Design & Development - Task & User Analysis: articles about the processes for analyzing tasks and documenting system requirements. Recommended Books

Effective Info Architecture
The site has grown too big, too fast, and they hired you to fix it. So where do you start? There are techniques and people who can help you become a better information architect. You're about to learn the techniques; your users are the people who can help you. Through techniques such as personas, card sorting, and pen and paper testing you stay close to your users and should have a good idea of how to design for them. (2001-09-16)

She Wants to Watch You
Far East Economic Review: Companies who design everything from household appliances to personal digital assistants are taking a closer look at how people really live. Finally, it seems, they have realized it's futile to invent technology and then try to convince consumers they need it. Intel, which helps other manufacturers design goods that run on its Pentium processors, has a team of anthropologists and psychologists who study human behaviour. Their research helps the company understand the "needs that traditional market research cannot convey. (2001-09-16)

User-Centered Design for VoiceXML Applications
My experiences have identified a number of issues that cause users to exit VoiceXML applications. For example, users will abandon an application - even if they like its concept - when they: are confused by their initial contact with it; think the application stopped working; encounter errors; don't quickly perceive the application's value; and become bored with long prompts or unwieldy application navigation. Your VoiceXML application can avoid or address these issues - and retain more first time users - by implementing human factors wisdom in the context of a UCD (user centered design) process. (2001-08-12)

Perfecting Your Personas
Cooper Interaction Design:  A persona is a user archetype you can use to help guide decisions about product features, navigation, interactions, and even visual design. By designing for the archetype—whose goals and behavior patterns are well understood—you can satisfy the broader group of people represented by that archetype. In most cases, personas are synthesized from a series of ethnographic interviews with real people, then captured in 1-2 page descriptions that include behavior patterns, goals, skills, attitudes, and environment, with a few fictional personal details to bring the persona to life. (2001-08-05)

UCD and the next generation of interactive technology
TaskZ.com: Today, when designing intranet systems, e-commerce web sites, or other screen-based systems, the central concern is not hardware performance, but user performance. These systems are meant to be efficient and easy to use in order to improve the user's productivity and overall experience. Because it has a negative impact on the user experience, technology-centered design directly conflicts with these goals. Therefore, many companies are being forced to abandon technology-centered design and adopt UCD methodologies. At first, migrating to UCD methodologies may be problematic for development teams that are accustomed to working from the technology up. However, the need to develop high quality products that respond directly to the needs and limitations of the customer far outweighs the initial difficulties that teams may encounter. (2001-08-05)

Designing for Usability on a Shoestring
WebReview: Designing a usable interface comes down to knowing who will be using it. This approach is referred to as User-Centered Design, and following it will improve the usability of your site. It's crucial that you focus on the user and their needs from the outset, and keep this in mind throughout the project. Without early and continual focus on the user, you run the risk of discovering usability problems late in the game, when changes are expensive and time consuming. The lesson is simple—identify the target audience of a site as soon as you start thinking about designing it. (2001-08-05)

Workflow Modeling: Tools for Process Improvement and Application Development
"Start with the end--the result--in mind." That is the message driving this visual models approach to improving the work flow process for organizational success. Experts in management and information technology provide use case scenarios for defining system requirements, real-world examples, project checklists, and other aids for sharpening the competitive edge. (2001-07-22)

Stalk Your User
Web Techniques, Jeffrey Veen: Contextual inquiry is an increasingly popular method for discovering this information. Also known as ethnographic research or field studies, the idea is deceptively simple: Build useful products and watch your users as they work. The process itself sounds even easier: Go to where your users are and tag along with them. (2001-05-13)

Business Gets Brainy
The Standard: Corporate anthropology got its start 20 years ago when applied-anthropology legends Lucy Suchman and Julian Orr dropped in on Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center to study how people interacted with technology. Since then, anthropologists, psychologists and other social scientists have dropped their curricula vitae for résumés and infiltrated the corporate world, calling themselves "knowledge liaisons," "ethnographers" and "evaluators." (2001-05-13)

