Values in Software Design Practice

A really useful post from Autodesek on the values required for software design practice, this I feel links in with the values outlined out in the IE.

Values in Software Design Practice

by John Schrag on July 10, 2009

Every user experience (UX) designer who practices in a corporate setting knows the breathless whirlwind that is modern business. We designers manage relationships with developers, business managers, and customers, and still have a full-time production role researching, designing and validating features and interactions. We rarely have enough time to do everything we should, and therefore have to carefully choose where to spend our time and resources. Some designers don't even have the luxury of such choice, and instead are tasked with specific deliverables, which are sometimes not the best use of their time. In the face of this industry-wide problem, it's no surprise that dysfunctional design practices can arise and even become so common that they are seen as normal, or at least inevitable. But I don't believe they are.

In 2001, a group of software developers, development managers, and consultants created the Agile Manifesto, a document that outlined a set of simple values that they believed were the foundation of good development practices. What is interesting about this document is that it makes no reference to specific practices or buzzwords -- instead, it outlines principles and values against which any particular practice can be evaluated.

In the same spirit, my co-workers and I spent several hours considering the question of UX design practice. We weren't considering the question of what makes good design; there are innumerable books on that topic. We were considering the question of what separates a healthy, effective design practice from the horror stories we hear about when talking to others in the industry. We came up with two lists; the first list (below) talks about doing certain actions in the right order. Reading the list, these orderings may sound obvious, but they are by no means standard practice:

Setting Goals before Taking Action
Understand Problems before Generating Solutions
Designing before Writing Design Documents
Validating Designs before Investing in Code
Steak before Sizzle

The second list is one of relative values. While all of the items on both sides of this list have value, we value the items on the left more than the items on the right:

We Value:

Validated Data over Expert Opinion
Quality of Data over Ease of Data Collection
Complete Workflows over Long Feature Lists
Achieving Results over Writing Reports
Collaborative Design over Design by Referendum or Design by Fiat
Ease of Use over Ease of Coding
Well-designed Critical and Common Workflows over Complete Coverage of Every Possible Workflow

Of course, a few words in a list doesn't capture these ideas all that well. In future blog posts, I'm going to talk about each of these items in more depth, show examples and talk about what can be done to keep your design practice healthy, even in the face of the whirlwind.

A Communications Primer: a Film by Eames (1953)

A inspiring talk on conveying information narrated by Charles Eames himself


The Eames’ “A Communications Primer” from FI$H 2000 on Vimeo

What do you think should be the 3 primary roles/objectives of an interaction designer?

An interesting discussion on the role of an interaction designer - interesting how the context
for the role would be very different from my own 3 primary roles/objectives within the context of the IEAT.

What do you think should be the 3 primary roles/objectives

of an interaction designer?

"I've been asked to update a job description for the purpose of performance reviews, etc. over the coming year. I'd be interested in hearing what you think the primary 3 roles of interaction designer should be. For a bit of context, the role sits in the IT projects team along with project managers, business analysts and the in-house developers. The organisation is small-medium but with multiple international presences and would be best classed as a membership body / service provider"

Some interesting visualization charts from the information aesthetics blog, with some interesting linear, tree representations and social-spacial:

1 ) The Effects of Chart Size and Layering on the Perception of Time Series Visualizations

Data visualization consultant Stephen Few has just posted an excellent article [perceptualedge.com] about a recent time-series visualization called the Horizon Graph. Originally developed by data visualization software firm Panopticon, Horizon Graphs can display about 50 sets of time-series values on a single screen. This particular visualization technique was the focus of a detailed evaluation study described by Jeffrey Heer, graduate researcher Nicholas Kong, and Maneesh Agrawala. The results are described in the scientific paper titled "Sizing the Horizon: The Effects of Chart Size and Layering on the Graphical Perception of Time Series Visualizations" (PDF) [berkeley.edu].

