Cambridge Usability Group

30th January - Informal Get Together

There will be an informal gathering of the Cambridge Usability Group for a chat and a few beers on Wednesday 30th January – starting around 7.30 at All Bar One in Regent Street. Adaptive Path are visiting Cambridge from the West Coast and will be joining us. All are welcome!

Rachel Jones (of Instrata in Cambridge) who many of you will know from her talks for the group has promised to be there early and bag a table...so look for her!

Look forward to seeing you there.

Masterclass in User-Centred Design

29th November, Møller Centre, Cambridge

Instrata is offering a 1-day intensive workshop on user-centred design. You will receive a basic grounding in a variety of techniques such as ethnography, lead users, personas, scenarios, prototyping and evaluation. You will learn when to use the techniques and what their benefits are. Most importantly, you will learn to apply the techniques through a series of exercises to the product or service you bring to the workshop. This could be a software application, or a mobile or web application, or a physical product.

The workshop is aimed at those of you that have taken on a usability or interaction design role within your organisation and wish to learn more.

Cost
Full price: £325 + VAT per person
Two or more delegates from an organisation: £300 + VAT
Members of the Cambridge Network: £300 + VAT

All prices include lunch, refreshments and handouts.

Contact Anita at anita@instrata.co.uk if you wish to register for this event or to find out about future courses.

Dr Rachel Jones is the course leader. Highly experienced, Rachel is at the forefront of people-centred design in the UK. Rachel is involved in mentoring organizations and teams in ongoing innovation programs at the BBC, BT and Reuters where she brings a people-centred approach to the development of new technologies and services. Rachel founded Instrata 6 years ago, which specialises in people-centred design and provides expertise across a broad range of services and products. Clients include Microsoft, Vodafone, Yahoo, Nokia, Proctor & Gamble, Smith & Nephew, Virgin Atlantic, and the Countryside Agency. Prior to starting Instrata, Rachel was employed by two of the foremost pioneers of people-centred design techniques, Xerox EuroPARC and Sapient (formerly E-lab). Rachel has a PhD in Computer Studies, over 40 international publications and has authored 10 patents.

Terms and Conditions:
Bookings are not confirmed until payment is received in full. Once payment is received you will receive the workshop documents. All fees must be paid for in advance. You may cancel your registration up to 14 days before the seminar. Your registration fee will be refunded less a £10 enrolment charge. If you need to cancel less than 14 days prior to the seminar you may send a substitute from your organisation. Cancellations must be received in writing. In the unlikely event of the seminar being cancelled a full refund will be made, but further liability is disclaimed. It may be necessary for reasons beyond the control of Instrata to change the date or the venue.

29th October - "Shaping new mobile services: is it anytime, anyplace, on the move, in the bag or in between?"

We are delighted to welcome back Rachel Jones as the speaker at our next event. Rachel, from Instrata in Cambridge, spoke at the inaugural meeting of the Cambridge group back in March 2005. In this new talk Rachel, a recognised UK expert in people-centred design, will explore ways of thinking about new mobile services as the capabilities of mobile devices continue to grow.

Date: Monday 29th October
Time: 6.30 for 6.45
Venue: Microsoft Research, Cambridge [Map & address]

Registration: Please email cambridge.usability@gmail.com to reserve a place. The event is FREE and you do not need to be a UK UPA member to attend

Shaping new mobile services: is it anytime, anyplace, on the move, in the bag, or in between?

The mobile has moved on from a simple communication tool. It now has many capabilities, many of which are now workable from the user’s point of view. For instance, the quality of the camera is nearly as good as that of a digital camera which it will surely replace; and internet connectivity is on the way to offering acceptable access times. Such capabilities can only improve.

Over these base services, new mobile services are being developed and a variety of dictums are being vaunted for framing and envisaging them. The mobile operators talk about offering services “anytime, anyplace”. For example, the mobile internet allows the internet to become ubiquitous – we can access anything online from anywhere. User experience experts frown at this approach and advocate the importance of “context” – different services are appropriate at different times, at different places, by different people. For example, with people’s position now determinable, we could identify the sort of services people will want to use based on their location.

In this talk, I explore various ways of thinking about new services, including anytime, anyplace, on the move, in the bag and in between. I suggest that each framework both opens up and restricts the way we explore the design space and therefore the way we envisage new services. I propose that we continue to explore new frameworks to help shape our thinking.

