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Usability SIG Summary of Past Programs

May 2002

The Usability SIG met on 16 May 2002 at the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Regional Services Center, 4805 Edgemoor Lane Bethesda, MD to hear a program on the subject: "Getting a handle on all the issues in e-government sites". This presentation was cosponsored by UPA DC Metro and the STC Washington, DC chapter.

The speaker was Caroline Jarrett, a usability consultant from the UK who specializes in forms: evaluating paper forms, design of paper and on-line forms, and effective implementation of business processes that include forms.

Because she works mostly with large government and non-profit organizations that are trying to establish new usability groups, Caroline become fascinated by the challenges presented by helping large organizations adopt user-centered design techniques. She is the author of the "Evaluation in Practice" and "Usability in Organizations" units in the new Open University course "User Interface Design and Development."

Caroline presented a model, called PRISM, that helps her in her work with the UK government and non-profit web sites. PRISM enables you to classify issues so that you can tackle them independently while still acknowledging them as being related.

In this interactive presentation, audience members shared their views about the myriad of issues that arise when trying to produce usable e-government. Carolyn demonstrated how PRISM can help keep you from feeling overwhelmed by the number of things you need to think about in developing a government web site.

About UPA DC Metro: For information about the UPA DC Metro (Usability Professionals Association) or to be added to the UPA DC Metro mailing list, contact the President and Listserv manager, Bill Killam, at . To join the UPA DC Metro, request a membership form from Events Chair, Christy Mylks, at .

March 2002

The Usability SIG met on 7 March 2002 at the NRECA (National Rural Electrical Cooperative Association) 4301 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, Virginia to hear a program on the subject: "Plain Language and Usability—A Case Study" Making large documents (like government rules) easy to understand and use—on the Web and on paper. It can be done! We did it!

The speaker was Gail Hughes is a manager in the Washington state Department of Labor and Industries. Ginny Redish, an STC Fellow, member of our STC chapter, and a nationally-known usability specialist, was a consultant on this project and introduced our speaker. The program description was the following:

Whether you work in government or in the private sector, you will find this case study fascinating. What do you do with a document that is huge, old, not organized clearly, and written in a bureaucratic style? How do you get people to agree to change it? What changes do you make to get it to be smaller, innovative, well-organized, and in plain language? And how do you know it works for the people who have to use it? Come take advantage of lessons learned in this case study.

For the past three years, a team at the Washington state Department of Labor and Industries has been rewriting workplace safety and heath rules so that they are easy to use and understand. The first set of revised rules, which went into effect last September, exemplify a new model for document writers everywhere. They are chunked into small, usable pieces. They are written in clear language—with "must" not "shall"—speaking directly to users "you must…"—with additional aids and notes to help people comply. And they went through three rounds of usability testing—two on paper and one for the web-based version. If you've ever tried to do plain language, you have to see this example and learn how they did it!

Gail Hughes, who lead the Innovations team through this effort, will talk about how they did it, where they are today, and what they plan for the future. She will describe how a key component was developing relationships with business and labor, attorneys, and safety and health professionals, who collaborated in the effort. She will talk about how the team worked with usability specialists and what they learned from usability testing of a very large document in which people need to find a specific piece of information—especially from the usability test of the rules on the web.

Many folks in the DC area face challenges similar to the one that this project dealt with—making a very large document originally written by lawyers, federal agency staff, and state agency staff into a document that all employers and employees in the state can understand and use easily. Gail will share "before" and "after" examples and will demonstrate the interactive CD version of the rewritten rule.

June 2001

The Usability SIG met on May 9 at the Manugistics offices in Bethesda, Maryland to hear a presentation from the National Cancer Institute relating to their Web site at http://www.usability.gov/.
Evidence-Based Web Design: Using the Latest Research-Not Opinions-to Create Your Site
Sanjay J. Koyani
Usability Engineer/Analyst
Communication Technologies Branch, Office of Communications
National Cancer Institute


This talk will assess Web usability guidelines that currently exist, and it reviews the National Cancer Institute's recent efforts to develop a current and accurate set of Web design and usability guidelines based on research evidence. The objectives of this presentation are to illustrate the difference between evidence-based and non-evidence-based approaches to Web usability, describe our method for developing the usability guidelines, and demonstrate the value of this tool for usability specialists.

Sanjay is a Usability Engineer/Analyst for the National Cancer Institute's Communication Technologies Branch, Office of Communications, which has produced the web site http://www.usability.gov. Sanjay will discuss both this web site and his group's approach to usability guidelines.

May 2001

The Usability SIG met on May 9 at the National Science Foundation in Ballston, Virginia. This was the kick-off meeting of the UPA-DC-Metro Chapter. The meeting involved introductions, committee formation, program, membership info, and a presentation by a speaker. All members of the STC, DC-CHI, and HFES are invited to attend in the spirit of collaboration and solidarity. For more information, contact Mahmoud El-Darwish , UPA-DC-Metro Chapter, 301-523-2255 (M).

February 2001

The Usability SIG met on February 7 at Hughes Network Systems to hear Ginny Redish's presentation on single sourcing—writing information once and using it many times. This was a joint meeting with the Washington, DC Chapter and was also attended by representatives from other usability and human factors groups in the area.

December 2000

The Usability SIG met on December 6 at ICF Consulting for a workshop about paper prototyping technique. It was an opportunity to see, in a simplified way, how this method works and how it might fit into your work.

October 2000

The Usability SIG met on October 26 at the Silver Spring Library to consider the topic "User Centered Design—How Products and Organizations are Impacted". The speaker was Lisa Solomon, President of Clientside Design, LLC. The presentation centered around Don Norman's new book, "The Invisible Computer".

June 2000

The topic of the June meeting of the Usability SIG was "Discussion and Review of Contextual Design: Defining Customer-Centered Systems." This meeting was a discussion of the book Contextual Design: A Customer Centered Approach to Systems Designs by Hugh Beyer and Karen Holtzblatt.

April 2000

In April, the Usability SIG considered the topic "Building a Usability Lab, From No Budget to a Complete Facility." Dick Horst, President of UserWorks, Inc., discussed the usability equipment available in a variety of price ranges.

December 1999

The STC's Washington, DC Chapter Usability SIG met on Tuesday, December 7, 1999 at the University of Maryland campus at College Park for an introduction to their Human-Computer Interface Laboratory (HCIL). We heard several speakers, starting with Ben Shneiderman, the head of the HCIL. After an overview of the work they do there, Ben turned the floor over to several of his colleagues, who each described part of their work. For an overall picture of the HCIL, see its Web page at http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/.

October 1999

The first Usability SIG meeting went well on October 12, with 14 attendees. Special thanks go to Ren Stimart and Susan Muldoon for sharing some of their usability projects with us and serving as a sounding board for the group's questions. They both described some low-budget approaches to usability testing and contrasted them with some of the more in-depth testing that they've done. Susan showed us a set of vocabulary tests that she used to find and analyze terminology questions (she used matching, fill-in-the-blank/multiple choice, and sentence completion tasks). Ren discussed a technique to conduct usability tests on several people at once in a classroom or computer lab setting. His testers completed tasks at their own pace and timed themselves, and they could also get help from the observers as needed. 10/15/99

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