PUMA Footprints: linking theory and craft skill in usability evaluation

‘Footprints’ are marks or features of a design that alert the analyst to the possible existence of usability difficulties caused by violations of design principles. PUMA Footprints make an explicit link between the theory underlying a Programmable User Model and the design principles that can be derived from that theory. While principles are widely presented as being intuitively obvious, it is desirable that they should have a theoretical basis. However, working directly with theory tends to be time-consuming, and demands a high level of skill. PUMA footprints offer a theory-based justification for various usability principles, with guidelines on detecting violations of those principles

Conceptual misfits in email-based current awareness interaction

Purpose - This research aims to identify some requirements for supporting user interactions with electronic current-awareness alert systems based on data from a professional work environment. Design/methodology/approach - Qualitative data was gathered using contextual inquiry observations with twenty-one workers at the London office of an international law firm. The analysis uses CASSM (‘Concept-based Analysis of Surface and Structural Misfits’), a usability evaluation method structured around identifying mismatches, or ‘misfits’, between user-concepts and concepts represented within a system. Findings - Participants were frequently overwhelmed by email alerts, and a key requirement is to support efficient interaction. Several misfits which act as barriers to efficient reviewing and follow-on activities are demonstrated. These relate to a lack of representation of key user-concepts at the interface and/or within the system, including alert items and their properties, source documents, ‘back-story’, primary sources, content categorisations and user collections. Research limitations/implications - Given these misfits we derive a set of requirements to improve the efficiency with which users can achieve key outcomes with current-awareness information as these occur within a professional work environment. Originality/value - The findings will be of interest to current-awareness providers. The approach is relevant to information interaction researchers interested in deriving design requirements from naturalistic studie

Scoping analytical usability evaluation methods: A case study

Analytical usability evaluation methods (UEMs) can complement empirical evaluation of systems: for example, they can often be used earlier in design and can provide accounts of why users might experience difficulties, as well as what those difficulties are. However, their properties and value are only partially understood. One way to improve our understanding is by detailed comparisons using a single interface or system as a target for evaluation, but we need to look deeper than simple problem counts: we need to consider what kinds of accounts each UEM offers, and why. Here, we report on a detailed comparison of eight analytical UEMs. These eight methods were applied to it robotic arm interface, and the findings were systematically compared against video data of the arm ill use. The usability issues that were identified could be grouped into five categories: system design, user misconceptions, conceptual fit between user and system, physical issues, and contextual ones. Other possible categories such as User experience did not emerge in this particular study. With the exception of Heuristic Evaluation, which supported a range of insights, each analytical method was found to focus attention on just one or two categories of issues. Two of the three "home-grown" methods (Evaluating Multimodal Usability and Concept-based Analysis of Surface and Structural Misfits) were found to occupy particular niches in the space, whereas the third (Programmable User Modeling) did not. This approach has identified commonalities and contrasts between methods and provided accounts of why a particular method yielded the insights it did. Rather than considering measures such as problem count or thoroughness, this approach has yielded insights into the scope of each method

Keeping Up With the Law: Investigating Lawyers’ Monitoring Behaviour

Purpose - We wanted to provide an enriched understanding of how lawyers keep up-to-date with legal developments. Maintaining awareness of developments in an area (known as ‘monitoring’) is an important aspect of professional’s information work. This is particularly true for lawyers, who are expected to keep up-to-date with legal developments on an on-going basis. Design/methodology/approach - We wanted to provide an enriched understanding of how lawyers keep up-to-date with legal developments. Maintaining awareness of developments in an area (known as ‘monitoring’) is an important aspect of professional’s information work. This is particularly true for lawyers, who are expected to keep up-to-date with legal developments on an on-going basis. Findings - The lawyers mostly used electronic resources (particularly e-mail alerts and an electronic tool that alerted them to changes in website content), alongside interpersonal sources such as colleagues, customers and professional contacts. Printed media such as journals and newspapers were used more rarely and usually to complement electronic and person-based resources. A number of factors were found to influence choice. These included situational relevance, presentation, utility and trustworthiness, the speed of content acquisition, and interpretation facilitated by the resource. Originality/value - Our findings enrich our understanding of lawyers’ monitoring behaviour, which has so far received little direct research attention. Our design suggestions have the potential to feed into the design of new and improvement of existing digital current awareness resources. Our findings have the potential to act as ‘success criteria’ by which these resources can be evaluated from a user-centred perspective

