UX Design / Article 1.

Aug. 2010, HCI Vistas Vol-VI

Author: Dr. Dinesh Katre

Abstract:

This article intends to disambiguate the use of a common concept “long-term usability’ in the fields of a) digital preservation and b) user experience design. Though both topics are different, they are juxtaposed in this article, as they borrow some ideas from each other. Long-term UX policy, transcending multiple software life cycles has been discussed at length to identify its scope, requirements, challenges and the possible benefits.

Introduction:

It was surprising to find that the term “Usability” is now being used often in the field of Long-Term Digital Preservation. During my recent discussion with Dr. David Giaretta, Project Director, CASPAR, Rutherford Appleton Laborartory, UK (who is mainly focusing on long-term usability of digital data); we realized that

there is a need to differentiate the meaning of “Usability” in digital preservation context if compared with what it means to user experience designers, so as to avoid the possible overlaps and misunderstandings.

In this context, the readers may first like to refer some articles on digital preservation which directly talk about long-term usability of digital information or digital data. The links to these articles are provided below-

• How to keep digital records understandable and usable through time?
• Long-term digital information usability issues - by IBM
• NARA/Long-Term Usability of Optical Media
• Ensuring long-term preservation and usability of digital information

Let us briefly understand what is meant by digital preservation as under.

“Long-Term” means - transcending all the technological changes and obsolescence over a long period (minimum 10 years)

The primary objective of digital preservation is to ensure the usability of digital information or digital data through the passage of time and technological obsolescence in terms of hardware, software, formats, storage media, processes and even the people.

a) Long-Term Usability in Digital Preservation Context

What properties are essential for the digital information or data to remain usable over a long period? These are briefly outlined as under-

• Transferability from one storage media to the other
• Convertability to new file formats without any distortion
• Communicability in terms of self description, semantics, linkages with context and associated knowledge
• Accessibility and searchability
• Readability and representability in the changing technological environment
• Understandability and use for designated user communities
• Building multiple purposes around the digital information to create motivation for its preservation

While thinking along these lines, I wondered - if we could incorporate the term “Usability” in digital preservation context then why can’t we adapt the “Long-Term” perspective in user experience (UX) design context? Is there a need for “long-term UX” or “long-term usability”? If the digital data has long term value then the GUI that creates it or manipulates it also has a long term purpose to serve.

b) Long-Term Usability in UX Design Context

As already discussed in my previous article “Prism of User Experience” - User Centred Design (UCD) methods, due to inherent focus on the ‘use’ of product, tend to pay greater attention on the short-term tasks and short-term user goals. The usage scenarios, walkthroughs, usability tests are performed within a short span of time. Most usability methods analyze representative user actions performed within a narrow slice of time and hence lack the long-term perspective.

Current practices are helpful in defining the short-term usability. We need to augment some new processes and methods for designing the long-term user experience.

The concept of “long-term usability” in UX design context has not been explored much so far. It combines technical as well as human factors. The aspects of long-term UX are consolidated as under-

• Long term UX policy
  Software companies and online businesses will need to define “long-term UX policy” which should include broad policy guidelines for UI design, Standards, UI scalability, usability and UX priorities (based on their market and users), steps for gradual UI transition through versions, harmonization between product and corporate branding strategies. The long-term UX policy should be further specified for software products, online businesses and services. Such long-term UX policy document can be helpful to all departments within an organization and the stakeholders at large. The real challenge is to plan and develop the long-term UX policy so that it remains valid for minimum 5 + years. It will require to transcend beyond multiple software life cycles.

It is interesting to refer the Principles of Googley UX published as part of corporate information page of google. It comes close to some points discussed above and has a long-term impact.

The company can decide whether to publish the Long-Term UX Policy or disclose it in portions to selected audiences. This is a sensitive matter as users can hold you accountable.

• Classification of short-term and long-term UX methods
  We need to classify the existing UX methods based on whether they capture the usability/ UX requirements which have short-term or long-term validity. Both types of methods are essential depending on the type of applications and users. New methods have to be augmented for evaluating the long-term usability.

• Longitudinal methods for user studies and data collection of long-term usability / UX requirements
  New methods are required for studying the habitual user interface patterns, capturing the gradual changes in user behaviours, priorities, interaction patterns and impact on human factors. E.g. the user personas could be incrementally modified to account for the changes in users over a long period. We need to evolve some techniques for building users’ UI knowledge inventory. The longitudinal study will help in developing larger consensus about what is usable or not usable. The knowledge within usability field will gain more grounding and stability.

• Open source libraries of proven and standardized user interface patterns / user interaction patterns (application / scenario / task based)
  Once familiarized with user interface the user shouldn’t require to learn it again for at least 5 + years (minimal cognitive stress with greater focus on goals). Certain interaction patterns stay valid for long duration in spite of new additions or innovations. They should be identified and standardized in the larger interest of people.

• High level long-term usability standards and guidelines to be evolved at a community level
  More generalized / high level long-term usability standards and guidelines could to be evolved in a consortia mode on similar lines as W3C for PC, Web, Mobile and other computing media. Wider community ownership will help in ensuring long-term support for accurate rendering of user interfaces in spite of changes in hardware, OS, browser, display resolution and size, etc.

Long-term usability” is particularly more relevant in medical applications / medical devices, control panels of machines, automobiles, aircrafts, devices for physically disabled and elderly people, financial applications, safety critical applications, user interfaces of public access systems, learning systems, e-government applications, etc. These are the application areas where there is no room for human error and users need to concentrate on final goals. Therefore, frequent changes in user interface design are not desirable.

Benefits of Long-Term UX:

• Reduction in the expenditure on usability re-engineering and user interface re-designing.
• Users won’t require to spend too much effort on unlearning old interface and re-learning the new one.
• The stakeholders (including third party developers) will have greater consistency in their approach to UX.
• The outcomes of longitudinal usability research will be more effective and reliable
• The long-term UX policy will attract long-term users and win user loyalty.

References:

1. David Giaretta, Digital Preservation Challenges, Infrastructures and Evaluations, Indo-US Workshop on International Trends in Digital Preservation, Pune, India, March 24-25, 2009, Pages 1-10
2. Dinesh Katre, Prism of User Experience, Article 7. HCI Vistas Vol-III, Sept. 2007
3. Dinesh Katre, QUANTITATIVE EVALUATION OF INTERFACE METAPHOR, Chapter 6, Visualization of Interface Metaphor for Software: An Engineering Approach; PhD Thesis, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, 2005.
4. Andrew Dillon, Beyond Usability: Process, Outcome and Affect in human computer interactions, Lazerow Lecture 2001, Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto, March 2001.
5. Masaya Ando, Masaaki Kurosu, Long term usability; its concept and research approach: the origin of the positive feeling toward the product, Lecture Notes In Computer Science, Proceedings of the 12th international conference on Human-computer interaction: interaction design and usability, Beijing, China, 2007, Pages: 393-396
6. Ronny Cook ,  Judy Kay ,  Greg Ryan ,  Richard C. Thomas, A Toolkit for Appraising the Long Term Usability of a Text Editor, 1995
7. Daniel Jalkut, Disabled Menus are Usable, Red Sweater Software
8. Sullivan, P.; Purdue Univ., West Lafayette, Usability in the computer industry: what contribution can longitudinal field studies make? Professional Communication Conference, IPCC ‘89. ‘Communicating to the World.’, 1989, Pages: 12-16
9. William Lidwell, Kritina Holden, Jill Butler, Universal principles of design, Rockport Publishers, 2003
10. Long-term (longitudinal) research methods, UPA 2005

© Copyright

  Research / Article 4.

  Nov. 2009, HCI Vistas Vol-V

  Author: Dr. Dinesh Katre

Background

This talk on ‘Significance of Research and Paper Writing: Process & Benefits’ was delivered at a workshop organized in the interest of the HCI community, on November 14, 2009, at Symbiosis Institute of Design, Pune. In this presentation, Dr. Dinesh Katre shares his experience and passion to promote HCI / Usability research in India. (The workshop was organized to encourage and enable the aspiring paper authors to contribute papers for India-HCI / IDID 2010 Conference)

User Behaviour & Psychology / Article 2.

Feb. 2009, HCI Vistas Vol-V

Author: Ganesh Bhutkar

Introduction

The domain of social networking is enhanced by efforts from entrepreneurs to capitalize on the social networking theory. Recent commercial interest has resulted in the emergence of multiple new websites dedicated to helping users capitalize on their social networks for dating, jobs, e-commerce, professional development etc. This article presents a comprehensive overview about users on Social Networking webSites (SNSs) along with some observations about their behavior. These observations are compiled based on authors experience with social network users, his discussions with Human Computer Interface (HCI) students and literature study.

Figure 1. Representation of SNS Users

As per Wikipedia, the first major Social Networking Site was SixDegrees.com, launched in 1997. During and just after dot-com bust, the SNSs attracted very limited number of users. The rapid growth of SNSs has come more recently since 2002-03. Many websites were launched for friendship and dating. These include websites like Friendster (2002), MySpace (2003), Orkut (2004), Facebook (2004) etc. They became extremely popular all across the globe and millions of users were attracted towards them. Thus, competition in the web market increased and few more websites with other aspects joined this bandwagon. The websites like Delicious (social bookmarking, 2003)), LinkedIn (business contacts, 2003), WAYN (travelling, 2003), Flickr (photo-sharing, 2004), and Answers (reference searching, 2005) started providing options to the users depending on their intension of socialization. A screen 1 shows a home page of WAYN - a social network for travelers.

