Usability Week 2010

Designing Complex Applications and Websites 2

  • London: Monday, May 17

Lynn Pausic
John Morkes

Full-Day Tutorial

Day 2 of this course explores new techniques for understanding and mapping expert users’ concept models, additional interaction design patterns and how to manage and apply them in the design process, and useful techniques for researching and prototyping complex applications and websites.

What You’ll Learn

In this session, you’ll learn how to:

  • Map domain-expert users’ conceptual models
  • Identify and apply advanced interaction design patterns that support expert users
  • Employ interaction design patterns to expedite prototyping
  • Conduct user testing to zero in on usefulness and avoid first use data
  • Manage and organize interaction design patterns
  • Effectively communicate designs containing complex-problem solving to developers

Course Outline

Tools for comprehending complexity

  • Patterns of Use versus Interaction Patterns
  • Activity-based user concept modeling
  • Identifying interaction patterns in user concept models

Interaction design patterns for complex situations:

  • System messages
  • Help
  • Information at a Glance
  • Dashboards

Prototyping

  • Moving from concept models to designs
  • Employing patterns in the prototyping process
  • Prototyping tools and considerations for complex systems

Research tools for the design and development phases

  • User testing, surveys, interviews, focus groups, etc.
  • Dangers of first use data
  • Framing tasks to reveal the meat
  • Testing for usefulness versus usability

Employing and managing interaction design patterns

  • Pattern development
  • Determining when a design solution becomes a pattern
  • Pattern management and organization
  • Pattern libraries and resources
  • Case study: Pattern Library

Format

This full-day tutorial includes lecture, real-world examples, exercises, Q&A and discussion throughout.

Handouts

Copies of the presentation slides

Who Should Attend

This course is intended for people engaged in designing, defining or testing user experiences for complex applications and websites. This includes information architects, interaction designers, visual designers, usability specialists, user researchers, technical writers, product managers, business analysts, UI developers, and managers of these disciplines.

See Also:

This course is a companion to Designing Complex Applications & Websites 1 and Designing Complex Applications & Websites 3. To learn the topic in depth, we recommend that you attend all three days, but each is structured to offer a valuable single-day experience.

Instructors

photo of Lynn Pausic Lynn Pausic is Co-Founder and Principal at Expero Inc., a consulting firm specializing in the definition, design and usability of user experiences for complex applications and websites. Lynn leads the User Experience Design practice at Expero. Lynn has worked with companies of all sizes from many industries to design hundreds of successful user experiences. Recent clients include Digital Globe, Charles Schwab, Freescale Semiconductor, GSI Commerce, Intel, Monotype Imaging and Servigistics. Previously, Lynn was the Director of Product Management for 2Vox, an early-stage company focused on wireless security and provisioning. Lynn has also worked as a Director of Human-Computer Interaction, a Senior Interaction Designer, and a Consulting Manager. Lynn has spoken on various topics related to user experience and design in many forums and professional seminars, such as Carnegie Mellon University’s HCI Institute, Cornell University’s Media Lab and ACM’s SIG-CHI conference. Lynn holds a B.S. from Carnegie Mellon University. Lynn has presented tutorials at Nielsen Norman Group conferences since 2006.
photo of John Morkes John Morkes is Co-Founder and Principal at Expero Inc., a consulting firm specializing in the definition, design and usability of user experiences for complex applications and websites. Morkes leads the User Research and Usability group at Expero. His recent clients include eBay, Fonts.com, Intel, Sprint Nextel, TiVo and the Greek Ministry of Economy and Finance. Previously, he was the Director of Human-Computer Interaction at Trilogy Software, where he led efforts to improve the usability of configurator-driven websites for Nissan and Ford, which Forrester Research rated as the two best consumer sites in the industry. Morkes has worked as a usability engineer for Sun and HP and as a journalist for Wired and R&D Magazine. He received a Ph.D. from Stanford University and master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Northwestern University. He has presented tutorials at Nielsen Norman Group conferences since 2000.