[Bellotti and Bly, 1996, Fagrell et al., 1999, Luff and Heath, 1998] they are somewhat vague about the concrete implications for design, particularly in the relationship be-tween the proposed prototypes and other technological artifacts. It is of vital impor-tance to explore how the (computer based) mediating artifacts may relate to each other because without knowledge of these relationships it is impossible for the design to take advantage of the possibilities of the different technologies.
This lack of seeing technology in a larger technological web is even more exag-gerated when we look at mobile technology for the consumer market. WAP services are advertised in a manner which lead the user to assume they will be able to access and do much the same things on their minuscule mobile telephone that they can on their PC, but when the WAP services and portals are examined, they bear very little resemblance to the medium they relate themselves to. We need to move away from an approach where every mobile phone or palmtop device is designed as if it is to be a stand-alone device giving the user access to everything from everywhere, completely independent of all other existing technology. Instead, combining a clear understand-ing of the use practice and use environment with placunderstand-ing the mobile ’communication device’ in the already existing ’web-of-technology’ could give a much clearer picture of where it would provide an actual improvement of existing services and where it was trying do what other technologies already can, only slower and more cumbersome.
This approach is well within the boundaries of the usability methodology I have been describing here.
6.5 Concrete examples of use in the BIDI project
In the following I will give more concrete examples of how we have used different, experimental usability techniques in the BIDI project.
6.5.1 Interrelations between field and lab
One technique for supporting the voice of the user and bringing aspect of the field into the lab is to organise a workshop area to (closely) resemble real work setting and use real artifacts from the workplace as resources in design. Complementary, staging ac-tion and playing out scenarios in the actual field environment adds a richness and detail to the situations impossible to duplicate in a ’lab’ environment. Using the real work context provides us with access to the multitude of actors and artifacts present in real work and lets us investigate into the relationship between these and future technology.
Techniques for letting the field and the lab mutually inform and support each other are described further in [Nielsen, 1998] [P2] which also gives other examples of how aspects from the field can be brought into ’the lab’ and vice versa, and how this may inform design. Furthermore, organising the physical space has been explored as means of supporting collaboration in workshops, both within the BIDI-project and by other research groups within the HCI area. [Petersen and Halskov, 1999] summarises the ex-periences with setting up collaborative design workshops through a set of generally ap-plicable guidelines. Another and equally interesting use of physical space in relation to design is as a vehicle to externalise design decisions and to illustrate the ongoing devel-opment of a design project as described in [Buur and Bødker, 2000, Covi et al., 1998, Karat and Bennett, 1991, Moran et al., 1999, Streitz et al., 1998]. The following ex-amples have been chosen to illustrate some of these considerations and what might be
gained from them.
A field experience in the lab—a Vision2000 example In our efforts to design new, technological support for refrigeration engineers, we engaged in a design workshop with refrigeration engineers from different companies in Denmark. We set up a range of products used by refrigeration engineers in the workshop area and made some mock-up refrigeration crates which were used with scenarios of set-up, maintenance and prob-lem solving situations based on interviews with supermarket employees, the technical staff, managers and refrigeration engineers from our field study. The use of props and mock-ups has been explored and recommended by e.g. [Ehn and Kyng, 1991, Kyng, 1999] as valuable tools in (explorative) design. We presented the scenarios to the participating refrigeration engineers and asked them to comment on whether they found the situations to be realistic pictures of work situations. Furthermore, we asked the refrigeration engineers to act out the scenarios, as they would handle the problem presented, using the available technology and pretending we were in a supermarket.
The discussions raised by these enactments both pointed out differences in work prac-tices and served as a vehicle in identifying problem areas in relation to the available technology and the work practice. Following this, the refrigeration engineers were asked to describe how they wanted the technology to better support the work situation, and we engaged in a cooperative effort to create future scenarios with descriptions of future technology with the aid of hand-held prototypes and foam mock-ups.
Simulating use in the field—a CIS-project example At one of the CIS-project workshops involving participation from all the involved research groups and several wastewater treatment plants we set up different prototypes at the plant and asked par-ticipants in groups to evaluate the prototypes after receiving a demonstration of them.
Their comments were, not surprisingly, related to the interface design, visualisation principles and the structure of information. Afterwards, we presented the participants with a work scenario where an alarm had been triggered on the inlet and asked them to play through the scenario with us, using the prototypes to demonstrate how they would handle the situation and discuss what was there and what was needed. Using the real use setting allowed us to relate the intended functionality with the actual context, to draw upon the information available in the area to support our choices of places and events in the future scenario. This type of staging use is more typical to usability stud-ies in the lab where users are asked to perform typical use tasks with e.g. new software, but it works equally well in a real use environment, illustrating specific aspects of use or effects of new technological devices. During the CIS-project, each of the research groups ran a workshop at one of the wastewater treatment plants for the purpose of design or evaluation.
