Making Monitoring UIs Suck Less

Technology users are technology observers as well: monitoring for problems or opportunities that might arise. Designing interfaces to support the monitoring of technology presents unique challenges: from detecting situations to responding to situations, to changing the tools to match a changing operating environment or the changing knowledge of the observer.

I present "Heed": a scale and framework to help observers of a system evaluate which situations need scrutiny and when, along with an example heed-based interface that encourages the development of situation awareness. I discuss how the framework and interface can be applied to four different situations: server performance, a business's finances, user experience in a community forum, and the risk of disease outbreak at a veterinary clinic.

Conrad Albrecht-Buehler is always on the look-out for new and challenging user problems to explore and design remedies for. He received his Ph.D. at Northwestern University studying human-computer interaction with Don Norman, and is now adjunct faculty at Northwestern's Segal Design Institute teaching user-centered design. His research focuses on interfaces for situation awareness and information visualization. In his spare time, he designs products for stroke survivors and enjoys dog training.

Presented by Conrad Albrecht-Buehler.
Google Tech Talk
February 26, 2009