Connecting People with Technology

Issues in Professional Communication

George Hayhoe, Helen Grady, George Hayhoe, Helen M. Grady, Helen M. M Grady, Helen Grady, George Hayhoe, Helen M. M Grady

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781351845281
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Professional Development

This book explores five important areas where technology affects society, and suggests ways in which human communication can facilitate the use of that technology.Usability has become a foundational discipline in technical and professional communication that grows out of our rhetorical roots, which emphasize purpose and audience. As our appreciation of audience has grown beyond engineers and scientists to lay users of technology, our appreciation of the diversity of those audiences in terms of age, geography, and other factors has similarly expanded.We are also coming to grips with what Thomas Friedman calls the 'flat world,' a paradigm that influences how we communicate with members of other cultures and speakers of other languages. And because most of the flatteners are either technologies themselves or technology-driven, technical and professional communicators need to leverage these technologies to serve global audiences.Similarly, we are inundated with information about world crises involving health and safety issues. These crises are driven by the effects of terrorism, the aging population, HIV/AIDS, and both human-made and natural disasters. These issues are becoming more visible because they are literally matters of life and death. Furthermore, they are of special concern to audiences that technical and professional communicators have little experience targeting - the shapers of public policy, seniors, adolescents, and those affected by disaster.Biotechnology is another area that has provided new roles for technical and professional communicators. We are only beginning to understand how to communicate the science accurately without either deceiving or panicking our audience. We need to develop a more sophisticated understanding of how communication can shape reactions to biotechnology developments. Confronting this complex network of issues, we're challenged to fashion both our message and the audience's perceptions ethically.Finally, today's corporate environment is being shaped by technology and the global nature of business. Technical and professional communicators can play a role in capturing and managing knowledge, in using technology effectively in the virtual workplace, and in understanding how language shapes organizational culture.

PART I

Usability:
Making Technology Fit Its Users

CHAPTER 1

Making Connections: Teaming Up to Connect Users, Developers, and Usability Experts

Carol Barnum, David Dayton, Kevin Gillis, and Joe O’Connor

IPSWITCH AND ITS PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

Ipswitch, Inc. is a private software company established in 1991 and based in Lexington, Massachusetts, with research and development in Augusta and Atlanta, Georgia, and a sales office in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The company, which specializes in client and server products for Internet file transfer, network monitoring, and messaging, has established a strong presence in the small and medium businesses market. By late 2003 it had developed three mature product lines, each at version 8, without the benefit of formal usability testing.

Although informal, internal usability testing had been done on a few occasions, it was not until R&D planned for a major release of the WSFTP Pro product that formal usability testing was put on the agenda for the first time. Ipswitch began to search in earnest for an external vendor to provide the usability testing.

IPSWITCH’S COLLABORATION WITH THE USABILITY CENTER AT SOUTHERN POLYTECHNIC

The Usability Center at Southern Polytechnic (http://usability.spsu.edu), one of three vendors receiving RFPs for the work, impressed the Ipswitch visiting team because of its prior software product experience, its full-solution collaborative process, and its state-of-the-art facility, especially its large and comfortable executive viewing room. Location was also a plus, as the Ipswitch R&D group was in Augusta, Georgia, a two-hour drive from The Usability Center, and one product group was located nearby in suburban Atlanta. Ipswitch wanted a vendor that could manage the project, but would also work as a team with the product experts. They also wanted as many employees as possible to participate and observe the testing firsthand. Southern Polytechnic’s process and facilities met these goals.

The product to be tested was the pending major release of WS_FTP Pro, the industry leader and most-used commercial FTP client, which was being redesigned to have a new look and feel to address the criticisms that the user interface was difficult for new users and that it was “dated.” The product team did not have direct or detailed feedback from users and was left to guess at what changes would help the situation. Thus, usability testing for WSFTP Pro was deemed essential. The users would be the judge!

When Ipswitch approached The Usability Center about conducting a single test of the WSFTP Pro product, they were wary about testing early prototypes, thinking that they needed the product further along in development to be able to gauge the issues for users. In the initial meeting, the usability experts asked the question: What will Ipswitch do with the findings from a late-stage usability test of its product? The response: Except for the quick fixes that could be handled right away, Ipswitch would use the information for the next release.