Who Is 'The User' Anyway?
frontend.com: Understanding the user is a pre-requisite of high quality interface design, whether online or offline. This means taking the time to find out what motivates typical user groups, what they expect from a given site or application, and how they prefer to work (or play). No site or application has one single group of users who share the same attributes. On the contrary, there are likely to be a number of distinct user types, each of which will have differing expectations and work patterns. Good interface design will cater for as many of these groups as possible, whilst of course reflecting the different priority the business may accord them. (2001-05-06)

Goal-Oriented Navigation Design
Knabe Design: Large information systems can support hundreds or thousands of different user goals. A navigation system should be structured in a way that allows a user to access support for a specific goal as quickly as possible. Each bottom-level item in the navigation system should somehow be a representation of a user goal, and category labels should somehow represent higher-level goals or categories of related goals. (2001-05-06)

Business-process model ready for release
According to this new release: "The Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI), a group formed in August to define a standard way to model business processes, is prepared to release the first draft of specifications for BPML (Business Process Modeling Language), an XML (extensible markup language) schema that is the first step toward the group's goal."  (2001-03-11)

Notes on Design Practice: Stories and Prototypes as Catalysts for Communication
Thomas Erickson, Apple Computer Inc.: My goal is to talk about some of the informal, practical methods that designers use to grapple with the messy, ill-defined issues that pervade their daily practice. The issues I am concerned with are": 

  1. Problem setting. Before designers can solve a problem, they first must define what it is. 
  2. Team building. Technology design is carried out by interdisciplinary teams. 
  3. Involving users. Designers know too much, and they know too little. 
  4. Collaborative design. The heart of design is the iterative process of creating a prototype that embodies the design, evaluating it, and then using the feedback to create a new prototype. 
  5. Design transfer. In large organizations, those who design a product are often not the same as those who implement it.
  6. Design evangelism. Much design occurs in the context of large organizations. Buy in of people -- executives, managers, potential collaborators -- is a necessity if the designed product is to be implemented, manufactured, and marketed. (2001-03-11)

Boxes and Arrows: Defining IA Deliverables
Webmasterbase.com: This article contains a brief describes of 7 information architecture techniques and deliverables. They are: conceptual model; content inventory and organization; user flows /scenarios; task analysis; site map; and page architecture. According to the author an: "...IA's job is to define the structure and behavior of the systems as it is perceived by the user, and these seven deliverables are an excellent way to make sure the IA's thinking is clear and clearly communicated." (2001-02-18)

Effective Strategies for Bridging Gulfs Between Users and Computer Systems
This paper describes design strategies that led to significant improvements in the usability and learnability of an end-user programming environment called RIDES. These strategies may be viewed as concrete procedures for building easily learned interfaces and were derived from Polson and Lewis' CE+ theory. RIDES was designed to make it possible for US Air Force training experts, with minimal programming experience, to author simulation-based Intelligent Tutoring Systems. Using the techniques described in this paper, the researcher reduced, by 1/3, the time it took to learn and use the redesigned RIDES system.  (2001-01-01)

What exactly is Knowledge Mapping?
"Knowledge mapping is a important practice consisting of education, discovery, survey, audit and synthesis. It aims to track the loss and acquisition of information & knowledge, personal and group competencies and proficiencies, show knowledge flows, appreciate the influence on intellectual capital due to staff loss, assist with team selection and technology matching. (2000-11-19)

A visual vocabulary for describing information architecture and interaction design
Diagrams are an essential tool for communicating information architecture and interaction design in Web development teams. This document discusses the considerations in development of such diagrams, outlines a basic symbology for diagramming information architecture and interaction design concepts, and provides guidelines for the use of these elements. (2000-10-22)

Designing the Perfect Product
According to this Intel.com article " The world is composed of lots of different groups that have come to be referred to as "digital tribes." Each digital tribe has its own folkways and specialized environment. Yet they all need to be served by today's high-tech companies. That's where ethnography and the concept of human-centered engineering come into play." (2000-10-15)