How external and internal resources influence user action: the case of infusion devices

Human error can have potentially devastating consequences in contexts such as healthcare, but there is a rarely a simple dichotomy between errors and correct behaviour. Furthermore, there has been little consideration of how the activities of users (erroneous and otherwise) relate to the conceptual fit between user and device, despite the fact that healthcare technologies are becoming increasingly prevalent and complex. In this article, we present a study in which nurses’ conceptions of infusion device practice were elicited to identify misfits. By focusing on key concepts that users work with when setting up infusions and the extent to which the system supports them, our analysis highlights how actions are influenced by the different resources available to users including: the device itself; supporting artefacts; the conceptual understanding of the user; and the community of practice the user is part of. The findings reveal the ways in which users are resourceful in their day-to-day activities and also suggest potential vulnerabilities within the wider system that could threaten patient safety. Our approach is able to make previously under-explored aspects of practice visible, thus enabling insight into how users act and why

A Phenomenological Exploration of Adaptation in a Polycontextual Work Environment

The rise of new ways of working through the use of information and communication technology brings about new phenomena that are powerful in the effects that they have on people. The potency of phenomenology lies in its philosophical simplicity and it provides the researcher with the ability to study the essence of an observable but scarcely understood phenomena: How do people perform effectively and efficiently in a geographically and temporally dispersed work environment? Collective action across multiple time zones continues to challenge both academics and practioners. This study provides a unique view of how globally dispersed participants achieve collective action. It throws light into how the creation of shared understanding is tempered by differences in time zones and how participants adapt through their choice of media, work practices and communication. Following an analysis of a case studied using phenomenology, this paper concludes with a model of adaptation in polycontextual work environments

Macroevolutionary issues and approaches in evolutionary Biology

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Socially responsible internal communication? Analysing the combined effect of CSR and internal communication on employees' affective bond to organization

Positive organizational differentiation between competitors is a critical matter for every organization in current economic scenarios. This “La Palisse” truth is obviously related to the fact that organizations deal with extreme difficulties in what regards valid ways of developing themselves with efficiency and with efficacy, as a natural consequence of integrating widespread competitiveness-based economies. In addition, current economic crisis scenario (notably in the European Union) has brought severe challenges to organizations, which have sped up the necessity of quality, innovation, organizational change or business ethics (e.g. Gomes, Asseiro & Ribeiro, 2013). Internal Communication (IC) is a strategic management area that directly deals with the internal publics of organizations (their workers). IC strategy follows the approach that information within an organization is a relevant resource, in such way, that its proper use when accompanied by inclusion actions regarding the internal publics brings them a relevant sense of awareness (D’Almeida & Libart, 2000). Curiously, this idea of vigilance and of the building of a supportive organization towards its human resources is also present in Corporate Social Responsibility’s (CSR) guidelines (e.g. Neves & Bento, 2005). When discussing CSR and its contributions for management, we become immediately alerted to the prospects of understanding its impact on effective IC management practices, notably on the employee-organization relationship improvement issues. In this matter, the existing literature is consistent in associating to both areas, directly or indirectly, several interesting contributions regarding critical indicators of individual performance at work, such as commitment, awareness or satisfaction (e.g. Brault, 1992; Brammer, Millington, & Rayton, 2007). However, despite of the amount of theoretical reasoning accumulated over the years regarding the importance of IC and CSR, these two areas still linger to be associated with the prediction of relevant individual indicators in joint models of analysis, such as employee commitment. Following these considerations, and using a quantitative methodology, this study’s main purpose is to investigate how employees’ affective commitment can be predicted by IC (considering its different axis), and evaluating if Internal CSR’s orientations play a significant contextual role in this relationship. As such, we propose that Internal CSR’s orientations will have a moderating influence on the positive association between the IC’s axis and employee affective commitment, as we are expecting CSR to strengthen the IC-Commitment relation. With this model of analysis, we will be able to evaluate if Socially Responsible IC brings an added-value to employee commitment purposes. In this sense, the present study aims to explore an answer to the following question: do Internal CSR’s guidelines moderate the relationship between IC and employees’ affective commitment?info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio