Activities of the Usability and User Experience Community
1999 Conference - Cincinnati, Ohio

Usability Session Descriptions

ID2L - "From Online Help to Integrated User Assistance: One Company’s Journey Beyond the Online Help Paradigm" - by Craig Marion, Strohl Systems.
For usability’s sake, Strohl Systems created a navigational coach that embedded user assistance within its flagship product. Now we're redesigning the product and building it around the user assistance. The "coach" won 3rd place in the EPSS Design Contest. It's described at http://www.epss.com/lb/casestud/Comp2/Strohl.htm

TR4T - "Online Editing: Results of a Dual-Mode Survey" - David D. Dayton, University of Puerto Rico
The preliminary results from an STC-sponsored survey of electronic editing practices, impacts, and attitudes will be presented. In addition to a full-scale survey of a random sample of STC members, the research included
a pilot survey administered on the World-Wide Web and a pretest using email software that automates the survey administration process. The potential advantages and problems associated with these innovative survey methods will be discussed.

TR4T - Developing and Implementing WWW Surveys - Susan G. Feinberg, Illinois Institute of Technology, Susan Andrews, Northwestern University
In our session we will address the first part of a two-part web-based survey to be deployed over time (longitudinal) to assess customer satisfaction with IT services by leveraging the ubiquitous computing environment of Northwestern University. Specific challenges of the survey to be discussed include the complexity and number of IT services to be surveyed, as well as the operating, programming, technical and design issues presented by such a large-scale project.

User-centered design was critical to the successful development and deployment of the survey. This survey tool was used to explore the richness and potential value of web surveys motivated by a combination of a desire to improve both the survey-taking process and results-computing process.

The benefit to the organization is the identification of service areas in need of improvement and the ability to match satisfaction level with actual product/service costs. As a result of this survey, interest was generated by other university departments and schools that wish to conduct similar web-based surveys.

ID5Y - "Creating a Visual Interface Design in Lotus Notes" - Whitney Quesenbery, Cognetics Corporation
What happens to the visual design when an intranet project moves to Lotus Notes? We were just concluding the user needs analysis and product concept work on a project called "InfoWeb" when Notes was adopted as a corporate standard and mandated for all development. The concept of an intranet brings with it some expectations, including a flexible, graphics-rich visual environment, a relatively free-form structure and easy extensibility. Now, the team had to find new ways to meet our design and usability goals within the Notes interface capabilities.

ID 10I - "Usability Testing for Information Design Projects" - Barbara Kingsley, Kenneth Keiser, Susan Kleimann, Kleimann Communication Group
Our overall goal for the workshop is to create a highly interactive 90 minute session where participants can ask questions, give examples, and work together to understand usability testing and its importance. Objectives for the session include: to effectively write "scenarios of use" for documents; to use "scenarios of use" to create usability test questions; to translate test questions to measurable objectives; to plan a usability test calendar; to analyze information gathered during a usability test.

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