Tài liệu Working through Screens-100 Ideas for Envisioning Powerful, Engaging, and Productive User Experiences in Knowledge Work pdf

Application Concepting Series
No. 1
A publication of
FLASHBULB INTERACTION, Inc
Also available in .html, “Idea Cards”
and 11’’X17” .pdf formats at
www.FlashbulbInteraction.com
100 ideas for envisioning
powerful, engaging,
and productive
user experiences
in knowledge work
By Jacob Burghardt
WORKING
THROUGH
SCREENS
This book is for my grandfather, William Wolfram, who
believed that the nature of work was changing into something
very different than what he had experienced at sea, in the
fields, and on assembly lines — and strongly encouraged
me to explore what it might mean.
FRONT MATTER | FRAMING THE PROBLEM
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The category of human efforts sometimes called “knowledge
work” is growing.
Knowledge workers are valued for their specialized intellectual

skills and their ability to act on and with complex information in
goal oriented ways.
In many contexts, the idea of knowledge work has become
almost synonymous with using a computer, to both positive and
negative effect.
Product teams creating computing tools for specialized workers
struggle to understand what is needed and to successfully
satisfy a myriad of constraints.
As a result of the design deficiencies in these interactive
products, people experience many frustrations in their working
lives.
Noticeable deficiencies, along with the ones that have invisibly
become the status quo, can lower the quality and quantity of
workers’ desired outputs.
With so many people in front of so many screens — attempting
to practice their chosen professions — these deficiencies have
real costs.
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
EXPERIENCED EFFORT
INTERACTIONS PERFORMED
SUBJECTIVE SATISFACTION
PROGRESS TOWARD GOAL
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8:12 ELAPSED TIME
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Circuitous
Boring
Awkwardly dynamic
Hard
Inconsistent
Distracting
Overly flexible
Mismatched
Replaceable
Needed
Typical
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Collectively, we have an infrastructural sense of what these
technologies can be that tends to limit our ability to imagine
better offerings.
Targeted improvements in the design of these tools can have
large impacts on workers’ experiences. Visionary design can
advance entire fields and industries.
At a basic level, applications can “fit” the working cultures that
they are designed for, rather than forcing unwanted changes in
established activities. They can augment rather than redefine.
When workers alter their culture to adopt a new computing tool,
it can be solely because that tool provides new meaning and
value in their practices.

Going further, elegantly designed applications can become a
joy to use, providing an empowering, connective sense of direct
action and a pleasing sensory environment for people to think
“within.”
Product teams can make significant progress toward these aims
by changing how they get started on designing their products
— by beginning with an emphasis on getting to the right design
strategy and design concepts long before getting to the right
design details.
It is time to start holistically envisioning exemplary new tools for
thought that target valuable intersections of work activity and
technological possibility.
FRONT MATTER | FRAMING THE PROBLEM
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WORKING THROUGH SCREENS
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EXPERIENCED EFFORT
INTERACTIONS PERFORMED
SUBJECTIVE SATISFACTION
PROGRESS TOWARD GOAL
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Overall, this new
tool feels like it just
belongs in how I
think about my own
ways of working
And I get to a beƩer
conclusion faster,
which feels much
more empowering
6:03 ELAPSED TIME
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Meaningful

Beautiful
Engaging
Irreplaceable
Eye opening
Mastery building
Clearly targeted
Domain grounded
Dependable activity infrastructure
Wanted
Extraordinary
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Extensive concepting,


based on intensive
questioning,

driving visionary,
collaboratively
defined strategies

for exemplary tools
for thought.
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WORKING THROUGH SCREENS
Suggestions for product teams:
Deliberately spend more time envisioning, at a high

level, what your interactive application could be and
how it could become valued infrastructure in work
activities.
Do not assume that a compelling knowledge work tool
will arise solely from the iterative aggregation of many
discrete decisions during the long haul of a product
development process.
Create a divergent ecosystem of concepts for your
product’s big picture and primary experiences.
Examine the potential value of reusing expected design
conventions — while at the same time ideating potential
departures and differentiated offerings.
Explore a breadth of directions and strategies before
choosing a course.
Plan on staying true to the big ideas imbedded in the
concepts that your team selects, while knowing that
those ideas will evolve along the way to becoming a
reality.
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WORKING THROUGH SCREENS
Extensive concepting,