Screen 1. WAYN - Social Network for Travelers

User Profiles

The user profiles on social networks consist of primary elements such as demographic information like sex, age, nationality, education, interest(s), self-description prose, picture(s), friend listings and testimonials etc. In the profile, providing both - a members perspective as well as that of his or her friends may be beneficial. The profile represents how the individual chooses to present identity at a specific time and with a particular understanding of ones audience. As discussed by Danah Boyd in his paper, the testimonials are only a tribute of the moment and reflect the same type of language one might see in a high school yearbook. The format of user profile may differ based on intensions of socialization on SNS. Screen 2 shows example of one user profile on LinkedIn - a network for business contacts.

Screen 2: Example of User Profile on LinkedIn

According to Bill Howard, social networks may differ in terms of who can join, who can see profile of member and how much of it is visible, whether sites are suitable for use on cell phones and their openness to web crawlers and other applications. The popularity, press coverage, diverse usage and future challenges make SNSs more suitable for study of users who visit and use them.

Types of Users on Social Neworks

Normally, to use SNS, user needs to register as a member with a respective SNS. As per Danah Boyd, the users of SNSs can be categorized as €“

1. Friends - These are the members of the social network whom the user knows personally in real life and trusts them as friends.

2. Friendsters - These are the members who may be indicated as friends by the user even though they are not known and trusted. A screen 3 shows a list of friends for Orkut user. Some of these friends without photographs appear to be friendsters.

3. Fakesters - These are the members with fake personas and they hide their actual personal information from other members.

4. Fraudsters - These are the members with fake personas and they can involve in fraudulent financial or sexual activity causing harm to other members.

Screen 3: Friends and Friendsters on Orkut

Observations about SNS Users

These observations are compiled based on authors experience with SNS users, classroom discussions with students for course of HCI and his study of various articles on SNSs in journals, conference proceedings and newsletters.

• Logically trustworthy

According to Danah Boyd, entrepreneurs and designers of social networking sites feel that the friends of friends are more likely to be good friends or dates than strangers and they would serve as a meaningful connectors and recommenders. These friends of friends are friendsters and friendsters can ensure more meaningful connections. But, author has observed that this assumption doesnt work often, as many of friendsters may become fakesters with or without reasons.

• Social Network Density and Relationships

Anthropologist Robin Dunbar has argued that a person can sustain about 150 social relationships - online or offline; most of them should be friends. Likewise, author has come across the fact that members are more likely to become active users if they enter a dense and active network, which is full of friendsters or fakesters.

• Contributing Communities

Most members regularly search for users out of curiosity. In the process, they also get into touch with many friendsters to form a group or community. Many communities are quite active and form a close bonding among members. As discussed by Danah Boyd, a user with such account passed away in his sleep. The friendsters of this deceased member organized condolence meeting and posted messages in his remembrance.

• Creativity by Fakesters

When creating fakesters, members go out of their way to be as creative as possible in their profiles. These fakesters can provide useful services. Author came across a group of guys that created a fake female character to provide good testimonials for their friends and to introduce them to interesting women. The study conducted by Gibbs, Ellison and Heino found that social networks can make fakesters more fitter and healthier persons. Some fakesters, who underreport their weight, realize then that they better start losing weight to match their ideal profile one. Author has noticed that with multiple representations of a single person, fakesters are often used against some disliked members. Some fakesters are created out to confuse the members on that social network.

• Role of fakesters in the growth of social networks

Danah Boyd noticed that while fakesters have been an integral part of these websites for a long time, their vendors and designers have never approved them. One argument against fakesters is that they may collapse the social network, devaluing the meaning of connections between users. This argument assumes that the networks value is in trusted links and that a friend of a fakester is going to be less trustworthy or compatible than the real. By and large, most users love the fake characters. They become little hidden treasures in the network and users go seeking out the most creative and interesting ones. The website can become less interesting if the fakesters are removed. So, author has found that many researchers recognize that they might have some problems with the fakesters, but still they value the creative expression and the usefulness of many fakesters. Some users say that fakesters are actually great because they remind them that nothing presented on these networks is actually real.

Screen 4: Example of Fakesters Profile with Fake Photograph

• Deviation of Information in Profiles

Many friendsters are not completely fakesters; but there can be some deviation from factual information. Bill Howard has highlighted one survey about online profiles. It suggests that about 81% members provide information that deviates from reality. Men lie more about their height while women lie more about their weight. A screen 4 shows a profile of a fakester. This fakester has used photograph of famous Bollywood Star €“ John Abraham from India. Overall, author observed that members provide least accurate information about their photograph. More accurate is the photograph; more is the possibility that member is honest in ones profile information.

Screen 5. Facebook User, Friends and Friendsters

• User Authorization Vs. Social Network Growth

As discussed by Dave Kearns, it is essential that the account that gets created on SNS accurately reflects the true identity of the person that it is created for. This step can overcome much of the identity frauds or thefts that are prevalent today. But, author has noticed that if administrators of SNS focus strictly on authorization, then it affects the growth of social network. Such SNS will have all authenticated friends or friendsters, but the growth will become very slow. Most of SNSs opt for the other approach and grow exponentially. Windley et al., has observed that the exponential growth taxes the management capacity of site administrators. The continued health of SNS depends upon identification and utilization of users who make positive contributions to the community, but finding such contributing users is a real challenge.

• Group Dynamics in Communities

Dinesh Katres article highlights the issues of social psychology with e-mail discussion groups or communities. During discussions, most members often tend to polarize in the direction of a dominant group opinion. Sometimes, the dominant group may have majority of friendsters and fakesters who want to spoil the discussion. The severe comments by some friendsters may attract attention of others and have greater potential to influence the opinions of participants. Usually, members respond to echo similar opinions and forget to contribute their independent observations on the issue. During discussions, members always respond to friends or friendsters and this reciprocal behavior is out of the nature of €˜give and take or gratitude. Also, during the discussion, some spoilsport members who are friendsters, fakesters or even fraudsters, may send offensive comments and vanish. They usually have no intention of adding value to the discussion. This happens because many friendsters and fakesters feel that they are invisible and unaccountable in message communication.

• Fraud Business

Some fakesters act as fraudsters. Author has observed that they advertise porn websites on SNSs. Danah Boyd has noticed a group with fraudster profiles for selling drugs.

• Survey about Age Groups

There is a general and popular perception that social networking is an activity enjoyed almost exclusively by teens and youths only. But, a social networking research study by National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) - USA, reveals that a large number of adults (48 percent) are users of SNSs. The growing number of adults using SNSs is an indicator of the increasing popularity and potential security risks of these sites.

Conclusion

The observations about diverse users on social networks show that there is wider scope to study SNS users, their behavior and its impact on growth of SNSs. With the growth of social networks, dealing with fakesters and fraudsters has become a big challenge. So, there is a need for developing tools and mechanisms for identifying, validating and tracking down their mischievous activities to protect the interest of normal users. Then only social networks can lead to thoughtful interactions.

Acknowledgements

I thank my TE (Information Technology) students of HCI (2008-09) at VIT, Pune for their contributions during classroom discussions, which helped me to compile this paper work.

References

1. Bill Howard, Analyzing online social networks, Communications of the ACM, Nov 2008, Vol-51, No-11, 14-16.

2. Danah Boyd, Friendster and publicly articulated social networking, Proceedings of ACM Conference on Human factors and Computing Systems (CHI), Vienna, April 2004.

3. Dave Kearns, Validation, authorization: the next steps to identity management, Network World, 08/20/2008.

4. Dinesh Katre, Social psychology of e-mail discussion groups€, Journal of HCI Vistas, Vol-II, Sept. 2006.

5. J. Gibbs, N. Ellison, R. Heino, €œSelf-presentation in online personals, Communication Research, Vol-33, No-2, April 2006, 152-177.

6. NCSA Survey on SNS Users, 2006.

7. P. Windley, D. Daley, B. Cutler, K. Tew, Using reputation to augment explicit authorization, Proceedings of ACM Workshop on Digital Identity Management, 2007, 72-81.

8. WAYN - SNS for Travelers

9. LinkedIn - SNS for Business Contacts

10. Orkut - SNS for Dating and Friendship

11. Facebook

12. Social Network Service, Wikipedia
    

Ganesh Bhutkar is Computer Engineering and Management postgraduate and currently pursuing PhD in Medical Usability. He is an Assistant Professor at VIT, Pune, India. He has published about 10 research papers and associated with some International Journals as associate editor and reviewer. Contact: ganesh.bhutkar@vit.edu

Design Research / Article 1.

Jan. 2009, HCI Vistas Vol-V

Author: Dr. Lene Nielsen

Introduction

This experiment originates from a comment posted on the forum connected to Journal of the HCI Vistas. Here Dinesh Katre wrote; I have always found it difficult to visualize or understand the characters illustrated in the books of P. G. Woodhouse because all are British personalities and I have not lived in Briton so long to understand these personalities as they are quite culture specific. (29-01-08). This made me wonder how personas descriptions are perceived and whether culture influences the perception. From this a simple search on Google scholar for literature on personas method and perception began. The search showed no articles on the subject. A similar search for personas method and culture gives several hits on how the persona method can affect organizational culture, hits on how to consider data from different cultures, but none that takes into consideration how different cultures perceive personas descriptions and what to take into consideration when developing personas perceived by readers from different cultures.

A persona is fictitious user constructed from different forms of field data. The data can originate from a combination of questionnaires, interviews, observations, probes etc. The designer uses the persona to imagine the end user’s design preferences and to imagine the needs that the future design can solve. This is done by writing stories “ scenarios “ about how the persona uses the future system. This enables the designer to explore future possibilities in an easily accessible way and in a format that is easy to change.

