Label Cloud

Monday, October 31, 2011

Usability engineering: process, products, and examples

Leventhal, L. M., & Barnes, J. A. (2008). Usability engineering: process, products, and examples. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall, pp. 67-74.

Factors influencing user reaction and usability: situational characteristics, user characteristics, and characteristics of the user interface.
Analysis: activity of understanding and breaking down of a problem ->task analysis:understanding user tasks at a high and a detailed level
>Specification: documenting and describing in detail ->task specification: the documentation of your understanding of the user's task.
Strategies to analyze user's problem:
  • Use Case Analysis: construction of use case models in Unified Soft. Dev. Process.
    Use cases: expected functionality of a target system - use case model documets how the target system will interact with people and systems
  • Sequence diagrams: step by step description of how the task is to be done Activity diagrams: workflow necessary to accomplish use case
  • Analysis Using Scenarios: SBD- scenario based development
  • Scenarios are stories that are detailed and contain descriptions of user's plans and goals, and description of tasks they will accomplish
  • Hierarchical Task Analysis: understanding user's tasks by decomposing them into the detailed subtasks that define them.

Effective prototyping for software makers

Arnowitz, J., Arent, M., & Berger, N. (2007). Effective prototyping for software makers. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann (Elsevier), pp. 21-50.


Verify prototyping assumptions and requirements:
4 requierments categories:

  1. Business/marketing requirements: define the needs of business or marketplace. Derived from market field research, market analysis, competitive analysis, domain expertise, sales force intelligence, focus groups
  2. Functional requirements: define the functionality necessary to support the business and market requirements. Derived from field research with user research, market analysis, competitive analysis, domain expertise, force sales intelligence, usability testing
  3. Technical requirements: technology needed to implement the requires functionality. Derived from technology research, technical analysis, competitive analysis, technology expertise, sales force intelligence
  4. Usability requirements: define the user experience and needed for user adoption of the software. Derived from any combination of user research, task analysis, competitive analysis, domain expertise, sales force intelligence, customer support intelligence, design and prototyping, usability testing
Transforming assumptions into requirements: iterative 3 steps
Step1: gather business, functional, technical, and usability requirements
Step2: inventorize requirements
Step3: prioritize requirements and assumptions

Iteration 1: From idea to first visualization
Iteration 2: From quick wireframe to wireframe
Iteration 3: From wireframe to storyboard
Iteration 4: From storyboard to paper prototype
Iteration 5: From paper prototype to coded prototype
Iteration 6: From coded prototype to software requirements

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Schank - Tell Me A Story

CH 1- Knowledge is Stories
Scripts: set of expectations about what will happen next in a situation.
-Life experience means knowing how to act and how others will act in a given stereotypical situation - this knowledge is script.The more scripts you know, the more situations will exist in which you will feel comfortable and capable of playing your role. Also, more scripts, failure and confusion.  
Memory: contain specific experiences-memories and labels-memory traces
stories comes with indices: locations, attitudes, quandaries, decisions, conclusions
More indices-> more comparisons with prior experience -> greater learning
-Knowledge is experiences and stories, intelligence is the apt use of experience and the creation and telling of stories.
-Major processes of memory: creation, storage and retrieval of stories .
-Understanding means constructing labels and using them to retrieve similar situations.

