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

Supply Chain Management User Experience

Needs Assessment and User-Centered Design

at PeopleSoft, Inc.(Supply Chain Management)

Maggie Law, Interaction Designer [email protected]

March 11, 2004 School of Information Management & Systems

University of California, Berkeley

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Supply Chain Management User ExperienceM. Law | 03/11/3004

…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 2003SCM UE team grows from 3 to 8 in less than a month!

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Research(Users, Customers, Industry)

Lynn

Team Manager

Jeff

Usability Engineers

Rosa Josh Amy

Interaction Designers

The Balance of Roles & Skill Sets

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

John Scott Maggie

MIMS 2002!

MIMS 2003!

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The Challenges We Face

Foundation BuildingClimbing product learning curves, understanding internal processes and culture, meeting new people, becoming familiar with one another, team intranet site, etc.

Self-PromotionOngoing awareness campaign: What is User Experience? How does the SCM UE team fit into our long-established routines?

Demonstrating ValueEarly successes; document everything; offer solutions – not just criticism.

Strategizing Best Use of Limited ResourcesInsert 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.comhttp://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/nhp/default.asp?contentid=28000443

User experience and interface design [represent] an approach that puts the user, rather than the system, at the center of the process.

IBMhttp://www-306.ibm.com/ibm/easy/eou_ext.nsf/Publish/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

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

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

It depends, of course.

Which method of transportation do you prefer?

vs.

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Motivations Define Our Experiences

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

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

Understanding context is essential to measuring user satisfaction.

Now compare...

vs.

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Ummm… “User-Centered Design”?

msdn.microsoft.comhttp://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/nhp/default.asp?contentid=28000443

[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_usability/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 TestingGoal: 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 ResearchGoal: 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 EvaluationsGoal: 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 AnalysisGoal: Gain better understanding of users’ goals and cognitive processes so software can map to them

• Pros: Provides valuable insight into user’s 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 InquiryGoal: 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 user’s 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 AnalysisGoal: 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 don’t 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!

Documents

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