ForUSE – Designing for Performance – Helmut Windl

Designing for Performance - Helmut Windl - Siemens (automations and drives)

... Notes are a little more raw than usual, but the content is quite exciting if anything can be gleaned from these scribblings.

Electronic Performance Support Systems (EPSS) with Usage Centred Design (U-CD) N.B. this is NOT the same as User Centred Design (UCD).

EPSS Workflow and tasks are all visible in the interface. software applications that have an explicit goal for supporting work performance and thinking by people who know neither the work nor the software while accomplishing expert

Performance centred design is driven by user performance, whereas U-CD focuses on usage and improved tools supporting task accomplishment. Performance centred design is still a philosophy. There is no explicit process but utilises lots of other processes to inform design.

U-CD
To design fro use you need to understand your users, their work, and their needs.
Users > Roles : Separate user actors from system actors then model roles. User actor play in relation to system
Work > Tasks : Identify Tasks needed to support user roles, cluster tasks by use and meaning, define intentions and responsibilities for each
Needs > Tools and Materials : Model UI contents needed to support task clusters. Derive visual and interaction design from models.

Product definition with product framework, user profiles, features and functions to roles to tasks to contents to implementation model. Also Creative design such as aesthetics. U-CD can be used at any size project from an agile one, to a big bloated process.

Performance Centred
Process simplification, reducing complexity and number of steps etc
Performance Information: All necessary information necessary to perform a task is provided in context.
Decision Support. Helps employee depending on work situation and condition to do the next appropriate steeps.

U-CD task model is currently unable to represent sequences of tasks and conditional branches visually in a model.

To redesign and simplify work flow, we have to capture and understand the clients real work process. This includes events leading up to and after the task itself.

K3 modeling techniques: like contextual design for capturing work process. [must find out more - looks good]. Designed to collect and represent real world work processes in an easy to understand model collaboratively with users. K3-Diagrams of the inspected work processes are drawn during field studies and are generalised to universally valid k3 diagrams that directly feed user role and talk modeling. Foltz, Killich, Wolf, 2000

K3 Notation
Activities represent related tasks supporting a high level goal e.g. cut, copy paste... represented by rounded rectangles. Control flows connect activities to indicate the sequence. Sequences are enclosed in start and end state. [This is quite similar to the way I would advocate modeling flowmaps which are heavily influenced by Jesse James Garret's visual vocab]. "Swim Lanes" [This is a really nice enhancement] allocate activities to personas, user roles or organisational units. Decisions by a user role or person are indicated by a diamond... etc

Much of U-CD doesn't enable flows in a visual way. So melding this with K-3 notation, you can get the Task Flow Map. I'm not going to make notes on this because it's too interesting to be distracted... besides which it's visual and my thousand words won't justify these lovely diagrams!

Exploratory Modeling [my thoughts] – gather questions about a task case or user roles through taking a first attempt based on personas and educated guesses. Then validate these through interviews and contextual enquiry.