CH 2- Where Stories Come from and Why We Tell Them
Five types of stories:
1.Official
2.Invented(Adapted)
3.Firsthand experiential
4.Secondhand
5.Culturally common
1.Official Stories: learned form school or business
carefully constructed
by a group that wants to sell a message
Facts are made simple  e.g. "AIDS - It's a Hop in the Sack"
Simple, no details
intent ro make complex issues clear
2.Invented Stories
like official stories, real and firsthand
created to make a point - but adaptations of previous stories
less details first, then elaboration to make it richer
massaging the reality - how much reality is massaged depends on the goal of the teller
3.Firsthand Stories
can be highly inventive - art of storytelling: finding good ways to express one's experience appropriate for the listener
have to make your story more interesting
no intended point
4.Secondhand Stories
stories of others
facts cannot be recalled perfectly so can be made up as needed
like telephone game is about recall and relate properly what they have just heard
indices less rich more specific
5.Culturally Common Stories
from our environment
Why we tell stories:
1- Me-goals: intentions that storytellers have with respect to themselves
-to achieve catharsis; to get attention; to win approval; to seek advice; to describe themselves
-self-descriptive narrative,
-a personal myth derived from one's experience, from parents, teachers, friends or enemies: starts with you-goal intention but retelling makes it me-goal intention
2- You-goals: intentions that storytellers have with respect to others
-to illustrate a point; to make the listener feel some way or another; to tell a story that transports the listener (to make others experience certain sensations, feelings), to transfer some piece of information in our head into the head of the listener; to summarize significant events
3- Conversational goals: intentions that storytellers have with respect to the conversation itself
- for topic opening, topic changing and continue conversation
The educational point: we must teach cases and the adaptation of cases by telling stories, not teach rules and the use of rules by citing rules - it is not easy to find the situation to apply the rule exactly - applying the stories help more.

CH 4 - Indexing Stories
Memory uses structures as indices to find stories it had already understood
-as in the schema theory, indices = schemas, we code the stories into our memory with indices, which then will help us retrieve.
Thematic Organized Packages (TOPs): indices that are organized around themes in Dynamic Memory
  • Indexing is different for everyone, 
  • the way to compute indices is common
  • different indices for each of us depending on what we know of the world - our perspective of things
Advisory stories: have lessons, derived from real experiences and meant as advise for a person with a problem.
Observation stories: meant to illustrate some in the world, and the truth offered not as an advice but as observation.
Proverbs: is a piece of advice - also observation.
     -elements that make up proverbs are the same elements that make up mental indices

Indexing stories - storytelling is relevant to one's intelligence
-no intelligent system can function properly if it cannot find what it needs to know when it needs to know it
-being able to tell stories at the right time
-intelligence depend upon clever indexing
-but indexing cannot be taught, we make our own way of seeing the world
-intelligence implies the creation and use of indices


 CH 6 - Story Skeletons 

Skeleton stories = Standard stories. Some stories are constructed around these skeletons.  
Sometimes a word of  culture cannot be translated into another language because there is a story unique or well known to that culture and can only be explained in another language by a story.
A word can be recalled by a story -> children learn complex words by being described in a situation
Words have different meanings or stories for different people -> My version of some word can be different than your version.  A meaning of a word can change according to different points of views because of the related skeleton stories they have first being told. People have non-identical skeleton stories.

Skeletons and Memory
Since we understand the world with stories, we remember the facts of an event with the story we have been told. We choose the story that is correct for us.
You need to believe your own story in order to tell it effectively. ->Decision making depends on story construction.

People wouldn't use a skeleton that you listener is unfamiliar with. Even though you can instruct your listener about the meaning of the skeleton, you want something more familiar to get a support from your listeners. So people choose a well known and culturally approved skeletons while telling their stories.
We speak in generalizations that our listener will understand.
Storytellers = story-fitters, people fit events/facts to the standard story they choose  
We adopt a point of view by telling a story. We are the stories we tell. We shape our memory by the stories we tell.

Gist of a story: what is held in memory
                            -the language, the way the story is told, the points we have in mind  
:Structured sets of events that function as a single unit in memory that can be transformed by a variety of processes into actual stories
-each time a story is told, gist is accessed.
-a dynamic entity that can change or be replaced over time by adding or deleting details. Gist: is an evolving kind of entity
Transformation of the gist - stories are different because intentions are different
Gist stored in memory and then transformed  by the processes:

