Interaction Design for Managing Change

Additional Submission
Medical Informatics 481
Nicki Cliffer
 Interaction Design for Introducing New
Processes and Procedures
 Premise
 Managing the introduction and implementation of new processes and procedures (e.g.
ITIL Core Processes) in a hospital environment requires managing change throughout the
hospital’s interactive systems
 Goal of approach
 Design interactive system to meet goals of users and stakeholders
 Design features for implementation of the new processes and procedures
 Requirements for each of the ITIL Core Processes (e.g. Incident, Change, and Problem
Management; Configuration and Asset Management; and Disaster Recovery)
 Management of ITIL Core Process area interactions within hospital services
 Stakeholder buy-in
 Training and other resource needs
 Communication considerations

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Interaction Design – Definition
 Interaction design (abbreviated as IxD) defines the structure and
behavior of interactive systems.
 Interaction Designers strive to create meaningful relationships
between people and the products and services that they use, from
computers to mobile devices to appliances and beyond.
 The practice typically centers on "embedding information
technology into the ambient social complexities of the physical
world.”
 Source: Wikipedia
 Bridging the Gap to Users
 Issue: How can we address stakeholder needs?
Create effective strategies
Design appropriate workflows
Develop processes and procedures
Provide the most useful resources

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Conventional Interaction Design - Warning
 Conventional design can be idiosyncratic
 Potential hazard of conventional approach aiming to meet goals of diverse
users without a clear focus
 Can fall prey to the ‘availability bias’ (Cooper Journal)
 Something for everyone, but not integrated into a coherent whole

 Solution
 Persona is strategic archetype
 Represents common broadly applicable goals in a concrete HUMAN
construct
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 Bridging the Gap to Users
 Stakeholder interactions provide knowledge of end-user and stakeholder needs
and goals
 But knowledge residing in reports can be hard to integrate

???

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 Bridging the Gap to Users
 Interaction Design using Personas
 Provides an effective way to meet the goals of many stakeholders without the
need for them to be physically present throughout the entire planning and
execution process.
 Was developed originally developed for designing computer program
interfaces for diverse, complex user populations
 Not a report on the shelf, but based on specific people

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Personas
 Personas - User archetype used to help guide decisions about product features,
navigation, interactions, and even visual design.
 Archetype goals and behavior patterns are based on real-live people.
 Designing for the archetype to satisfy the group of people represented by that
archetype.
 Create personas by interviewing people and synthesizing them from the
ethnographic interviews with real people to learn their culture and their goals,
objectives and pain-points.
 Capture the interviews in 1-2 page descriptions for each persona, and include:
 behavior patterns
 goals
 skills
 attitudes
 environment
 fictional personal details
 Create a set of personas for each product or tool set. Select one of the personas to
be the primary focus for the design.
 “A good persona (or user archetype) is based on research and is specific,
memorable and includes actionable information.” (Source: Cooper Journal)
 Making User Knowledge Actionable
… the Complex Accessible through User Personas

Melissa Stark Tom Kelley

IT Technician IT Technician
Entry Level (1st year) Experienced (15 years)
Field Services technician Computer programmer
Desktop support IT security specialist: alarms/alerts
Goals Goals
Learn skills
Career Success
Don’t mess up
Provide for family
Help people Care for sister
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 But doesn’t that just shift the complexity?

 Don’t you need hundreds of personas?

 No: STRATEGIC CHOICE of personas
simplifies and focuses considerations
Choose a primary persona
 fulfilling her goals will automatically fulfill goals
of others
If you need more than one primary persona,
you need more than one design

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 Interaction Design Approach
 Objective
 Provide concrete strategic target to inform decisions or determinations (as
for quantitative modeling)

 Strategic modeling principle

 Choose a modeled situation to fulfill goals of the range of target situations
 NOT to represent all target situations
 INSTEAD if the modeled situation is satisfied, other target situations
will be satisfied

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 Interaction Design Advantages
 Embodies in a useful tool knowledge about users, making it readily
accessible and actionable for design of response systems
 Provides context for concrete thought about actual situations, rather than
(potentially off-target generalities or abstractions
 Focuses collected knowledge of user goals
 Effective and efficient means of representing entire population of
users for design considerations
 Facilitates issue identification and consideration
 Makes mental modeling explicit (what planners/designers do anyway)
 Provides a common framework
 Facilitates communication – provides clear common ground for
discussion and consideration

