Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design

Bill Buxton

• Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780080552903
• Topic: Ciencia de la computación
• Subtopic: Interacción persona-computadora

Sketching User Experiences approaches design and design thinking as something distinct that needs to be better understood—by both designers and the people with whom they need to work— in order to achieve success with new products and systems. So while the focus is on design, the approach is holistic. Hence, the book speaks to designers, usability specialists, the HCI community, product managers, and business executives. There is an emphasis on balancing the back-end concern with usability and engineering excellence (getting the design right) with an up-front investment in sketching and ideation (getting the right design). Overall, the objective is to build the notion of informed design: molding emerging technology into a form that serves our society and reflects its values.

Grounded in both practice and scientific research, Bill Buxton's engaging work aims to spark the imagination while encouraging the use of new techniques, breathing new life into user experience design.

• Covers sketching and early prototyping design methods suitable for dynamic product capabilities: cell phones that communicate with each other and other embedded systems, "smart" appliances, and things you only imagine in your dreams
• Thorough coverage of the design sketching method which helps easily build experience prototypes—without the effort of engineering prototypes which are difficult to abandon
• Reaches out to a range of designers, including user interface designers, industrial designers, software engineers, usability engineers, product managers, and others
• Full of case studies, examples, exercises, and projects, and access to video clips that demonstrate the principles and methods

Part I

Design as Dreamcatcher

Design for the Wild

No Risk is the Highest Risk

—Aaron Wildavsky

I want to start with a story.

I have a good friend named Saul Greenberg. He is a professor at the University of Calgary, and one of the world’s leading researchers in the area of human-computer interaction.

It is through that profession that we met. We collaborated on a book (Baecker, Grudin, Bux-ton … Greenberg 1995), and met at conferences. But it was our mutual passion for mountains and the outdoors that cemented our relationship.

I have been told on occasion that I am extremely competitive. Confessing this will hopefully give all the more weight to my public acknowledgment that Saul is a far more experienced mountaineer than I am. I love the time that we have spent in the mountains, not just because I love mountains, or because he is great company. Saul is also a great and generous teacher and someone whom I could, and frequently do, trust with my life.

A couple of years ago, Saul almost lost his life. He was skiing with his wife, Judy, and three other friends. They were, essentially, in their backyard, behind Canmore Alberta. It was spring, conditions were great, and they were in terrain that they knew extremely well. And yet, Saul was caught in an avalanche and buried under almost two metres of snow.

In many ways, this book is about why Saul is alive today and why I still have the pleasure of climbing and skiing with him—frequently in terrain not unlike where he was caught.

So, given how lethal avalanches are, why is Saul still alive? The simple answer is that Judy dug him out before he suffocated.

However, if you have any experience with such things, you will know that nothing is that simple. For example, why weren’t Judy and the others also swept up by the slide?

Let me answer that question. To minimize the likelihood of this happening, the normal procedure whenever traversing avalanche terrain is to spread out. If the risk is perceived to demand it, you go one-by-one, and in either case, you always try to have lookouts. These people remain in a safe position, spotting the location of the person(s) doing the traverse. That way, there is someone who knows where the victims were last seen in the event that something happens.

Although the avalanche risk on this particular day was considerable, they had been skiing terrain far more severe, so they deemed the lesser precaution of spreading out as adequate for this slope. As it turned out, this was a bad call. They had not spread out far enough so two others in the party also got caught. One was buried up to her shoulders. The other, Shane, ended up on the surface. Saul was the only one completely buried.

The people caught were the inner three of the five. Judy, at the front, had traversed the slope safely, and was playing the role of lookout from lower down. The last person in the party, Steve, had held back, and was spotting from above.

Therefore, when the slide occurred, Steve and Judy were well positioned, organizationally as well as physically, to do what was required. Normally, if there are enough people, one of the lookouts will stay in a safe spot. This is a safety precaution in the (all too frequent) event that a second slide catches the would-be rescuers. In this case, because they were the only two not caught, and given their assessment of the risk, both lookouts went to the aid of those caught.

Steve, who was higher, checked up on Shane (who was okay), and then immediately went to his wife. He freed her arms, and made sure her head was above the snow. He then went down to where Saul was buried. (This is a form of triage that you do, making sure the most visible people are clear just to the point that they are safe, and then go for the longer or deeper burials.)

