8.2 Task Analysis
8.2.1 Results from the Task Analysis
The following summarises the results of the task analysis conducted with the marketing director, clothing product manager, marketing manager and the designer, from the company used during the field research. They were already familiar with the IBIS‘S representation and they were first asked to read through the two manuals for the IBIS^ and the representations. They were then asked to run through the following tasks speaking their thoughts out loud as they tried complete each task.
Task 1: Spend twenty minutes navigating through the IBIS^ representation and make some general comments about your understanding o f it and problems you see with either the interface or the notation.
The same problems in the IBIS'*' representation were reiterated as outlined as a result of the analysis in the chapter 6? In particular the interface was still deemed very hard to navigate. The fact that there was no zoom facility on the interface was thought to be especially annoying because it was only possible to view a small section of the map at one time, making it difficult to make sense of without more context. In order to see the whole picture and make sense of the maps it was necessary to print each
portion of them out and stick pages of A4 together, forming a large plan of a map. It was further emphasised that a visual overview of all the maps in the system would be essential. The designer stated 'the thing I would find difficult is there is no overview. That’s the really hard thing because that is the most arduous thing to get your head round, in order to get the big picture. Maybe it would be helped if there was a zoom, or you could print a report that shows how it all links together - it doesn ’t necessarily even need to be visual it could just be a textual report showing the chain o f maps, that would give you an idea o f how from the first map to the end map, they are connected, because it is quite hard to follow the links because the interface makes it so hard to navigate. ’
It was thought that the representation would be ideal for identifying where bottle necks were occurring in the design process and also for identifying where decisions were required. The need for other 'overview, zoom and detail on demand facilities’
(Shneiderman, 1998) such as scroll bars, which the users were familiar with from other software packages, was repeated. In terms of the notation they were still familiar with it from the previous field study experiments. However problems were still encountered making sense of and remembering the meaning of the numerous coloured links and the section on the link types in the manual was referred to several times during the twenty minute exploration of the maps. The requirement to annotate the representation to bring it up to date was reiterated, in order that the design team would be able to set the record straight before they moved on with the design. For example, it was noted that there were too many positions left hanging with no decision nodes attached to them, where in many case decisions relating to the particular positions had been made. The need was stressed for the maps to be accurate in order for them to be used for quality analysis e.g. assessing the role of the external designers.
Task 2: Spend twenty minutes navigating through the representation and
make some general comments about your understanding o f it and problems you see with either the interface or the notation. Compare it to the IBIS^ representation used initially.
The initial comments related to the enhanced navigation elements provided within the IBisPdr interface demonstrated in figures 8.3 and 8.4. It was possible to move
through the maps much more smoothly using the vertical and horizontal scroll bars at the edges of the screen. The zoom facility which enable larger portions of map to be viewed in one go was also liked. It was however commented that it was a shame that when the whole map was viewed on the screen, the nodes and their annotations were too small to read. Linking the system to an extra large VDU in the design room to overcome this problem was suggested.
The split screen allowing the text associated with the nodes to be viewed at the same time as viewing the maps was referred to as being a great improvement. However it would have been preferred if the labels for the nodes were included in the text part of the split window, so that if the maps were zoomed out to the extent that you couldn’t read the node labels, you would still be able to look at the labels by clicking on the node and reading it in the text window. It was further commented that the maps were clearer without the use of the colour coded links.
The addition of the new node types ‘not actioned’ and ‘resolution’ were noted. The marketing director referred to the manual and was able to succinctly describe the difference between when the decision or resolution node should be used, i.e. that a resolution would be attached to a position node if all the positions in the line of reasoning were addressed by the resolution and a decision nodes would be attached to a position node where only some of the ideas in the line of reasoning would be addressed by the decision. He was aware that any position (light bulb) nodes in the line of reasoning where a resolution was attached would be greyed out to indicate that each of the positions in this line of reasoning had been addressed by the resolution. It was commented that care would need to be taken to ensure that the correct usage was made of decision and resolution nodes, especially if the representation was being constructed rapidly in order to be concurrent with the design meetings. The marketing director used the section of the map shown in Figure 8.4, to explain the difference between the resolution and decision nodes types.
