Tutorial Proposal

Title

Conceptual Design: From User Requirements to User Interface

Instructor

Kathy Potosnak

Interface Concepts

Description

Conceptual design involves explicitly defining the ideas or concepts underlying the user interface of a product. This half-day tutorial introduces conceptual design and a framework for creating conceptual designs. It teaches the what, why, and how of conceptual design.

Conceptual design covers what a product is, what it does, and how it does it. All products have conceptual designs. If the conceptual model of a product is not designed explicitly, one (or more) will be created implicitly by the people developing the product.

Many usability problems can be traced to poor, inconsistent, incomplete, or competing conceptual designs. Explicitly creating a good conceptual design up front is more cost effective than fixing conceptual problems that are discovered later in the development process.

The conceptual design framework introduced in this tutorial synthesizes many user-centered design principles and practices. Rather than jumping right into the layout of menus, dialog boxes, and the like, the framework begins with user requirements, focuses on the underlying concepts, and results in the creation of a model of the user interface for the product. The user interface model clearly and accurately represents the underlying concepts to the user and guides the design of menus, dialogs, and other user interface elements.

The framework involves the following seven activities:

1. Define a central concept.

2. Describe users and their requirements.

3. Define and prioritize measurable objectives and constraints.

4. Design the user's object model.

5. Design the user's task model.

6. Synthesize a user interface model.

7. Evaluate results against the objectives.

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In addition to describing these seven activities, the tutorial covers the background, benefits, and application of the framework. The material is colorfully illustrated by anecdotes and examples from the instructor's personal experience. Attendees work through a simple, yet realistic example project to get hands-on practice applying the framework during the tutorial.

Justification for a CHI Audience

This tutorial is highly relevant to a CHI audience because it focuses on a critical, yet often neglected aspect of user-centered design: the conceptual design underlying a user interface. The conceptual design framework has been developed and refined by the instructor during her years of experience as a practitioner in the software industry. Although semi-structured, the framework is flexible and adaptable to many development environments, platforms, and product domains. It is fast and easy to apply to real projects.

The approach of this tutorial is proactive and preventative. It focuses on the early design phase and avoidance of conceptual design problems, which can be the most deeply ingrained and difficult problems to fix later in the development cycle.

Because it presents a new design methodology, this tutorial will be of interest to anyone responsible for user interface design, including user interface designers, software developers, managers of HCI projects, human factors practitioners, and industrial designers. It will also provide a useful perspective for those who participate on interdisciplinary design teams, including users and professionals in other areas. Interface evaluators and testers will find value in understanding how conceptual design problems may impact user interface learnability, usability, and other performance and attitudinal measures. Teachers of human-computer interaction will want to add the conceptual design framework to the repertoire of practical methods they teach their students. Researchers in HCI will find conceptual design a fertile domain for studies on how people learn and use computer systems as well as a tool for researching the design of new products.

How Tutorial Will be Conducted

The tutorial consists of brief lecture segments interspersed with several large group and small team exercises. The lecture material is illustrated by numerous anecdotes from the instructor's personal experience in the software industry with both research projects and shipping products.

The exercises cover all aspects of applying the conceptual design framework to a simple example project, so attendees gain experience with each of the activities. Three of the exercises will be done as one large group with attendees volunteering responses from the audience. The group exercises are partially completed ahead of time by the instructor, so that attendees see more of the results than could be completed in the limited time available. The remaining four exercises will be done in small teams of two or three

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attendees working together. The small teams will not be expected to complete a full design, but will get enough practice to learn the concepts involved.

An interactive question and answer period and filling out of evaluation forms conclude the session.

Schedule

This proposal is for a half-day tutorial. The schedule below assumes the tutorial will be held during the morning session. If it is assigned to an afternoon session, the times will be modified appropriately.

Time Topic

9:00 - 9:15 Introduction, Tutorial Objectives

9:15 - 9:30 Conceptual Design Framework Overview

9:30 - 9:45 Success Stories, Benefits

9:45 - 10:00 Central Concept

Group Exercise: Central Concept

10:00 - 10:15 Users and Requirements

Group Exercise: Users and Requirements

10:15 - 10:30 Measurable Objectives and Constraints

Group Exercise: Measurable Objectives and Constraints

10:30 - 11:00 BREAK

11:00 - 11:15 Object Model

Team Exercise: Object Model

11:15- 11:30 Task Model

Team Exercise: Task Model

11:30 - 11:45 User Interface Model

Team Exercise: User Interface Model

11:45 - 12:00 Evaluate Design

Team Exercise: Evaluate Design

12:00 - 12:15 Discussion, Q & A, Feedback on Results

12:15 - 12:30 Closing Comments, Tutorial Evaluation Forms

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Materials

The instructor will use overhead projector slides to present the lecture material. A flip chart will be used to capture the results of the group exercises, so that the results may be posted throughout the session. Materials for attendees with include the tutorial notes and two sheets of flip chart paper each for use during the small team exercises. The instructor will also provide Post-it Notes for use during the individual exercises.

The tutorial notes will include copies of all the overhead slides used by the instructor with space on each page for attendees to take notes. Tutorial notes will also include an abstract, agenda, instructor bio, and annotated bibliography. A sample of the tutorial notes, which also shows samples of the content of the slides, is included separately with this proposal (Note, however, that the final design of the slides is awaiting receipt of the CHI'98 format instructions to be contained in the author's kit. Also, the sample does not include the full annotated bibliography that will be included in the final set of notes.)

History

The contents of this tutorial were developed and refined by the instructor over a period of several years while she was employed in the software industry. Her experience with both product teams and research projects indicated that software developers and user interface designers generally did not explicitly address the underlying conceptual design of their products' user interfaces. This led to conceptual design problems that often were discovered too late in the development process to correct. Other problems were created by user interfaces that did not clearly or accurately express the underlying concepts. She discovered in practice that both sets of problems could be addressed by a user-centered methodology which focuses attention and design effort on the conceptual design up front in the early stages of the development cycle.

Since its initial inception, the instructor has successfully introduced her conceptual design framework to numerous product development teams, both as an employee and, more recently, as part of her independent consulting practice. It has been applied to shrinkwrap software products, web sites and world wide web applications, research projects and new technologies, and other computer products.

A truncated (2-hour) version of this tutorial was presented in March 1997 at the monthly meeting of the Puget Sound CHI chapter. A listing of the evaluation feedback from this audience is included along with this proposal.

The instructor has also presented a lecture-only version of this tutorial (without exercises) to various consulting clients over the past two years.

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Modifications for CHI'98

Changes that have been made to the tutorial on the basis of feedback from former attendees include:

· Changing the order of slides to alternate between lecture and exercises (previously it was all lecture then all the exercises).

· A new project example that is slightly more interesting (a video store rather than a bookshop), while still simple enough to work through in a limited timeframe.

· Allowing more time for working through the project example exercises.

Changes that will be made to the tutorial specifically for CHI'98 include:

· A completely new slide design specifically for the CHI'98 audience (awaiting the CHI'98 author's kit with format instructions).

· Changing some of the group exercises to small team exercises.

· Addition of an annotated bibliography.

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