[Sigia-l] We could just use whiteboards instead.

[Anne Miller]

<WE don't develop the applications implementations - that's for those who
have the skills to do. We don't design technical systems, we design
information architectures and user experiences.>

I suggest that we dont even design information architectures - we represent
architectures that exist in the world. The architectures, (by which I mean
the pieces of information and their interrelationships), are designed and
continue to be redesigned in the context of use.

Which in my view is why the 100% digital prototyping argument is misguided.
When you involve users in the design process, you get a sense of the
variability in purposes and conceptualisations about how purposes can be
achieved. You need a means for extracting both purposes and conceptual
relationhsips. Users as a group generally cant sit in front of a digital
prototying tool - the keyboard operator takes over. Users can of course work
as a group with butchers paper, whiteboards and other lo-fi materials. When
group processes are managed and facilitated designers can get a sense of
variability in purposes and in conceptualisations.  Its here in my view that
the opportunities for innovation lie.

cheers

Anne Miller
Coordinator
Human Factors Online
Key Centre for Human Factors
University of Queensland
http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/~hufa/

-----Original Message-----
From: sigia-l-admin at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-admin at asis.org]On Behalf Of
Stewart Dean
Sent: Sunday, 24 August 2003 5:28 PM
To: Listera; sigia-l at asis.org
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] We could just use whiteboards instead.


At 13:49 19/08/2003 -0400, Listera wrote:
>"Stewart Dean" wrote:
>
> > The technology is not important.
>
>How can you say that when the very thing that you produce at the end of all
>this is 100% digital, technological artifact? Make one 'small' mistake
(like
>using the wrong format) and you can even deny basic access to your product,
>forget about all the other niceties. We design/develop *digital*
>collaborative environments, automated workflows, data access routines,
>communication pathways, etc., but we won't use ourselves the technologies
we
>spec for our users to use?

WE don't develop the applications implementations - that's for those who
have the skills to do. We don't design technical systems, we design
information architectures and user experiences.

What ever we design based upon what the technology can do, not how it does
it, it can be implemented many different ways. It's a clean separation
between design and implementation. It's taking a few steps back and looking
at what the users want to do, not how the current technology currently does
things.

This, I feel, is something you are choosing not to do when it comes to the
lo-fi / hi-fi discussion. The users work better with a whiteboard and post
it notes, you only need to see them in action to determine that. Yet you
feel that it is vital to use a hi-fi solution because the end solution is
hi-fi.  Surely we only use the technology because it will do what we want
to do IF we design the user experience correctly. When we design any
solutions we have to think about the real world and how people are going to
use it. The whiteboard situation is endemic of that kind of thinking. A
technical solution would be more fragile, complex, limiting and require a
darkened environment to be more effective, all of which hamper the process
it is there to facilitate.

So let me repeat again - the technology is not important - and add - it
will do what we want it to do. This is what I mean by having a healthy
disrespect for technology. If it doesn't do what we want it to do then the
first job is to find out a way that it can - and that is where good
engineers support us. The technology is there to support our work, in an
ideal world.

Now I appreciate that we have to make compromises, we all work with limited
time and money budgets, but I hope you can at least see the point I'm
getting at.



>This reminds me of a meeting I once had at the dawn of the WWW with a few
>execs of TimeWarner's Pathfinder.com. They were so uncomfortable with the
>medium and technology that anything *digital* we had to discuss, including
>email, had to be printed out. I knew then and there, despite all the money
>and hoopla, Pathfinder wasn't going anywhere. And it didn't.

People still do print out text to read. If that is what the users want then
that's what the user gets. The execs my not have been your typical user but
they did represent the actions that you would find amongst users. Sounds
like it was case of being able to show them how others used the Internet so
they could empathise with the potential users. Old media, incidently, can
teach use many things. Having worked on a paper based publication it's
taught me a lot about how electronic content should be treated.

Regards

Stewart Dean



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