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This blog post has come from a set of notes that I’ve made during an event that took place on 26 September 2017 at the Royal Society of Arts, London. The event was a lecture, entitled ‘the power of design thinking’ by Sue Siddall, who works as a partner at IDEO, an international design and consulting company.

My interest in a design has emerged from my interest in computing. I have been an associate lecturer for an interaction design module for ten year and before then I studied software development, specifically looking at how computer programmers maintained computer software. During my studies, I briefly stepped into the area of design: software maintenance can, of course, mean software design. Also, for a brief period of time, I helped to manage the tutors who delivered a number of design modules at The Open University, until there was a restructure, and I joined the School of Computing and Communications.

A history

Sue presented a story of a career, where she moved from the subject of law, to advertising and then into IDEO. An interesting note I made (regarding advertising) was: ‘simple ideas enter the brain quickly; if you throw ten balls at someone they won’t catch any, but if you throw one, they will catch one’. A key point regarding a transition to design was the importance of putting human beings at the centre of everything.

Examples

One slide conveyed the message that we use design to tackle complex problems, products, services and environmental issues. We were presented with two very different examples. The first example was about designing a series of nutritional products for people who had a particular metabolic condition; children didn’t want to consume products that were designed in such a way that singled them out from others. A key idea was to reframe a question from a business problem to a human centred problem. A thought was that this change in perspective could change the nature of an entire business.

The second example was uncovering ways to run, organise and structure private schools in Peru. By looking at the systems and by considering the end users point of view, curriculum was designed, teachers were supported and it was mentioned that financial models were provided.

Final points

We were left with three things to take forward: (1) the importance of asking user centred questions, (2) create movements (amongst staff and people), not mandates (to tell them to do things), and (3) be optimistic and consider the opportunity of uncovering better ways of doing things.

There were two questions that I noted down from the audience. The first was: how do you get, nurture or encourage diversity of thought amongst people [when it comes to designing products, services or systems]? This question was answered in terms of diversity of employees. As Sue as responded, I thought about different idea generation techniques that has been taught on a design module that I once studied for a while.

The second question was very interesting: can design thinking be used for bad things? Expanding on this: can designs be used to hook people into using things that are not good for them, or nudge them towards taking certain actions? At this point I remember the earlier link to advertising. A quick search reveals a whole subject area called ‘nudge theory’. The answer was in terms of people are becoming more familiar with the ways in which people are manipulated. A comment was that designers have an ethical responsibility. As this answer was given I recalled the emphasis on ethics within my own discipline by organisations such as the British Computer Society.

Links and reflections

During the talk I collected (which means writing down) a number of links. The first was to IDEO.org. Drawing on a constant habit of browsing webpages, I tried to find an about page that offers a simple summary of what this site was all about, but I couldn’t find one. Scrolling down a big page led me to the following: ‘we design products, services, and experiences to improve the lives of people in poor and vulnerable communities’. There was also a reference to DesignKit.org,which is described as a ‘book that laid out how and why human-centered design can impact the social sector’ (IDEO website)  Another site mentioned was OpenIDEO.

From a personal perspective, I think I was expecting something slightly different from the talk. Looking outwards from my own discipline, I see that human-computer interaction has changed fundamentally as computing devices are becoming embedded into everything. It is also interesting to see the shift from HCI to the idea of user experience. I have also been curious about the onwards extension to the broader area of service design. What I found interesting was the way that design thinking was presented in terms of being able to address bigger and organisational problems. I totally agree that humans are, of course, the most important part in any system: understanding their needs, motivations and desires are paramount.

What I was expecting was more detail about exactly how ‘design thinking’ was applied in these situations. Some tools were mentioned (such as personas), but I wanted to know more. It is at this point that I thought: I need to go look at those resources.

On 11 February, I was back at the Museum of London.  This time, I wasn’t there to see juggling mathematicians (Gresham College) talking about theoretical anti-balls.  Instead, I was there for a lecture about the usability and design of medical devices by Harold Thimbleby, who I understand was from Swansea University. 

Before the lecture started, we were subjected to a looped video of a car crash test; a modern car from 2009 was crashed into a car built in the 1960s.  The result (and later point) was obvious: modern cars are safer than older cars.  Continual testing and development makes a difference.  We now have substantially safer cars.  Even though there have been substantial improvements, Harold made a really interesting point.  He said, ‘if bad design was a disease, it would be our 3^rd biggest killer’.

Computers are everywhere in healthcare.  Perhaps introducing computers (or mobile devices) might be able to help?  This might well be the case, but there is also the risk that hospital staff might end up spending more time trying to get technology to do the right things rather than spending other time dealing with more important patient issues.  There is an underlying question of whether a technology is appropriate or not.

This blog post has been pulled directly from my notes that I’ve made during the lecture.  If you’re interested, I’ve provided a link to the transcript of the talk, which can be found at the end.