The Value of Real Customer Involvement
In this ClickZ article,  Nick Usborne asks "Why don't more e-commerce sites work harder to solicit, manage, and use significant feedback from their customers? I'm not talking about that lame "feedback" button. I'm talking about respecting your visitors as an important element in your team." (2000-10-15)

Extending UML for UI
UIDesign.net - "This paper seeks to set out my current position and opinion on how the Unified Modeling Language might be extended to accommodate the modeling of interaction design and user interface design for the purpose of facilitating a user centered design process." (2000-10-15)

Seven Styles of Learning
In this article, Elaine Winters asks: Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences, hypothesizes that human beings are capable of seven independent means of information processing. How many do you think are considered when a team brainstorms a new product proclaiming itself to be 'interactive?'  (2000-10-15)

Methods for Modelling, User Interface Design and Evaluation
Many system development projects fail to provide information systems with high usability. This thesis focuses on how to solve this problem by introducing methods for modelling, user interface design and evaluation. These methods are primarily designed to serve as complements to existing methods for systems development. (2000-10-08)

MSN Explorer: A Study in Usability
"The usability team has helped to create Microsoft’s most consumer-friendly product ever," said Bob Visse, lead product manager for MSN at Microsoft. "By creating personas and conducting user research, field studies and laboratory testing, the team shaped the outcome of the product based on what they found users need and want." (2000-09-10)

Simple question, simple answer?
According to this NUA Knowledge News editorial by Catherine McDonnell "Much frustrated head-banging on the part of the Internet user could be avoided if more websites knew just what it is their customers want. All the online company has to do is take the trouble to find out which problems their customers are trying to solve and what information is needed, simply by listening and observing rather than flashing and whining." (2000-08-13)

Conceptual Design: Cornerstone of Usability
This pdf file is an article by Jeff Rubin that appeared in, Technical Communication, 2Q1996, Volume 43, Number 2. " This article suggests why conceptual design is so often neglected by development teams and presents a five-step process for developing a sound conceptual model for a software application. The crux of the process is the development of multiple models and low-fidelity prototyping. (2000-08-06)

Narrative Scenarios as a Design Tool
According to this article by David Bliss "Scenarios are stories in which the product being designed is placed within the lives of its intended users. People, software, hardware and the interaction that binds them together constitute the typical cast of characters for scenarios." (2000-08-06)

13 common objections against user requirements analysis
In this InternetArchitect.com article, Simon D'Hertefelt recommends that  "...before designing an interactive solution, you have to understand the problem: who are the future users, what are their current practices and what are their needs? This article lists 13 common objections against user requirements analysis and why you should not believe them." (2000-07-30)

User-Centred Requirements Handbook
This handbook emphasises the importance of obtaining a complete understanding of user needs, and validating the emerging requirements against potential real world scenarios of usage. (2000-07-23)

Building Better Business Systems with Scenarios
According to this Software Development article by Dr. Carlos Jerome "If you eschew use cases because they are too onerous or boring to prepare, there is another way to probe problems and stress limits. Scenarios can simultaneously illustrate business rules and invigorate your team." (2000-07-09)

Why user experience disasters happen at the start of web projects
According to this InformationArchitect.com article by Sim D'Hertefelt, "Usability IS about choosing useful functionalities. If a website is not useful, making it easy to use or attractive is not going to make it more usable. Usable means useful AND easy to use AND appreciated by users." (2000-06-11)

13 common objections against user requirements analysis
In this related InformationArchitect.com article, Sim D'Hertefelt lists 13 common objections against user requirements analysis and why you should not believe them. (2000-06-11)

Composition and Usability
Technique: In this Digital Web article, Rick Cecil describes a process of asking questions to identify the required components of a web page and then ranking those in order of importance. (2000-06-04)

