailed Requirements (Level 5) – Detailed requirements are an outcome of the iterative design process which involves node staff and users. In fact requirements will manifest as high fidelity prototypes of the functionality. That being said, this is a design driven rather than requirements driven process.

How We Do It 1.Identify Opportunities – Suggestions from staff, user research, process analysis 2.Prioritize – Based on risk and reward. Balance dev time and maintenance costs against desire of PDS staff and MC + impact 3.Obtain Beta Users – Secure target users for use cases, act as testers, address effectiveness and desirability 4.Prototype – Rapid prototype based on use cases and user feedback 5.Evaluate Results And Iterate – Evaluate results quantitatively and qualitatively to determine if should return to step 4, promote to beta quality, or curtail further development.

Tool Opportunities Current list a synthesis of all suggestions and research to date including provided list from the MC. It is available separately and we encourage further contributions. Sources MC Tools List Previous User Research Senior Review Upcoming User Research Categories Ingestion (Construction + Design, Validation, Submission) Retrieval (Search, Browse, Visualization, Download, Transformation) Other (ex. Toolkits and Services to support outside tool development)

MC Tools List

Previous User Research - Example

Senior Review Synthesis

Upcoming User Research - Survey In order to supplement, refine and update opportunities from previous research and suggestions, we're conducting a survey and follow up interviews. Comprehensive – Very open ended and necessarily lengthy. Future surveys to be more targeted. Assistance Helpful – Asking for your participation and encouragement of staff and scientists to complete. Also would like feedback on the survey itself if you get the opportunity to participate. Precursor to More Research – Results will lead to short targeted surveys and interviews. The survey is located at Please fill out as much as is applicable to you. If you don't have the time to fill it out, we can conduct a phone interview instead.

Once we've gathered results, we'll flesh out the opportunities list and integrate them into process analysis similar to the familiar pain points diagrams. This will serve as a tool for making decisions on development Results