A personas description is not just any kind of document, but differentiates from other documents, as it is a description that is aimed at a known reader (the designer), who is distinctively different from the persona it portrays. The portrait will evoke identification in the reader, so the reader can imagine and understand the persona from the description and can, with this method, make informed design decisions.

Differences in Culture

In recent years cultural aspects has come to play a significant role when discussion interface design and evaluation methods. In the following I will briefly present the work of the cognitive psychologist Nisbett [2] who argues that there is a difference between how people perceive objects and situations related to the region from which they originate. Nisbett argues that Easterners (Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese) tend to think holistic, are more likely to attend to backgrounds, are more likely to expect change than Westerners, are more likely to group objects in thematic relations, and deal with contradictions finding truth in both sides. Westerners (Europeans and Americans) think analytic, are more likely to attend to objects, group according to taxonomies, and tend to reject one side of contradictions.

In this experiment it is especially the holistic versus the analytic thinking and grouping in themes rather than according to taxonomies that might be in play. In connection to personas descriptions the question becomes; how different are the categories we use to perceive a description?

The Experiment

I took a persona description of an online manager from a business project for the Danish company Traceworks. It was translated into English and all mentions of name and living place were removed (see app. 1). From my personal network I asked students and professionals to do as follows:
1. Read the personas description presented below
2. Give the persona a name
3. On the Internet, find a photo that matches the description
4. Describe why you have chosen the photo
5. Before the 1st of June return the name, the photo and the explanation directly to me.

From each of the countries India, China and Denmark I got three replies: five male and three women, all familiar with the personas method. The participants are distributed evenly between students and professionals. In the following I will analyze the response.

Analysis

Strategies
In the accounts for the choice of photo there seems to be two strategies at play; either interpreting or looking for clues in the description:

• Interpreting the text and using the interpretation as explanation for the choice of photo ‘I don’t know why but I tend to associate obesity with reluctance to new technology mindset. Don’t ask me why!’(Indian informant 3). Information Technology means he would earn more money than average (Chinese informant 1).
• Finding a specific description in the text that serves as explanation for the choice of photo. She has young children and therefore she could not be old (Danish informant 2). He has no time to do much exercise, so he may be a little fat (Chinese informant 2).

Table 1 below shows each of the participants chosen strategy. The Danish informant 1 chose to describe the choice with a personal knowledge of people employed in advertising: I assume I know the person, because of my previous career and involvement in advertising. I, from the get go, had an idea of how I presumed this person to look, since to me we all looked alike at the agency after a while. (Danish informant 1).

Tabel 1. Perception strategies

Most participants used the strategy of finding cues in the text. Interestingly none of the Danes used interpretation as an overall strategy.

Almost all of the photos showed a person in suit, even the only photo of a female. Three from India and China chose photos of western business people, while the rest chose photos of locals. The Indian informant 1 chose both a westerner and a local looking and explained that in the text is mentioned: ‘X is 42 and married, with a son age 3 and a daughter age 7′ an Indian man would not have so young children at 42, this points to a westerner.

The photos from two of the Danes looked very Danish while the photo from the Danish female shows a woman, not very Danish in expression. All of the Danes picked photos of younger people than the other informants did.

Tabel 2. Photo contents

Tabel 3. Photos arranged according to informant’s country

None of the Danes interpreted the text, but rather found cues in the text. Not that this experiment have any statistical significance, but it might correlate to Nisbetts [2] findings of Easterners more prone to holistic thinking than Westerners.
Other areas seem to create a shared understanding, regardless of culture as there seems to be a united, but also stereotypical understanding of how a business person looks.

Conclusion

This experiment does not show huge cultural differences among the participants. The study is small and further studies are needed to show if personas descriptions are perceived differently in different cultures. Another study with an expectation of larger differences, e.g. a description of a female consumer, might show other findings.

The experiment does show that there are different strategies when perceiving the written descriptions.
The experiment also shows how easily it is to create implicit knowledge in the description, in this case where the age of the persona and the age of children communicates a Westerner.

It also shows how easy it is to create a stereotypical image of the user. As I have written elsewhere, stereotypes prevent engagement [1] and in personas descriptions it is recommended to write ’rounded’ character descriptions, but this leads to another discussion.

Acknowledgement

I want to thank the CultUsab project and the Chinese, Danish, and Indian participants.

Appendix 1

The personas description:
X, manager of online marketing.
X is 42 and married, with a son age 3 and a daughter age 7. X lives in a house a bit outside the capital and commutes to and from work.
At work, X likes to wear formal clothes, but not too formal.  X tries to do a bit of fitness, but finds it hard to get it into the busy schedule with work and family.
X is content with the place in career and has not, as in the youth, the possibilities to work long hours as X wants to be with the family “I want to play with my children every day”. Sometimes X works in the evening, when the kids are in bed.
Education
X has a degree in sales- and marketing from a business school. X studied before there was anything called online marketing, therefore X has the knowledge on online marketing from books and seminars.
The company
X is employed in a large company with a long tradition of offline marketing. X is the manager of the online department in the company and is responsible for the development of the company’s online initiatives.
X is responsible for the company’s online ads. Here X has to make sure that the campaigns support the company’s offline activities. X  is also responsible for getting clients for the department’s new activities. X sees a huge benefit in online marketing, as it is easy to access what you get you for your money.
X makes sure that the company’s website is constantly updated and that new initiatives make it interesting for the customers to visit the website regularly.
X experiences from time to time that the organization is sluggish and that the road from idea to action can be long.
The online department
The online department employs four people. It is primarily X who is responsible for the company’s online marketing. The other employers are mainly engaged in the website and how recently added elements perform. It is important for the department to show a high level of activity on their new initiatives.
Communication
X is in daily contact with the company’s many media- and advertising agencies about campaign activities for the next quarter. X lets the media agencies deliver media plans. “I do not have the time to keep an eye on what sites to post on. They are much better at that.” X has the final say on the media plans.
X reports directly to the board and presents last quarter’s result as well as new initiatives. This is done by collecting numbers from the agency. They are copied into Excel and later into a PPT.
Technology
Apart from X, everybody in the online department is interested in technology. X finds new technologies expensive and difficult to handle, but has a notion that there might be some benefits.

Reference

[1] Nielsen, L. 2004. Engaging Personas and Narrative Scenarios.  Samfundslitteratur. Copenhagen.
[2] Nisbett, R. E. 2000. The Geography of Thought.  Nicholas Brealey Publishing. London.

Lene Nielsen wrote her Ph.D. thesis ‘Engaging Personas and Narrative Scenarios’ in 2004.
She is a usability consultant at Snitker & Co.
Contact information: ln@snitker.com

Conference on Advances in Usability Engineering (CAUE) 2008

Transition from informal gatherings to a formal conference

Usability practitioners in Pune have witnessed World Usability Day seminars during 2006 and 2007. Learning from the experience of both these events, the need was felt to elevate its standard by adopting to a typical conference format, with open invitation for research papers and peer review process for selection. This approach is chosen so as to give fair chance to beginners as well as experienced practitioners. This dream has come true due to the initiative of Vishwakarma Institute of Information Technology (VIIT) to organize the national level Conference on Advances in Usability Engineering for our community. The bold initiative of an academic institute like VIIT must be appreciated, as presently usability engineering is gaining popularity mainly in the IT industry. Kudos to VIIT!

World Usability Day, Pune 2008

Gratitude to Dr. Donald Norman

This year€™s World Usability Day at Pune has become very special due to CAUE. It has become even more significant as both events are blessed by none other than Dr. Donald Norman, who was recently awarded with Benjamin Franklin Medal for his seminal contributions to the knowledge of usability in everyday life. I am very grateful to Dr. Norman for honouring my request and sending a very inspiring message for usability practitioners in India on this momentous occasion.

WUD 2008 Message from Donald Norman for Indian Usability Practitioners

Response to call for papers

Call for papers announced for CAUE has received 50 papers all together. We received about 22 research papers from usability practitioners (44%), 15 papers from faculty members (30%) and 13 papers from students (26%). The review committee has shown sufficient leniency in order to encourage the paper authors and selected 28 papers for inclusion in the conference proceedings.

Download CAUE 2008 Proceedings

Response from Information Technology Industry

It is obvious that usability engineering is gaining greater support from IT industry, whereas educational institutes are still catching up with the demands of industry. Usability practitioners from IT Service companies have contributed large number of papers if compared with the contributions from product companies.

CAUE 2008 Programme Schedule

CAUE Photos

Response from Academia

We received 28 papers from academia (15 papers from faculty members and 13 papers from students), mainly from engineering and design institutes. We had expected more contributions from the faculty members of newly established design institutes. Out of the papers received from faculty members, very few of them directly focused on the theme of usability engineering and human-computer interaction. We were unable to select some papers as they focused on different aspects of computing and not on the conference theme. It is evident that more awareness about usability needs to be created in the academia.

We had specifically announced a thematic track on HCI in Education with the objective of understanding the experience of faculty members from engineering and design institutes. We wanted to bring up the challenges faced by them in teaching usability engineering and human-computer interaction. But unfortunately, no papers are received on this theme. Presently, we can observe significant participation from engineering and design departments. But this isn€™t enough. People from humanities (psychology, social science, linguistics, etc.) should also get involved in advancing the usability research.

13 papers are received from students of design and engineering institutes. The papers submitted by design students have focused on specific experimentation involving users, assessment of user interface technologies and product design. In future, we would like to receive more papers from the students of engineering and humanities.

