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Contextual inquiry and the representation of tasks
Abstract
An abstract is not available.
... The first step to designing an effective data provenance tracking tool was to undertake a contextual inquiry [23] with Safe Haven Data Analysts (invited n=6; attended n=3 ) within the Grampian Data Safe Haven to gain deeper insights into the real-world work environment and their interactions as data is ingested, extracted, pseudonymised, linked and checked prior to releasing data to researchers in the TRE. This method involves observing users in their natural environment to understand users' activities and processes and is essential in ensuring technology can accommodate and enable their real work [24]. ...
IntroductionWe present a prototype solution for improving transparency and quality assurance of the data linkage process through data provenance tracking designed to assist Data Analysts, researchers and information governance teams in authenticating and auditing data workflows within a Trusted Research Environment (TRE). Methods
Using a participatory design process with Data Analysts, researchers and information governance teams, we undertook a contextual inquiry, user requirements interviews, co-design workshops, low-fidelity prototype evaluations. Public Engagement and Involvement activities underpinned the methods to ensure the project and approaches met the public's trust for semi-automating data processing. These helped inform methods for technical implementation, applying the PROV-O ontology to create a derived ontology following the four-step Linked Open Terms methodology and development of automated scripts to collect provenance information for the data processing workflow. ResultsThe resulting Provenance Explorer for Trusted Research Environments (PE-TRE) interactive tool displays the data linkage information extracted from a knowledge graph described using the derived SHP ontology and results of rule-based validation checks. User evaluations confirmed PE-TRE would contribute to better quality data linkage and reduce data processing errors. Conclusion
This project demonstrates the next stage in advancing transparency and quality assurance within TREs by semi-automating and systematising data tracking in a single tool throughout the data processing lifecycle, improving transparency, openness and quality assurance.
... Although methods employed for this type of design differ significantly in their underlying theories, the key component of all modern usability design and evaluation techniques is a clear understanding of the users' goals and tasks. These goals and their associated tasks can be of different granularities, ranging from broadly defined ones like " retrieve, relate, and report financial, production, and personnel data in order to persuade [a] manager to allocate effort and resources differently " (Mirel, 1996, p. 16), to very specific ones involving a few clearly articulated changes to an existing document. ...
... manager to allocate effort and resources differently " (Mirel, 1996, p. 16) to very specific ones involving a few clearly articulated changes to an existing document. The broad scope of ERP and other enterprise-wide systems creates its own special requirements for usability analysis. ...
Anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems have unintuitive user interfaces that hinder usability, frustrate users, and ultimately interfere with their successful adoption and utilization in organizations. Despite the huge costs associated with poorly implemented systems, ERP usability has received little attention from the IS and HCI research communities. We argue in this paper that existing theories on usability should be extended to address the unique challenges resulting from the size, complexity, and integrated functionality of these industrial behemoths. We believe that collaboration theory is a new and beneficial way to conceptualize the relationship between the user and the system. This theory has the potential to provide a foundation for user-system interaction that enhances user performance and satisfaction with ERP systems.
Successful task performance in a health or medical-related activity, especially in treating critical patients through biotechnology in resource-constrained settings, is determined by product usability that emphasizes the ease of use, error recovery, efficiency, and satisfaction. This means that technical products designed to be used in this context need to be efficient and easy to use. Research findings and suggestions laid out in this paper will highlight the importance of use context that allows for effective use of technological products across cultures. Successful patient treatments through biotechnology in resource-constrained settings and health communications are intrinsically connected to the concept of product usability. Such goals can be achieved through localized UX design practices that help users perform their desired tasks with speed, accuracy, and satisfaction, and thus promote social justice and inclusion in resource-constrained settings. Through a case study, this paper shares findings related to usability problems in technology transfer from industrialized nations to an underrepresented, underdeveloped country. The article provides implications of the findings, suggesting that designers in industrialized nations should consider how technological products designed through localized usability can be better positioned to be used for promoting social justice and human rights in the underserved, undeveloped countries.
As a discipline and a set of practices, technical communication focuses on designing technical products through the effective implementation of usability to facilitate users in performing tasks with speed, accuracy, and satisfaction. This article proposes that designers in the Global North should consider the effective localization usability implementation in their products or systems so that social justice can be promoted in the Global South’s countries that import such products from the Global North. Using a purposeful sampling research method, this article shares findings from a study, emphasizing that technical products developed through participatory localization for usability might be in a better position to be used for promoting social justice and human rights in resource-constrained settings. The article discusses the implications of the findings, suggesting that northern products should be designed according to the usability expectations of local users in the Global South so that the North–South divide can be, at least, narrowed, if not eliminated.
This entry defines value from users' perspectives and discusses the need to consider "user value" as an important framework for enhancing product usability in technical communication. Arguing it is essential to involve users in the process of product design, the paper emphasizes the need to recognize users as value co-creators. To further enhance and extend the study of usability, this article proposes a value proposition approach to design and notes such an approach can help communication designers effectively design, test, and deliver materials end users want and value.
