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Tutorial #16: How to Introduce, Deploy, and Optimize User-Centered Design in Your Organization
Karel Vredenburg, Scott Isensee, Carol Righi Tuesday, July 9th, 8:30 AM - 5:00 PM
Keywords: Organizational issues, Product lifecycle and usability, User-centered design
Audience: Beginner, Intermediate, Manager/Advocate
Abstract:
This presentation is an overview of an integrated approach to User-Centered Design (UCD), and explores practical issues concerning the introduction of this approach to an organization. Students engage in a hands-on workshop in which they practice concepts and examine metrics that help an organization apply UCD to product decisions.
Targeted Audience: Beginner, Intermediate, Manager/Advocate
Length of Tutorial: Full Day
System, Product, or Project Focus:
Web, Computer software, Hardware, Process
Learning objectives:
- Provide practical advice based on the presenters' personal experience with the introduction, deployment, and optimization of UCD across various organizations and development projects, including IBM, BMC, Netpliance, MetLife, and others.
- Have session participants share their experiences with each other on these topics.
- Give students hands-on experience with UCD concepts and metrics.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF MATERIAL COVERED BY TUTORIAL AND A SCHEDULE OF EVENTS WITH TIME ALLOCATION
This presentation provides an overview of an integrated approach to User-Centered Design (UCD), and explores some practical issues concerning the introduction of this approach to an organization, including:
- Identifying a set of core principles guiding the UCD approach;
- Introducing UCD through education, communication, and advocacy;
- Developing skills and methods for the deployment of the UCD approach; and
- Optimizing the UCD approach via metrics, tools, and technology.
The tutorial will include an extensive hands-on workshop in which students will work through a case study. The case study will place the students in the role of managers of a UCD effort in an organization. Students will analyze UCD data and make organization-level decisions to enhance the quality of the organization's products.
Participants will be encouraged to participate at specific segments of the session. Participation will consist of a) whole-group discussions of experiences with UCD, b) brainstorming about ideas for introducing, deploying, and optimizing UCD at the participants' workplaces, and c) and a hands-on, small-group, case-based workshop.
The following topics will be covered during the session:
- User-Centered Design Overview. UCD is an integrated approach to designing and developing applications, products, and solutions from a user's perspective. While it has been defined in various ways, the essence of UCD involves two primary elements. The first concerns the design of the total user experience by a multidisciplinary team of professionals. Any offering, whether it is a commercially marketed or used internally within an organization, consists of various elements. These include, for example, the user interface, the documentation, the code, and, in the case of commercial products, packaging and marketing materials. These elements combine to create a total user experience. Whatever skills are required to design the total user experience should be present on the design team. The second major element of UCD involves gathering input from users. This input includes understanding users' tasks, environment, and current product usage; continuous feedback on iterative low- and high-fidelity prototypes; and comprehensive hands-on user tests of products.
- Introducing User-Centered Design. There are many existing approaches to design and development. Traditional approaches tend to be very technology-centric, and firmly entrenched in many organizations. On the other hand, UCD-type approaches are less familiar and therefore require special attention when introducing them to an organization. The presenters' experiences and those of industry colleagues suggest that the following are particularly effective strategies for introducing UCD:
- Make the message simple
- Spend time on education
- Get on "every train leaving the station"
- Get the right and best skills
- Include the right methods
- Carefully select a pilot project
- Communicate, Communicate, Communicate
- Deploying UCD. New design challenges have made it necessary to develop new methodologies for evaluating design. We will discuss the following novel methodologies:
- OVID: Many effective methodologies exist for code development, but few for user interface design. We will discuss OVID - a user interface design methodology which brings rigor to the UI design process, provides checks for design completeness, produces a model in a form the programming team can use directly, and unites members of a multidisciplinary design team around a common design modeling language.
- Design Walkthrough: UCD relies on user feedback to help the design of the total user experience evolve. But how can you test something that has not been developed yet? How do you determine whether your total user experience design is on track early enough to change it? A unique methodology, called Design Walkthrough, allows you to test the total user experience long before its details are set in stone.
- Optimizing User-Centered Design. One of the most critical areas of concern and focus regarding UCD is how to optimize this approach in a world of rapid product cycles and fiscal restraint. In addition, there is an increasing need to ensure that products are "internationalized" for the world marketplace and are tested in a context-rich environment. This segment of the session will explore new directions in tools and technology to address these optimization challenges, such as recruiting, surveys, virtual testing, automated testing, design team groupware, and other advanced technologies. unattended or with the user signaling key events.
