Needs Assessment and User-Centered Design at PeopleSoft, Inc. (Supply Chain Management)

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Needs Assessment and User-Centered Design at
PeopleSoft, Inc.(Supply Chain Management)
March 11, 2004 School of Information Management
Systems University of California, Berkeley
Maggie Law, Interaction Designer
maggie_law_at_peoplesoft.com
2
or

• How a small, enthusiastic team of User
  Experience professionals plans to conquer the
  world of enterprise software.

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History Environment

• 1987
• The company is founded specializes in HR
  management software.
• 1995
• Entered supply chain software market.
• 2000
• Became first enterprise software maker to offer a
  pure Internet architecture around this time,
  very first UE professionals are hired.
• May 2003
• Total Ownership Experience corporate initiative
  is publicly announced additional UE headcount
  grows faster than ever in company history.
• September 2003
• SCM UE team grows from 3 to 8 in less than a
  month!

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The Balance of Roles Skill Sets

• The Supply Chain Management User Experience (SCM
  UE) Team

Team Manager
Usability Engineers

Jeff
Rosa Josh Amy
Interaction Designers


Research (Users, Customers, Industry)
John Scott Maggie
Lynn
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The Challenges We Face

• Foundation Building
• Climbing product learning curves, understanding
  internal processes and culture, meeting new
  people, becoming familiar with one another, team
  intranet site, etc.
• Self-Promotion
• Ongoing awareness campaign What is User
  Experience? How does the SCM UE team fit into our
  long-established routines?
• Demonstrating Value
• Early successes document everything offer
  solutions not just criticism.
• Strategizing Best Use of Limited Resources
• Insert ourselves into development process early
  and often emphasize good design patterns not
  simply one-off solutions emphasize and educate
  about accessibility seek out and seize all
  possible teaching opportunities with developers
  automate audits to identify patterns of issues.

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Errr User Experience?

• msdn.microsoft.com
• http//msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url
  /nhp/default.asp?contentid28000443
• User experience and interface design represent
  an approach that puts the user, rather than the
  system, at the center of the process.
• IBM
• http//www-306.ibm.com/ibm/easy/eou_ext.nsf/Publis
  h/10
• User Experience Design fully encompasses
  traditional Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
  design and extends it by addressing all aspects
  of a product or service as perceived by users.
  HCI design addresses the interaction between a
  human and a computer.

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Motivations Define Our Experiences
Which method of transportation do you prefer?

• Bicycle
• good form of exercise
• environmentally friendly
• cheap
• scenic

• Airplane
• time-efficient
• high-speed
• powerful
• heavy luggage ok

vs.
It depends, of course.
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Motivations Define Our Experiences
Now compare...

• Gaming Software
• free time activity
• voluntary participation
• solitary or social
• entertaining

• Enterprise Business Software
• job requirement
• task-driven
• process-oriented
• pressure to succeed

vs.
Understanding context is essential to measuring
user satisfaction.
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Ummm User-Centered Design?

• msdn.microsoft.com
• http//msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url
  /nhp/default.asp?contentid28000443
• The philosophy of user-centered design
  incorporates user concerns and advocacy from the
  beginning of the design process and dictates the
  needs of the user should be foremost in any
  design decisions.
• Usability Professionals Association (UPA)
• http//www.upassoc.org/usability_resources/about_u
  sability/what_is_ucd.html
• User-centered design (UCD) is an approach to
  design that grounds the process in information
  about the people who will use the product. UCD
  processes focus on users through the planning,
  design and development of a product.