In the paper, 2 different experiments are described. The goal of the first experiment was to determine the impact of the band number and horizon graph variant ("mirrored", flipping the negative values around zero, versus "offset") on value comparisons between horizon graphs. The goal of the second experiment was to compare normal line charts to horizon graphs and investigate the effect of chart height on both.

Want to know the dry results? No significant difference was found in either estimation time or accuracy between the different chart types. However, both estimation time and error increased as more bands were displayed. In the 2nd experiment, the estimation error increased as chart size decreased; layering increased estimation time, and mirroring did not; and lastly, the estimation time decreases with chart height.

More interestingly, from the results, following 3 design guidelines were proposed:

• Mirroring Does Not Hamper Graphical Perception. Mirroring a chart (that is flipping the negative values around zero) neither slowed estimation time nor hurt estimation accuracy, but cuts the size of the chart in half.


• Layered Bands Are Beneficial As Chart Size Decreases. Dividing a chart into layered bands increased the estimation time and increased the estimation error at constant chart heights. Therefore, the use of 4 or more bands is discouraged, as this resulted in increased time and error, while subjects complained that interpreting 4-band charts was difficult and tiring


• Optimal Chart Sizing. For both normal line charts and 1-band mirror charts, they found a chart height of 24 pixels to be optimal

2) TreeViz: Visualization of Large Tree Structures

TreeViz [randelshofer.ch] is an amazingly small and elegant application (working on all OS platforms) that is able to visualize large data structures organized in a tree by 7(!) different interactive data visualization techniques: Hyperbolic Tree, Circular Treemap, Rectangular Treemap, Sunburst Tree, Icicle Tree, Sunray Tree and Iceray Tree. The project currently consists of a file browser demonstration, which visually represent your computer system's file structure.

3) If the World were a Village of 100 People

A gigantic isometric eBoy-like infographic, based on the concept of summarizing world statistics as a village of 100 people [binsworld.com]. As a result, all the objects and characteristics within it become a percentage: 6 cars, 24 televisions, 9 English speaking people, 10 homosexuals, and so on. The village is divided into 5 navigable zones: Economy, Life, Food, Danger and a World map.

However, somewhere the concept became a bit lost, as I suppose the 300 million bottles of wine and 2500 million cups of coffee are not destined to be consumed by a meager 100 people?

See also Miniature Earth.

4) Finally - Dopplr presents the Personal Annual Report 2008: freshly generated for you, and Barack Obama…
Dopplr generated the Personal Annual Report for its users. It’s a unique-to-you PDF of data, visualisations and factoids about where they travel in 2008,

An example shown was the Personal Annual Report President Barack Obama.

"The main info-visualisation element of the report is the 2008 timeline, where we represent the trips you’ve taken throughout the year, pulling out the places you’ve stayed the longest and, where we can illustrating them with the Creative-Commons-licenced, Flickr-sourced photography we use on our new city pages. Then, in the main body of the report there are a number of other things from your 2008 we try and surface, such as the fellow travellers that you coincide with most on your trips. "

Can a similar principal be used for the element of the timeline in the IEAT by showing fellow information of other scientists in the lab?

One to continue to contemplate....

Where that ACD thing fits ? -http://www.ixda.org/discuss.php?post=35466

I am not sure if such a distinction needs to be made, but if practitioners need clarification then....? An aspect that may be further validated and clarified through the literature review.

The concern at this point and my interest is in that if there is a need for such a distinction then the understanding I aim to provide of activities within the information ecology is an an argument for further justification of the work.

Some thoughts...
I would argue that ACD is more part of the evolution of UCD. Design is about framing problems, and ACD is more of an evolving perspective of UCD to frame problems.

I would agree with following view point made
On 11 Nov 2008, at 02:51, Livia Labate wrote: [snip]Dan Saffer differentiates ACS and UCS in his Designing for Interaction book very similarly/succinctly. His best point is that the PURPOSE of an activity is not necessarily a user goal, meaning looking at a design problem with a user goal in mind may be too esoteric and not necessarily helpful (which is the pro argument for ACD).[trim]

Fundamentally for me ACD for me draws on the principles framework set out in Activity theory and so for this reason I would argue that it is much more that a modern day task analysis to design. At its core activities consist of the tools people use, the subject the people themselves and the material object that can be tangible or totally intangible.

