Monday MetaData

International Usability Evaluation: Issues and Strategies
Emilie W. Gould, Acadia University, Canada
Aaron Marcus, Aaron Marcus and Associates, USA
Apala Lahiri Chavan, Human Factors International, India
Huatong (Hannah) Sun, Grand Valley State University, USA

In this SIG, practitioners will discuss challenges they faced in selecting and customizing methods for international usability design. Facilitators and then participants will contribute experiences, case studies, and helpful multicultural contacts.
• Storytelling: Sharing Narratives
• Bizarre-Bazaar Method: informative performance method for Asian users
• Having very young facilitators when doing contextual inquiry and/or interviews
• Use methods that use inherent cultural practices from the community you are researching

Making Action Visible in Time-Critical Work
Jonas Landgren, Viktoria Institute & Göteborg University Sweden

Ethnographic accounts of time-critical physical work. Design implications for making verbal communication persistent to provide accountability. Inspiration for designers and practitioners of systems and applications for time-critical settings.
• Window report: crucial information, snapshot view
• Situation assessment, rushed deployment: location, surroundings, context to inform intervention, can’t wait must rush deployment but need full information
• Situational adjustment: momentary meetings, taking control of situation to bring to a safe state, a lot more time for momentary meetings with incident commander, improvisation
• All these work rhythms, share all the information, all communication is verbal and ephemeral
• Actions visible in conversations
- The actions are embedded in temporal structures which form the conversations and are thereby also represented in the communication.
- The work rhythm forms the conversations and makes aspects of the context of those actions visible in the conversation.
• Design implications
- Make verbal communication persistent
• Record the conversations with meta data
- Make verbal communication visible
• Visualize the evolving structure of conversations
• Create technology that is running on communication devices, each conversation should be uploaded to some central communication, structure of communication and visualize it
• CallerNo: ReceiveNo: Start: End: Audio: Note
- Collect basic information about communication, the content, create a structure through a timeline perspective
• Dual Use
- Supporting ongoing response work
• Evolving structure and cues to support sensemaking
- Post-emergency analysis
• Material for detailed analysis and response work evaluation
• Occasions for use
- Mobilization * – transportation, awakening
- Intervention – status report
- Situational adjustment *
- Incident completion
• Summing up
- Key rhythms and temporal structures in time-critical work
- Make ephemeral verbal communication persistent and visible
- Dual use: ongoing work, post-analysis

Participatory Design in Emergency Medical Service: Designing for Future Practice
Margit Kristensen, Morten Kyng, University of Aarhus, Denmark
Leysia Palen, University of Aarhus & University of Colorado, Boulder, Denmark & USA

Results of a participatory design process for emergency medical service address future practice and challenges of designing for major incidents.
• Palpable Computing: Palcom and ISIS Katrineberg
• Emergency Medical Service (EMS) in Major Incidents
• PalCom
- Focus on palpability of IT: how new functionality can be created through deconstruction and reconstruction
- Begin with real users in context
• Major Incidents
- All incidents are unpredictable
- Characterized by
• Too few available resources, meaning priorities have to be made
• Require immediate response
• Rapid changes in situation
• Many different professionals at the incident site as well as in remote locations
- Today: Minimal IT-support
• Participatory Design approach
- Field Studies, Design and Prototype Development, Workshops
• Familiarity Principle
- Professionals have to be very familiar with the IT to be used in major incidents
- Thus the IT should not only be useful (and used) in major incidents, it should be used and be very useful in everyday work
• Integrated alarm system
• Interdisciplinary hierarchy – can cause conflict
• Personal ID and data information for each victim
• Categorization of victims
- Triage cards, not immediately visible
• Medical assessment
- Only available equipment
• Communication and coordination around the victims
- Information handed over from person-to-person
- Finding each other or staying together during emergency response systems
• Victims as boundary objects in major incident EMS
- Presence of victims an indication of the work-to-be-done
• Design ideas
- Wireless biomonitors and remote access displays
- Capturing and displaying…
• Wireless biomonitors – The BlueBio System
- Exchange of data with hospital…
• Data from several monitors to different displays and change between these
• Technical solutions to support high degree of dynamics
• One/more to more connections situation without having physical indicators of what/who is connected (= no wires)
- How to indicate connections? Light, color, etc.
• Changes between connections
- How to indicate, how to carry out
• Respiration sound – can this be used at all?
- Distinguish between noise and not-noise
- Listen over distance without watching the patient
• Must be used with real users to get a more realistic understanding
• Designing/developing to the major incident area is difficult
- Not only matter of size, but kind
- The familiarity principle
- Reliability in use is crucial
• Cannot be done with out serious involvement of professions
• Participatory Design approach is essential