Thematic distribution of papers

We have broadly defined 6 thematic tracks for papers namely-

• Offshore Usability
• Usability for Bridging the Digital Divide
• Usability Engineering
• User Experience Design for New Media
• User Experience Research
• HCI in Education

Although these themes are not very tightly bound, we found that most papers could fit under the themes of Usability Engineering, User Experience Design for New Media and User Experience Research. India enjoys a very significant share in offshore IT market. But we received very few papers on this theme. More serious experimentations are necessary to identify the difficulties and possible solutions for usability in offshore settings. We received no papers on the theme of HCI in Education. Experts specializing in different areas are invited to speak at the conference to cover the themes where few papers or no papers are received.

Technical diversity

The research papers have covered various aspects of usability related to wide ranging applications such as m-commerce, e-governance, business portals, etc. Many papers have also focused on accessibility interfaces that cover search engine optimization, menus for font selection, mobile interface for low literate, home page design strategies, etc. Sufficient coverage to user interface guidelines, user centred design case studies, evaluation of usability methods and standards is also ensured. Papers on Web 2.0, multi-touch technology for mobile and object oriented system architecture offer technical insights of usability. Motivational, persuasive and user driven approaches to design are also featured. Some unusual topics related to factors affecting the performance of call centres and design of portable X-Ray system are helpful in expanding the horizon of usability. Topics that elaborate process and methods like user experience design strategies and design management are also included.

On the whole, the conference is offering coverage to diverse topics related to usability. There is major scope for improvement in terms of scientific rigor of research, depth of experiments and quality of documentation. However, we should be happy to have taken a step forward.

Conference on Advances in Usability Engineering is intended to help in capturing the state-of-the-art of usability in India. CAUE team has resolved to publish the conference proceedings so as to trigger incremental developments. Such manuscript will be immensely helpful to practitioners, researchers, faculty members and students. I hope that it is made available in libraries and on Internet for future reference. I hope that the success of CAUE will establish a new benchmark for the usability research in India. Looking forward to many more chapters of CAUE in the years to come.

Dr. Dinesh Katre

CAUE 2008 Advisory / Review Committee

 UX Design / Article 9.

 Dec. 2008, HCI Vistas Vol-IV

 Author: Dr. Vladimir L. Averbukh

Abstract

The work is devoted to a problem of search of metaphors for interactive systems and systems based on Virtual Reality (VR) environments. The analysis of magic fairy tales as a source of metaphors for interface and virtual reality is offered. Some results of design process based on magic metaphors are considered.

1. Introduction

This work is devoted to a problem of search of metaphors for interactive systems and systems based on Virtual Reality (VR) environments.

Metaphors play a significant role while designing, and also help users to master interface opportunities with ease. Sometimes the success or failure of system depends on successful choice of metaphors.

However researchers have started to complain of rarity of interface metaphors already in early 90 years when development of visual interactive systems were anywise a novelty. (See [1].) In our opinion one may find a lot of sources of metaphors, but it is necessary to search these sources by some criteria. We suggest to consider magic fairy tales and popular fantasy novels (using a set of characters, concepts and situations similar to the magic fairy tales) as one of sources of computer metaphors. Thus, we are interested with ‘magic’ ideas i.e. ideas of miraculous actions, positions, things and events that are impossible in reality. These ideas are useful to create interface and visualization metaphors and to develop new techniques for dealing in virtual environments. Note that VR may demand wide diversity of magic metaphors, because in fact it is a real (’not magic’) magic. Even superficial analysis shows that at times magic in fairy tales extends possibilities and features of realistic objects and characters and at other times fairy tales describe occurrences being in marked contrast to everyday routine. Both cases are interesting in connection with metaphors searching. Moreover VR also at times augments user’s means, and  at other times transfers users to new worlds.

Pic 1 ‘the Flying Carpet (Disney films)

Magic ideas described in fantasy novels or in literary processed folklore fairy tales are the most worked and consequently the most useful for our purposes.

Interface metaphor is considered as the basic idea of likening between interactive objects and model objects of the application domain. Its role is to promote the best understanding of semantics of interaction, and also to determine the visual representation of dialog objects and a set of user manipulations with them. A metaphor, considered as a basis of the sign system, underlies in a basis of a dialog language in its turn. User formulates the problem with the help of this language and achieves its solving from the computer. The metaphor helps to describe abstraction, structures understanding of new applied area, but also assigns dialog [visual] language objects.

We understand interface metaphors in broadened sense, not subdividing them onto metaphors, analogies, idioms or metonymies. These divisions are important for the metaphor theory, but are not necessary for our consideration. Interface metaphors may be considered as a special case of scientific metaphor used for generation of new or additional senses to understand new facts and phenomena. The understanding of an interface metaphor as an usage only everyday and well-known (often technical) realities is unsatisfactory and even wrong for several reasons [2], [3].

2. Related Works

The problems of metaphor design, as well as formalizations of their search and/or generations were repeatedly considered in the literature. The idea of automated creation of visual metaphors and corresponding visualization systems was proposed.

Interest to ‘magic’ in connection with HCI and interface metaphors was showed in early 90-’ years. The significant attention has been given to ‘Magic Features’ conception. This conception in the context of HCI was introduced for the first time by A. Kay. [4]. In the literature (also by A. Kay) some theoretical approaches to problems of HCI magic were considered and some examples were given (see [5-9]. ‘Magic Features’ are considered as important for HCI. The authors of the works [6-8] emphasized especially that metaphors doesn’t preclude magic. Obviously, if to consider metaphors not only as usage everyday things and everyday entities then magic may be a part of interface metaphors. The word ‘magic’ is very popular as a part of metaphoric names for interface techniques’ for example ‘magic lens’, ‘magic mirror’, ‘magic lancet’, etc. In [10] a number of specific examples from stage magic is presented and application of its principles and techniques in human interface design is discussed. The article [11] is devoted to sources of metaphor for tangible user interfaces. Authors suppose magic and paranormal phenomena could be a fruitful place to look for new metaphors for tangible user interfaces. Also Voodoo magic is considered as an interesting idea for interfaces with virtual objects. In [12] Voodoo dolls technique is used as a two-handed interaction technique for manipulating objects at a distance in immersive virtual environments.

Pic. 2  -A Knight at Crossroads (Victor Vasnetsov)

Ideas for interface metaphor design, linked with magic fairy tales, fantasy and science fiction novels, are described in a number of articles. In [5] for example the fantastic metaphor of flying carpet is mentioned, but in  [13] the metaphor of the magic carpet is realized for instant moving in the virtual reality environment. In [14 ] [15] and [16] usages of ‘magic wand’ are described. Magic wand is considered as a manipulation metaphor to form an interface in systems with elements of virtual reality. Interesting ideas of wonder objects (for example, magic mirror) were proposed (and realized in prototype variants) for storytelling in the modern museum [17]. In [3] the information system using a City Metaphor is described. In this system magic/fantastic opportunities are used on regular basis. Among these opportunities there is the ‘Tunneling through space’ presenting the typical adoption from Science Fiction. Also rooms with ‘magic windows’ may be considered as a magic (science fiction) feature. ‘Magic window’ is an interesting expansion of a well-known Information Wall metaphor.

On our opinion the metaphors adopted from magic fairy tales, science fiction and fantasy novels are more preferable than the metaphors constructed on the basis of complex and gloomy magic rituals and Voodoo techniques.

Two famous book of Russian scientist Vladimir Propp (Morphology of the Folk Tale and The Historical Roots of the Wonder Tale) are devoted to fairy tales. (See translation one of them into English in [18].) In this work the sets of fantastic situations, characters (among them - the hero, the false hero, the assistant, the wrecker) and the structure of magic fairy tales are explored in detail, and also their connection with the basic ancient myths is shown.

In fairy tales of different nations one can find very interesting sets of ‘magic features’. In the following sections we consider, what is behind this conception and how magic may be useful when searching of metaphors for interactive systems and systems based on virtual reality environments.

3. Magic. What is this?

Here we consider fantastic magic, selecting samples that are fruitful for interface and virtual reality metaphors.

Magic transport. In fairy tales and fantastic novels one can find:

A. Teleportation - instant carry by means of verbal influence (spell) or by means of manipulations with any objects or uses of such devices as teleports;

B. Rather slow moving by means of magic transport. A magic transfer may take place both for subjects, and for (animated and inanimate) objects of magic. (See the Pic 1 as the example of the flying carpet.)

Magic navigation means - for example, the milestone with magic legend ( see as the illustration the picture of Russian painter Victor Vasnetsov ‘A Knight at Crossroads’ - Pic. 2)  or the magic clew, following to which one may reach up Fairland.

Magic communications means. An example - the magic mirror tuned on the interesting character for his/her protection or observation.

Wonderful (additional to normal) opportunities on manipulations with objects, processes and even natural phenomena. In some variants - superforce, invulnerability, etc. Generally speaking one can use the term ‘magic power’ (or ’superpower’). These manipulations and power may be carried out through spells and objective magic, and also through the universal manipulator - a magic wand. (See Pic. 3-4 as the examples of magic wand using in the films about Harry Potter.)

One can set off the general class of the magic objects as objects possessing ‘magic properties’. Thus it is possible the magic expansion of usual functionality (seven-league boots), as well as attributing to object of additional, unusual in reality functions (for example Aladdin’s Wonderful Lamp used for a call, activization and neutralization of magic beings   see Pic 5.). For a designation of the magic objects used as manipulators, transport and communication means one can use also the term ‘magic tools’.

Magic transformations of objects. As an example one can consider the construction of palaces by Jinnee in the Arabic fairy tale or transformation a pumpkin into the carriage for Cinderella.

