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This page describes the consulting services of Positive Interaction Inc., provided by Dick Penn
Information Architecture
The information architect's job is to devise an overall plan of how the site or application will bridge the gap between the data and the user. Beginning with a clear definition of the mission of the software, the IA determines what information is available and how it is structured and related. The information is carved up into manageable pieces and fitted into a structure which is navigable and understandable to users. This structure is tested and refined against the tasks which users perform, and adjusted so that these tasks can be carried out smoothly and with confidence.
We have performed this function in several intranet corporate-knowledge websites, as well as system-management functions in the telecoms industry. Experience in both user-centered design, object-oriented thinking and the design of database systems using SQL provide a background which bridges the divide between users and implementers.
Human-Computer Interaction Design
The job of the HCI Designer is to do everything possible in a software project to ensure that the finished product is usable. This includes defining rules and guidelines for a number of design elements and ensuring that they are applied consistently across the application.
These include:
- the layout and structure of the screens
- a navigation method, including search and history as needed
- a vocabulary for all words used in screens and messages
- platform standards such as the Window User Experience guidelines
- a visual vocabulary for the symbols, colors and graphical representations
- performance standards for responsiveness and strategies for minimizing the impact of delay
Decision Support Software Development
Decision support software is a specialized type of program which is designed to let a group of people reach a decision in a way that ensures that all voices are heard and the decision reflects a true consensus of the group rather than a mere majority. In partnership with my client Sharpe Decisions, I have developed the leading product in this area, which is used by professional facilitators all over the world. Developing and supporting this product since 1996 has given me skills applicable to a wide range of groupware systems, using connected computers or RF keypad technologies.
Using the base of software developed for Sharpe Decisions, I can build a specialized program to your specific needs. This could implement a particular research methodology, or could tailor the existing product to the features you want to use and an apperance which makes it unique to your organization. Look at the Sharpe Decisions product, and if it meets your needs, buy or rent it from Sharpe Decisions. Call Lynda Sharpe-Lalonde on (613)258-7049 to arrange for a product demonstration at your location.
If you find that the generic product is not ideal for you, get in touch with me, and we can discuss developing a special version to meet your needs. I offer this service under licence from Sharpe Decisions Inc.
Web Services for Educational Applications
For several years now we have been working with Chalk and Wire Inc., a provider of software to support the Professional Development and needs of the educational community. We have designed and built a number of web-based services, including a peer-assessment tool for candidate teacher portfolios, an authoring system for simple interactive games, and a tool for creating and deploying surveys over the web. The design philosophy in all these services emphasises simplicity and directness, and supports operation over a very wide range of browsers, taking account of the technology lag in the education field.
Product Prototyping
Early in the design process, everyone from development and marketing to product support and documentation need a vision of the product as it will ultimately appear. In the early stages this may be only a sketch of a few screens. Within weeks it may contain rendered images of a number of screens with buttons to allow the user to click through realistic scenarios, for demos and customer feedback. Later in the process, the prototype may look and feel like the real product, with sufficient realism for effective usability testing.
At all times, the prototype must reflect a consensus view of the product, so that the development and marketing teams can move forward with a common vision. Building such prototypes is a distraction for the development team, who need to produce robust, scaleable software. Prototypes are fragile, throw- away code.
Product prototypes are produced as an integral part of our usability design process, ranging from quick appearance models to high-fidelity prototypes which look and feel like the finished product and automatically log user actions for analysis.
Tools such as Visual Basic, MS Powerpoint, Adobe Photoshop, and technologies such as HTML, CSS, Javascript and SQL are used in the development of prototypes - these specific technologies need not line up with the tools used in product development, because the prototype is throw-away code developed on a separate stream in parallel with devlopment.
We have produced numerous product prototypes for Cognos over the years, and a complete interactive simulation of a screen-based telephone for Avaya, Inc. in New Jersey. This kind of work is very feasible to do remotely, and we confidently offer to provide the service anywhere in the world.
