Applying engineering psychology to designing products

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Applying engineering psychologyto designing
products

• Presentation to Engineering Psychology class
• University of Toronto
• January 2006
• Paul McInerney
• IBM gt DB2 Product Development gt User-Centered
  Design Team

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Agenda

• Purpose
• Describe a real-world context in which
  engineering psychology knowledge is applied
• Use sample real design assignments to illustrate
  how engineering psychology knowledge is applied
• Agenda items
• Usability and UCD (user-centered design) From
  idea to manifestation in a specific product
  development project
• Engineering psychology applied to the design of
• progress indication displays
• automated advisors

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What is usability?

• Usability defined
• The effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction
  with which a specified set of users can complete
  a specified set of tasks in a particular
  environment (International Standards
  Organization)
• Sample usability objectives
• Original draft
• Make the DB2 product installation as easy as
  possible
• Revised
• A certified database administrator in a large
  bank can install the DB2 product and make a
  network connection between the client and the
  server.

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What is UCD?

• User centered design
• A community of people and a body of knowledge
• A process or methodology for defining and
  achieving usability objectives
• A sub-process of the overall product development
  process
• An approach that involves (1) design of the
  total user experience and (2) a multidisciplinary
  team.
• Similar concepts
• human-computer interaction, user experience
  design, human factors, engineering psychology,
  ease of use, user interface design, usability
  testing, etc.

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Presence in industry and academia

• Associations, e.g.,
• Usability Professionals Association (UPA) -
  www.upassoc.org
• ACM SIG CHI (Computer-Human Interaction) -
  www.sigchi.org
• U of T HFIG
• Standards ISO (International Standards
  Organization) etc.
• Education - courses, degrees, textbooks
• Research research topic
• e.g., International J of HCI, J of Usability
  Studies

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Presence at IBM (1) - www.ibm.com/easy
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Presence UCD at IBM (2)

• Corporate vs. project teams
• Corporate-wide team tools, method development
• Project-specific UCD departments, e.g., DB2 UCD
• Research teams
• Leadership
• VP for Ease of Use
• UCD Corporate Lead
• Management process
• Ease-of-use objectives
• Monthly executive reviews of metrics

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Presence on a product development team

• Team for product X
• Development (coding) team members
• Project management team members
• Requirements management team members
• Testing team members
• User manual writing team members
• User Centered Design team members
• .

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What does a UCD team do?

• Activities to... Influence product direction
• define ease-of-use objectives for the release
• periodically assess achievement of objectives
• Activities to... Understand users and the
  competition
• user and task analyses - customer visits,
  interviews
• scenario generation
• competitor product assessment
• Activities to... Design product externals
• lead design for selected GUIs
• contributor, consultant, reviewer of selected
  product designs
• Activities to... Evaluate design
• user sessions design explorations, evaluations,
  validations, beta

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Skills and knowledge for UCD

• concepts, facts and methods from engineering
  psychology, human factors, etc.
• product development process
• application domain
• user interface and computer technology, e.g., GUI
  vs. web pages
• Questions and Comments?

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Progress Indication

• Further reading
• www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/us-progind/

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Examples

Guideline Displaying the time remaining is
better than the time elapsed Guideline Its a
good idea to Guideline Its a bad idea to
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Progress indication in everyday life

• Q How much longer until we arrive at our
  destination?
• A I have no idea Ive never driven there
  before.
• A We've been traveling for 1 hour.
• A I estimate we'll get their in 39 minutes and
  14 seconds. ....lttwo minutes latergt we'll be
  there is 15 minutes and 34 seconds.
• A It normally takes two hours but there is a
  traffic jam ahead.
• A We should get there with 30 minutes to spare
  before your meeting.
• Lessons
• insight is available from other domains
• some answers are better than others
• providing an answer requires modeling things we
  dont control

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Engineering psychology of waiting