Similarly to magic objects magic subjects may be set off, i.e. evil, good or neutral (with respect to heroes) magicians possessing superopportunities. (As a variant - magic anthropomorphic beings, for example, fairies, gnomes, trolls, jinn, etc.)

Magic transformations of persons. In fairy tales such transformations may be spontaneous, unexpected for the characters, or transformations may be results of magic actions (some magic spells or manipulations). These transformations can be carried out in view of sympathetic magic (that is magic based on some similarity).

Pic. 3-4 the Magic Wand (Harry Potter’s films)

4. What does practice show?

Our attention was involved with two ‘magic-fantastic’ metaphors from the novels (and also the films) about Harry Potter. These are Speaking and Moving Portraits and the Map on which shifts of persons under observation are visible. In this case portraits of dead persons are the active objects. They may address to alive characters of the novel without requests, and even pass from one portrait framework to another to do a visit to each other. The map continuously traces and shows the site of an observable person.

There are a lot of active, anthropomorphic and speaking characters in fairy tales and in science fiction novels such as Golem, robots of K. Capek and I. Asimov, and so on. Similarly there are various variants of magic/fantastic means of navigation and searching both in fairy tales, and in a fantasy.

In these magic metaphors visualness is not so important then spontaneous activity inherent in generated objects and subjects. Spontaneous activity can be considered as means to imitate reasonable behavior. It is necessary also subjectness of characters (i.e. their existence independently of users) to imitate reasonable behavior. In the fantastic and popular scientific literature and films such active computer ’subjects’ have appeared some decade ago. In modern computer practice agents who are active under own initiative, frequently cause irritation. We have been started our research of active intellectual agents to understand what, why and where have to do active intellectual agents.

The idea of the ‘active’ map showing a real landscape and movings of objects on it was considered. ‘Activity’ of a map can be connected to events, the same type, as well as in navigating systems - travel of this or that district, turn, crossing and so forth, but ‘activity’ can be and ’spontaneous’, connected with time events. The other idea may be possible the development of the ‘active’ scheme of a protected apartment or territory. In this case tracking systems and the ‘marked’ persons may be necessary. Movings of all without exception persons may be shown on the scheme, and labels allow to identify them. In connection with the given ideas it is possible to note, that works in the given direction on the basis of systems such as GPS are actively carried out, and there are examples of the interactive maps which are performing roles of guide-adviser. Also now it is easy to develop speaking anthropomorphic agents-avatars, and there are a lot of examples of such realizations.

Pic. 5 -  Aladdin’s Wonderful Lamp (Disney films)

We have decided to connect the idea of active agents constructed on a metaphor of the speaking portrait, with the expert system. The point is that the active agent with its (possible) importunate activity is warranted almost only in case of learning systems. The logic of project development led us to the next idea the idea of ‘active textbook’ [19]. This textbook have to be able to analyze the pupil behavior during textbook studying, for example, time of reading, manipulations with the text and so on. Basing on these analyses ‘active textbook’ may detail teaching material, search new data sources or turn to other things. The analysis of a user behavior may be realized at a syntactic level (at a level of operations with the mouse and the keyboard, eye tracking, etc.), and on semantic one (monitoring of opened files or sites, applications under execution, recording of events, etc.) Such analyses and elements of programming by demonstrations will allow our system to learn to teach during the process of its using and to operate in the given direction ‘independently’. Also it is possible to supply the system by means adviser functions. The system will be like clever human being adviser and will not impose the opinion, but will prepare pieces of advice and decisions. The human-like behavior may be provide by psychologically caused braking of the system activity.

In the visualization systems constructed on the basis of virtual reality environments, there are the tasks where complex manipulations with objects are necessary, for example, to pull out something, to cut or to zoom. As a metaphor of the tool for such tasks, first of all the idea of a magic wand comes into designer’s on mind. But a magic wand has not differentiated action and hence requires means to change modes of operating. In the specialized systems it is more natural to use specialized ‘magic tools’.

As a metaphor of the tool for such tasks, first of all the idea of a magic wand comes into designer’s on mind. But a magic wand has not differentiated action and hence requires means to change modes of operating. In the specialized systems it is more natural to use specialized ‘magic tools’.

For example, in medical information system as manipulator’s metaphor the idea of ‘magic lancet’ is offered. ‘Lancet’ allows to dissects this or that organism area for the profound exploring. During any human organism object ‘dissecting’, all physical changes are visualized, as if we did it in a reality. In case of a combination the ‘magic lancet’ metaphor with three-dimensional model of human body, one may obtain the virtual model of operations and the prototype system of information visualization for the medical purposes is under construction now. Systems based on this metaphor may be used for example for surgery learning [20].

5. Conclusions

Our preliminary research shows the applicability of ‘magic’ metaphors for tasks in the interactive systems and systems basing on virtual reality environments. For example, the search of metaphors of moving in virtual environments may be needed magic transportation techniques, such as teleports and flights of various types (the flying carpet, the flying ship, Roc, a winged horse). And metaphors of intellectual agents-informants may be based on magic means of navigation.

In fairy tales and fantastic novels one can find a lot of the magic phenomena, such as magic knowledge, war magic, fulfillments of desires, telepathy and thought-reading, etc. But we yet don’t know definitely, whether these feature useful for searching of metaphors. Though for a choice of metaphors for manipulations with objects and processes in virtual environments ‘the war magic’ may be interesting. The war magic is connected with transferring the events which have place in magic space into reality. For example, any variations of ‘magic chess’, where games with chess-men are transferred into land battles, or the ‘naval’ military magic where models of fight in a vat with water are transferred into sea battles. These ideas (partly close to Voodoo magic) one may find in a number of folk and literary fairy tales.Let’s pay attention that folk fairy tales are governed by rigorous logic of a plot development and a choice of characters. By the way, in literary fairy tales and fantasy novels, as a rule, this logic is observed. The analysis shows, that very exotic ‘magic’ metaphors may be useful to form any interface features. However realization of interactive systems on their base may be as complex as contradictory. Magic metaphors are frequently transformed to abstract interface opportunities, not keeping the appreciable connection with initial ideas. For example, in case of Speaking Portrait metaphor the anthropomorphness of an agent turned out not necessary. But there is necessary to endow it the function of the magic assistant, - conductor into the world of knowledge. Of course the transmuted abstractness of metaphors is an advantage, than a defect of their use.

In the systems created for example for office automation or for end-user programming the presence of magic interface manuals may appear as distracting or even irritating factor. However use such ‘magic features’ as automatic returning electronic analogs of paper documents on its place after the ending of processing (see [21]) may be carried out without any special warnings even for users - non-specialists. Such features are well conformed to common sense of clerks and does not demand unnecessary efforts during operations. Infringement of magic logic due to any absurd ideas or to farfetched subjective likeness may lead to serious mistakes. The sharp criticism of interface metaphors, as such, is connected to infringement of magic logic in early variant Apple’s interface (using the trash can metaphor to eject disks) [4].

6. References

[1] Repenning A. 1993. Agensheets: A Tool for Building Domain-Oriented, Dynamics, Visual Environment // Ph. D. Dissertation. University of Colorado at Boulder. Department of Computer Science. CU-CS-693-93. December 1993.

[2] Averbukh V.L. Visualization Metaphors. Programming and Computer Software. Vol. 27, No. 5, 2001 pp. 227-237.

[3] Dieberger A. 1994. Navigation in Textual Virtual Environments using a City Metaphor, PhD Thesis at the Vienna University of Technology. http://homepage.mac.com/juggle5/WORK/publications/thesis/ThesisPDF.html

[4]  Kay A. 1990. User interface: A personal view, In The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design, B. Laurel (ed.), Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts, 1990, pp. 191-207.

[5] Poupyrev I. 2001 3D interaction strategies and metaphors http://people.cs.vt.edu/~bowman/3dui.org/course_notes/siggraph2001/metaphors.pdf

[6] Kuhn, W. 1995. 7±2 Questions and Answers about Metaphors for GIS User Interfaces.  Cognitive Aspects of Human-Computer Interaction for Geographic Information Systems. (Nyerges, T.L., et al., eds.), Series D: Behavioural and Social Sciences, Vol. 83, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 113-122.

[7] Rohrer T (1995 Feelings Stuck in a GUI web: metaphors, image-schemas, and designing the human computer interface, or Metaphors we compute by: bringing magic into interface design. 1995.

[8] Madsen K. H. 2000. Magic by Metaphors in Designing Augmented Reality Environments Proceedings of DARE 2000 on Designing augmented reality environments Elsinore, Denmark , Pages: 167 -169.

[9] Grosjean J., Coquillart S. 1999. The Magic Mirror: A Metaphor for Assisting the Exploration of Virtual Worlds. In Spring Conference on Computer Graphics, pp 125-129

[10] Tognazzini, 1999. B. Principles, Techniques, and Ethics of Stage Magic and Their Application to Human lnterface Design. Proceedings of the ACM INTERCHI-93 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp 355-362, Amsterdam , 1999.

[11] Svanaes D., Verplank W. 2000. In Search of Metaphors for Tangible User Interfaces // Interfaces, DARE’2000, ACM, 2000 http://www.idi.ntnu.no/~dags/papers/dare2000.pdf

[12] Pierce J.S., Stearns B.C., Pausch R. 1999. Voodoo Dolls: Seamless Interaction at Multiple Scales in Virtual Environments // Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics Proceedings of the 1999 symposium on Interactive 3D graphics Atlanta, Georgia, United States Pages: 141-145, 1999.

[13] Shumin Zhai, Kandogan E., Smith B.A, Selker T. 1999. In Search of the ‘Magic Carpet’: Design and Experimentation of a Bimanual 3D Navigation Interface Journal of Visual Languages and Computing (1999) 10, 3-17.

