Understand the Business Function

1. Understand the Business Function ACS 367 Step #2

2. Business Function • Perform business definition and requirements analysis • Determine basic business functions • Describe current activities through task analysis • Develop a conceptual model of the system • Establish design standards or style guides • Establish system usability design goals • Define training and documentation needs

3. business definition and requirements analysis • Establish the need for a system • Determine requirements • Direct Methods • Observational study, prototyping, usability labs • Indirect Methods • MIS intermediary, Surveys…

4. Determining Basic Business Function • A detailed description of what the product will do is prepared. • Major system functions are described (IPO) • A flowchart of major functions is developed

5. Task Analysis • Task analysis involves breaking down user’s activities to the individual task level. • The goal is to obtain an understanding of why and how people currently do the things that will be automated. • Knowing WHY: establishes the work goals • Knowing HOW: provides details of actions performed to accomplish the goals.

6. Task Analysis • Task analysis provides information concerning: • Work flows • Interrelationships between people • Objects • Acionts • The output of a task analysis is a complete description of all user tasks and interactions.

7. Task Analysis • A goal of task analysis and a goal of understanding the user, is to gain a picture of the user’s mental model. • A mental model is an internal representation of a person’s current conceptualization and understanding of something.

8. Mental Models • Guidelines for designing mental models • Reflect the user’s mental model not the designer’s • Draw analogies or present metaphors • Success of desktop metaphor • Comply with expectancies, habits, routines and stereotypes

9. Design Standards or Style Guides • Value of standards (users) • Faster performance • Fewer errors • Reduced training time • Better satisfaction • Better system acceptance

10. Design Standards or Style Guides • Value of standards (designers) • Increased visibility to HCI • Simplified Design • Reduced redundant effort • Reduced training

11. Design Standards or Style Guides • Document Design • Include many concrete examples of concrete design • Provide rationale describing conditions under which various design alternatives are appropriate • Provide good access • Table of contents • Index • checklists

12. Design Standards or Style Guides • Examples (ISU iGuide) • http://www.iwss.ilstu.edu/iguide/

13. Usability Goals • Usability (Bennett, 1979) • The capacity to be used by humans easily and effectively, where • Easily: • to a specified level of subjective assesment • Effectively: • To a specified level of human performance

14. Common Usability Problems • Ambiguous menus and icons • Unclear step sequences • More steps to manage interface that to do tasks. • Inadequate feedback and confirmation

15. Measures of Usability • Are people asking a lot of questions? • Are frequent exasperation responses heard? • Are there many irrelevant actions being performed? • Are there many things to ignore? • Do a number of people want to use a product?

16. Criteria for Measuring Usability • Effectiveness • Level of performance • Be specific here (required percentage) • Learnability • Within some specified time (learning curve) • Flexibility • Allowing adaptation to some specified percentage variation in tasks • Attitude • Levels of tiredness, discomfort, frustration…