About the speaker

Rachel Jones founded Instrata 6 years ago. Instrata specialises in people-centred design and provides expertise across a broad range of services and products, including mobile, web, television, medical, travel, and personal care services. Instrata offerings include strategic innovation, ethnographic research, user requirements understanding, design mapping and design solutions. Clients include Microsoft, Vodafone, Yahoo, Nokia, Proctor & Gamble, Smith & Nephew, Virgin Atlantic, and the Countryside Agency.

Rachel has over 20 years experience in people-centred design and has been involved in mentoring organisations and teams, managing research and design projects, and developing novel methods and tools. Rachel’s specific experience and expertise comes in selecting or developing the appropriate techniques for a project and guiding the process.

Prior to starting Instrata, Rachel was employed by two of the foremost pioneers of people-centred design techniques, Xerox EuroPARC and Sapient (formerly E-lab). Rachel spent four years at Xerox EuroPARC, which is a world leader in understanding the human and organisational aspects of technologies in use, and on reflecting this understanding in novel design. At Sapient, a leading e-commerce consultancy, Rachel was involved in developing major corporate web sites and services for mobile devices. Rachel has a PhD in Computer Studies, over 40 international publications and has authored 10 patents.

8th October - CHI @ Cambridge

Cambridge Usability Group events return after a long summer break with an opportunity to hear two excellent papers presented earlier this year at CHI 2007.

Date: Monday 8th October
Time: 6.30 for 6.45
Venue: Microsoft Research, Cambridge [Map & address]

Registration: Please email cambridge.usability@gmail.com to reserve a place. The event is FREE and you do not need to be a UK UPA member to attend

The first paper and winner in the best paper awards at CHI 2007 is “Capturing life experiences: Software or wetware?: discovering when and why people use digital prosthetic memory” presented by Vaiva Kalnikaité and Steve Whittaker.

Abstract
Our lives are full of memorable and important moments, as well as important items of information. The last few years have seen the proliferation of digital devices intended to support prosthetic memory (PM), to help users recall experiences, conversations and retrieve personal information. We nevertheless have little systematic understanding of when and why people might use such devices, in preference to their own organic memory (OM). Although OM is fallible, it may be more efficient than accessing information from a complex PM device. We report a controlled lab study which investigates when and why people use PM and OM. We found that PM use depended on users' evaluation of the quality of their OM, as well as PM device properties. In particular, we found that users trade-off Accuracy and Efficiency, preferring rapid access to potentially inaccurate information over laborious access to accurate information. We discuss the implications of these results for future PM design and theory. Rather than replacing OM, future PM designs need to focus on allowing OM and PM to work in synergy.

About the speakers
Following an MA at Cambridge, and PhD at St. Andrews, Steve took various research posts either side of the Atlantic - HP Labs Bristol, The Stanford Center, Lotus Boston, Edinburgh University and finally AT&T Labs, New Jersey. In 2003, he returned to the UK to teach and research as Professor in Information Retrieval, Sheffield University. Steve continues to win research grants, file patents and publish widely. His research interests include Computer Mediated Communication, and Multimodal Interfaces.

Vaiva is a PhD student in Department of Information Studies, Sheffield University.

Our second paper, “Usability Testing: What Have We Overlooked?", by Gitte Lindgaard and Jarinee Chattratichart will be presented by Jarinee. This paper was nominated in the best paper awards at CHI 2007.

Abstract
One way to keep down the cost of usability tests is to run an optimum number of sessions - enough to reveal most of the problems, but not so many that later sessions simply duplicate the results of earlier ones. Nearly 15 years ago, Jakob Nielsen (useit.com) claimed the optimum number of users to run was 5, and this magic number was adopted by many organisations. Many empirical studies were conducted but could not overturn or fully support the claim. Many discussion panels at major HCI conferences failed to reach consensus, or close the debate. As Larry Constantine (Constantine & Lockwood, Ltd.) summarised at the last panel (held at CHI'2003), '.usability testing now appears to be a highly variable art in which the results depend on who is testing what by which protocol with which particular subjects'. In this talk, Jarinee will provide evidence that overturns this magic number 5, and suggest a new research direction for improving usability test results.