Figure 8.3. Z oom ed Out V iew o f an Entire I B I S ™ Map
Single Coloured Zoom Facility Links
N ew Node Type: Resolution N ew Node Type: Not Actioned jiKsrai
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Figure 8.4. I B I S ™ map dem onstrating the u se o f D e cisio n and R esolution N od es Greyed Out Position Nodes Linked to Resolution Nodes
Decision Node Type : Resolution Node Type : Indicates a decision but does not Indicates a resolution and does address all the position nodes in address all the position nodes in the line of reasoning the line of reasoning
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The manual was referred to several times in order to become familiar with the colour coding denoting the different departments for the decision and resolution node types as shown in the section of a EBIS^^*^ map in figure 8.5. There was debate amongst the group as to whether this was a useful addition or not and whether colour coding was the best way of showing it or 'was this complicating the notation?'. The designer noted that it would be obvious which department a node stemmed from by looking at the names of the person that had added the node but she then said that since people leave the company quite frequently this probably would not be possible a few years down the line. The consensus was that overall denoting the department that decisions and resolutions were coming from was quite useful and it was queried whether this could be extended across the whole notation. For example, could every node in the representation have a background colour that represented a particular department? This would then enable the production manager, for example, to quickly browse the
map and look at the design dialogue just from the opinions of the production personnel involved in the design process. It would enable the themes being brought up from the different departments to be traced and facilitate tasks such as a search on all the comments added by the marketing team on the colour palette. The colour
coded links used in the IBIS^ maps had been very confusing, ‘with the colour coded
links it is just too much detail, you can7take it all in, with the colour coded nodes it is fine because when looking at the nodes there is a strong block o f colour and the colour coded departmental nodes are easy to interpret at a glance and provide the notation with valuable additional functionality. With the links, adding different colours doesn7seem to provide the user with a lot more information. All you need to know is there a relationship between one node and another since the node type automatically infers what type o f relationship exist. Also with the link lines, you don't see colour differentiation very well, whereas with the block o f colour on the nodes it is very clear.' For example it is not necessary to have a link type ‘objects to’ when there is already an ‘objects to’ argument node.
Figure 8.5. IB IS™ Map Demonstrating Colour Coded Decision and Resolution Nodes Colour Coded Decision Nodes Colour Coded Resolution Nodes A
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The addition of date stamping was particularly liked by the production manager who viewed it as a potential 'weapon' against deadlines not being heeded. It was also thought that this would be useful for allocating responsibility. The example shown in figure 8.6 was used, stating that on 05/05/97 it can be seen that the marketing director said to the designer: "On long sleeved garments the primary logo (the patch) should always be on the chest and the secondary logo (the license plate) on the bottom o f the sleeve. On the short sleeved garments the secondary logo should go in the side seam." If for any reason this instruction was not followed after the 05/05/97 it was identified that the representation could be referred to in order to establish exactly what and when it had been said. It was not however thought that stamping the nodes with the exact time of their addition would have any particular benefit and that date stamping would be sufficient.
Figure 8.6. IBIS^^^ Map Demonstrating the Addition of Date Stamping to the Nodes
Date Stamping on Nodes
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): "On long sleeved garm ents the primary logo (the patch) should alw ays be on the chest and the secon dary logo (the license plate) on the bottom of the sleeve. On the short sleeved garm ents the secon dary logo should go in the side seam . "
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The hyperlinking of the key position nodes to visuals of the final product relating to the position, as shown in figure 8.7, was particularly liked by the designer. However the production manager mistook the pink colouring to mean that these were nodes added by the production department since she had confused it with the production resolution and decisions nodes that had a red background. There was discussion on the confusion that colour coding could cause if used too widely within the notation. The consensus was that it shouldn't be used in more than one capacity within the notation, they would prefer a different way of denoting a node was linked to a visual of the final product such as an ‘V’ flag next to the node.
Figure 8.7. Hyperlinking Position Nodes to a Visual of the Relevant Final Product
Pink Background on the Position Node Denoting a Hyperlink to the
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There was no problem understanding the use of the 'not actioned' node type seen in figure 8.8, but it was noted that the representation could now be annotated with some
further 'not actioned' nodes that become the case since the design rationale was last updated. There was no comment on the 'R' flag that denoted retrospectively added nodes as shown in figure 8.8. When probed about this, the users felt it was interesting to see what had been added as part of the design discourse and what had been added later but the ‘Not Actioned’ node type was inherently a retrospective node and therefore the R’ flag used with this node type was redundant.
Figure 8.8. IBIS^^^ Map Demonstrating the ‘Not Actioned’ Node and the R’ Flag
Not Actioned Node
‘R ’ Flag Denoting Retrospective Node
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The 'Find/Replace' facility in the edit menu as shown in Figure 8.9, was found easy to use and identified as being an invaluable tool for tasks such as quickly locating any references to certain products within the knowledge base. This tool would become increasingly essential over time as the knowledge base grew with the addition of new data from each subsequent design cycle.
Figure 8.9. M ap Dem onstrating the Find/R eplace Facility
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Selection; 1.3.1.33 Reference: 1 9 /0 3 /9 7 (32005) J a sp ee Short |V»w:'
Similarly the spell checker facility in the tools menu, shown in figure 8.10 was identified as being useful, particularly in view of the fact that data would be likely to be entered into the knowledge base by various people within the organisation and they would not necessarily be trained typists and might be prone to typing errors. ^