1- Distillation: two-part process,
  Memory process: reduces events of a story to a set of simple propositions = Gist Construction
 -searching through the events and finding the most important ones, - that your listener would be interested into
 -construction of a memory representation of the story.
  Translation: puts those propositions into English  - from their representation in memory to English
2-Combination: Combining two stories deciding which is the master and which is the coloration of the master. Events are interwoven to make one coherent story.
  Suppression: examines gist of each story
  Conjunction: must weave two stories into one by deciding which is the dominant one
3-Elaboration: finding additional things to say. e.g to create an emotional impact
  Detail addition: details are added to the gist, by searching memory to add details.
Story gets more interesting and attention-getting
  Commentary: adding our own view of the situation, adding comments according to audience and our view   at the time
  Role-playing: involve story combination
4-Creation:
combines elements of a real story with a standard story author wishes to tell
5-Captioning: reducing a large amount of information to a very small amount.
6-Adaptation: taking one story and making another one out of it.

    Monday, October 24, 2011

    Ch 11 - An Introduction to Return on Investment

    Levels of Data

    • Level 0: input
    • Level 1: reaction and perceived value
    • Level 2: learning and confidence
    • Level 3: Application and Implementation 
    • Level 4: Impact and Consequences
    • Level 5: Return on Investment - ROI: shows the benefits of the impact measures compared to project cost.Usually in terms of benefit-cost ratio (BCR), ROI as percentage, or payback period
    ROI Process Model
    Data collection:
    during project implementation: surveys, questionnaires, tests, observations
    after project implementation: surveys, questionnaires, observations, interviews, focus groups, action plans, performance contracts, business performance monitoring
    Data Analysis:
    isolation of project effects: control groups, trend line analysis, forecasting models, participant estimates, manager estimates, senior management estimates, expert input, customer input
    data conversion: use of standard values, output data, cost of quality, time savings converted to wage and employee benefits, analysis of historical costs, use of internal and external experts, search of external databases, use of participant estimates, soft measures mathematically linked to hard measures
    project costs: initial analysis costs, cost - to design and develop,
    -of all project materials, -for the project team, - of the facilities for the project, travel, lodging, and meal costs, participant salaries, admin and overhead costs, evaluation costs
    return on investment calculation: Benefit-cost ratio BCR = project benefits / project costs
    ROI = net project benefits/ project costs * 100

    Ch 10 - Evaluation in Instructional Design

    formative evaluation: designed and intended to support the process of improvement, done by someone who can make improvements
    summative evaluation: rest of evaluation done by any observer or decision makers who need evaluative conclusions for any reasons

    2 key features: 
    1- testing focus on objectives criterion-referenced testing - not to sort the learners with grades, but rather determine the extent to which each objective is mastered
    2- focus on the learners as the primary source of data for making decisions about instruction -


    Evaluation: process of determining the merit, (intrinsic value of the evaluation object/evaluand)
     worth,(market value of the evaluand)
     and the value (involves making of value judgments)
     of things and evaluations are the products of that process. (Scriven)
     Logic of evaluation: 1 - select the criteria of merit or worth
    2- set specific performance standards
    3- collect performance data and compare the level of observed performance with the level of required performance
    4- make the evaluative judgments
    --identifying criteria of merit and worth, setting standards, collecting data and making value judgements

    CIPP evaluation model - Stufflebeam
    CIPP = context, input, process, product
    context eval: assessment of the environment to determine the need and objectives and identify the factors of the environment that will impact the success - needs assessment and used in program planning decisions
    input eval: eval questions raised about the resources that will be used develop and conduct the innovation/program - used in program structuring decisions
    process eval: (formative eval) - examine the ways in which an innovation is being developed, initial effectiveness ans effectiveness after revisions - used to make implementation decisions
    product eval:focus on the success of the innovation in producing the desired outcomes - used in summative eval decisions

    Five Domain evaluation model - Rossi's
    needs assessment: is there a need for this type of program in this context?
    need: a gap between the actual and desired state of affairs
    theory assessment: is the program conceptualized in a way it should work?
    if not based on sound social, psychological and educational theory, it doesn't work - theory failure
    implementation assessment: was this program implemented properly and according to the program plan? - if not operated properly, implementation failure
    impact assessment: did this program have an impact on its intended targets?
    efficiency assessment: is the program cost effective?