Usability Testing
Any user-centered design process must include testing with real users. It is bad practice for the designer or implementer to conduct such tests. I have a number of excellent associates I can draw on for such testing, and include their work in any proposal for clients who do not have this skill in-house.
Contacts for Consulting Work
| dpenn@acm.org | |
| phone | +1 613 241 3973 |
| cell | +1 613 863 4833 |
| fax | +1 613 241 6027 (make sure my name and phone number are on the cover page) |
| courier | 189 Cathcart Street Ottawa, Ontario Canada, K1N 5C1 |
| Box 72160 Kanata North RPO, Ottawa Ontario Canada, K2K 2P4 |
Business hours are from 7:00am to 5:00pm Eastern Time (GMT-5).
Resources and Hosted Sites
Logo Design by Alison Penn
Freebies
- Color Guide to Web Safe Colors
Chinese Landscape This image was recently used without permission in 2600 magazine, which makes me feel special.
It's always nice to be ripped off by professionals. Thanks guys!
- Desktop Background of Chinese Landscape
- Color Contrast Test PatternA test pattern to dramatize the contrast of text over colored backgrounds, which can also be used to measure the color reproduction of monitors
The flag of Free Luna, from Robert A Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress."
Maybe not the best book ever written, but it has a special place in my heart. TANSTAAFL, then as now.
Chinese LandscapeSlides for Carleton Lectures
Hosted Sites
My Mum's Book about her experiences as a Nurse in Plymouth England during the Blitz
Useful Links in HCI
| HCI-related Sites | The CHI special interest group maintains this brief list
of information sources related to computer-human interaction.
|
HCI Index
| Hans de Graaf of the University of Delft maintains this list of
HCI resources with a distinctly European flavour. While there is little
critical review, there are a number of links to local resources not
found in other lists.
|
Software Design Smorgasbord
| This well-annotated collection of links has a lot of
interesting stuff, including cool web things, visual design and
information design. Hey, it even links to here!
|
Interesting HF Sites
| A very comprehensive and well-maintained list of sites
relating to human factors and HCI topics. It is maintained by
Michelle Vincow and Michelle Yeh of the University of Illinois. There are no
critical reviews or descriptions of the sites.
|
UPA Resource List
| A fairly long list of links related to usability and UI design,
with a brief description of each. Maintained by the Usability Professionals
Association.
|
HCI Resources on the Net
| A very comprehensive set of HCI-related links maintained by
Mikael Ericsson at the University of Linkoping. Especially good for
finding research groups and consultants world-wide.
|
Interaction Design
| A short but varied list of links with brief descriptions from
the university of Umea in Sweden.
|
Cognitive Science
| A long and well-annotated list of resources related to cognitive
psychology, maintained by Stanford University and mostly aimed at
researchers.
|
DMOZ
| On the world's best, volunteer-maintained, directory of the internet,
here is the page on Human-Computer Interaction, with 150 mostly-relevant links.
