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Second International Conference on Usage-Centered Design

TOPIC - Visual & Interaction Design

PRE-CONFERENCE TUTORIALS
SATURDAY - 18 October

A1 - 8:30a-5:30p

Usage-Centered Design: A Crash Course in Designing for Use

Larry Constantine and Lucy Lockwood, Constantine & Lockwood, Ltd.

This intensive, hands-on tutorial provides a practical introduction to usage-centered design, a proven, industrial-strength process with an established track record on varied development projects from modest XP applications to very large-scale systems. Participants will gain experience in using simplified, agile techniques to quickly organize information about users and user tasks into concise models for driving the visual and interaction design. They will learn how abstract models of user roles, task cases, and abstract user interface prototypes can lead to better designs and dramatic improvements in user performance and ease of learning. The major focus will be on task modeling with essential use cases, which serve as a common thread throughout an integrated usage-centered software development process. Work on a case study problem will provide practice in applying the models and methods of usage-centered design.

MONDAY

M10 - 9:30a-10:30a

KEYNOTE: Performance by Design

Bill Buxton, Buxton Design

This keynote might be titled "What I have learned about software product design in 8 1/2 years of working with some of the best industrial designers and film makers in the world." By design, I do not mean code design. Rather, I use the term in the way that it would be understood by an industrial or graphic designer. In software development, product design and software engineering are not well differentiated. Far too often, the result is a product that is late, over budget, short of features, high on bugs, and underperforms in the marketplace. Overall, software companies have a far better track record with incremental releases than with new product design. To put the lessons I have learned into perspective, I will work through a case study which suggests that my education was time well spent--as well as fun.

M32 - 1:30p-3:00p

Software Product Design: From Theory into Practice

Bill Buxton, Buxton Design

This presentation addresses the pragmatics of the structure and practice of the design process. Issues discussed include team composition, techniques for "sketching" interaction, the difference between the engineering and design notions of prototypes, and reconciling the design of the product, its business/marketing plan, and manufacturing/engineering plan before green-lighting. This session will be highly interactive, based on audience participation, but grounded on a few key case studies.

M41 - 3:30p-5:00p

Instructive Interaction: Innovating Without Inundating Your Users

Larry Constantine, Constantine & Lockwood, Ltd.

Radical improvements often demand unconventional designs. Industry-leading results do not come from me-to designs based on slavish adherence to standards and conventions. Fortunately, even radically non-standard user interfaces can be made completely intuitable with the right visual and interaction design. Instructive interaction is a proven approach that has been used successfully in complex commercial products to enable users to master novel features immediately. Through a combination of both novel and established techniques, user interfaces can be made self-teaching. This session will show how genuine breakthroughs in user performance can be achieved through innovative designs without compromising ease of learning or support for new users. The necessary preconditions for single-trial learning will be outlined and the basic approaches to instructive interaction will be illustrated with copious examples from real-world products in a variety of applications areas.

TUESDAY - 21 October

T10 - 8:30a-10:00a

Between Extreme and Unified: Where Are the Users and Usability in Development Processes?

Ivar Jacobson, Jaczone; Jim Heumann, IBM; Ron Jeffries, XProgramming.com; Jeff Patton, Tomax Corp.; Larry Constantine (Moderator)

In a lively and informative format, this plenary panel will bring together two opposing teams of authoritative panelists to compare how users, usability, and user interface design fit into modern software development. Challenges from the moderator and questions from the audience will shape a critical examination of the relative strengths and shortcomings of competing approaches across the spectrum of processes ranging from XP to RUP. .

T23 - 10:30a-12:00n

Designing for Performance Using Usage-Centered Design

Helmut Windl, Siemens AG

New software applications like Windows XP, Office 2003, and Windows Movie Maker 2 show that user interfaces are turning radically from being object-oriented to task and performance support. At first sight, usage-centered design seems to be the perfect approach to design such systems, but a closer inspection reveals that usage-centered design has to be slightly refined to do the performance support job. This session shows how to use usage-centered design to create systems that follow the electronic performance support system (EPSS) philosophy. It covers the necessary extensions and refinements to the usage-centered design models and process.

T42 - 3:30p-5:00p

Making Mistakes Well: Improving Error Messages, Help, Forms, and Other Web Crisis Points

Matt Linderman and Jason Fried, 37signals

This session is an exploration of on-line contingency design; the art and science of preventing visitor mistakes and helping visitors get back on track once a problem does occur. Come learn the top contingency design rules that can radically improve your site's customer experience, usability, and conversion rates. Plus, see the best and worst of contingency design in action. The class will analyze and evaluate the crisis point handling of major sites, including Amazon, Walmart, E*Trade, Google, Yahoo!, Citibank, SprintPCS, eBay and others. You'll leave the session inspired and armed with real world solutions that can improve your site immediately.

T43 - 3:30p-5:00p

Visual Design Patterns in Action

Jim Hobart, Classic Systems Solutions

Visual Design Patterns offer a powerful new way of applying design solutions based on specific context by telling the interaction designer when, why and how the design solution can be applied. Successfully implementing design patterns for complex user interfaces is both challenging and potentially very rewarding. Learn what a design pattern is and how can it be used in user interface design. Find out how to document and communicate a design pattern, how to use design patterns in usability testing, and learn tips and techniques for implementing design patterns within your organization. This talk will look at several design patterns in detail and then describe real world situations where they were applied successfully.

WEDNESDAY - 22 October

W22 - 10:30a-12:00n

Lean Feature-Driven Development of Interaction Designs

David Anderson, uidesign.net; Brian O’Byrne, JStateMachine Project

Lean Feature-Driven Development using Statechart modeling and Mediator Pattern can reduce variation in UI development with precise, right-the-first-time implementation of the interaction designer’s intent. In this approach, content models are elaborated into Statecharts that can be directly mapped to an MVC Type-II architecture and Mediator Pattern. With minor extensions, Statecharts can model complex application behavior and be mapped into UI features for tracking in Feature Driven Development. Statecharts drawn using UML modeling tools can be exported in XMI and imported into the JStateMachine engine implementing table driven Mediator and Command patterns in either a Web Servlet or JFC (Swing) environment.

W31 - 1:30p-3:00p

Making Usage More Productive: Leveraging Usage-Centered Design for Improved Performance

Lucy Lockwood, Constantine & Lockwood, Ltd.

One of the hallmarks of usage-centered design is its focus on the tasks - the actual work -that users of a system are trying to accomplish. Whether the software is a traditional business or desktop application, a web site, or embedded in a phone or medical device, focusing design on supporting usage pays off dramatically in terms of increasing user productivity and performance. Supported by exercises and examples, learn how to leverage the methods and models of usage-centered design to streamline task steps, speed task completion, reduce errors, reduce user stress, and support expanded task performance. Find out how to make the case to management that increased productivity, lower error rates, and faster learning all translate into an improved bottom line for your company, organization, clients, and customers.

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Full Program

Pre-Conference Tutorials

Plenary Sessions

Short Presentations

TOPIC THREADS -

User Performance & Performance Support

Visual & Interaction Design