[14] Ciger J., Gutierrez M., Vexo F., Thalmann D. 2003. The Magic Wand // Spring Conference on Computer Graphics Proceedings of the 19th spring conference on Computer Graphics Budmerice, Slovakia SESSION: Virtual reality, Pages: 119-124, 2003.

[15] Kahn K. 1995. Metaphor Design. Case Study of an Animated Programming Environment // Proceedings of the 1995 Computer Game Developer Conference April, 1995, Santa Clara, California

[16] Rawat T.J. 2005. WONDER OBJECTS Magic and Interactive Storytelling // Proceedings of ECHISE’05, held in Conjunction with PERVASIVE’05, May 11, 2005, Munich, Germany. Pp. 91-96.

[17]  Ciger J., Gutierrez M., Vexo F., Thalmann D. The Magic Wand // Proceedings of the 19th spring conference on Computer graphics Budmerice, Slovakia, 2003, pp. 119-124.

[18] Propp V.  1958. Morphology of the Folk Tale // International Journal if American Linguistics, V. 24, N 4, pt 3. Oct. 1958.

[19] Averbukh V.L., Dernov G.S. 2008. Using of active information agents in learning environments (In Russian) - In Press.

[20] Averbukh V.L., Bakhterev M.O., Baydalin A.Yu., Gorbashevskiy D. Yu., Ismagilov D.R., Kazantsev A.Yu., Nebogatikova P.V., Popova A.V., Vasev P.A. 2008. Searching and Analysis of Interface and Visualization Metaphors // Human-Computer Interaction, New Developments. / Edited by Kikuo Asai. Chapter 3, Vienna, In-teh. ISBN 978-953-7619-14-5, pp. 49-84.

[21] Trushenkova, P. 2007. Local Application Metaphor: How to Create and Use. In  Electronic Proceedings of HCII 2007, Beijing, 2007.

Vladimir L. Averbukh (Ph. D. On Computer Sciences) is the head of the researcher’s section on Computer Visualization in Institute on Mathematics and Mechanics (Urals Branch of Russian Academy of Science, Ekaterinburg. Russia). Also he is the associate professor on Computer Science and Control Processes Department in Urals State University. His main research interests lie in such areas as Scientific Visualization, Software Visualization, the Theory of Computer Metaphors. His teaching activity is linked as with lecture courses on Scientific Visualization and Software Visualization, as with supervising of Master and Ph. D. students.

Link of section on Computer Visualization: http://www.cv.imm.uran.ru/.

E-mail: averbukh@imm.uran.ru

Address: GSP 384, Inst. Math. Mech. 16. S. Kovalevskoi, Ekaterinburg. Russia. 620219.

Telephone:+7 3433 753496

Fax:+7 3433 742581

Indian Scenario / Article 8.

Sept 2008, HCI Vistas Vol-IV

Author: Dr. Dinesh Katre

How best can mobile technology support social causes?

USID Foundation must be thanked and applauded for selecting such thought provoking topic for the panel discussion during the conference at Bangalore. Through this brief article, I share with you the information gathered during my study for this panel discussion. I also wish to share my insights with you, as the revelations of this study indicate many opportunities for user experience professionals. Design and engineering students along with NGOs can take up exciting projects to help the social cause and enhance the social capabilities of mobile technology.

This article focuses on ’social usability of mobile’ in terms of social development and constructive use of mobile for a positive social change. Let us first understand the difference between personal and social usability.

Personal Usability- Focuses on addressing the needs and concerns of an individual. It pays great dividends to the company in terms of business and customer satisfaction!

Social Usability- Focuses on addressing the needs and concerns of society at large, in terms of impact across masses. It may or may not make business sense.

Rural Mobile Penetration

This topic is very relevant to India, as there are plenty of burning social issues needing solutions. India is witnessing exponential growth of mobile subscribers, from 300 million this year to 560 million by 2012, as projected. However, 65% of rural geography of India is still waiting to be tapped by mobile service providers. As per the report of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), rural subscribers form only 21% of the total mobile subscribers in India. On the whole, rural mobile penetration is less than 5%.

Improving the reach of mobile in rural areas should be our top priority, as most of the social issues like illiteracy, epidemics, natural calamities, poverty, unemployment, water scarcity, female foeticide, superstitions, etc. are faced prominently by the rural population. You must be wondering what has mobile to do with all this?

As per the GSM Associations report, our planet has over 3 billion mobile subscribers. If you consider the total population of world i.e. 6.6 billion, mobile phones are spreading very rapidly. Mobile phone, like a trusted companion walks along with us in the most private and public places! It is the most powerful source of information and a medium of communication. The fusion of mobile telephony with multiple gadgets (computer, internet, television, radio, camera, variety of sensors, and what not) makes it a fairy tale magic wand cum cristal ball! The biggest challenge is how innovatively can we use its immense potential for a desired social transformation.

Lack of value bias

Whether you wish or not mobile technology is impacting our lives. But there is no way to ensure whether this impact is constructive or destructive. I sincerely believe that-

Any technology is born barbaric until we humanize it, socialize it and civilize it!

During our discussion at USID conference, Kentaro Toyama aptly interpreted my standpoint as €˜lack of value bias in mobile technology€™. I have already elaborated this point of view about technology, as part of my article titled ‘prism of user experience design’ earlier. He added further that mobile technology is like a gun, which can be used for self-defense or to kill somebody. Use of mobile technology too manifests in both socially responsible as well as irresponsible ways. Let us consider the examples of its constructive and destructive use.

Constructive social use

Mobile has been helpful for rescue operations during floods, cyclones and disaster management. Blood banks in Kenya send SMS updates about the stock to local hospitals. There are examples of using SMS for sex education, HIV awareness creation, sending weather updates to fisherman and market information to farmers, etc. PDA phones are also used for capturing medical data of villagers. There are reports that discuss how mobile phones are helping in poverty alleviation. SMS polls by television game shows and news channels are rooting the democratic values even deeper. These examples are eloquent enough to tell what cell phones are capable of.

Destructive social use

At the same time, hoodlums are also busy circulating bomb hoax SMSs and pornographic MMSs to cause social havoc. Mobile communication has given boost to all types of business activities. But we can€™t ignore that drug dealers, prostitutes, burglars, terrorists and other dangerous anti-social elements are also causing tremendous social nuisance using the power of mobile technology. Due to absence of value bias the technology is empowering angels and evils equally! There is a need to build socially responsible mobile applications that are embedded with human values. It is also important to note the psychological impact on mobile users (such as social alienation), camera-phones invading the privacy of people, accidents caused by cell phone distraction, health hazards due to electromagnetic radiation of mobile stations, neck problems, and the recent BlackBerry Thumb (Repetitive Stress Injury). In the following deliberation, some case studies are presented from usability perspective.

Social usability of ‘condom a capella ringtone’ (HIV awareness campaign)

At the beginning of the panel discussion, I carried out a quick survey on the much hyped up ‘condom ringtone’, the HIV awareness campaign produced by BBC World Service Trust and funded by Melinda Gates Foundation. Out of the 100+ conference attendees, we found that only 3 persons (including myself) had downloaded this ringtone, though almost all of them were aware of this campaign. Out of these three persons none was actually using this ringtone on their mobile device. The ringtone consists of musical recitation of the word €˜condom€™ in western and stylized accent, which is not understandable to an average Indian.

Secondly, I doubt to what extent the conservative society in India will accept the idea of breaking out with a condom ringtone in public places. Many would find it extremely embarrassing. It is against the socio-cultural mindset of Indians, which can not be changed overnight. I feel that a deeper study of social psychology of Indian population is necessary to understand the socio-cultural values that make them so conservative and apprehensive about this topic. Seemingly, the television advertisement of this campaign has generated more hype than the use of actual ringtone. The ad is quite obscure and indirect. I understood this advertisement only after reading an article about this campaign in Times of India. I am yet to see anyone using this ringtone in public.

This communication is reaching the educated urban population, which is mostly aware of HIV disease and its prevention. HIV awareness is required more in the lower economic strata, where mobile penetration is very poor. The message does not seem to be reaching where it should. The campaign is surely helping Microsoft in goodwill creation and establishing a socially responsible brand for their business. The creative campaign designers will surely bag an award amidst an elite gathering. But how much has this campaign actually helped the social cause is a matter of investigation. Serving a social cause through mobile technology needs much more serious impact analysis.

Idea’s education-for-all campaign

Idea’s ‘education for all’ campaign focuses on education of girl children, an important social issue. It presents a dreamy vision of how mobile technology is helping this cause. Great brand building strategy! is what we can say about this campaign. e-learning and interactive multimedia has been around for last two decades. The technology providers always talk in terms of possibilities. Effectiveness of learning through electronic media is still debated and doubted by many. Use of mobile for education is undoubtedly a very imaginative concept but there is a need to focus on actual impact.

Use of mobile technology during Bihar floods and Gustav hurricane

I also tried to observe the difference in use of mobile phone for evacuation purpose during the recent Kosi flood in Bihar, India and Gustav hurricane in America. There are news reports on how cell phones turned savior in flooded Bihar. But what we find is that cell phones were used only for making phone calls and sending SMSs to seek help. Aid for flood victims is also being raised using SMS. Is that all one can do using mobile technology? Let us see how mobile was used during Gustav hurricane.

During the fury of Gustav hurricane the mobile companies offered special services, free SMS, free phone calls, text message charity for collection of funds and much more. Callers were also helped with mobile alerts, GPS positioning, emergency services notification, emergency calls and emergency directions. Mobile service providers strengthened their networks to ensure that their subscribers face no communication failure in the time of emergency.