based on intensive
questioning,

driving visionary,
collaboratively
defined strategies

for exemplary tools
for thought.
FRONT MATTER | FRAMING THE PROBLEM
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WORKING THROUGH SCREENS
Suggestions for product teams:
Ask more envisioning questions, both within your team
and within your targeted markets.
Develop empathy for knowledge workers by going into
the field to inform your notions of what your product
could become.
Stimulate conversations with this book and other
sources relevant to the topic of mediating knowledge
work with technology.
Find and explore situations that are analogous to the
work practices that your team is targeting.
Keep asking questions until you uncover driving factors
that resonate.
Create visual models of them.
Focus your team on these shared kernels of under-
standing and insight.
Lay the groundwork for inspiration.
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WORKING THROUGH SCREENS
Extensive concepting,

based on intensive
questioning,

driving visionary,
collaboratively
defined strategies

for exemplary tools
for thought.
FRONT MATTER | FRAMING THE PROBLEM
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WORKING THROUGH SCREENS
Suggestions for product teams:
Use design thinking to expand upon and transform your
product’s high level mandates and strategy.
Continually explore the strategic implications of your
team’s most inspiring ideas about mediating knowledge
work.
Make projections and connections in the context of key
trends and today’s realities.
Think end to end, as if your product was a service,
either literally or in spirit.
Build and extend brands based on the user experiences
that your team is striving to make possible — and how
your product will deliver on those promises.
Envision what knowledge workers want and need but
do not articulate when confronted with a blank canvas
or a legacy of unsatisfactory tools.
Invite workers to be your collaborators, maintaining a
healthy level of humility in the face of their expertise.
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WORKING THROUGH SCREENS
Extensive concepting,

based on intensive
questioning,

driving visionary,
collaboratively
defined strategies

for exemplary tools
for thought.
FRONT MATTER | FRAMING THE PROBLEM
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WORKING THROUGH SCREENS
Suggestions for product teams:
Dive into the specific cognitive challenges of knowledge
workers’ practices in order to uncover new sources of
product meaning and value.
Set higher goals for users’ experiences.
Envision “flashbulb interactions” in targeted activities
— augmenting interactions that could make complex
conclusions clear or open new vistas of thought.
Explore how carefully designed stimuli and behaviors
within onscreen tools might promote emotional
responses that are conducive to attentive, focused
thinking.
Surpass workers’ expectations for the potential role
of computing in their mental lives.
Raise the bar in your targeted markets, and with it,

the bar for all knowledge work tools.
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Extensive concepting, based on
intensive questioning, driving
visionary, collaboratively defined
strategies for exemplary
tools for thought.


This phrase embodies a suggested overall approach for product
teams envisioning new or improved interactive applications for
knowledge work.
In support of this suggested approach, this book contains 100
ideas — along with many examples and questions — to help
product teams generate design strategies and design concepts
that could become useful, meaningful, and valuable onscreen
offerings.
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Table of Contents
Preface
Introducon: The case for Applicaon Envisioning
Primer on example knowledge work domains

A. EXPLORING WORK MEDIATION AND
DETERMINING SCOPE
A1. Inuenal physical and cultural environments
A2. Workers’ interrelaons and relaonships
A3. Work pracces appropriate for computer mediaon
A4. Standardizaon of work pracce through mediaon
A5. Interrelaons of operaon, task, and acvity scenarios
A6. Open and emergent work scenarios
A7. Collaboraon scenarios and variaons
A8. Local pracces and scenario variaons
A9. High value rao for targeted work pracces

B. DEFINING INTERACTION OBJECTS
B1. Named objects and informaon structures
B2. Flexible idencaon of object instances
B3. Coupling of applicaon and real world objects
B4. Object associaons and user dened objects
B5. Object states and acvity ow visibility
B6. Flagged variability within or between objects
B7. Object ownership and availability rules
B8. Explicit mapping of objects to work mediaon
B9. Common management acons for objects
B10. Object templates

