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Determine the basic business functions.
- Understand the User’s Mental Model:
- Goal: Gain insight into how users think and understand the tasks they perform.
- Approach: Conduct task analysis to break down user activities into individual tasks.
- Result: Obtain a comprehensive view of user tasks, interactions, and workflows.
- Perform Task Analysis:
- Goal: Understand why and how people currently perform tasks that will be automated.
- Approach: Break down user activities into tasks, focusing on goals and actions.
- Result: Get a detailed description of all user tasks, interactions, and conceptual frameworks.
- Develop Conceptual Models:
- Goal: Create a conceptual model for the user interface based on the task analysis.
- Approach: Design a framework that reflects the user’s mental model.
- Guidelines:
- Reflect the user’s mental model.
- Use analogies, metaphors, and comply with user expectations.
- Ensure consistency in design.
- Result: A conceptual model describing how the system’s functions are presented.
- Define Objects:
- Goal: Identify and describe all objects manipulated to accomplish tasks.
- Approach: Determine object behavior, relationships, actions, and attributes.
- Guidelines:
- Make important objects obvious and easy to manipulate.
- Preserve, display, or allow editing of relevant object information.
- Result: A clear understanding of the key objects and their roles in the workflow.
- Develop Metaphors:
- Goal: Use metaphors to enhance user understanding of the system.
- Approach: Choose real-world analogies that work best for each object and action.
- Guidelines:
- Use simple, common, and major metaphors.
- Test selected metaphors for user comprehension.
- Result: Improved user comprehension through relatable metaphors.