Needs Assessment
In this paper Dalton Cote provides an overview of the methods, reasons and benefits of conducting a needs assessment study. According to Cote "Needs assessment is a systematic study to accurately describe gaps or discrepancies in performance that exist between what people are capable of doing now, what they should be capable of doing, and what they will be required to do in the future." (2000-05-21)

Toward the Automatic Construction of Task Models from Object-Oriented Diagrams
Task models bridge the gap between HCI and Software Engineering.  They are useful both for interface design and for generating user interface code and user documentation. These benefits, however, are difficult to achieve because building task models from scratch is difficult. In this paper, we describe an approach for automatically constructing task models from object-oriented diagrams in a CASE tool. (2000-03-12)

Task-Centered Human Interface Design 
The central goal of this online shareware book is to teach the reader how to design user interfaces that will enable people to learn computer systems quickly and use them effectively, efficiently, and comfortably. The interface issues addressed are primarily cognitive, that is, having to do with mental activities such as perception, memory, learning, and problem solving. (2000-02-06)

Site Redesign
A article about the process used to redesign the uidesign.net website. This first article is about the process for gathering requirements.  (2000-02-06)

Cluster Analysis for Web Site Organization
"This paper outlines the premises of and describes a method for using card-sorting and cluster analysis to involve users in the organizational design of Web sites. Members of a site's target audience sort cards representing key pages of a proposed site into groups. Cluster analysis is then performed across all participants' card groupings to produce site diagrams. By revealing the perceived relatedness of the key pages, these diagrams can help guide the navigational design of the site to meet users' expectations, resulting in a more usable site." (via WebWord) (2000-01-16)

Use OO to build a better UI
Recently, a group of application architects at IBM developed a way to build object-oriented user interfaces (OOUIs), called the Object, View, and Interaction Design (OVID) methodology. This article is adapted from their book Designing for the User with OVID. (1999-12-05)

Apprenticing with the Customer: A Collaborative Approach to Requirements Definition
This online article describes a technique for gathering task and process information through an apprenticeship relationship with a user. The technique is called Contextual Inquiry. (Sep-05-97)

Design as Storytelling
This article describes how to use story telling in the early stages of the interaction design process. The author relates that:  "I almost always begin design by talking with users. Initially, my goal is simply to collect people's stories. I believe that the stories people tell about what they do and how they do it contain information vital to designing good interfaces. Stories reveal what people like about their work, what they hate about it, what works well, what sorts of things are real problems. But although stories can contain a lot of valuable information, I believe that it is the process of collecting stories, rather than the content they contain, that is their most valuable contribution to design."  (1999-10-10)

Helping and Hindering User Involvement - A Tale of Everday Design
This case study provides a detailed account of the obstacles and facilitators to user involvement that were identified during the design of a computer application. The factors that affected user involvement included contracting design services, selecting users, motivating users, facilitating and mediating meetings and offering points of focus for user contributions. (Sep-03-97)

Identifying User Requirements Through Prototyping and Usability Testing
In this article John Harris argues that we should not use paper prototyping or any other usability techniques to gather user requirements. He recommends that we should be using a statistically valid techniques to gather most types of user requirements. (May-16-99)  

Publications by InContext Enterprises This page contains links to articles by H. Beyer and K. Holtzblatt about user-centered design and work analysis methods. The articles include "Making Customer-Centered Design Work for Teams"   and "Representing Work for the Purpose of Design". (Nov-02-97)

Requirements Engineering and Specification in Telematics
User requirements specification is a critical part of the system design process. This web site is intended to provide assistance with establishing accurate user requirements. (1999-10-03)

Walking with the User
According to this Computerworld article " Many companies make a point of putting information technology professionals to work on store floors, in route trucks and in purchasing offices — the front lines where the business lives or dies. Walking the walk helps IT folks learn the business and how their work affects it. They empathize with business customers and look for opportunities to improve work processes. They build closer relationships and feel a part of something bigger than their current project." (Feb-07-99)