There are also several interesting point made by Josha Porter on the blog post
http://bokardo.com/archives/activity-centered-design/. A particularly interesting point is a point raised by Don Norman in the article ‘Human-Centered Design Considered Harmful’.Norman says:
“Many of the systems that have passed through HCD design phases and usability reviews are superb at the level of the static, individual display, but fail to support the sequential requirements of the underlying tasks and activities. The HCD methods tend to miss this aspect of behavior: Activity-centered methods focus upon it.”

To this I would ask how much of ACD and USD methods differentiate and overlap in design practice?

Paper dashboard

Some thoughts taken from the blog post Pasta & Vinegar

A fascinating stack of notes with numbers, additions and corrections encountered recently in a very old-school french grocery store. This awfully nice pile of duct-taped paper looks very pre-computing and surely plays more role than calculations: it’s clearly as dashboard for the salesman as he told me he uses it as a reminder for customer credit “emprunts”.

The importance of paper, again.

Why blog this?

The importance of paper has resonated through the work I have been conducting, this I think again only highlights this importance of paper and the activities it supports.

This is useful in the current the thinking of and understanding activity theory in how paper is able to work and function in the environment (ecology of the french grocery store)

Some initial thinking with this is how the initial 'tests' for the information ecology could be in looking at the ways successful tools/artifacts in the information ecology function.

Could suitable analysis of the ecolgoy expose how and why they are successful?

Activity theory thoughts...

With the thoughts of the research being aided by the theoretical framework of activity theory, the following statement has particular significance for my thinking of how the concept of tools does not describe all technologies, and so if not all artifacts are tools "can the use of artifacts that are not tools be described as mediation?"

[Artifacts] mediate activity that connects a person not only with the world of objects, but also with other people. This means that a person's activity assimilates the experience of humanity. -- Leont'ev (1974)

Thoughts on tools to accomplish tasks...

We use tools to accomplish tasks, and we abandon tools when the effort required to make the tool deliver exceeds our threshold of indignation. ... (... the threshold of indignation (is) the maximal behavioral compromise that we are willing to make to get a task done.)
-- Paul Saffo, in Bringing Design to Software, edited by Terry Winograd, 1996

Why blog this?
The information ecology discusses how to move away from the tool centric approach, the interpretation and thoughts that the information ecology puts on the above statement is how
a tool is abandoned when it "exceeds our threshold of indignation" I would cite this as being down to the context/environment that the tool is being used in. So that the tool has not been fully thought of in the context of its information ecology - can question if this can begin to explain the behavioral compromise that people are willing to make to get a task done.

A key here for me is recognizing what the information ecology is and what it can mean for a new tool with what it is part of, in order to be able to start to explain and question the "behavioral compromise".

Multiple thoughts

Last week Genevieve Bell, a highly respected anthropologist and Director of User Experience within Intel’s Digital Home Group, gave the 2008 commencement speech at the UC Berkeley School of Information.

She filled it with “anthropological advice” about how to approach the world like a fieldwork project.

"I hope you can achieve a balance of online and offline encounters with the people, spaces and practices around you. I hope you can be fully engaged with local issues and the ways in which global ones are manifested around you. And I hope you experience moments of profound dislocation and discomfort – when things aren’t familiar – because I firmly believe it is in those moments that we learn the most about ourselves and what we truly value."

http://www.experientia.com/blog/genevieve-bells-anthropological-advice-at-berkeley-commencement/

Some food for thought:

• Working Knowledge: Inside the Kindle E-Book Reader

LIBRARY TO GO: Amazon's Kindle E-Reader
AMAZON.COM

More and more people are gazing at electronic-book readers—lightweight slates about the size of a thin paper­back that can store up to 200 downloaded books. Although prior generations fizzled, Sony’s Reader, introduced in 2006, and Amazon’s Kindle, which debuted last year, are both selling well. The key difference is the screen.