I feel that evacuation plans, precautionary guidelines, dos and don’ts for flood hit villages, weather forecasts, and other helpful information could have been circulated through SMS to Bihar flood victims. The rescue operations could have been synchronized more effectively. Mobile service providers could have played a more proactive role to help their customers in Bihar. Even before I finish writing this para, there is a news of floods in Nashik and coastal areas of Orissa. Lessons need to be learnt faster, as it is costing us lives of people.

Need to strengthen social usability of mobile

If the flood affected villagers are to be helped / guided through mobile messaging, which language would they prefer? English? The villagers in Bihar would have understood the evacuation plans in English? Is Hindi SMS well supported on Mobile handsets? No! Would illiterate villagers understand SMS instructions in Hindi? No! How would the illiterate villagers send SMS? Pictorial language? Have we defined a pictorial SMS script for illiterate villagers? No!

Present mobile handsets require multiple keystrokes to type the desired Devnagari letter. While standing on the rooftop of a sinking hut, do you think it is possible to type a rescue SMS in Hindi or any other Indian language? Seems very difficult!

Socially useful applications with basic technological extensions given below are essential for enhancing the social usability of mobile. Translators from English to regional languages- It will help those people who do not understand English. Text-to-speech for regional languages- Illiterate people can be helped with reading the text in regional languages. Speech-to-text-for regional languages- Illiterate people can be helped with converting their thoughts into text.

Could there be specially enabled mobile handsets for the people who live in flood prone areas or cyclonic regions? A handset with a big SOS (Save Our Souls) button? Why not?

The collective efforts between mobile service providers, handset manufacturers, technology developers, government agencies, non-government social service organizations, social scientists and user experience practitioners are essential to create constructive social impact using mobile technology. But who wants to work for a social cause? There is no money in social service. Therefore, innovative business models are needed to address the motivational and sustainance requirements, if social usability of mobile technology had to improve.

The reports and articles related to social impact of mobile technology-

[1] Anuradha Shukla, OnStar Announces Emergency Services for Hurricane Gustav Victims, Disaster Planning, TMCnet, September 02, 2008

[2] Asheeta Bhavnani, Rowena Won-Wai Chiu, Subramaniam Janakiram, Peter Silarszky, The Role of mobile phones in sustainable poverty reduction, ICT Policy Division, Global Information and Communication Department, June 2008

[3] Cell phone accidents, pictures and stories

[4] Electromagnetic fields and public health, World Health Organization (WHO), June 2000

[5] John Beatn, Judy Wajcman Impact of mobile phones in Australia, The Australian Telecommunications Conference, Published by Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, September 2004

[6] KatrinVerclas, Research on Economic and Social Impact of Mobile Communications: GSMA Development Fund, MobileActive.org, August 25, 2008

[7] KatrinVerclas, Mobile Phones and the Flood in Bihar, India, MobileArtive.org, September 10, 2008

[8] Mission Rural India, Voice & Data, December 2007

[9] Monthly Economic Analysis, Fortune 2008, A Report Published by Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, May (2008), Pages 5-6.

[10] Role of Mobiles in Disasters and Emergencies, A Report by GSM Association, December 2005

[11] Sheila Kinkade, Katrin Verclas, Wireless Technology for Social Change: Trends in Mobile Use by NGOs, Access to Communications Publications Series, A Report by United Nations Foundation and The Vodafone Group Foundation

[12] Social Impact of Mobile Telephony in Latin America, A Report by GSM Association, 2006

[13] The Social Impact of Mobile Telephony, ITU Telecom

[14] 3 Billion GSM Connections On The Mobile Planet Reports The GSMA, April 2008

A snap taken during USID conference-

UX Design / Article 7.

June 2008, HCI Vistas Vol-IV

Author: Chandan Sharma

(In case of eBusiness and online marketing, the potential customers are users too. Their interaction with the eBusiness software needs to be considered from user’s point of view. However, their business transactions have to be seen from customer’s point of view. We are using the popular term ‘User Experience’ quite often in the article. However, in specific context we refer to the ‘customer experience’ as well.)

What is your idea of creating better user experience? Is it primarily usability? When we say eBusiness we mean branding, website leads, business conversions and better quality of service, which would further derive more sales, more revenue.

eBusiness in India is still at infancy, though it is maturing gradually. People are learning from experiences, observations and reading about what is really working and what is not.

Companies are focusing primarily on their e-Commerce product, which could be a website or web based application or even a mobile application. Once a product is ready after ensuring its usability, accessibility and other important elements that help spawn good experience, the company launches the product, promotes it through various offline and online media and then wait to analyze the revenues.

But there are some important aspects, which are often neglected by eBusinesses. Should the companies focus only on the final product for a better user experience? Do we need consideration for all elements that impact the total experience?

Let€™s see what a user interacts with before he reached the final product.

As illustrated in the above diagram, very often the user does not reach final product straight away. There are various channels that direct the users to the eBusiness website. Based on the combined experience of all these elements, the customer/user develops the desire to purchase something or apply for the business offer.

We must notice the fact that the potential customer may not directly come to your website, you will require to persuade the customers, attract their attention by applying variety of techniques. The potential customer takes time to form an opinion and develop confidence about the website or the e-commerce product. Hence, the entire user experience should be the primary concern for all e-businesses.

Let€™s now discuss the various elements separately and understand the possibility of enhancing the total user experience of an eBusiness.

1. Splash page

Splash page as we all know is the initial page that captures user€™s attention and drives him/her to your website. Once a user interacts with the splash page, s/he is more likely to click on the links or images to reach the main website. Same usability principles which we apply for any other website may be applied to the ebusiness website.

Same user experience principles are applicable for the design of Landing Pages or Lead Generation Pages. The forms are expected to be usable and fully functional. In online marketing, landing page is the one that appears when potential customer has clicked the web-advertisement or a search engine result link.

Here are some important considerations which designing the splash page.

• Main highlight should be €˜above the fold€™ making sense to the splash page
  (above the fold- is the area of a web page that visitors can see without scrolling)
• Branding elements should be composed above the fold so as to build more trust
• Action buttons should be highlighted separately for clear understanding of actions
• Content should be very well formatted and should be minimum to avoid complexity and confusion
• Avoid distractive elements
• Important information must to be highlighted

2. Microsite

Microsites or weblets help in enhancing the primary website. These are a clustor of pages representing a particular segment or scheme, or product in the website. These are again meant to generate business leads and enhance the brand.

However, one very important aspect to consider is the URL. The typical URL of a microsite is shown below-

www.CompanyName.com/ProductName

Based on our experience we have seen that the URLs need to be memorable. URLs consisting of rhyming sounds, catchy and meaningful words are quickly remembered by users and you find them visiting after long gaps. URL is also an important part of the user experience.

3. Banner Ads

It is believed that a picture is worth thousands of words. However, the banner ads are one of the most controversial eBusiness techniques, the more animated or flashy they are the more the problems. Banner ads have been there since the inception of online marketing. There are conflicting theories about the banner design.

4. EDM (Electronic Direct Mailer) or Newsletters

E-mailers that are sent to the users, registered or non-registered. E-mailers too contribute to the user experience of an eBusiness as it gives you the first exposure of information and generates the leads.

EDM is designed with optimum information, understandable content, functional links, and persuasive buttons. Use of visual content has to be optimized. The user should be given an option to Opt-Out and other details that he might need to know.

Most important technical aspect is to consider the behavior of various email clients as that can impact presentation of e-mailer. Therefore, EDMs have to be tested for various email clients before it is sent out.

5. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Findability is an important factor in for User Experience. It is ideal for the eBusiness websites to appear on the first page for a relevant search on popular search engines. Try for the important keywords related to your domain, general keywords, common phrases and sometimes even the wrongly spelt words, ensure that your site shows up on the first page.

Potential customers tend to notice and explore the search results on the first page. Repeated appearance as part of search results increases its familiarity, which leads to more trust and credibility generation.

How locatable your website is, how noticeable your products are to your potential customers? Are they getting exactly what they want? Does the URL of eBusiness captures the essence of your business? These are the basic questions that need to be answered while designing the eBusiness website.

6. SEM (Search Engine Marketing)

Search Engine Marketing is believed to generate more revenues to companies than traditional offline marketing. Company like Google provide services (Google Adwords) on Search Engine as well as Content Network advertisement (contextual advertisement). These services are more concerned about how to serve the customers with what they want and when. An eBusiness company can leverage upon these services.

Contextual Advertising

User Experience Goals of eBusiness

It is not enough to ensure the usability for eBusiness and online marketing. It should also achieve the user experience design goals in terms of-

• Trust
• Reliability
• Confidentiality
• Security
• Effectiveness
• Efficiency
• Satisfaction

Evaluation of customer/user experience

The customer/user experience of an eBusiness product can be evaluated based on following parameters.

• Better conversions
• Increased ROI
• Brand recognition
• Word of mouth
• Repeat customers

Successful examples in Indian context

Though the online marketing arena is still at its infant stage in India, however, very successful experiments have been done by companies like Avaya GlobalConnect Ltd., Dell, Campaq, American Express, ICICI Bank, Yatra.com.

These companies considered complete User Experience as their target, which includes banner ads, EDMs, SEO initiatives and even mobile commerce. AmEx is said to have done business in millions on Google Mobile AdSense ads in India.

Conclusion

User Experience Design for eBusiness should include not just the main product but also the online marketing strategy in terms of banner ads, emailers, splash page, SEO initiatives, URL of microsites, etc.

