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
Supply Chain Management User Experience
…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 2003
SCM UE team grows from 3 to 8 in less than a month!
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The Balance of Roles & Skill Sets
The Supply Chain Management User Experience (SCM UE) Team:
MIMS 2002!
Jeff
Rosa
Josh
Amy
Team Manager
Usability Engineers
MIMS 2003!
John
Scott
Maggie
Interaction Designers
Lynn
Research
(Users, Customers, Industry)
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The Challenges We Face
Foundation Building
Climbing product learning curves, understanding internal processes and culture, meeting
new people, becoming familiar with one another, team intranet site, etc.
Self-Promotion
Ongoing awareness campaign: What is User Experience? How does the SCM UE team fit
into our long-established routines?
Demonstrating Value
Early successes; document everything; offer solutions – not just criticism.
Strategizing Best Use of Limited Resources
Insert 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.com
http://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.
IBM
http://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
Which method of transportation do you prefer?
Bicycle
• good form of exercise
• environmentally friendly
• cheap
• scenic
vs.
Airplane
• time-efficient
• high-speed
• powerful
• heavy luggage ok
It depends, of course.
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Motivations Define Our Experiences
Now compare...
Gaming Software
• free time activity
• voluntary participation
• solitary or social
• entertaining
vs.
Enterprise Business Software
• job requirement
• task-driven
• process-oriented
• pressure to succeed
Understanding context is essential to measuring user satisfaction.
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Ummm… “User-Centered Design”?
msdn.microsoft.com
http://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 Testing
Goal: 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 Research
Goal: 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 Evaluations
Goal: 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 Analysis
Goal: 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 Inquiry
Goal: 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 customconfigured 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 Analysis
Goal: 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!
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