C. ESTABLISHING AN APPLICATION FRAMEWORK
C1. Intenonal and arculated conceptual models
C2. Applicaon interacon model
C3. Levels of interacon paerns
C4. Pathways for task and acvity based waynding
C5. Permissions and views tailored to workers’ idenes

C6. Standardized applicaon workows
C7. Structural support of workspace awareness
C8. Defaults, customizaon, and automated tailoring
C9. Error prevenon and handling convenons
C10. Predictable applicaon states
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WORKING THROUGH SCREENS
D. CONSIDERING WORKERS’ ATTENTIONS
D1. Respected tempos of work
D2. Expected eort
D3. Current workload, priority of work, and
opportunity costs
D4. Minimizing distracon and fostering concentraon
D5. Resuming work
D6. Alerng and reminding cues
D7. Eventual habit and automacity

E. PROVIDING OPPORTUNITIES TO OFFLOAD EFFORT
E1. Ooading long term memory eort
E2. Ooading short term memory eort
E3. Automaon of low level operaons

E4. Automaon of task or acvity scenarios
E5. Visibility into automaon
E6. Internal locus of control


F. ENHANCING INFORMATION REPRESENTATION
F1. Coordinated representaonal elements
F2. Established genres of informaon representaon
F3. Novel informaon representaons
F4. Support for visualizaon at dierent levels
F5. Comparave representaons
F6. Instrumental results representaons
F7. Highly funconal tables
F8. Representaonal transformaons
F9. Simultaneous or sequenal use of representaons
F10. Symbolic visual languages
F11. Representaonal codes and context

G. CLARIFYING CENTRAL INTERACTIONS
G1. Narrave experiences
G2. Levels of selecon and acon scope
G3. Error prevenon and handling in individual interacons
G4. Workspace awareness embedded in interacons
G5. Impromptu tangents and juxtaposions
G6. Contextual push of related informaon
G7. Transioning work from private to public view

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H. SUPPORTING OUTCOME EXPLORATION AND
COGNITIVE TRACING
H1. Acve versioning
H2. Extensive and reconstrucve undo
H3. Automated historical records and versions
H4. Working annotaons
I. WORKING WITH VOLUMES OF INFORMATION
I1. Flexible informaon organizaon
I2. Comprehensive and relevant search
I3. Powerful ltering and sorng
I4. Uncertain or missing content
I5. Integraon of informaon sources
I6. Explicit messaging for informaon updates
I7. Archived informaon

J. FACILITATING COMMUNICATION
J1. Integral communicaon pathways
J2. Representaonal common ground
J3. Explicit work handos
J4. Authorship awareness, presence, and contact

facilitaon
J5. Public annotaon
J6. Streamlined standard communicaons
J7. Pervasive prinng

K. PROMOTING INTEGRATION INTO WORK PRACTICE
K1. Applicaon localizaon
K2. Introductory user experience
K3. Recognizable applicability to targeted work
K4. Vericaon of operaon
K5. Understanding and reframing alternate interpretaons
K6. Design for frequency of access and skill acquision
K7. Clear and comprehensive instruconal assistance
K8. Seamless inter-applicaon interacvity
K9. Directed applicaon interoperaon
K10. Openness to applicaon integraon and extension
K11. End user programming
K12. Trusted and credible processes and content
K13. Reliable and direct acvity infrastructure


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L. PURSUING AESTHETIC REFINEMENT
L1. High quality and appealing work products
L2. Contemporary applicaon aesthecs
L3. Iconic design resemblances within applicaons
L4. Appropriate use of imagery and direct branding
L5. Iconoclasc product design

M. PLANNING CONNECTION WITH USE
M1. Iterave conversaons with knowledge workers
M2. System champions
M3. Applicaon user communies
M4. Unancipated uses of technology
Glossary
Bibliography
About the author +
FLASHBULB INTERACTION, Inc.
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