About the speaker
Jarinee Chattratichart graduated in Computer Science from Imperial College London and her PhD at Brunel University concerned the Usability of Visual Programming Languages. She has subsequently taught and conducted research at Westminster, Guidhall and now Kingston University.

Our thanks to Microsoft Research Labs for their sponsorship of this event.

Talk: Accelerating Discovery, A Grand Challenge for HCI

This isn't a CUG talk, but it may be of interest. Ben Shneiderman is talking on Monday 21/5/07 at 14:00 on "Accelerating Discovery: A Grand Challenge for HCI". There's more info at http://talks.cam.ac.uk/talk/index/7381

14th May - "Information Visualization"

The speaker at our next event will be Bob Spence, author of the textbook "Information Visualization: Design for Interaction" and Emeritus Professor of Information Engineering at Imperial College London.

Date: Monday 14th May
Time: 6.30 for 6.45
Venue: Microsoft Research, Cambridge [Map & address]

Registration: Please email cambridge.usability@gmail.com to reserve a place. The event is FREE and you do not need to be a UK UPA member to attend

Our thanks to Microsoft Research Labs for their sponsorship of this event.

"Information Visualization"

"Basically, visualization has nothing to do with computers". This title of an earlier talk by Bob Spence emphasises the fact that visualization tools must be designed to support the formation of an internal model by human users of such tools. Bob will discuss, among other features of information visualization, how the successful realisation of the benefits of visualization depends upon an appreciation of human capabilities: "Forget the technology" will summarise much of his talk.

About the speaker:

From the unlikely schoolboy hobby of telephone exchange design Bob Spence became a designer of electronic circuits. Then, in 1968, he realised the enormous potential that interactive graphics held for engineering design, a realisation that led via research and development to the first (1985) commercially available interactive-graphic circuit design facility. His work in Human-computer Interaction also led naturally into information visualization, and along the way Bob was the co-inventor of the first Focus+Context technique (the Bifocal Display) and the Attribute and Influence Explorers. An influence upon his work in information visualization came from his parallel research into engineering design for mass production, leading to visualization tools such as the Prosection Matrix and the Influence Explorer. Bob is currently Emeritus Professor of Information Engineering at Imperial College London and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He presents courses on Information Visualization around the world: “have course, will travel”. He has just published the textbook "Information Visualization: Design for Interaction" (Prentice Hall, 2007).

5th February - "Selling Usability to Business"

*** NEW DATE ***

We are delighted to welcome Dan Benatan as the speaker at our first event of 2007.

Date: Monday 5th February
Time: 6.30 for 6.45
Venue: Microsoft Research, Cambridge [Map & address]

Registration: Please email cambridge.usability@gmail.com to reserve a place. The event is FREE and you do not need to be a UK UPA member to attend

Our thanks to Microsoft Research Labs for their sponsorship of this event.

An overview:

While it seems that there is an increasing awareness of usability in business, we still have an uphill struggle getting management commitment and finding budgets. It may be that we tend to get in our own way. Our own convictions about the obvious ‘rightness’ of usability work and user-centric design can blind us to the hard-nosed business justification we need. Having held senior executive roles in financial services, Dan had this need firmly in mind when he developed his intranet assessment model. The model specifies a balanced approach to three different aspects; Impact, Usefulness and Usability. The assessment uses inputs from end-user testing, end-user interviews, stakeholder interviews and heuristic review.

Dan will talk about the model with a specific emphasis on those components that help achieve business acceptance.

About the speaker:

Dan Benatan will be familiar to regular attendees. He is now working with LBi – the largest full service digital agency in Europe as a senior business consultant.

Dan has worked in the field of Computer Human Interaction (CHI) since the late 70’s and has designed highly usable applications, largely in call-centre environments, for industry in the UK and abroad. He left IT for a time, spending 12 years at senior level in Financial Services, mostly in product and organization development and communications. Dan established Comprehensive Web Consulting in 2002 to build on his earlier work at Giga Information Group on Web, intranet and extranet effectiveness and usability. Dan has advised several of the world’s leading companies and written on effective e-Business practices, web analytics and applications usability.