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 Interaction Design Example

Example
 Elements of strategic model for developing ITIL Change Management
policies and fine-tuning of software tool
 Personas of stakeholders (e.g. IT technicians from various service
towers, nursing staff, physicians, executive management)
 Model Change Management software tool – form development and ticket
workflow
 Model scenario
 Change due to priority one problem with a server malfunction
 May require greater specification, by strategic choice (if fulfilled,
other scenarios of interest will be fulfilled)

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Mental Models …in a Common Framework
Conventional Approaches Interaction Design
Plan for ITIL Integration Design for Melissa

Meet Tom’s
goals too

Miscommunication Common framework

 Persona Development and Six Sources of Influence
Motivation
 Developing the individual goals
for the personas helps to develop
designs that enable real users
meet their goals.
Personal  Doing this right the first time
reduces re-work and helps keep
the project on schedule and
within budget.
 In a sense, personas are an
amalgamation of peers. They are
a social unit embodying the
social motivation.
Social  Identifying the social and cultural
motivators will ensure that they
are taken into account when
designing the solutions.
 Personas help to understand the structure of the
organization and the interactions between different
elements of an organization. This will influence how
to build the interaction design.
 To be successful, ITIL core processes must be
Structural designed to work together. For example, if a Change
fails, a Problem tiger team may need to be formed to
handle the Change back-up plan. Change and
Problem Coordinators will need to be pulled into play
in the affected parts of the organization. Personas
help to identify who is affected and what they need to
do to .
Ability
 When developing the personas, ask about
their work and life goals. Find out what
facilitates and what impedes those goals.
 Relate them to the interaction design in
question (e.g. ITIL implementation).
 Look for things that may impede personal
ability (e.g. People don’t have a good grasp
of the ITIL core processes and may need
training)
 When building the persona, ask questions that will
help gain an understanding of the person’s culture,
and how that affects their work. (e.g. How do you
handle change management within your
organization? Who reviews impending changes?
Who approves changes? How are changes tracked?
What happens when a change is not successful?
What works well using this method? What needs to
be improved?)
 Include the culture and the motivators of that culture
into the persona’s goals, objectives, pain-points, and
personal life details.
 Interview people from all parts of the
organization and all pertinent stakeholder
groups.
 Discuss how these personas interact with
each other within the organization to
accomplish their work. (e.g. What does Tom
need to do before taking a server down, and
how does that affect Melissa)
 Design workflows that take these
interactions into account.
 Interaction Design – Misperception of Personas
 Potential misconception: Design for a persona will result in idiosyncratic
design
 “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?” (S 2, Ep 15): Homer meets long lost brother
Herb, who heads an automobile company. Believing Homer is the perfect
“everyman,” Herb instructs his designers to make exactly the car that Homer
wants. [From cooper.com]

• Reality: Persona is strategic archetype representing common broadly

applicable goals in a concrete human construct

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 Interaction Design Summary

 Disadvantage
 Takes time, effort, and facility with approach

 Advantages
 Effective: time and effort result in effective mechanisms for managing
change such as ITIL Core Process integration
 Other approaches also take time and often result in less efficacious
results
 Scalable: degree of rigor of modeling (and thus, time, effort, and facility)
can fit complexity of situation and time and resources available
 Enables the interaction design developers to gain a deeper understanding of
the six sources of influence (Patterson et al)

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 Related Approach - Design Thinking

IDEO
 “Design thinking is an approach that uses the designer’s sensibility
and methods for problem solving to meet people’s needs in a
technologically feasible and commercially viable way. In other words,
design thinking is human-centered innovation.” Tim Brown
 Inspiration, iteration, storytelling

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 References
 Wikipedia – Interaction Design Definition. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interaction_design downloaded
11/20/2010
 McCullough, Malcolm (2004). Digital Ground. MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-13435-7.
 Two leading companies that engage in interaction design (others exist)
 Cooper: http://www.cooper.com/
 Alan Cooper
 User Interface Engineering: http://www.uie.com/
 Jared Spool
 Cooper Journal http://www.cooper.com/journal/personas/
 Alan Cooper
 The Inmates Are Running the Asylum
 About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design
 Kim Goodwin
 Designing for the Digital Age: How to Create Human-Centered Products and Services. Wiley
Publishing, Inc., 2009.
 Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler
 Influencer – The power to change anything. McGraw-Hill, 2008
 IDEO – Design Consultancy
 www.ideo.com
 The author gratefully acknowledges assistance from Kenneth Cliffer, Ph.D.
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