2001 RM CHI Meeting Archive

Meeting Archive

November 29, 2001

Topic: Facilitating Usability Study Sessions
Speakers: Nancy Shepard and Carolanne Fisher
Location: Sun Microsystems, Broomfield

Learn how to be a better facilitator of usability studies and practice your techniques with your colleagues. We'll first cover tips for being an active listener, encouraging thinking aloud, guarding against inserting your own bias into a session, and dealing with difficult situations and people. Then we'll each take turns practicing our technique in front of a video camera in the Sun usability lab, play our tapes back, and get feedback from everyone. Plan on lots of role-playing both as subjects and facilitators and participating in some lively discussions as well.

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September 20, 2001

Topic: Ice Cream Social
Who: Everyone
What: An ice cream "social" where we can just sit and meet each other, catch up, etc. (nailing down a nice place with outside seating)

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August 16, 2001

Topic: AT&T’s Broadband Innovation Lab
Speaker: Scott Brenner, AT&T Broadband Labs
Location: AT&T Broadband Labs in Westminster

AT&T Broadband Labs, the research and development organization for AT&T Broadband, maintains an Innovations Lab that a showcases broadband products and services. This lab provides a glimpse into of future of the broadband experience.

The tour starts with an overview of a fully functional HFC network from the headend to the customers homes. From the network you move into the home where we have demonstrations of potential products and services that take full advantage of the power of our broadband network. You can experience the future of TV from HDTV to video on demand as well as future display devices for the home. You will also get a glimpse of how people will use the web in the future through cable modems, home networks and automation systems and non-PC web surfing devices.

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July 19, 2001

Topics: Hands-on Usability Study Design Session
Facilitator: Nancy Shepard (Sun Educational Services)
Location: Sun Microsystems, Broomfield

This meeting was a working session in which we broke into small teams to develop a usability study plan for a real product. We learned new methods and shared ones we have already used. This was styled after a Judith Ramey workshop and was great fun for both experienced and beginning HCI people.

Worked in small design teams to:

Then, each team presented its results to the other teams. Nancy Shepard, manager of a human factors team for Sun Educational Services, facilitated the session. While she provided tips, templates, and guidelines from her own experience.

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June 28, 2001

Topic: Rocky Mountain CHI Summer Social
Who: Everyone
Location: 32 degrees and Rising, 1718 Broadway, Boulder (303-786-8888)

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May 31, 2001

Topic: Usability and User Preference Assessment for Off-the-shelf Products
Speaker: George J. Boggs (Ixian Technologies, Inc.)
Location: StorageTek, Louisville

The usual operating assumption for the usability professional is that they will be involved in the product design process. However, large retail companies often buy products from external vendors and resell them to the consumer. An interesting difference of interests arises in this situation. Even though the vendor sells a consumer product, the customer is the reseller - actually, the reseller's purchasing management. Hence, the vendor's design interests focus on the reseller, and what the reseller might perceive as usable and preferable. This can effectively remove the end user from the design process.

This talk describes two experiments. The first evaluated wireless telephone headsets to determine the critical design features for the end customer. The goal of this experiment was to select the best of the currently available headsets and to provide the reseller with concrete suggestions about what to look for when purchasing future products. The second evaluated wireless telephone accessories to determine which accessories users found valuable and whether or not it made sense for end users to buy these accessories in bundled sets that would have special pricing.

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April 26, 2001

Topic: Welcome to the Wireless World: Problems Using and Understanding Mobile Telephony
Speakers: Leysia Palen (CU Boulder), Marilyn Salzman (Genomica)
Location: University of Colorado, Boulder Campus, Engineering Building, Room ECCS 128

Wireless devices, like PDAs and mobile phones, call for comprehensive treatment of their usability. As mobile technologies, wireless devices can be used in a variety of places, and therefore must be dynamically managed: software and hardware features have constantly changing relevance depending on the situations in which they are employed, for example. Like other service-based technologies, understanding how wireless devices operate extends beyondthe hardware and software components to include an understanding of network services ("netware") and service provider business agreements ("bizware") as well. Finally, wireless devices, and in particular wireless phones, play a role in the social world. Developing a personal practice of wireless telephony communications necessarily includes attention to how one affects and is affected by one's social networks and locale. Usability of such technologies, therefore, is more accurately assessed if it extends beyond an examination of the devices themselves to include broader attention to the contexts of their acquisition and use.

We report on the results of a study in which 19 new wireless phone users were closely tracked for the first six weeks after service acquisition. The proposal for the study originally called for an assessment of the usability of telephone handsets, and for an evaluation of the process of learning and discovery of hardware and software features. However, we kept the investigation broad in scope, hypothesizing that there was a great deal to learn about the experiences of new users more generally. As we observed our new users, we discovered that fundamental aspects of sales, service, and business communications were critical to their learning and discovery of features. When these aspects were misunderstood by users, it directly affected the use and usability of their wireless telephones.

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March 22, 2001

Topic: Suspending Disbelief - Selling Low Fidelity Studies to Product Developers
Speakers: Nancy Shepard (Sun Educational Services)
Location: Sun Microsystems, Broomfield

Low-fidelity prototypes and simulations are quick low-cost methods for studying user behavior and gathering design feedback early in the product development lifecycle. Yet development teams are often resistant to using these low-tech methods for several reasons: automatic conditioning to use higher quality prototypes, limited experience with low-fidelity models, judgement of colleagues and management, and disbelief that quality information can be gained from low fidelity methods.

In using low fidelity prototypes over the years, Nancy has found that her test subjects have a much better acceptance and ability to suspend disbelief about a prototype or simulation than do the development teams themselves. Nancy will present a usability study done for Hewlett-Packard and will walk through the rapid prototyping method used in this study. She will then discuss the barriers she had to overcome while using this method including:

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February 22, 2001

Topic: Trends in HCI
Speakers: Arnie Lund (Sapient)
Location: Sun Microsystems, Broomfield

Arnie Lund will be talking about trends in HCI and what it means for design professionals. He will be sharing a presentation he will be giving at the Summer HCI course at the University of Michigan. Much has changed since it was originally given last year, and he would like the audience's insights into appropriate updates. Where is technology going, and what does it mean for HCI practitioners and researchers? What areas should we monitor, and what skills should we develop?"

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