Accounts from a Claims Reuse Experience: Design of an Airline Fares Tracker

Previous research efforts have led to the establishment of a repository of claims as reusable knowledge entities. Through the analysis, design, and prototyping of a notification system aimed at monitoring airfares across time, airlines, and location, this paper presents the various work-products resulting from a scenario-based design approach coupled with the Claims Reuse Library to support reuse-centric claims analysis. Finally, we share our experience and findings using the Claims Reuse Library as a core to knowledge transfer

Performance Evaluation of Navigation Approaches on High-resolution Displays

We conducted a study to discover if the data navigation techniques suitable for high-resolution displays differed significantly from those traditionally used for single-screen desktop displays. The high-resolution capability of the former display makes it possible to show more data at once without having the user drill-down to get to the details. At the same time, the larger physical size makes it difficult for the user to interact with such a display using current day interaction techniques. Given these factors, we compare the performance of users on tasks that involve navigating into hierarchically-structured data. The specific visualization we use is a cushion treemap, displayed at multiple resolutions—on a 3x3, 17” tiled screen display; on a 2x2, 17” tiled screen display; on a single 17” screen display, and on a 66” SMART Board™. Through the performance evaluation of 24 users, we show that beyond a certain resolution and physical screen size, the drill-down technique fares relatively poorly, while the straightforward technique of displaying all the data at once results in better performance at the tasks we studied

Study and Redesign of a Semi-public Display: Online Enlightenment

Semi-public displays are systems designed to strengthen awareness and collaboration among small co-located group environments. Placed in a semi-public space, Online Enlightenment is a physical device associated with MSN® Messenger to provide information regarding the online status of peers. The raison d'être of the system is to leverage group members’ awareness of their peers’ availability through changes of their online status in order to facilitate meeting scheduling, promote opportunistic collaboration, and foster project teamwork without introducing distraction. At an early stage of the development process, this paper presents the results of a usability study of the system and proposes a redesigned mock-up to address the identified deficiencies

Reuse-centric Requirements Analysis with Task Models, Scenarios, and Critical Parameters

This paper outlines a requirements-analysis process that unites task models, scenarios, and critical parameters to exploit and generate reusable knowledge at the requirements phase. Through the deployment of a critical-parameter-based approach to task modeling, the process yields the establishment of an integrative and formalized model issued from scenarios that can be used for requirements characterization. Furthermore, not only can this entity serve as interface to a knowledge repository relying on a critical-parameter-based taxonomy to support reuse but its characterization in terms of critical parameters also allows the model to constitute a broader reuse solution. We discuss our vision for a user-centric and reuse-centric approach to requirements analysis, present previous efforts implicated with this line of work, and state the revisions brought to extend the reuse potential and effectiveness of a previous iteration of a requirements tool implementing such process. Finally, the paper describes the sequence and nature of the activities involved with the conduct of our proposed requirements-analysis technique, concluding by previewing ongoing work in the field that will explore the feasibility for designers to use our approach

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This paper outlines a requirements-analysis process that unites task models, scenarios, and critical parameters to exploit and generate reusable knowledge at the requirements phase. Through the deployment of a critical-parameter-based approach to task modeling, the process yields the establishment of an integrative and formalized model issued from scenarios that can be used for requirements characterization. Furthermore, not only can this entity serve as interface to a knowledge repository relying on a critical-parameter-based taxonomy to support reuse but its characterization in terms of critical parameters also allows the model to constitute a broader reuse solution. We discuss our vision for a user-centric and reuse-centric approach to requirements analysis, present previous efforts implicated with this line of work, and state the revisions brought to extend the reuse potential and effectiveness of a previous iteration of a requirements tool implementing such process. Finally, the paper describes the sequence and nature of the activities involved with the conduct of our proposed requirements-analysis technique, concluding by previewing ongoing work in the field that will explore the feasibility for designers to use our approach

Supporting Requirements Reuse in Notification Systems Design through Task Modeling

In hierarchical task analysis, designers study and decompose the tasks users perform while interacting with a system. Overlooking task analysis can have serious consequences on the design outcome. By making tasks clear to the designers, we can leverage an in-depth understanding of a usage scenario. Resulting from task analysis is a task model that explicitly enumerates the low-level tasks and activities a user can perform with a piece of software. Our first challenge was to identify a design space (notification systems) and knowledge storage approach (claims). By attaching claims to tasks in a hierarchical task analysis, the model creates a visualization of relationships, embodying the system requirements. Successfully adapting task modeling to model notification tasks shows promise in benefiting the requirements analysis of notification system design and promoting reuse. This paper describes a procedure and instantiation of hierarchical task analysis, to help designers identify the most important aspects to focus design and to support reuse of design knowledge within and between projects. The results of our usability study make us confident that users are able to understand the processes of task modeling if provided with sufficient help

Designing the Claims Reuse Library: Validating Classification Methods for Notification Systems

We discuss our research into the development and testing of a notification system claims library for assisting designers in interface development. Our research focuses on achieving consistent values among multiple users when adding and searching claims. We discuss the methods used for redesigning the application, techniques used for testing, and reengineering goals for the Claims Library. This work extends previous efforts on design knowledge reuse in the HCI research community, as such our methods and techniques should be reusable by others. We designed the interface to the library for users entering claims, ensuring usability and understandability. Since we noted problems with a particular feature (the IRC input method) through an internal round of testing, we conducted a lab-based test to isolate specific breakdowns. Our results validated portions of claim classification indices, suggest key reengineering changes that should inform ongoing and future development of the claims library—of broad interest of notification systems developers