user interface design notes

Boabab Health, March 2014 Harry Hochheiser, [email protected]

Design

Harry Hochheiser University of Pittsburgh Department of Biomedical Informatics [email protected] !+1 410 648 9300

Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA

Baobab Health, March 2014Harry Hochheiser, [email protected]

GoalsDesigning Work, not designing interfaces

!

Start big - think about where we’d like to get

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Then, scale back to what we can do.

!

!


What are our design goals?Definition of goals informs design

Can’t tell if you’ve succeeded without goals…

Lean Value Diamond… (modified from Grunden and Hagood, 2012)

Costs

Quality

Time/Efficiency

Satisfaction

Materials, Capital, Revenue

Patient, Staff, MOH

Capacity, Wait times, Turnaround time

Safety Waste Removal, Best Practices

IMPROVE Safety, Quality, Satisfaction DECREASE Costs


Multiple Goals• Often dealing with multiple goals

• May have to make tradeoffs…

• Explore alternative designs?


Framing questions• Gerry’s example about managing the fatalities from

vehicle accidents

• PASSIVE: measuring data

• ACTIVE

• installing airbags

• re-routing traffic flowVISIONARY: ask “What is the goal?”

To safely move people and goods?

Solution - more public transit and fewer cars!


After Interpretation

Data Collection

Analysis and Interpretation

!Design Activities

Before designing.. !How do you know you've got it all, and got it right?

Review with Stakeholders


How to Inform Design?● Goal – go from all of this data to design

● Design of what?

● Software artifacts

● Underlying work processes

● Easier said than done

● Secondary intents

● Systems for tracking medical device repair might be used to track productivity of individual technicians

● Cultural issues: control, resistance to change, diverse stakeholders...

● Issues of trust and authority – customers vs. stakeholders?


Activity Design Scenarios

Problem Scenarios

Activity Design Scenarios

Original description of motivating challengesOriginal description of motivating challenges

Description of how proposed design will meet those challenges


Storyboards

● Cartoonish depictions of interaction designs/visions

● Design to communicate ideas

● Particularly for stakeholders

● Tell the story graphically – graphical scenarios..


Storyboards

● Amal Dar Aziz – Guide to storyboarding http://hci.stanford.edu/courses/cs147/assignments/storyboard_notes.pdf


Storyboards/Scenarios are not prototypes

● Continuing goal: communicate vision

● Avoid miscues

● Convey broad ideas of design

● Focus on big ideas

● Prevent/discourage rapid descent into micro-critiques

● “That button should really be in the lower-right corner...”

● Prototypes will come along soon enough


User Environment Design

● Storyboards and scenarios are not necessarily complete

● Tie them together in some coherent whole?

● System-level view

● System-level diagrams to try to layout relationship between activities how well does it hang together.

● Analogy -architectural floor plan?


Floor plans as inspiration...

● Show overview of how things fit together – not too much detail S. Wood 2003 Using a Floor Plan as a Metaphor for Design: Is your product a dream house, or a construction

nightmare? http://incontextdesign.com/articles/using-a-floor-plan-as-a-metaphor-for-design-is-your-product-a-dream-house-or-a-construction-nightmare/


User Environment Design

● Focus areas with functions, link, objects.

● Defines overall structure of how things will get done

● Built up from storyboards

● Can guide development – one “room” or focus area at a time...

● Not UML Design!

● Beyer & Holtzblatt do not discuss with stakeholders.

● Why not?


Prototypes

● User Environment Design - informs interface design

● Two challenges

!● How to do the design

● How to use prototypes to engage users and validate design


Prototypes● Pre-release functionality for evaluation

● feedback prior to large investment in development

Wizard-of-Oz

Storyboard

Video Prototype

Rapid Prototype

Working System

Low Cost, Low Fidelity

High Cost, High Fidelity

Paper prototype

Computer Animation

Rosson & Carroll, 2002


Paper Prototypes(thanks again to Anind)


Prototypes evolve

H. Beyer & K. Holtzblatt, Contextual Design. ACM Interactions, 1999

• Explore with users • Modify on the fly • Insights inform

• Redesign • Revision of earlier findings • New visions

• Iterate !• Other forms • More detailed mockup • “Wizard-of-Oz”

!• Don't get too pretty too quickly •Discourages feedback


Prototypes as means, not ends● Final design may not look like prototype at all, and that's fine.