14 November 2006: World Usability Day

Nottingham Univeristy is hosting a World Usability Day event - "Usability - different applications; a common purpose". They have some interesting presentations lined up (I'm particularly curious about "Farmer Buckley's exploding trousers"). Full details are on the atttached flyer if you would like to go along...

Midland World Usability Day

9th October - "The Four Pleasures: Usability and Beyond"

We are delighted to welcome Professor Patrick Jordan as the speaker at our next event.

Date: Monday 9th October
Time: 6.30 for 6.45
Venue: Microsoft Research, Cambridge [Map & address]

Registration: Please email cambridge.usability@gmail.com to reserve a place. The event is FREE and you do not need to be a UK UPA member to attend

Our thanks to Microsoft Research Labs and The Technology Partnership plc for their sponsorship of this event.

An overview:

Products and services should bring pleasure to those who use them and profit to those who create them. To do this effectively they must connect with the consumer in a compelling manner. Effective innovation means designing products that meet both our practical and emotional needs. It speaks to our personalities and values — our hopes, fears, dreams and aspirations. If we are to connect fully with consumers then we have to fully understand them. Having a deep and thorough understanding of people is the key to designing the products and services that people will want to buy and that they will find useful and enjoyable.

This presentation outlines a framework for understanding people holistically. It is called ‘The Four Pleasures’.

This framework has been applied to the design and marketing of many of the world’s most successful products and services across all market types and sectors. It is used by many of the world’s leading brands including: Microsoft, Starbucks, Ford, Nokia, Gillette and Proctor and Gamble.

The ‘four pleasures’ divides human experience and motivation into the following four areas:

• Physio-Pleasure: This is to do with the body - pleasures derived from the senses. In the context of products physio-pleasure would cover, for example, tactile and olfactory properties as well as ergonomic issues.


• Socio-Pleasure: This is the enjoyment derived from relationships with others. Products and services may help to enhance or facilitate particular social situations and may confer social or cultural status on the user.


• Psycho-Pleasure: This type of pleasure refers to people’s cognitive and emotional reactions, including their reactions to the products and services that they use.


• Ideo-Pleasure: This concerns people’s values. It is important that the values embodied in products and services are consistent with the values of those for whom they have been designed.

The presentation will be illustrated with many examples of products and services that have been designed using this framework. These have proved to be extremely successful commercially as well as a huge hit with users. By understanding people holistically and designing to meet their needs we can create products and services which will have a significant and positive affect on both individuals and society as a whole. They will be a joy to use and will bring success to those who manufacture and supply them.

About the speaker:

Professor Patrick W. Jordan is an international brand, design and marketing consultant, author and professional speaker. His methods and ideas have influenced the design of many of the products that we find in our homes, cities and workplaces. Pat is Owner and CEO of the Contemporary Trends Institute [CTI], an international trends and branding consultancy. Recent clients of CTI include: Starbucks, Gillette, Microsoft, Proctor and Gamble, Unilever, Nokia, Samsung, Philips Electronics, Masterfoods, Rexam [the world’s largest packaging company] and the US and UK governments.

Pat is a former Vice-President of Symbian, where he was also head of design. Symbian is the world’s largest mobile-communications consortium, jointly owned by Motorola, Samsung, Nokia, Psion, Ericsson, Sony and Panasonic. Prior to that he was Head of the Trends and Identity Group within the Domestic Appliances and Personal Care divisions of Philips, Europe’s largest electronics company.

Pat has over 100 publications in peer-reviewed journals, books and conference proceedings. He has written or edited 6 books, including Designing Pleasurable Products (Taylor and Francis 2000) which has become a standard design and marketing text within both industry and academia and the bestseller How to Make Brilliant Stuff that People Love and Make Big Money Out of It (Wylie 2002).

Pat has a visiting lectureship at London College of Fashion and Central St Martin’s College of Art and Design and a guest lecturer at numerous universities in many different countries. Pat is on the advisory board of Delft University where he reviews and advises on the university’s design research agenda and is a non-executive director of Sense Worldwide a leading international trends bureau. Pat is head of the Trends and Strategy section of the Industrial Designers Society of America and was the youngest holder of the Nierenberg Chair at Carnegie-Mellon University, the most prestigious appointment in US design education.

3rd July - “Case Study: Making Tesco.com Accessible”

Our speaker at this meeting will Nick Lansley, IT Manager at Tesco, introduced by Julie Howell from RNIB.

