Stephanie Rosenbaum

Helping users to use help: improving interaction with help systems

The content management, IA, and documentation communities have written extensively about the structure and content of help systems, as well as on help delivery mechanisms. But even if content and IA are perfectly suited to users’ needs and tastes, a help system may still fail to engage users, because they don’t interact with the help system in the first place. This workshop focuses on effective integration of help systems into users’ environments. It will help us understand how users access help systems, so we can improve the initial interaction between users and help systems.

Alternative methods for field usability research

Field usability research involves observing people in their own environments-for example, workplaces, homes, and schools-to learn their normal or natural behavior. Through field research, we can gain an in-depth understanding of the goals, needs, and activities of people who use the products and documentation we design and develop. This paper introduces three field research methods-condensed contextual inquiry, ethnographic interviewing, and field usability testing-illustrated with a short case history of each method. The paper then describes when and why to use each method, that is, how to choose the appropriate method for different data-collection goals.

Usability in practice: field methods evolution and revolution

Field Methods are a collection of tools and techniques for conducting studies of users, their tasks, and their work environments in the actual context of those environments. The promise of such methods is that they help teams design products that are both useful and usable by providing data about what people really do. Participants in this forum will address: the origins and framework of Contextual Design the application of field methods to task analysis a review of ways to adapt these methods to practical constraints a discount approach to field studies.

What makes strategic usability fail?: lessons learned from the field

This panel asks a group of well-known usability practitioners what is keeping us from achieving the penetration of strategic usability within organizations. Eight panelists describe the lessons they learned while attempting to make usability pervasive in different organizational environments.

Best practices in longitudinal research

This workshop will identify best practices for longitudinal research through an in-depth exploration of methods and metrics for collecting and analyzing user data over time. This is the fourth event in an ongoing effort by the organizers to enhance our current body of knowledge about longitudinal research.

Usability in Practice: user experience lifecycle - evolution and revolution

The practice of usability and user-centered design must integrate with many other activities in the product development lifecycle. This integration requires political savvy, knowledge of a wide variety of methods, flexibility in using methods, inspiration, and innovation. The speakers and their colleagues have met these requirements and describe their experience fitting various methods into design and development efforts. This forum highlights their successes and setbacks.

Focus groups in HCI: wealth of information or waste of resources?

Many HCI professionals frown on focus groups, while some believe focus group methodology can be successfully applied to collect usability data. This panel features interaction among HCI professionals with very different experiences and opinions.

Field Usability Testing: Method, Not Compromise

This paper discusses a user research method the authors have refined over several years: field usability testing. Field usability testing combines techniques from traditional laboratory usability testing and condensed contextual inquiry, itself an adaptation of traditional contextual inquiry methods. The authors describe two approaches or models of field usability testing: ethnographic and structured. Three case histories illustrate the method, giving examples of the ethnographic model and the structured model.

Combining usability research with documentation development for improved user support

As a usability research and information design firm, Tec-Ed has noted the advantages of evaluating a products usability in conjunction with developing its print and online documentation. Usability research identifies the problems with a user interface. When business or technical constraints prevent problems from being corrected in the interface, we still improve the products usability by addressing these problems in the documentation. In other cases, the documentation can inform us of specific problems to research in the usability work.This paper describes two case studies in which the same team performed both usability and documentation projects for a product. In addition to the expected benefits from combining usability and documentation work, using the same team resulted in efficiencies in process and quality of execution. The experience also suggests that usability evaluation is not simply an alternative career path for technical communicators, but rather a complementary skill that can enhance their professional development while adding more value to the work they do for employers as well as users.

Creating usable self-service interactions

In todays economy, more and more of our transactions with organizations to research and purchase products and services are self-service; they involve no interaction with a human being. This paper explores peoples experiences both with self-service transactions and with processes where the interaction migrates from self-service to human mediation. Two case histories from the authors consulting firm describe user research and interaction design to improve the usability of self-service transactions.