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Mapping a UCD Methodology
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The Master Plan
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Established Research Evaluation Techniques

• Baseline Usability Testing
• Goal Establish a baseline against which future
  product versions will be measured
• Involves pre-screened users -- varying levels of
  expertise, domain knowledge
• Moderator leads user through a list of key tasks
  while a recorder captures data
• Requires mature product state, either just before
  or just after release
• Pros Relatively cheap (can even be done
  remotely) recordable produces quantifiable
  data opportunities for in-context inquiry
• Cons Non-native environment tasks and product
  configuration may not accurately reflect true
  user experience
• Field Research
• Goal Gain better understanding of user
  experience and behaviors by observing them in
  their native work environment
• Involves volunteer users willing to accommodate
  researchers
• Typically used on expert (or comfortable) product
  users with strong knowledge of functional domain
• Pros Tasks reflect typical product use valuable
  visibility into workplace environment, work
  artifacts, inter-personal user interactions and
  offline activities affords in-context inquiry
• Cons Relatively expensive still somewhat
  disruptive to routine work practices no metrics

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Established Research Evaluation Techniques

• Heuristic Evaluations
• Goal Identify and correct violations of
  established usability principles
• Best if several people evaluate individually,
  then compare notes
• Use critical thinking not all heuristics are
  appropriate in every context
• Pros Provides quick and relatively cheap
  feedback no user interaction required can
  generate good ideas for improving the UI
• Cons Discovers relatively limited scope of
  usability problems (use of color, layout,
  information structuring, terminology, etc.)
• Task Analysis
• Goal Gain better understanding of users goals
  and cognitive processes so software can map to
  them
• Pros Provides valuable insight into users
  motivations
• Cons Requires a level of business domain
  knowledge or subject matter expertise not typical
  of most UE professionals

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Some Tricks of Our Own Creation

• Remote Contextual Inquiry
• Goal Bridge contextual gaps between usability
  testing and field research
• User shares desktop environment with UE
  moderator, and communicates via speaker phone
  phone and screen activity are recorded
• Remote user interacts with software while
  speaking through actions UE moderator observes
  and may ask in-context questions
• Non-UE product team members (developers,
  functional analysts, strategists, etc.) are
  invited to observe and, to a limited extent,
  interact with user
• Pros Inexpensive recordable data collection
  highly visible to product development community
  affords in-context inquiry provides visibility
  into users typical task behaviors and
  custom-configured installation
• Cons Still not as rich as face-to-face
  observers can be a liability -- tend to want to
  troubleshoot

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Some Tricks of Our Own Creation

• Bucket Analysis
• Goal Identify patterns of issues across test
  results data form strategies to address them
• Group usability test results data into 10
  general categories or buckets (similar to
  affinity diagramming)
• Determine which buckets are most full of issues
  these likely indicate particularly serious
  problems with the software
• Determine which tasks tested have the most issue
  buckets associated with them these are likely
  the most broken interactions on the list
• Pros Inexpensive high-level analysis reveals
  generalizations that can drive strategic UE
  efforts analysis is appropriately subjective to
  the specific application and task set being
  tested
• Cons Test results data dont necessarily fit
  tidily into categories bucket definitions and
  judgments may vary depending on who is doing the
  analysis

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Future Directions

• Personas Scenarios
• Need to work with more users before we can
  develop archetypes
• Card Sorting
• Need better understanding of knowledge domain
  before we can conduct informational grouping
  exercises with users
• Et cetera.

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Current Design Activities

• Page Design Mock-Ups
• Digital simulations of application pages
• Sufficient to validate designs without spending
  time/expense to code
• Great communication tool between designers,
  developers, and prospective users
• Site Maps (Interaction Flows)
• Not as easy in PeopleSoft as with traditional
  websites
• Excellent for identifying high-level issues
• Interactive Prototypes
• Simulate animated product behaviors
• In the months ahead
• Rapid Prototyping
• Participatory Design
• Etc.

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Maps Visualizations
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FYI Tools We Use

• Site mapping, other diagrams and visualizations
• Inspiration (we favor over Visio)
• Page mock-ups, interactive prototypes
• PhotoShop
• Illustrator
• Dreamweaver, CSS
• PowerPoint
• Generally indispensable
• TechSmith products (SnagIt, Camtasia, Morae)
• WebEx
• Excel

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• Thank you!