Interactive: View the insides of the Kindle E-Reader

Researchers had wrestled with e-book readers for decades, but most sported power-thirsty, backlit LCD screens that glared in low light or were drowned out by bright sunlight. The breakthrough this time is a screen made with “electronic paper” from E Ink Corporation in Cambridge, Mass. Sony, Amazon and other makers worldwide are using the material.

E-paper displays are reflective: ambient light bounces off them, so they look and read like ordinary paper. The screens are very energy efficient, too. “The only power used is when you turn a page,” says Isaac Yang, manager of software product development at Sony in San Jose, Calif. No current is needed to sustain the characters on a page once it has been called up. Yang says about 7,500 pages can be turned on a single battery charge. Downloading books consumes additional power.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=library-to-go&sc=rss

• Product ecology as a design framework

Extract taken from Pasta&Vinger blog

Recently, in my daily data farming, I ran across several sources mentioning the notion of “product ecology”. It generally refers to how (interaction) design broaden its focus from systems targeted on one person to more socially or culturally situated products. Among the sources about this, Jodi Forlizzi’s work struck me as very relevant.

In this article in the International Journal of Design, she focuses on the interesting notion of “product ecology” and how it can be employed as a theoretical design framework:

“In the Product Ecology, the product is the central unit of analysis. (…) The functional, aesthetic, symbolic, emotional and social dimensions of a product, combined with other units of analysis, or factors, in the ecology, help to describe how people make social relationships with products. These include the product; the surrounding products and other systems of products; the people who use it, and their attitudes, disposition, roles, and relationships; the physical structure, norms and routines of the place the product is used; and the social and cultural contexts of the people who use the product and possibly even the people who make the product. “

(image taken from Forlizzi’s paper)

But how does that help designers? Forlizzi highlights few key ideas about the assumptions of the Product Ecology framework[I recommend reading the whole paper here]:

“First, each product has its own ecology, resulting in subjective and individual experience in using the same product.
(…)
Second, the factors in the Product Ecology are dynamic, and interconnected in several ways.
(…)
Third, changes in product use cause changes in other factors of the Product Ecology.(…) When a product no longer plays a key role, it is marked by events such as people changing roles, or going in and out of the ecology;
(…)
Fourth, the Product Ecology can be delimited by a group of people in close proximity, or a group that is spread out over a great distance.
(…)
Factors in the Product Ecology can be examined in isolation or in combination at the level of a single product, to understand what particular product features will inspire social use, or at the system level, to understand how a particular product will have an impact on a system of products retained for similar functional, aesthetic, symbolic, social and emotional factors. Similarly, behavior of individuals or groups using products can be studied.“

So, to some extent, the “product ecology” can be employed to study variety of products/services. An interesting example of such use can be found in this article (from CSCW 2006) about how robotic products become social products. The paper basically shows how different people within a houselhold formed different social relationships with Roomba vacuum (and not with the more classic vacuum). The classic vacuum, in this ethnographic study, affected significant change in the families, while the stick vacuum did not: people cleaned more often, more members of the family participated and there were more prone to make social attribution to the roomba. The author then draws some design implications concerning the importance of social attribution: “when simple social attributes are part of the design of robotic products and systems, people may adopt them more readily and find them less stigmatizing“.

http://liftlab.com/think/nova/2008/05/26/product-ecology-as-a-design-framework/

Why blog this?
Particularly interested in the concepts discussed in the Product Ecology design framework. May have help in understanding the direction and assistance needed to aid in the application for the information ecology as set out by Nardi.

Interesting and useful piece on the uptake now of the Amazon Kindle and how there is still
uncertainty over e-books and readers and if they will ever become truly ubiquitous.


Finally

• Why blogging is good for you

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-healthy-type&sc=rss