Research techniques are sometimes seen as the atoms or essential building blocks of research projects: invariant, inviolable steps that are applied the same way, no matter what the socioeconomic characteristics of the environments in which they are deployed. That is, they are often seen as arhetorical, and rhetorical choice and agency play a role only in how they are arranged and implemented. In this article, I draw on the notion of translation to provide an alternate account, one that emphasizes the rhetorical nature of research techniques without overdetermining the influence of the environments in which they developed. To illustrate, I examine how one research technique—prototyping—has been translated to fit four different socioeconomic environments, undergoing significant changes in claims and implementation while maintaining enough coherence to be seen as a unitary technique. Finally, I argue that the notion of translation provides us with an account that emphasizes the rhetorical nature of research and our agency as researchers while still acknowledging how techniques constrain our work.
When members of task groups communicate through computers instead of traditional means, much about the group could change: group structure, intensity of communication, interaction across physical barriers, and the work process. This chapter probes these issues by reviewing a year-long field experiment among active workers and retirees planning a company's retirement policy. The study shows many effects of computer communication. Among other findings, the study shows that computer communication can help reduce barriers to social interaction in distributed work groups and can broaden leadership roles. How are task groups affected, if at all, by access to computer-based communication capabilities in addition to conventional communication media? What happens when the infrastructure for shared work is built on cables, microprocessors, and screens along with corridors, meeting rooms, and blackboards? How, if at all, does networked information technology affect group structures and interaction processes
A prime attraction of object-oriented programming lan~ages M the posslbdit~ of reusing code, We ex- amme the support provided by Smalltalk to pro- ~ammers attemptin to incorporate an existing class f mto a new. design, . ocussing on issues of usage ex- amples, object-spec~lc analysis, how-to-use-it infor- mation, and ob"ect connections. We then describe a i" View Matcher or reuse, a tool that documents reus- able classes through a set of coordinated views onto concrete usage examples; in three scenarios, we il- lustrate how the tool addresses the issues raised in our analysis of reuse in Smalltallc.
There are several book-length reviews concerned with interface design [1,2,3]. The general aspects of good practice in screen design and dialogue construction will apply to hypertexts just as surely as they apply to other instances of human computer interaction. Hypertexts do raise additional issues relating to ways in which readers can be helped to move within the information resource and to exploit novel information handling techniques (e.g. creating their own personal links within the material).
This chapter discusses the user's experience and evolution of usability engineering. Usability engineering starts with a commitment to action in the world. It seeks to capture user experience within a context situated in user work and in a form useful for engineering. Usability engineering provides operationally defined criteria so that usability objectives can be used to drive an efficient and productive engineering effort, and it can lead to production of systems that are experienced by users as usable and that serve as a basis for the next generation of systems. When a system is built and delivered to users, interaction with it would affect user experience and would shift the background against which users evaluate that system in comparison with other systems. Therefore, as systems are built that provide new functionality with new levels of usability, the expectations of users would shift so that the whole cycle should begin again.
An abstract is not available.
In The Nürnberg Funnel: Designing Minimalist Instruction for Practical Computer Skill, John Carroll builds a case for online training as a replacement for a user's manual, a traditional part of the paper library for computer products. In this commentary, I too will argue for a type of minimalist online tutorial as the primary means of user support, but I'll suggest something far different from the "minimal manual."
Hypertext researchers and designers contend that the hypertext information structures may reflect the semantic structures of human memory. Further, they believe that mapping the semantic structure of an expert onto hypertext information structure and explicitly illustrating that structure in the hypertext will result in improved comprehension because the knowledge structures of the users will reflect the knowledge structures of the expert to a greater degree. (Structural knowledge is defined as the knowledge of how concepts within a domain are interrelated.) This paper reviews techniques for ascertaining an expert's knowledge structure and mapping it onto hypertext. It then reviews the results of three studies that assess the effects of different methods for explicitly mapping expert knowledge structures onto hypertext on the acquisition of structural knowledge by the learners. The studies show that depicting knowledge structures in the form of a graphical browser or by making explicit the structural nature of the links during traversal does not improve learners' acquisition of structural knowledge. However, when assigned the task of generating a semantic network following browsing, structural knowledge acquisition improved significantly. It is the assigned processing task and goals for learning while interacting with a hypertext that appears to most significantly determine the effects of its use on learners' knowledge structures. (27 references) (Author/BBM)
Beyond the Monkey House: Audience Analyses in Computerized Workplaces Writing in the Workplace: New Research Perspectives
- Barbara Mirel
Designing Interaction: Psychology at the Human-Computer Interface
- Bannon Liam
- Susanne Bødker
Cognitive Flexibility Constructivism and Hypertext
- R P Spiro
- M Feltovich
- R Jacobson
- Coulson