• Impacts of poor waiting experiences
• Drop-off / Attrition
• Dissatisfaction
• Dysfunctional behaviour, e.g., repeatedly press
  Submit button
• Wasted time
• Attributes of good waiting experiences
• Known end point
• Linear progress to a predictable end-point
• Consistent waiting period across sessions
• Periodic reassurance that things are proceeding
  normally
• Indication when things are NOT proceeding
  normally
• Ability to end

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Sample guidelines

• Time remaining is better than time elapsed
• e.g., 3 minutes remaining vs. 4 minutes elapsed
• For time estimates, use human-scale precision
• e.g., less than 1 minute remaining vs. 34.5
  seconds remaining
• e.g., about 4 hours vs. 3 hours and 54 minutes
• Total progress is better than progress on current
  step
• Progress bar design
• start at 1 complete, not 0
• don't display 100 until ready to exit
• show smooth, linear progress

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Design challenges

• Designing the display is the easy part.
• Getting good information to present in the
  display is the hard part
• Getting worker components to report progress
• e.g., converting work remaining into time
  remaining
• e.g., 500 records left to load
• Aggregating progress of individual worker
  components
• e.g., different work metrics used by different
  components
• e.g., 5 records created vs. 5 rows loaded

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Commentary

• Where design insight/guidelines come from
• familiarity with research on related domain
  (waiting in lines)
• reasoning based on general knowledge of
  engineering psychology to cover gaps
• observations and testing of existing good and
  poor designs
• design team discussions of design options
• Questions and Comments?

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Advisor tools
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Advisors Examples and Overview

• Examples
• An IT specialist wants to adjust settings to make
  a system run faster.
• A researcher needs to select the appropriate
  statistical test to analyze some data.
• A grandmother wants advice on buying the
  appropriate computer model.
• Overview
• Tool that provides advice on selecting a course
  of action among a set of alternatives
• Most advisor attributes/design questions are
  invariant across application domains

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Exercise

• Instructions
• Suggest improvements to a preliminary design of
  an advisor tool
• Project background
• Application domain Selecting a cruise ship
  itinerary
• Sample user problem (scenario)
• Laura wants to plan a cruise to stop at
  particular ports of call. She wants to travel
  about 10 days starting in March spend less than
  4K.
• Preliminary design to critique
• On the screen, input or select desired ports of
  call, etc.
• Advisor displays the cruise with the best fit.
  The display includes a button to Book tickets
  now for this cruise.

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Design issues

• Design concept decisions
• Scope and emphasis provide recommendations vs
  carryout recommendations
• User experience success factors
• support the full task flow
• design for trustworthiness and credibility
• design for range of expertise

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Essential task flow of advisor tools

• Describe problem/choice/material to analyze to
  advisor
• Describe priorities and constraints
• tune tradeoffs - define "best"
• Wait for advisor to generate recommendations
• Review recommendations
• review recommendations for acceptability
• assess validity/trust
• Subsequent tasks
• iterate/what-if (repeat steps 1 to 4)
• save recommendations for later review or action
• act on recommendation now

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Designing recommendations that will be accepted

• Provide some options leave final decision to
  user
• Provide assessment of recommendation
• wrt attributes specified by user and general
  attributes
• Provide ancillary information
• Explanation for recommendation
• Amount of work completed
• Access to rejected options
• Avoid recommendations that look funny

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Exercise (revisited)

• Instructions
• Suggest improvements to a preliminary design of
  an advisor tool
• Project background
• Application domain Selecting a cruise ship
  itinerary
• Sample user problem (scenario)
• Laura wants to plan a world tour cruise to stop
  at particular ports of call. She wants to travel
  about 100 days starting in March spend less than
  40K.
• Preliminary design to critique
• Input or select desired ports of call, etc.
• Advisor displays the cruise with the best fit.
  The display includes a button to Book tickets
  now for this cruise.

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Questions and Comments

• ?

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Summary

• Common design assignments benefit from
  psychological insight
• waiting gt progress indication
• trust and reliance on automation gt advisors
• But design assignments require additional types
  of skills and knowledge
• working with in a defined product development
  process
• understanding the application domain
• understanding and addressing technical constraints