Southern Polytechnic suggested: Why not do an earlier test in some prototype phase, then iterate the design and test again to see whether Ipswitch got it right? Ipswitch was uncertain about this approach, but Southern Polytechnic convinced them of its viability. Thus, it was agreed in late November 2003 that the first of two tests of WSFTP would take place in January 2004, focusing on two user groups: the professional (business) user and a new “home” user, a novice to FTP.

Members from The Usability Center and Ipswitch’s development groups formed a team. With Carol Barnum leading the collaborative effort to plan the test, the team defined the specific user profile for each group, created the tasks and built the scenarios, designed the pretest, posttask, and posttest questionnaires, and planned the approach to analyzing the results. The Extended University, which administers The Usability Center, took charge of recruiting to match the specific user profile for each group.

Three key components led to a successful collaboration:

1.Development of the user profiles, scenarios, and questionnaires was a joint effort, with Southern Polytechnic providing the usability expertise, and Ipswitch providing the product knowledge.

2.The logging was also a key component of the testing process, as the log forms the basis for a detailed analysis of the findings from each user. Using the rich qualitative process established by The Usability Center, David Dayton logged each user’s interactions along with any relevant comments or questions from team members in the control room. As a bottom-up approach was used to collate the findings, the team’s review of the logs was critical to achieving a consensus in detecting and naming the issues experienced by users, as well as highlighting the positive experiences. The first round of testing produced more than 100 findings, grouped into fewer than 10 categories, including mental model, learnability, terminology, interface, feedback, and so forth. These categories then became the standard for later tests.

More than 30 different employees observed one or two days of testing from the executive viewing room, including the company president, Roger Greene, and vice president of research and development, Mary Beth Westmoreland, whose commitment to the testing had been firm and enthusiastic. So much discussion ensued among the developers and other observers during the test sessions that it was decided to kick off the findings meetings in the executive viewing room with each person’s observations about the most important (or surprising) thing they observed. After that, the core team from Ipswitch and The Usability Center went into the detailed analysis session, which took several hours. Videotapes were handed off to the company and reviewed again by the president, plus others who had not attended; a report was submitted a week later, documenting the process, the user groups, the scenarios, and the findings.

3.A significant challenge was to incorporate the findings into the next iteration of the product. The usability team focused on findings, and deliberately stayed away from solutions. Ben Henderson, development manager at Ipswitch, participated in every step of the usability test. He then created a matrix that mapped the findings to the product’s design documents and led the product design team through an iterative process to address each of the findings.

ROUND 1: MAJOR FINDINGS

The usability testing brought forth much more than the broad comments R&D had heard about the dated, too technical interface. As the users worked through tasks in the test scenarios, it became clear to the observers that there were issues with mental model, navigation and system feedback, and work flow.

The Missing Mental Model

The connection wizard is the first set of screens that the user sees on completing installation. Its purpose is to get users connected to an FTP server so they can transfer files. Reactions from most of the new users revealed that the connection wizard did not fit their mental model of what the software was supposed to do. The terminology, task sequence, and feedback left them confused about what it meant to set up a “site” and the difference between the site name and the site address (see Figure 1). When users did understand the connection concept, they failed to note that they were also saving the information as a site (like a favorite) that they could quickly connect to again.

The solution was to clarify the presentation in the connection wizard (see Figure 2) and to provide a getting-started tour that introduces key concepts.

Figure 1. Before testing: Connection Wizard failed to anticipate new users’ mental model.
© 2008 by Ipswitch, Inc. used with permission.

Navigation and Feedback Issues

While mental model issues were a sticking point for novice users, advanced users experienced problems with navigation and feedback. The prototype used multiple windows to show the directory/file lists for two or more FTP connections, in conformance with Microsoft’s Multiple Document Interface (MDI).

Nevertheless, the WSFTP Pro users, all of whom had 7+ years of IT experience, had difficulty navigating the windows in the MDI format (see Figure 3). Some tried to view all windows at once by tiling them, but then had to scroll in the smaller windows. Another resized windows and overlapped th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table Of Contents
• Introduction
• PART I: USABILITY: MAKING TECHNOLOGY FIT ITS USERS
• PART II: GLOBALIZATION: OVERCOMING THE CHALLENGES OF LANGUAGES AND CULTURES
• PART III: HEALTH AND SAFETY: INFORMING SOCIETY OF RISKS AND DANGERS
• PART IV. BIOTECHNOLOGY: REPORTING ITS POTENTIAL AND ITS PROBLEMS
• PART V. CORPORATE ENVIRONMENT: IMPROVING COMMUNICATION
• Contributors
• Index