6.5.2 Using theoretical constructs to inform design
Interaction perspectives in the SmartWindows project In the SmartWindows project we investigated ways of challenging design of mobile devices by using four theoretical interaction perspectives (tool, media, system and dialogue partner) [Kammersgaard, 1988]
as basis for defining four ’design perspectives’ to illustrate different ways of interacting with artifacts. Each interaction perspective was developed into a two-page poster with the original, abstract description of the interaction perspective on the right-hand side and a character description to the left-hand side, focusing on his or her use of
technol-6.5. CONCRETE EXAMPLES OF USE IN THE BIDI PROJECT 45 ogy, which served as an exemplification of the perspective. These design perspectives were used at an inspiration workshop where a group of interaction designers, indus-trial designers, HCI researchers, usability engineers and psychologists from Danfoss, Kommunedata, Bang & Olufsen and Aarhus University were gathered to work with the first version of the design perspectives in relation to work at the combined heating and power plant. Using work situation descriptions and video clips from the field study they were asked to explore design possibilities for a portable piece of equipment from the point of view of the four design perspectives, one perspective in each of four groups.
The groups created scenarios based on the work situation description to situate their thinking about possible ways of interaction in this setting—where would the media perspective, emphasising communication between people in the plant, head? Or, with the tool perspective, which tools would be needed, and for what purposes? To present these considerations, the groups acted out their resulting future work situation with mock-ups of future technology. We found that the restrictions inherent in working with one specific work situation description and one specific design perspective actually helped define the boundaries and create a common ground on which the participants could use their individual experiences and backgrounds in the negotiation of the de-sign. This ’boundary zone’ [Bertelsen, 1998] was first defined through the negotiation between the participants of how the assignment should be understood and affronted.
Later it served as a collaborative design space as the participants started sketching de-sign ideas for the future scenario on paper and with simple props like pipe cleaners and plastic cups, elaborating on some and discarding others. The intended outcome of this workshop was not to generate specific design solutions but rather to inspire and aid the process of generating new ideas for regarding mobile support for work at a combined heating and power plant. We see the use of caricatures in the design perspectives as an important tool in achieving this goal. Because the design perspectives quite clearly did not provide realistic views of the world, it was also clear for all participants that their utilisation did not yield the solution to a design problem but rather the unfolding of a design space.
Augmented reality principles in the CIS project Similarly, we have used the the-oretical classification of augmented reality principles [Mackay, 1998a]—augmenting the user, the object and the environment—as a tool for design in line with the use of metaphors in participatory design [Madsen, 1994], and the previously mentioned springboards in developmental work research [Engeström, 1987]. We used the aug-mented reality classification to inspire design of new ways of interacting with a mobile device to be used in a wastewater treatment environment, challenging the predominant
’direct-manipulation’ interaction paradigm which proffers pen based interaction with the hand-held device. Based on four work situations from our empirical study at the wastewater treatment plant, we developed four horizontal prototypes where interaction with the mobile device reflected one of the three augmented reality principles. One had a gesture-like nature as if it was the extension of the user, another was based on the manipulation of other physical devices to which the mobile device could be attached, etc. Focusing on interaction with physical objects in the work setting provided us with specific boundaries to work within and thus became an effective guide in deciding what to include in each of the PDA applications. Thus, the concepts of augmented reality worked as a tool for handling the context problem. Most of the information and con-trol made accessible with the suggested PDA applications is present in the existing process control system. The strong focus on interaction with physical objects around
the plant, however, helped in specifying actual physical and situational context for the applications in the future scenarios.
6.5.3 Design in multidisciplinary groups and mobile work
The wide range of representations of work and artifacts made available at the work-shops worked as sources of inspiration and promoted the different perspectives in the design work. The participants could use the artifacts as concrete anchors in more the-oretical discussions by using them to refer to or interact with to exemplify a point they were making. Common to the methods presented is their anchor into real use situa-tions. In a design context, realistic scenarios from empirical studies work as the frame within which new technology can be developed and experimented with without ever losing touch with reality and the use context.
In supporting mobile work, experimentation with design is particularly important.
Support for mobile work must be found in the combination of e.g. desktop systems, hand-held devices and local displays in order to provide the best access to the infor-mation needed for workers to perform the daily tasks and to reconfigure themselves in response to changes in requirements and unplanned events [Luff and Heath, 1998]. To provide the best range of access points into the information we need to look at e.g. user interface design, interaction paradigms and information visualisation from many dif-ferent angles. This can be accomplished through new, creative design techniques as the ones mentioned above, involving a wide range of practitioners and users, representing the stake-holders in design.
Chapter 7
Mobile work in a process environment
Moving from techniques to change usability practices to a more specific area for ap-plication of the techniques, we turn to look at what constitutes work in a process envi-ronment. In the following, I will present the primary case study and pull forward key elements of work in a process environment, with emphasis on wastewater treatment, but also illustrated by examples from the two other case studies.