Paper Mockup of Stembook

Das, et al. 2008 Linked Data in a Scientific Collaboration Framework

!www.stembook.org


Prototyping ToolsUse Cogtool?

!

Presentation Software - Open Office?

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Pencil http://pencil.evolus.vn/

!

many others..

http://pencil.evolus.vn/


Advice on prototypesDon’t make them pretty

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Try several

head-to-head

explore ideas

like IDEO shopping carts…


The Prototype Paradox

● Prototypes are supposed to be throw-away, but...

● ..they tend to take on a life of their own

● Especially when presented as (possibly minimally) working software

!● Another argument for staying with paper as long as

possible

Baobab Health, March 2014Harry Hochheiser, [email protected] BIONF 2014 January 2014 Harry Hochheiser, [email protected]

Interface Design● Often considered an art, not a science

● Choose an interaction style

● “First, do no harm”

● Build on familiar models

● Metaphors

● Don't mess with convention

● Less is more

● Complexity is the enemy

● Get the basics right, then refine or innovate

● Don't use 3D (unless you need to)


Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design

1. Strive for consistency

2. Cater to universal usability

3. Offer informative feedback

4. Design dialogs to yield closure

5. Prevent errors

6. Permit easy reversal of actions

7. Support internal locus of control

8. Reduce short-term memory load


Consistency

• Language

• Yes, No, Cancel, Abort..

• Layout

• Colors

• Widgets


Universal usability

Users of varying abilities, education, background

Different computing environments…

!

this is a strength of Baobab’s


Informative Feedback

Make it clear when steps are done

Indicate where you are in the process

ANC Prescription page?


Design Dialogs to Yield Closure

Process bars,

completeness indicators

Indications when a task is complete


Prevent Errors

Better to prevent than to recover

!

Again, a strength at Baobab


Permit easy reversal of actions

• “Back” or “Undo” button

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• Note feedback guideline - very important here


Support internal locus of control

• System doesn’t take over

!

• “The computer will reboot in…”


Reduce short-term memory load

• Don’t force users to remember what they’ve done

• Related to other rules:

• Offer informative feedback

• Design dialogs to yield closure

• Prevent errors

• ANC: synopsis of user status at top of screen?

• dialog that blocks screen content?


Contextual Design and Agile Development

● The Agile Manifesto (www.agilemanifesto.org)

● Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.

● Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.

● Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.

● Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.

● Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.

http://www.agilemanifesto.org/


Contextual Design and Agile Development

● The Agile Manifesto (www.agilemanifesto.org)

● The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.

● Working software is the primary measure of progress.

● Agile processes promote sustainable development.

● The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.

● Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.

● Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential.

● The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.

● At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.

http://www.agilemanifesto.org/


Design Challenges• Mini design sprints

• 3 problems, 30 minutes each

• 2-3 groups each problem

• Design a solution

• Storyboards

• Paper prototypes

• Flowchart

• …etc.


Design Challenge 1• Client sign in and hand-off to counselor


Design challenge 2• Counselor referral of client for treatment

• subsequent follow-up?


Design challenge 3 • Registration desk and counselors managing load and

referring clients who can’t be seen on a given day.


Presenting and critiquing ideas?• What problem were you trying to solve?

• Strong points?

• Weak points?

• Based on

• models from interviews, including questions and observations

• Design guidelines

• Cognitive issues

• Holes in designs? Holes in our understanding?

user interface design notes

Education

permit easy

term memory

march 2014harry

support internal

offer informative

user environment

interface

agile manifesto