Information &Information &Interaction DesignInteraction Design

Fall 2005

Bill Hart-Davidson

Session 7: teams present research plan + a sequence diagram from phase 2 homework; Affinity diagrams; Preview: object-oriented modeling

Today in ClassToday in Class Be ready to share…– Your Research Plan– Your Sequence diagram

We’ll talk about affinity diagrams as a way to analyze data from your CD interviews

We’ll talk about consolidated sequence diagrams

Key OO modeling concepts

Tell us about your Tell us about your Research PlanResearch Plan

The research focus - what does your team need to know?

The interviews/observations you will do broken down by roles

The approach you will take in each of these

How you will deal with the challenges your project poses

Affinity Diagrams & Affinity Diagrams & Consolidated Work ModelsConsolidated Work Models

Affinity diagrams and consolidated work models are tools for making inductive reasoning from multiple data sources systematic by:

1. Creating concrete representations of work practices

2. Granting “ownership” of the representation and subsequent designs to the whole team

3. Emphasizing patterns vs. anecdotes

What is an Affinity Diagram?What is an Affinity Diagram?

Simply put, it is a issue-categorized, prioritized list of the insights that come from interpretation sessions.

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Affinity Diagram: StructureAffinity Diagram: Structure

sum.points

sum.points

sum.points

sum. groups

point

point

point

point

point

Built from the bottom up, categories emerge from the specifics of your observations. NOT a “sorting” task.

Example…Example…

weekly reports focus on production goals

and customer qualitymetrics

all users routinely print And file customer E-mails

customer contact recordsare important, but informal

Innovating w/ the AffinityInnovating w/ the Affinity

As patterns emerge, the team’s job is to link these with design goals…bringing your expertise IT systems to bear on the data

sum1

Customer-relationshipmanagement

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sum2

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The Affinity tells users’ storiesThe Affinity tells users’ stories

We do it routinely…

Customer-relationship management is vital to our business

E-mail file

Call back sheets

But inconsistently…

The Affinity gives you a way to The Affinity gives you a way to check design direction w/ userscheck design direction w/ users

“We have noticed that maintaining relationships with customers is important to you. You spend a great deal of time during the day doing this sort of work: creating or updating records, responding to e-mail, logging and returning calls. You also evaluate your staff using metrics that relate to this work, and yet much of it is done ad-hoc and informally…what we would like to do for you is…

Consolidated Work ModelsConsolidated Work Models

Like Affinity Diagrams, consolidated work models tell stories of how work happens in ways that

1. Allow the whole team to see and understand work practices

2. Highlight design issues and opportunities

Consolidating = move from Consolidating = move from individual individual organizational patterns organizational patterns

Flow models: move from understanding individual workers’ practice to patterns of work by “role”

Sequence models: move from understanding instances of work to the structure of the work, including reasons for differences observed

Consolidated sequence Consolidated sequence diagrams: UML/swimlanediagrams: UML/swimlane

studentteacher

Assignpaper

peer

Draft paper

Draft paper

Exchange &Review papers

Check reviews

Note all user roles involved in a task are represented; artifacts are in blue; trigger in redCont.

Sequence consolidation: gradingSequence consolidation: grading• Instructor skims whole report quickly, no more than 2-3 seconds per page

• Instructor returns to P1, begins reading

• Instructor flips through document, lingers on heading on p. 3

• Returns to p.1, reads abstract

• Flips through all pages again quickly

• Returns to P1, begins reading

Nominating the action: Nominating the action: “triage”“triage”• Instructor skims whole report quickly, no more than 2-3 seconds per page

• Instructor returns to P1, begins reading

The fact that the instructor encountered no serious problems in this instance made the purpose of this action hard to detect

Consolidation remindersConsolidation reminders• When you give a generic name to a role, an action, an influencer (in the cultural model), a tool (in the artifact or physical model), or a space (in the physical model)…verify it with users!

• These generic names will be very important in our next phase of the design, OO modeling, as they will frequently become the shorthand for system features including user environments (metaphors, screens), data objects & states, actions, and of course, user roles.

OO modelingOO modeling

Object-oriented modeling provides a way to coordinate the design work with development work by using similar terms to express the priorities of each group.

We speak, in OO modeling, in terms of User Roles that do specific Actions through the use of Objects.

ViewsViews

A view is the way a given object appears to a user. Views can focus the attention on a single object, or provide a way to see, understand, and interact with many objects at once.

2 Views of the Buddy Object in AIM2 Views of the Buddy Object in AIM

Buddy name, status in “buddy list”

Buddy details in “buddy info”

Object/View InstancesObject/View Instances

Objects spawn “instances” of themselves that users interact with. This allows the same basic object to carry context-specific details.

Views also have instances, which tend to be “sessions,” reflecting the time, place, and task conditions.

Object StatesObject States

Most objects a user interacts with have a lifecycle, a series of “states” it can go through.

At any given time, an object is occupying some state and may be poised to move to another (usually as the result of something the user does).

Next time…Next time… Artifact and Physical Models– Exercise 2, build a consolidated

Artifact or physical model Representing design concepts

w/ OO modeling techniques Guidelines for Phase 2

presentations