1. Administrivia Issues – EPost and Portfolio
Insights on supplemental readings
Themes and insights from exercises
UCD and Usability
Usability – evaluation
Contextual Inquiry – observation
Feedback on exercises
Overview of first Deliverable

2. Project Sharing Team discussions Class-level discussion
Share results of user synthesis
Discuss your choice of methods and results
Answer student question list
Class-level discussion
Each spokesperson: share one challenge, one surprise, and one lesson learned
Review answers to Student Questions
Note: Ken & Elisabeth circulate, distribute exercises, and answer questions

3. Discussion of Readings
Insights from supplemental readings.
Facilitate class discussion of topics / ideas / themes garnered from the online discussion, related to assigned readings.
Discussion Leaders
1. Linda Moschell 2. Cynthia Putnam 3. Susan Shinoda 4. Dina Fesselmeyer
Leaders to turn in their word statements.

4. Topic D: Characterizing Tasks, Goals and Context
Driving Questions:
What would we want to record and share about tasks? About the environment and circumstances under which users do tasks?
How will information on users, tasks, and the task environment be used in design?
What properties do user and task characterizations need to have in order for them to serve as useful tools for the design team?
What challenges and issues can arise in user and task characterization?

5. Analyzing Tasks Goal of analyzing tasks Risk
Develop an understanding of what people do
Understand how they do things
Learn about constraints
Example: tying your shoe
Inform the team so that they can create a design that
Works the way that people do
Succeeds
Meets user’s goals
Supports user’s values
Accepted
Risk
A device-driven design rather than a user-centered design
Developing a product/system that will not be used because it is incompatible with the user’s work
Example: Visio
the goal is “understanding”?

6. Task Analysis Fundamentals
A task: observable, measurable action that has an observable beginning and an observable end
Goal oriented
Compare demands on the user to the capabilities of the user
Understanding the interaction of a task’s components
A framework for describing people’s behavior
Attributes
Order
Frequency
Criticality
Tools involved
Process (flexibility?)
Time to complete
Difficulty
Sequences
Interactions
Examples of values: price is important; certain make of car, brand loyalty,
Examples of capabilities: Can you type? Can you build a website? Can you write a program? Can you understand computer logic? Are you technically savvy? What skills do you have / not have?

7. Motivation Users decide when and how to use things
People often have many options of tasks to choose from
Depends on
Time
Cost
Skills
Capabilities
Confidence
Ease of learning
Values
You learn about a user’s tolerance and self-imposed constraints by observing.
If you observe variations, try to understand how important that flexibility is to the users.
Cooper/Reimann (About Face 2.0, Ch 5), pp. 60.
Goals are shorthand notation for motivations
Understanding WHY a user performs certain tasks gives designers great power to improve, or even eliminate those tasks, yet still accomplish the same goals.

8. Task Diagrams Types of Diagrams Decomposition
Hierarchical Task Analysis
Task List / Inventory

9. Decomposition Consider Inputs Outputs Triggers
Goals extracted from interviews
Bottom-up approach – start with actions
Parallel actions as options/alternatives
Understand the mental decisions users make while doing a specific task
Often quite messy, but very informative
Can you imagine/think of others?

10. Hierarchical Task Analysis
Best for
Optimizing the task
Arranging the actions in a coherent flow
Goal tree
Goals
Subgoals
Actions
Optional actions
Substitute actions
Checking task diagram for validity and completeness
Why do I _______? (look to the box above)
How do I _______? (look to the box below)

11. Actions
Consider
Purpose (why does this action move the task toward its goal?)
Cues (what tells the user it’s time for the action?)
Objects (what does the action operate on?)
Method (what IS the action?)
Options
Errors
Projections
Recovery
What if the action is not done?
An example of a product/system that meets end goals, but fails to satisfy experience goals is Travel Manager.
Meeting manager – developer “don’t want to talk about it”; technical issues trump user needs (database design overruled user needs)
Developer – “I don’t have time to make that challenging technical solution work”

12. Task List / Inventory Granularity – what qualifies as a “task”
Break down into sub-tasks until you arrive at the level that is likely to map to menu choices and icons.
Add tasks that
Users don’t do now
They would not think to put on the list because they don’t know that they will able to do them
An example of a product/system that meets end goals, but fails to satisfy experience goals is Travel Manager.
Meeting manager – developer “don’t want to talk about it”; technical issues trump user needs (database design overruled user needs)
Developer – “I don’t have time to make that challenging technical solution work”

13. Synthesizing Task Information
Challenges
Figure out the best way to help people easily and quickly do their tasks (and meet their goals!)
Arbitrarily change task sequences without good reason.
Tendency to become solutions-oriented.
An example of a product/system that meets end goals, but fails to satisfy experience goals is Travel Manager.
Meeting manager – developer “don’t want to talk about it”; technical issues trump user needs (database design overruled user needs)
Developer – “I don’t have time to make that challenging technical solution work”

14. Context Develop an awareness Users influenced by context
Activity around them
Physical environment (workplace)
Example: Clock radio
Equipment
Example: Postal Kiosk
Relationships with others
Pressure on users
To go fast
To not make mistakes
Timed, tracked or evaluated on performance
Is there help to answer questions and solve problems?
Local computing focal
Help Desk/Help Center Coworker
System Administrators or Technicians
Social
Example: Failure of the computer-based training for call center staff
Cultural
Experiences related to
Corporate
Regional
Professional
Socioeconomic
Metaphors – obscure or inappropriate
Example: food labels (culture affects how a message is received)
Cultural bias you bring to your observations (awareness)
Good interaction design is devising interactions that achieve the business goals without violating the goals of users.

15. Project Exercise Task Analysis
Using the contextual inquiry data generated collectively by the team, generate a synthesis of what you know about the tasks – frequent and critical.
Description should also include information on the context/circumstances in which the tasks are completed.
Prepare a one-page description of these results and potential implications for redesign.
Bring copies of the exercise to class (one copy for each member of the team, one copy for the instructor) and also post it to your design portfolio.
Due next Thursday

16. Problem Definition USER DATA PROBLEM DEFINITION User Task Context
Field notes
Profiles / personas
Task Analysis

17. Looking back / Looking ahead
Where we’ve been
Topics – Readings and discussion
What is UCD?
What to know about users?
Collecting information about users…
Doing contextual inquiry…
Project
Insights about users, tasks, and contextual issues
Actual data from observing real users
Sharing among team members
Resulting in… task information to analyze and synthesize
Where we’re going
Project exercise:
Results of synthesis of task information
Readings:
On design, translating user and task information into design
Summaries: One page
Issue Statement: A reminder
1. David Rosten 2. Eric Lewallen 3. Arlene McBride 4. Les Kendrick