    Training evaluation model - Kirpatrick
    Level 1: Reaction: assessment of learner's reactions and attitudes toward the learning experience
    Level 2: Learning: determining what participants in the learning program learned
    training events based on knowledge: measured with achievement test,
      skills: measured with performance test
      attitudes: measured with questionnaire
    Level 3: Behavior (Transfer of Training): determining whether the training program participants change their on-the-job behavior (OJB)as a result of having participated in the training  program.
    Level 4: Results: finding out if the training leads to final results

    Success Case Method - Brinkerhoff
    determining what works is to examine successful cases and compare them to unsuccessful cases
    Steps
    1- focus and plan the case
    2- construct a visual impact model
    3- conduct a surve research study to identify the best cases and the worst cases.
    4- schedule and conduct in-depth interviews with multiple success cases
    5- write-up and communicate the evaluation findings

    Utilization-Focused Evaluation (U-FE) - Patton
    evaluation done for and wioth specific intended userd for specific intended uses
    - rule: should be judged by the degree to which it is used
    Process use:occurs when clients learn the logic of evaluation and appreciate its use in organization
    Steps
    1- conduct a readiness assessment
    2- identify the primary intended users and develop a working relationship with them
    3- conduct a situational analysis
    4- identify the primary intended uses
    5- focus the evaluation
    6- design the evaluation
    7- collect, analyze and interpret the evaluation data
    8- continually facialiate evaluation use
    9- conduct a meta evaluation - an evaluation of the evaluation

    Monday, October 3, 2011

    DMDL/ECT Website Redesign

    Overview


    The redesign will address the problems different learners face on the ECT website. The learners in this case are the people who want to learn about the field of ECT from the website. Each need different knowledge because their learning goals are different:   
    prospective ECT/DMDL majors: want to learn about the program requirements, courses, admission process, research and faculty. They also want to learn the benefits of the program, whether ECT is the right career for them. 
    administrators who may not know what ECT is: want to learn about the other admins, how the administration work in this field.
    funders or research organizations: want to learn whether the research groups are addressing the right research questions
     and their current projects, students and faculty members that are involved in these research, past and current papers 
    potential internship sites or other external partners: want to learn the courses taken and whether these courses are appropriate for their internship program. 
    scholars or professionals from the field but not familiar with our program: want to learn current students' interests


    Redesign process
    1- Define our target audience
    2- Define the learning goals for each audience
    • start by picking up a target audience, and a learning goal for this audience.
    • create a scenario around this learning goal and the website
    • think about the problems occurred in this scenario
    • from Bloom's taxonomy choose the level of the learning that is already in the website design 
    • from Bloom's taxonomy choose the level of the learning that we want to achieve
    3- Analyze the needs to accomplish these learning goals 
    4- Assessment of the needs and goals
    5- Requirements, specs and wireframes

    Let's analyze what we need in our design to accomplish each learning goal
    prospective majors: they would like to see the degree requirements, courses, how to apply and ongoing research as well as the research groups or labs. These are already on the website. However, a prospective student would like to know whether this is the right program for him/her. The courses, internships and research fields are one important portion of this decision making process but knowing what can be done after graduation is the more important. The website is missing information about the former students, what they are doing or where they work. There is also no information about student life at NYU, campus area, the city, and etc. 

    administrators who may not know what ECT is: 

    funders or research organizations: funders would like to know what kind of research is currently being held, what the focus of the research groups are, how important the research is in the program. They would like access to papers that research groups have published. The website has information about the two research groups, but one has to navigate to another website to check the people involved in the research or the previous research papers are not available. 
    potential internship sites or other external partners: These group would like to know the courses and master requirements. However, they also need to know what projects the students are working on, and also more information about the students in this program. 
    scholars or professionals from the field but not familiar with our program: They need to know: Who is this program for? What research is going on? What does the program offer to students? Am I a good fit? To get answers of these question, they need to navigate through a different lists. Most of the questions should be answered by an insider, which there is no access to on the current website.