| |
Guidelines and Principles
| HCI Design Principles | IBM's list of design principles and goals. While a little abstract, these principles could help in the assessment of a product or in high-level design. |
| Web Design Guidelines | A specific set of guidelines intended for corporate websites within IBM, but worthy of more general application. |
| Web Usability | A collection of links on the usability of websites, with brief critical comments on each and links to readable plaintext of the articles. |
| Jakob Nielsen | A large collection of advice, reviews and guidelines from Jakob Nielsen, the Sun guru on web usability. |
| Yale Web Style Guide | A nicely designed and very practical set of guidelines for website design, which talks about process as well as content issues. |
Bibliographies and Research Data
| Searchable HCIbib | An enormous searchable database of published papers in HCI. It is very comprehensive and goes back a long way (you can even find me in there!) |
| HCI Readings | A well-chosen and nicely-formatted list of books on HCI topics, including old standards from the Human Factors field as well as many more recent works. Includes the official styleguides for all the main user interface platforms. Maintained by Gary Perlman. |
| Recent Theses | A list of recently-completed PhD theses related to human-computer interaction, maintained by Joaquim Jorge. |
Jobs
| UPA Job Bank | The best open list of user interface, usability testing and visual interaction jobs I have seen. Maintained by the Usability Professionals Association. |
| HCI Resources | An experimental page providing a front end to job search engines and a list of links to job pages on other services. |
Consultants
| HCI Resources | A long list of consultants and research organizations in North America and around the world. |
| Maskery and Associates | The best of the old Usability Design Group from Nortel, still in Ottawa providing comprehensive and high quality work in usability and HCI design. |
| Convergent Design (Ottawa) | This consulting firm run by Hans Bergman provides high level product design, user interaction design and helps to design "products that understand people". |
Prototyping Tools
| Microsoft Visual Basic | A programming environment intended for developing custom and vertical-market business applications, which is incidentally excellent for rapid prototyping. Not cross-platform, though - works only on Windows. |
| Macromedia Director | The leading development tool for multimedia CD-ROMs and other animation products, this tool is capable of producing excellent product demos and simulations. The programming model is very movie-oriented, and may not suit applications where there is a lot of data. The best tool for cute animation effects there is, and totally cross platform. Runs identically on Mac and Windows, and delivers on either platform or (through Shockwave) over the web. |
| Adobe Photoshop | The professional's primary tool for graphics creation. Not really a prototyping tool, but an essential part of the designer's toolkit nevertheless. Makes GIFs and JPEGs as well as platform-specific formats and runs identically on Windows and the Mac. |
| Brad Myers' UI software | For a comprehensive list of UI design tools and the contact information of their suppliers, see this list maintained by Brad Myers. |
Societies
| SIGCHI | The Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Most members live in the USA and Canada, and have a mixture of backgrounds, including Human Factors, Computer Science, Psychology and Graphic Design. Home of the annual CHI conference, the top conference on this side of the pond. |
| Usability Professionals Association | Mostly focussed on usability assessment and testing, this group also attracts interface designers, and tends to be more focussed on the person and less on the technology than CHI. |
| CapCHI | The Ottawa Chapter of SIGCHI, which includes many of practitioners of HCI in the Ottawa area. |
| Ottawa Chapter of Usability Professionals Association | The more human-oriented members of the Ottawa human-computer interaction crowd are to be found here. More about testing than design, but interesting to all. |
| Human Factors and Ergonomics Society | Most members are based in North America, and most have a Human Factors or Ergonomics background. Special interest groups exist for Computer issues and for Telecommunications. |
| The British HCI Group | This is the Human-Computer Interaction group of the British Computer Society, the counterpart of CHI in the UK. Also the homepage of the annual HCI conference. |
| The Ergonomics Society | Based in the United Kingdom, most members are British, and have an ergonomics background. The site has links to many other ergonomics groups around the world. |
| The International Ergonomics Association | Spread around the world, but mostly in Europe, most members have a background in ergonomics or occupational health and psychology. |
| American Institute of Graphic Arts | This site is as nice-looking as you might expect, but rather short on content. There are lists which will help you find a member of the association, though. |
| SIGGROUP | The official website of the ACM special interest group on computer supported cooperative work, and the home of the annual CSCW conference. |
Others
| IBM HCI Group | Definitely netting the prize for cutest graphics, this site mixes good ideas and advice on interface topics with large doses of corporate hype. |
| Typing Injury FAQ | This site contains a wide range of information about the health effects of too-concentrated computer use, and some strategies for preventing and dealing with those effects. |
| VE-TG | The Virtual Environments SIG of the HFES. Much of the material is outdated, but it will put you in touch with the group. |
| CPSR | Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility maintains this site, which discusses a number of issues related to the social impacts of computer technology. |
| Usability Methods | A structured definition and practical advice for each of the methods used in usability assessment and task analysis. The Design section is a bit light, and there are several empty boxes, but this is a good overview of the various formal methods and the distinctions between them. Maintained by James Hom of San Jose State University. |
Anything I've missed?
If there are any sites you find useful please let me know by e-mail or phone. - Dick
©2002, Positive Interaction, Inc.