Judy went directly to the spot where she had last seen Saul. What she did not do is immediately start digging, since the chance of her finding him based on that would be almost nil. Among other things, the slide would have likely carried him from where she last saw him. Furthermore, even if she guessed approximately where he might be, she would not be able to dig around looking for him. No matter how powdery soft the snow was before the avalanche, the heat generated by friction during the slide would melt it, and when it stopped, it would freeze to a consistency most resembling concrete. It is difficult enough to dig one hole—digging holes as a search strategy is an exercise in futility, almost certainly with death as a consequence.

In order to pinpoint Saul’s location, Judy used her avalanche transceiver. In computerese, this is a wireless collaborative PDA with a multimedia (audio/visual) user interface, such as the one shown in Figure 4. Using this, she walked a particular pattern on the snow, employing the loud-ness of a ping (determined by the strength of a signal from Saul’s transceiver) to guide her closer and closer to a spot above where he was buried.

When the transceiver search has indicated the likely burial point, normally the next step is to pinpoint the exact location using an avalanche probe. Illustrated in Figure 5, these look like three- to four- metre long skinny tent poles. You push them down into the snow, in a regular pattern, in the area indicated by your beacon. When the victim is felt you then start to dig.

In this case, Judy took a calculated risk, and skipped the probe step. She started to dig immediately at the location indicated by her transceiver. This was when Steve arrived. Having verified that she had not confirmed the exact location with her probe, he asked if he should do so. She said no, stating that her visual tracking followed by the transceiver search left her reasonably confident that she was in the right spot. However, she had to dig so deep that this confidence was starting to waver just before she got to Saul.

So let’s focus on Saul. What did he do once he realized his situation? The first thing he tried was to ski out of it. This is generally difficult; avalanches can travel at up to 200 km/hr. (For most of us, 40 km/hr is skiing really fast.) In this case, the combination of the conditions and Saul’s technique enabled him to ski down with the slide. The problem was at the base of the slope, where it immediately rose to a knoll, thereby creating a kind of trough. This is what we call a feature trap. It not only trapped Saul at the bottom of the slope, it also provided a natural basin to collect the avalanching snow. (It was also why Judy felt comfortable skipping the probe step. She had been on the top of the knoll, and knew that since Saul was at the bottom when buried, he was not going to be carried further downhill.)

Figure 3: Spreading Out in Avalanche Terrain
When traveling in terrain where there is avalanche risk, you spread out so that if there is an avalanche, you minimize the number of people caught in it. Someone always watches from a safe position (in this case it is the photographer) in order to spot where people are, in the event of a problem.

Photo: Pat Morrow

Figure 4: An Avalanche Transceiver
A transceiver is worn under your outer layer of clothing in order to minimize the risk of it being torn off by the force of an avalanche. The harness is a fundamental part of the design. The device works in one of two modes: transmit or receive. The default is that they are always in transmit mode. That is, normally, all of them should be transmitting a signal that can be picked up as an audible “ping” by a receiver. You want this as a default if you are buried, because the last thing that you want when caught by an avalanche is to be fumbling around with your transceiver. Snapping the waist strap into the device, which you have to do to wear it (left photo), automatically sets the device in the correct mode. That same connector has a fast-release mechanism. If someone is buried, the survivors undo the snap, and they are automatically in receive or search mode (right photo). Note that the device still is secured to the wearer by the yellow strap, in the event that the rescuers are hit by a secondary avalanche. All controls of the transceiver can be operated while wearing gloves (although I am not doing so in these photos).

Photos: Liz Russ

Figure 5: An Avalanche Probe
The probe is like a long thin tent pole. It is light, and collapses for easy portability (left photo). It has a cable running through the centre of the poles that enables it to be assembled very quickly. When assembled (right photo), it is pushed down into the avalanche debris, enabling the rescuer to probe for the victim.

Figure 6: An Avalanche Shovel
An avalanche shovel appears to be just a conventional shovel. However, it has a few conflicting constraints on its design. First, it must be compact and light, since you need to carry it in your pack. On the other hand, it needs to have a blade strong enough to penetrate the very hard consolidated snow encountered in avalanche debris, and be large enough to let you dig quickly and efficiently.

As the river of snow started to slow down and cover him, Saul did the most important thing in terms of staying alive: he cupped his hand over his nose, and mouth, making sure that he kept an air space within which he could breathe.

Once buried, he went very Zen, and purged every effort to struggle or rescue himself. Struggle and fight is what you do on top of the snow. Underneath, you must wait. And wait. And have faith in your partners, their training, and everyone’s gear.

In Saul’s case, this trust was well placed. Judy found him. The total time from the slide to rescue was about 10 minutes. That was good—after 20 minutes, he probably would have been dead.

What Saved Saul?

Is Saul happy t...