- Managing with Metrics. It is often thought that UCD sounds good in theory, but that projects cannot be effectively managed from a UCD perspective. This is not the case. Rather, UCD activities can provide the data to make decisions about products, staff, strategy, and other high- and low-level design and development issues. Through a hands-on, small-group, case-based workshop, students will gain experience with UCD metrics by studying, analyzing, and making decisions based on UCD data. Take-up and discussion will help students evaluate and integrate their workshop experience, and give them ideas for implementing UCD in their own organizations.
Timeline
This full day (7-hour) tutorial will be organized into the following segments:
Time | Topic |
| 45 minutes | Introduction and UCD overview |
| 15 minutes | Discussion: Presenters' and participants' experiences with UCD |
| 15 minutes | Break |
| 35 minutes | UCD deployment experiences and strategies |
| 15 minutes | Discussion: Deployment experiences and strategies |
| 60 minutes | Lunch |
| 10 minutes | Current issues in design |
| 20 minutes | Some novel UCD techniques |
| 20 minutes | Some UCD tools |
| 15 minutes | Break |
| 140 minutes | Exercise: UCD Leadership Workshop |
| 30 minutes | Debriefing, discussion, and wrap up |
DESCRIPTION OF MATERIALS (HANDOUTS)
Participants will receive a full copy of the presentation slides with room for note taking. They will be shown a website where tools and reference materials can be downloaded. Here are examples of the presentation materials:
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| Slide of the EZSort tool for information architecture |
Slide of an OVID object relationship diagram |
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| Slide depicting the Total User Experience |
Slide depicting the UCD process |
Maximum number of participants
40
BACKGROUND OF PRESENTERS
Karel Vredenburg is Architect and Corporate Team Lead for User-Centered Design at IBM. He has responsibility for the development of IBM's UCD approaches, methods, and tools; the deployment of them company-wide; and the leadership of IBM's team of 400 UCD practitioners. Karel joined IBM in 1988 after having done graduate studies, research, and teaching at the University of Toronto. Karel introduced UCD at IBM in 1993 and assumed his
present company-wide role in 1995. He has written over 50 conference and journal publications. Together with Scott and Carol, Karel recently completed a book entitled "User-Centered Design: An Integrated Approach." Karel is regularly sought out as a speaker and panelist at industry conferences. He was plenary speaker at ErgoCon'99 in San Francisco. He is also a member of several committees and industry working groups including the International Standards Organization Human Centered Design committee, the Knowledge Media Design Institute Advisory committee, the National Science and Engineering Research Council UCD education committee, and the National Institute for Standards and Technology Usability Testing working group.
Scott Isensee is a user interface architect at BMC Software where he designs user interfaces for systems management products and defines the architecture on which numerous products are based. In the past he: designed the Netpliance i-opener information appliance, worked on a medical information system as a consultant to Kaiser-Permanente HMO, was lead of the cross-company user interface architecture group which designed the Common Desktop Environment (CDE) GUI for UNIX, was lead of IBM's user interface architecture group, served on ISO and ANSI committees writing HCI standards, and designed hardware and software for the banking industry. Scott holds 44 US patents and is a coauthor of the books "The Art of Rapid Prototyping," "Designing for the User with OVID: Bridging User Interface Design and Software Engineering," " Information Appliances and Beyond," "Constructing Superior Software," and " User-Centered Design: An Integrated Approach." Scott holds masters degrees in Computer Science and Industrial Psychology.
Carol Righi is president of Righi Interface Engineering, Inc. She has worked in the area of human-computer interaction since 1984, and specializes in user-interface design and evaluation and user-centered design education. Her most recent activities have included the design of a web site for the Usability Professional's Association conference registration; user interface and tutorial design for online tests for a leading standardized test developer; online and traditional course development, curriculum architecture, and instruction for IBM's user-centered design initiative; multimedia kiosk design for a major American automobile manufacturer; desktop user interface design for a leading life insurance company; numerous web site evaluations; and various other design, evaluation, and educational activities. Carol is a member of the Usability Professional's Association and SIGCHI, the human-factors special interest group of the Association for Computing Machinery. She is a member of the advisory council for a popular user-centered design discussion group. She is a co-author of "User-Centered Design: An Integrated Approach." Carol received her BA and Ph.D. from Fordham University in New York City.
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