In his presentation, Nick Lansley explores how Tesco.com became conscious of the need to offer its vision-impaired customers a usable and accessible grocery web site, and shows the path the company has taken from the early days of two separate sites (one for sighted customers and one for visually impaired customers) to today’s brand new integrated service with two “skins”.

Date: Monday 3rd July
Time: 6.30 for 6.45
Venue: Microsoft Research, Cambridge [Map & address]

Registration: Please email cambridge.usability@gmail.com to reserve a place. The event is FREE and you do not need to be a UK UPA member to attend

About the speakers:

Nick Lansley is a founder member and IT New Technologies Specialist at Tesco.com. He has been working in IT systems for 18 years and today looks to see how new technologies will make the Tesco.com service better for customers and simpler for staff.

Julie Howell is the Digital Policy Development Manager at the Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB). She works with policy makers, information architects, manufacturers and software designers, businesses across all sectors and government agencies to ensure the accessibility to disabled people of digital information products and services. Julie was a founder member of the NHS Care Record Development Board (CRDB), working to ensure the accessibility to disabled people for the forthcoming NHS Care Records Service. She is a member of the NHS Direct New Media Committee. Julie is of Technical Author of a new BSI specification for accessible website design, 'Publicly Available Specification 78: Guide to Good Practice in Commissioning Accessible Websites'. She is the current holder of the New Media Age Effectiveness Award for 'The Greatest Individual Contribution to New Media'.

8th May - "Ethnography and how it can inform design"

Our speaker at this meeting will be Louise Ferguson who will look at the nature of ethnography and what it can offer the user experience and design community and their clients. She will briefly discuss what’s involved in 'doing ethnography’ and its relationship to other methods.

Ethnography is on a roll. Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen a slew of articles in mainstream business media extolling its merits from the corporate perspective. Meanwhile companies such as Intel have continued to build their teams of anthropologists, all actively engaged in product and system design processes through the application of ethnographic techniques.

This is a repeat of the very popular and over-suscribed talk Louise gave at the UK UPA meeting in London in January - if you missed seeing Louise then, here is your second chance!

Date: Monday 8th May
Time: 6.30 for 6.45
Venue: Microsoft Research, Cambridge [Map & address]

Registration: Please email cambridge.usability@gmail.com to reserve a place. The event is FREE and you do not need to be a UK UPA member to attend

About the speaker:

Louise Ferguson is a user-centred design consultant specializing in user research for design and strategy. Her clients have included government agencies, think tanks, NGOs, and blue chip firms in a range of industry sectors including professional services, telecommunications and financial services. She has contributed to a range of public policy and think tank research and publications, including Getting By, Not Getting On: Technology in UK Workplaces (The Work Foundation, 2003), the report from a major ethnographic research project based on eight UK organisations, and Touching the State (Design Council, 2004), concerning design in the public sector.

Louise is Vice President of the UK chapter of the Usability Professionals’ Association. As Director of Design for Democracy’s UK Voting Initiative (a joint venture between UPA and AIGA), she is working with government agencies to improve the design of voting systems in the UK. In July 2005, together with Danny O'Brien and other digital rights activists, Louise co-founded the Open Rights Group, which aims to raise awareness of digital rights issues in the UK. She is currently Chair of ORG. Louise holds a master’s degree in human-centred computer systems, a first degree in political economy, and various postgraduate qualifications in languages.

February 27th -"A user-centred approach to creating new mobile phone services "

Matt’s talk brought out one of the largest crowds we’ve seen at the CUG. For many, the attraction was the opportunity to gain some insight into the special usability issues around mobile devices.
Matt Davies is a Product Manager & User Experience Designer at QUALCOMM, a worldwide technology leader in mobile telecoms. He has extensive experience in user experience design and user testing including two years working with the Cognitive Psychology department at Sussex University and a range of consulting engagements with Flow Interactive.
The presentation covered three main areas:

Qualcomm’s iterative user-centred approach to mobile application design
Matt discussed the iterative design process they apply, emphasizing the importance of testing and continuous refinement. Starting with the identification of the target users, their environment and their goals, the team defines representative personas and scenarios in which the developing model can be tested. Qualcomm owns a device-based prototyping system which allows them to model applications on a device quickly. Despite this, their UE design teams make extensive use of paper prototyping. This allows processes to be mapped and changed on the fly by anyone who can use a pen. Only after the design is reasonably well proven on paper is it transferred to a mobile platform for device-based testing in the user experience lab.
Device-based testing continues with refinements to the interface until the design goals are achieved and the resulting user interface can be coded for real-world application.

