Tutorial 26

Designing for Complex Products

Jared M. Spool, Carolyn Snyder, User Interface Engineering

Monday, May 8

Objective

Participants will learn (1) tools for advanced interaction, (2) tools for providing access to functionality, (3) how to research, design, and evaluate these tools, (4) real-life examples of successes and failures, and (5) how to use the techniques of paper prototyping, contextual inquiry, and modeling to develop these tools.

Content

This tutorial covers advanced tools and techniques for complex products. The complexity of a product resides in the interface content. Traditional, widget-oriented approaches to interface design emphasize form over content and so do not help designers tackle the real issues. This tutorial divides tools into two categories: tools for advanced interaction (e.g., wizards, cue cards, drag and drop, advanced data entry) and tools for providing access to functionality (e.g., toolbars, live status bars, right mouse button, tabbed dialog boxes). For each type of tool, the tutorial shows examples from commercially available products, discusses pros and cons, and describes important design considerations that can make or break the tool. Successful development of such tools requires a thorough understanding of users and their work. This tutorial discusses how to research the design problems using the techniques of contextual inquiry and modeling and how to obtain feedback on a particular design so that it can be improved.

Audience

This advanced-level tutorial is for practitioners with experience in the design of complex products. Participants are also assumed to have knowledge of (not necessarily experience with) usability testing, contextual inquiry, and paper prototyping.

Presentation

Lecture, exercises

Instructors

Jared M. Spool is the Founding Principal of User Interface Engineering, a product design consulting firm specializing in product usability issues. He has extensive experience designing and conducting usability studies on a variety of products. Carolyn Snyder is a Principal Consultant at User Interface Engineering. She is also experienced in usability studies, paper prototyping, and contextual inquiry. Together, they have taught leading edge development teams to successfully use these techniques to develop complex products.

Keith Instone / instone@acm.org / 95-01-05