Citizens, stakeholders and
designers:
Modeling for user diversity
Florence Pontico
Marco Winckler
http://liihs.irit.fr/
{pontico, winckler}@irit.fr
eGovernment design / model-based approach / modeling requirements / tool requirements / perspectives
e-Government
administrative e-Procedures
 Definition Web application that provides support
to the remote achievement of an administrative procedure
 Advantages
• For the citizen: Free access, any time, any place
• For the administration: Better and more modern image of the
administration / Facilitates procedure modifications (e.g. due to
new regulations)
• For both: Less paper to handle and archive / Facilitates procedure
monitoring / More speed and efficiency (e.g. no postal delay)
 Examples
• Local level: child enrolment at the holiday centre
• National level: income-tax return
• International level: visa application
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eGovernment design / model-based approach / modeling requirements / tool requirements / perspectives
e-Government
particularities & constraints
 Ethical (and legal) constraints
• Security: authentication of users, data protection at every step
(use, transport, storage, archive)
• Accessibility: anyone must be able to use the application whatever
his handicap may be (blind, elderly people etc.)
• Help and guidance to the user whose profile is poorly known (only
his purpose towards the application is clear: achieve a procedure)
 Special needs for a support tool
 Usability: support to the communication between stakeholders
• Rules checking: validity, coherence, ergonomics, simulation
• Method for a guidance in administrative eProcedures design
• Flexibility
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eGovernment design / model-based approach / modeling requirements / tool requirements / perspectives
e-Government
user diversity (1/2)
 Development team (designers)
• Involved in the design: project managers / developers /
•
•
graphic designers / domain experts
Set up e-services according to technical and legal constraints
Manage usability
 Citizens
• Individuals, firms, associations
• Universal access to information
• Find availability of e-services and use that safely
 Administrative clerks
• In charge of the treatment of the procedure
• Primary contact for answering citizens’ claims
• Involvement might require re-organization of their work
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e-Government
user diversity (2/2)
≠ viewpoints, backgrounds & interests
 Appropriate modeling support is necessary to:
 Collect and organize user requirements (and constraints)
 Improve communications inter- user categories (e.g.
wizards)
 Communicate new ideas
 Abstract views of the applications (to think about
Interaction not about UI design)
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Examples of modeling
techniques
SWC: navigation model
HTML
programm End-user
er
Advanced
programmer
1. submit
paper
Web
Designe
r
2. inform
problems
Author
3. Find
solution
4. Correct
problems
UML use cases
YAWL: workflow model
In top
Call for
papers
[nb_papers]
[nb_papers]
Record
submission
Review
submission
[nb_accepted_papers]
Record final
submission
Out top
[nb_reviewers]
In Review
Submission
Perform the
review
CTT: task models
Collect
review results
Determine
acceptance
Notify
author
Out Review
Submission
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eGovernment design / model-based approach / modeling requirements / tool requirements / perspectives
which models?
multi model-based specification
 Application (interactive system)
navigation between web pages & scripts
 Task / Activity
activities achieved by users to reach a goal
 Procedure
global vision of the procedure as a sequence of automated and manual
operations achieved by several agents using a set of resources
 Resource
representation of the resources (data, documents, tools)
of the application environment
 Organizational
roles definition, way to allocate them to agents, responsibilities
and skills
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eGovernment design / model-based approach / modeling requirements / tool requirements / perspectives
which models?
Organizational
model
AGENT Paul
ROLE Reviewer
ALLOCATION MODE Paul applied to be reviewer
and he was selected by the conference organizer.
SKILLS He is allocated a set of submissions he
has to review
PERFORMED BY
The decision of
acceptance is taken by
the meta-reviewer
ACTIVITY Evaluate a submission
EVENT New submission to evaluate
TRIGGERS Validate a review
 notify the meta reviewer
SUB ACTIVITY Validate a review
є Evaluate a submission
Process model
SUPPORT ‘Evaluate a
submission’ activity uses
submission and review
Information for conference
management specification
is spread among models and on
the relations between them
ACCESS RIGHTS A reviewer can
read modify delete any
submission he was allocated to.
Resource model
RESOURCES Author’s details /
Reviews / Submissions
TOOLS Chat application for meta-review
TASK Evaluate a submission
SUB TASK Read the submission
є Evaluate a submission
Task model
USES To evaluate a submission,
the reviewer reads the paper
that was sent by the authors.
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eGovernment design / model-based approach / modeling requirements / tool requirements / perspectives
process modeling
why? what? how?

Administration viewpoint:
procedural, functional, global, objective description…


NB: definition of the coordination between roles and resources, the common
goal being decomposed into validation steps.
Different modeling trends
• Controlled activity flow (e.g. YAWL [Van der Aalst 02])
• Service sharing between agents (e.g. OSSAD [Dumas 90])
• Information circulation among work stations (e.g. ECF [Karbe
90])
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eGovernment design / model-based approach / modeling requirements / tool requirements / perspectives
task modeling
why? what? how?

User viewpoint:
specification of steps of the procedure in terms of users’
activities, subjective description…


NB: When the activity of an user is spread among procedure stages, his task
model permits the anticipation of his whole participation into the procedure
(including e.g. data to collect).
Different modeling trends
• User’s knowledge (e.g. TKS [Johnson 92])
• Environment resources (e.g. MAD [Pierret-Golbreich 89])
• Elements of the interface (e.g. CTT [Paternò 98])
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eGovernment design / model-based approach / modeling requirements / tool requirements / perspectives
modeling requirements
what should be specified
 User-centered description of the activity
how an activity is actually led in this environment
 Intervention of several users in an activity
how different agents interact, coordinate and take benefit of
other agents’ skills and responsibilities
 Role definition
what the skills and responsibilities of this role are, how it is
allocated to a particular agent
 Use of a resource
structure of the data involved, use of secondary tools during
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the procedure (e.g. calculator)
eGovernment design / model-based approach / modeling requirements / tool requirements / perspectives
modeling requirements
eGovernment criteria evaluation
Task
Process
Both
Existing modeling methods coverage
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of eGovernment specification criteria
eGovernment design / model-based approach / modeling requirements / tool requirements / perspectives
conclusions
& perspectives…

Review
• Administrative e-Procedures are complex applications
with strong design and specification requirements
• Appropriate models can help designers to communicate
with people involved in the process (see MERISE
experience)
• Formal methods precise but rather to understand
• Informal description techniques lack support for
completely describing users
• Multi model based specification is required
• No existing modeling method/tool is adapted
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Current and Future work




Use MDE approach to wave different models
Provide consistency among models
Case studies for identifying which graphical
representations of information is the more
appropriated to each category of
participants
Our goal:


Provide methodological support
Provide wizards based on models that can guide
users through the applications
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Thanks
for your attention !