References

165 Design Guidelines for Newsletter Subscription, Content, Account Maintenance, and RSS News Feeds Based on Usability Studies, Neilson Norman Group Report on Email Newsletter Usability, Third Edition, 2008.

Use of Cognitive Tricks on Web Advertising, Dinesh Katre, User Behavior & Psychology / Article 10, Journal of HCI Vistas, Vol -II, Nov 2006

Banner blindness €“ Old and New Findings Useit.com Alert box.

Online Search Ads Faring Better Than Expensive Displays, The New York Times, By Stephanie Clifford and Miguel Helft, May 19, 2008

Google Help Center for Google Ads User Experience

Chandan Sharma has 8 years of experience in the field of World Wide Web. He has Masters in Computer Science and MBA in Marketing. Currently working with Avaya GlobalConnect Ltd at Gurgaon, India as Online Marketing and eBusiness Manager for multiple intranet and internet projects.

In the field of user experience he has been trained from HFI Mumbai and had been studying Usability, Credibility and Online Persuasion for World Wide Web in Indian context.

UE Process / Article 6.

May 2008, HCI Vistas Vol-IV

Author: Pushkaraj Mirajkar

In most of the product/ service based organizations, technical writers are based offshore. They collaborately work with the product development team and create documents like User Manuals, Setup Guides, Quick-Start Guides, In-built help in software’s, Online Documentation, which accompany the final product.

Technical writers usually create such documents which contribute to assist the user for any product they use.

Documentation is more of an “After Thought” process; and in many respects documentation tries to compensate for the lack of intuition in a product.

A critical point to use these technical documents is when the users face a Cognitive Friction (as mentioned by Alan Cooper in his popural book The Inmates Are Running The Asylum), while interacting with the product and they are now forced to refer to these documents to achieve their tasks.

Challenges faced offshore

Technical writers are involved at a very late stage in the product-development life cycle due to which the quality of the documentation suffers.

1. Time bound deliverables

Due to late involvement; technical writers are bounded to create documents with a quick turn around time.

2. Closely associated with the development team hence they are

a. Dictated by the product development team

b. Biased and tend to use technical jargons

c. More focused on the functions and features rather than the user’s tasks

3. No access to the actual users

Technical writers usually don’t have an in-dept knowledge about the target audience for whom they are catering to hence the documentation-

a. Does not speak the user’s language

b. Reflects a lot of cultural issues

Technical writers can overcome these challenges by

• Getting the organization to have Technical Writing as a planned activity
• Involving them in the early stage of the product life cycle
• By creating User Focused Usable documents, which is the most critical activity Testing documents of a product with actual users is key to create Usable documents.

Conducting a Usability Test for Technical Documentation

As Technical Writer’s are based offshore and they need to connect with the actual users worldwide to conduct a Usability Tests for their documents. Tools and Technology can be used to bridge this gap. They can either test their documents-

• Remotely (offshore) OR
• One-on-One with actual users

Remote Usability Testing

• Using WebEx a web/video conferencing tool documents could be shared online with the representative users. Phone/ Skype or any other chat messenger could be used as a conversation medium along with WebEx.
• Another medium to test the users is installing Morae software on the client’s machine and invite users for the test.

Advantages of Morae

• Using a Webcam, users’ expressions can be captured
• Users actions can be recorded and monitored

One-on-One testing with actual users

This is the best way to test your documents with the actual users, as you can physically see users stumble using the products and refer to the documents. A scenario-based testing can be conducted. E.g. for a cell phone, a user could be using his handset while he travelling, or office etc. We could use these real life scenarios and test the efficacy of the technical documents. Using any of the methods above, a Usability Test can be conducted with the actual/representative users. Mentioned below are the details of how to conduct a Usability Test.

With whom should you conduct your usability test?

Usability testing of documents is conducted with user’s who are likely to purchase and use your product. So for e.g. in a library system, you must test your documents with librarians.

Why do you do Usability Testing?

The objective of usability testing is to identify specific concerns and goals the user might face while using the documents for the product being developed. In a typical Usability Test you want to-

1. Choose 3-4 critical tasks
   The documents which you create could be very elaborate and testing the entire document is not feasible. You can choose 4 to 5 most critical tasks which are important from a user’s perspective and where YOU think the user would likely refer to the document while performing the task.
2. Create a Test Plan
   In usability testing the most critical step is to develop a plan for the test. The plan should reflect what you are going to test with the user and what kind of data you are looking for. Below is a table which can help you design a test plan.

3. Benchmark the Test

Why should you benchmark a test?

You must know what would be a reasonable and realistic time estimate, errors etc. that a user will tolerate before they abandon or get frustrated with their task.

What will you benchmark?

• Ability to complete tasks
• Time taken to complete a task successfully while referring to the document
• No. of errors the users encounter while referring to the document
• Level of satisfaction while referring to the document

How do we set benchmarks for the test?
Typical benchmarks are set on the users Task and his Goals.

E.g. Task: By referring to a user manual how can a user send an email by using his
newly purchased mobile phone.

Goal: 85% of all participants should be able to complete this task within 2 minute
(this is your benchmark assumption)

You could also study the competitor’s product by using the same usability benchmarks and get a comparative idea.

4. Conduct Test on the document

• How many Tests should you conduct and How Many Participants should you test?
  The number of participants is frequently dictated by the budget and time allotted for the test. The best results come from testing no more than 5 users and running as many small tests as you can afford.

If the no. of users exceeds beyond 5 your observations become repetitive hence there is no more value added to your test results.

• Conducting the test
  You will now conduct the test with the target users by narrating to them the scenarios and asking them to perform the task. In this process you must ask the users to Think-Aloud while they perform their tasks. You can record the data by either video/audio recording of the test session or by taking notes.

Points to keep in mind while conducting the test?

• Making the participant feel comfortable
  The most important thing to remember is to take good care of participants. Make them comfortable.
• Telling the participant that you are testing the document not them.
  Users are usually intimidated with the term Testing. So participants need to be informed that you are testing the Document and not them. In fact you can approach it as help us evaluate the document.
• Staying Neutral with the participant
  You conduct a test to listen and watch your users, not to demonstrate, not to train nor to teach; You must not say either negative or positive things about the document. You should only encourage the participant to think aloud. If the participant asks a question, reply by saying something like “What do you think?” or “I’m interested to know what you would do.”
• Taking good notes
  If an additional note-taker can be present at the test, they should capture what the participant does in myriad details as possible. When participants do not take one of the expected pathways, it is most useful to note what exactly they would do.

What do you gain by following this process?

• Learn about the discrepancies in your documentation
• Apply lessons learnt in the testing to the rest of the documentation

Key points

• Usable product documents can be planned by the organization by having the Technical Writers involved in the very early stages in the product development cycle
• It is important that technical writers test their documents with actual users so that they can have a higher confidence level that the documents which accompany the products are €œeasy-to-use€ and which speak the users language.
• They also need to sit remotely from the development team, which would help them write the users language rather than influencing the document with technical jargon

Other ways of contributing usability into the product

While Technical Writers study the product for which they plan to create a document, they could also note down points which they think could be discrepancies in the product such as

• Terminologies which the user may find difficult to understand
• Any content which is too elaborate and difficult for the user to read
• Error messages that are difficult to understand particularly if they are expressed in technical jargon rather than in plain English
• Headers/ Labels that may not be intuitive to the content
• These points could be sent to the client or to the development team in a documented memo that could be used in the present or a later version of the product.

References

1. From the actor to the script: A Human Factors Case Study Iyengar, J. Human Factors in Practice, 1999
2. Why you need to test with 5 users? Jakob Nielsen’s Alert box, March 19, 2000
3. Usability.gov
4. The art of usability benchmarking
5. How many users do you need to test?

Pushkaraj Mirajkar, a Computer Engineer by profession, started his career into the space of web, and later moved into the world of creativity. He is a certified professional in User-Centered analysis, design and Usability testing from the Ohio University, USA.

In the field of Usability and User Interfaces, he has catered to various challenging domains including e-Commerce, Health, Lifesciences, Collaborative space, Finance etc. This involved product analysis, UI Design and usability testing. He has gained valuable skills in understanding designs for ease of use, and related ergonomic studies.

UE Process / Article 5.

March 2008, HCI Vistas Vol-IV

Authors: Jhumkee Iyengar and Ranjit Gadgil

The high tech and world class IT Corporations in the rapidly growing city of Pune, India and its low-tech Government organizations serving the public form a striking contrast. The gap in work cultures between the two makes joint projects a challenge, even though much needed and apparently feasible. In this poster we present an approach where an intermediary role was adopted to bridge the gap in work cultures and a user centered design methodology was adopted in the interests of the common citizen, to successfully complete two projects, the Pune Municipal Transport (PMT) website and the Pune Garden Department website.

Click to enlarge the poster.

Jhumkee Iyengar is a consultant in User Experience. She initiated the User Experience Engineering and Design service at Persistent Systems Pvt. Ltd, based in Pune, India and presently focuses on new initiatives and research and long-term interests of the effort. Her interests are usability in e-Governance and offshore usability. Jhumkee holds a Masters in Human Factors Engineering Design from Tufts University, USA, a Masters in Product Design from the Industrial Design Center I.I.T. Bombay and a Bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering from the College of Engineering, Pune.

Ranjit Gadgil is Programme Director at Janwani, an initiative of the Mahratta Chamber of Commerce. His interests are in improving governance through policy advocacy, people’s participation in governance and e-governance. He has a special interest in sustainable transportation and urban waste management. The “Participatory Budgeting” initiative of Janwani has become regular event in Pune. Ranjit graduated from IIT Kanpur majoring in Physics. He pursued a PhD at Cornell before working as an IT Consultant.