A recent Qualcomm study to determine attitudes and acceptability of promotional activities on mobile phones
Having explained the layout and facilities of Qualcomm’s User Experience Lab, Matt explained the challenge they were addressing, the constraints they faced and the approach they planned to take. With only 15 days to set up, test, analyze and report, the team still managed to collect enough information to support an informed product decision.
We were then shown a four-minute extract from the many hours of videotaped user test sessions. The extract clearly supported the decision to drop the push promotion idea until users could be given more control of the process.

A walkthrough of a new, flexible homescreen design
Finally, Matt showed us images and explained the concept behind a new interface design for mobile phones. The design concept effectively expands the space available on the user’s home screen and affords the ability to customize the interface by selecting the functions that will appear by default in the expansion space.
Apparently, when this was tested with users they wanted the facility on their phones. By the end of Matt’s talk, many of the audience felt the same. Perhaps this concept will make it to production.

November 28th - "Usability vs Accessibility? No contest"

Our speaker at this meeting will be Donna Smillie, Senior Web Accessibility Consultant at RNIB.

Accessibility and usability are sometimes presented as different things, even as principles which conflict with each other at times, and are often addressed separately in the design process. Many would argue, however, that they are closely linked, and that they ultimately address many of the same issues, albeit from different angles. In this presentation, Donna discusses the overlap between accessibility and usability in web design, and how these specialist areas rely on each other for maximum effectiveness.

Date: Monday 28th November
Time: 6.30 for 6.45
Venue: Microsoft Research, Cambridge [Map & address]

Registration: Please email cambridge.usability@gmail.com to reserve a place. The event is FREE and you do not need to be a UK UPA member to attend

About the speaker:

Donna Smillie, RNIB's most experienced web accessibility consultant, has had a varied career, from writing data analysis programs on early desktop computers in the 1970's to providing technical support to customers of a CD-ROM publishing company in the 90's. A contract post at British Airways then led to her creating and managing several department websites on the company intranet. She has been an enthusiastic user of online systems for over 20 years, and has seen at first hand the positive impact they can have on the lives of people with disabilities. This, combined with her work at BA, made her aware of the barriers that can be created by inaccessible web design. Donna joined RNIB in March 2000, creating RNIB's 'See it Right' accessible website consultancy. In 2001, the 'See it Right' Accessible Website logo was launched, and has been very successful in encouraging companies to improve the accessibility of their websites. Donna is an experienced public speaker, and has given talks about web accessibility at many seminars and conferences in the UK and Europe.

For more information about web accessibility and RNIB's See it Right consultancy, visit: www.rnib.org.uk/webaccesscentre/

"Making usability pay: effects of applying UCD principles at an online mortgage broker" – Tom Wood and Tim Loo of Foolproof

Foolproof is a consultancy that specializes in improving online sales through the application of usability and user centred design techniques. On 26 September Tom Wood and Tim Loo, two leading members of the consultancy, shared their experience of a recent, highly successful project for an online mortgage lender.

The project began with a detailed heuristic review of the client’s existing online presence and a benchmarking survey of the competitive market. The heuristic review identified a number of serious usability flaws in the online application and sales processes. The survey found several competitors were handling aspects of the interaction much better than their client.

In the light of these findings, the client deferred a planned programme of advertising intended to drive business to their website. They asked Foolproof to undertake the redesign and development of the site.

Foolproof undertook to design the information architecture and the customer journey based on their previous studies of consumer behaviour in the online financial services market. The Foolproof team developed wireframe layouts of the new pages with the content specified, rather than written. They engaged the services of appropriate experts in graphic design and copywriting to flesh out the pages and then passed the detailed specifications to the client’s own developers for prototyping.

The prototype was tested with carefully selected representative members of the target audience to validate and fine-tune the message and the journey. The test results and the feedback from the test participants indicated that the new site was likely to succeed. The resultant site was launched together with the deferred advertising programme.

The new site has achieved a significant improvement in converting visits to sales and repaid the entire cost of the studies, design and development within one month of launch.

There is no single remarkable step in this process. I would hope that for most usability practitioners, this is simply a solid example of good professional practice. What stands out is the unsullied commerciality of the entire process. The message is that we need not rely on political correctness and social conscience to justify usability. Usability is a key competitive factor in the online marketplace. Usability pays.

William Newman’s talk “How can Human-Computer Interaction Research help the User Experience Professional?” 25 July 2005, Microsoft Research, Cambridge

Our thanks to William for a stimulating talk that offered rare insights into the history and development of HCI Research, presented significant challenges, raised the title question and left us with some points to ponder.

I personally have worked in, or close to, the computer industry since 1975. With my inherent interest in the history of the industry, William’s CV is a matter for admiration and some envy. William worked in HCI research with Xerox for twenty years. His work at the renowned Palo Alto Research Center and then in their Cambridge Research Centre put him in the very heart of HCI research and development. Many of the fundamental mechanisms of interaction that we now use every day, were born in these centres. William was able to recount key developments in the history of HCI from the perspective of an insider.

William took us back to the first attempts by Xerox to bring together engineering science with the emerging interactive computing technology. The vision was to develop a formal predictive model of task-oriented human behaviour that could be used to guide the design of interactive processes. In response, Stuart Card and Tom Moran created the GOMS model. William gave the impression that this looked, at the time, to be a very useful contribution to the field until the anthropologist Lucy Suchman (now a professor and co-director of the Centre for Science Studies at Lancaster University) came along and exposed the complications that arise from the fact that human behaviour is contextual; that behaviour changes under the influence of factors external to the man-machine interface.

The next significant milestone William spoke about was the installation by Xerox of Alto computers at everyone’s workstation. These machines used a GUI with icons, menus, mouse and keyboard. They were connected by Ethernet and became the platform for application development by end-users for themselves and to share across the community. This first instance of ubiquitous computing offered prompt user feedback and seemed to signal the start of a shift away from the theoretical approach in the development of HCI to an empirical approach based on usability testing.

William went onto explore the forces that have shaped the subsequent development of HCI research. He proposed that HCI research is being driven, to differing degrees, by four key factors:
· Moore’s Law
· Canned interaction
· Software crafting tools, and
· The requirement to publish.

These forces have led HCI researchers to focus their efforts in
· Developing radical solutions;
· Deriving new heuristics from experimentation, and
· Developing better tools for designers.

All of this supports commercial activity and the requisite volumes of publishing, but as a result much less has been done to enhance existing solutions or develop new models that can be applied more broadly. This was contrasted with engineering research, where most of the work targets the development of new models and theories to support future design activity.

This dearth of pure research links directly to the need for reliable and appropriate metrics. One of the challenges of HCI Research in general and of Usability is the difficulty of providing objective measurements of problems and of improvements. This measurability is an essential component in mobilizing funding and motivating new research and development.

William indicated that these innovative developments and radical solutions tend to give people the ability to do things that we couldn’t do before. He suggested that greater long-term value might be found by working to enhance existing human capabilities, helping us to do what we already can do, but better, more effectively, faster or more cheaply. I found this distinction difficult to apply since most of the technology I work with has simply enhanced our capabilities, allowing us to do the same things faster, at greater distance and without the need to develop all of the specialised skills.

William then raised several good examples of real-world issues such as improving the effectiveness of rescue teams and providing support for carers. Whilst these are clearly worthwhile goals, they don’t necessarily attract the funding needed to support the required research. He also raised examples of more mundane issues that may warrant research. Two key examples were the tendency for writing tasks to overrun (a tendency I have experienced intensely while writing this) and the growing use of laptops in meetings. He suggested that work could usefully be done to address both of these issues. In the first case designing writing tools to help authors avoid overruns. In the second, to explore the causes of the behaviour and to find better ways of addressing these causes that don’t have socially undesirable consequences.

William left us with the thought that it may be our role as User Experience professionals that must expand to address some of these issues. The UX community is actively engaged with existing products and methods and seems more involved in achieving the sort of incremental improvement required. We can look to the HCI Research community for metrics, models and tools, but we need to apply these in our ongoing empirical research and continuous improvement of usability