Infusion pumps

Harold showed us pictures of a series of infusion pumps.  I didn’t know what an infusion pump was.  Apparently it’s a device that is a bit like an intravenous drip, but you program it to dispense a fluid (or drug) into the blood stream at a certain rate.  I was very surprised by the pictures: every infusion pump looked very different to each other and these differences were quite shocking.  They each had different screens and different displays.  They were different sizes and had different keypad layouts.  It was clear that there was little in the way of internal and external consistency. Harold made an important point, that they were ‘not designed to be readable, they were designed to be cheap’ (please forgive my paraphrasing here).

We were regaled with further examples of interaction design terror.  A decimal point button was placed on an arrow key.  It was clear that there was not appropriate mapping between a button and its intended task.  Pushing a help button gave little in the way of help to the user.

We were told of a human factors analysis study where six nurses were required to use an infusion pump over a period of two hours (I think I’ve noted this down correctly).  The conclusion was that all of the nurses were confused.  Sixty percent of the nurses needed hints on how to use the device, and a further sixty percent were confused by how the decimal point worked (in this particular example).  Strikingly, sixty percent of those nurses entered the wrong settings.  

We’re not talking about trivial mistakes here; we’re talking about mistakes where users may be fundamentally confused by the appearance and location of a decimal point.   Since we’re also talking about devices that dispense drugs, small errors can become life threateningly catastrophic.

Calculators

Another example of devices where errors can become significant is the common hand-held calculator.  Now, I was of the opinion that modern calculators were pretty idiot proof, but it seems that I might well be the idiot for assuming this.  Harold gave us an example where we had to try to simply calculate percentages of the world population.  Our hand held calculator simply threw away zeros without telling us, without giving us any feedback.  If we’re not thinking, and since we implicitly know that calculators carry out calculations correctly, we can easily assume that the answer is correct too.  The point is clear:  ‘calculators should not be used in hospitals, they allow you to make mistakes, and they don’t care’.

Harold made another interesting point: when we use a calculator we often look at the keypad rather than the screen.  We might have a mental model of how a calculator works that is different to how it actually responds.   Calculators that have additional functions (such as a backspace, or delete last keypress buttons) might well break our understanding and expectations of how these devices operate.  Consistency is therefore very important (along with the visibility of results and feedback from errors).

There’s was an interesting link between this Gresham lecture and the lecture by Tony Mann (blog summary), which took place in January 2014.  Tony made the exact same point that Harold did.  When we make mistakes, we can very easily blame ourselves rather than the devices that we’re using.  Since we hold this bias, we’re also reluctant to raise concerns about the usability of devices and the equipment that we’re using.

Speeds of Thinking

Another interesting link was that Harold drew upon research by Daniel Kahneman (Wikipedia), explicitly connecting the subject of interface design with the subject of cognitive psychology.  Harold mentioned one of Kahneman’s recent books entitled: ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’, which posits that there are two cognitive systems in the brain: a perceptual system which makes quick decisions, and a slower system which makes more reasoned decisions (I’m relying on my notes again; I’ve got Daniel’s book on my bookshelves, amidst loads of others I have chalked down to read!)

Good design should take account of both the fast and the slow system.  One really nice example was with the use of a cashpoint to withdraw money from your bank account.  Towards the end of the transaction, the cashpoint begins to beep continually (offering perceptual feedback).  The presence of the feedback causes the slower system to focus attention on the task that has got to be completed (which is to collect the bank card).   Harold’s point is simple: ‘if you design technology properly we can make the world better’.

Visibility of information

How do you choose one device or product over another?  One approach is to make usually hidden information more visible to those who are tasked with making decisions.  A really good example of this is the energy efficiency ratings on household items, such as refrigerators and washing machines.  A similar rating scheme is available on car tyres too, exposing attributes such as noise, stopping distance and fuel consumption.  Harold’s point was: why not create a rating system for the usability of devices?

Summary

The Open University M364 Fundamentals of Interaction Design module highlights two benefits of good interaction design.  These are: an economic arguments (that good usability can save time and money), and safety.

This talk clearly emphasised the importance of the safety argument and emphasised good design principles (such as those created by Donald Norman), such as visibility of information, feedback of action, consistency between and within devices, and appropriate mapping (which means that buttons that are pressed should do the operation that they are expected to do).

Harold’s lecture concluded with a number of points that relate to the design of medical devices.  (Of which there were four, but I’ve only made a note of three!)  The first is that it’s important to rigorously assess technology, since this way we can ‘smoke out’ any design errors and problems (evaluation is incidentally a big part of M364).  The second is that it is important to automate resilience, or to offer clear feedback to the users.  The third is to make safety visible through clear labelling.

It was all pretty thought provoking stuff which was very clearly presented.  One thing that struck me (mostly after the talk) is that interactive devices don’t exist in isolation – they’re always used within an environment.  Understanding the environment and the way in which communications occur between different people who work within that environment are also considered to be important too (and there are different techniques that can be used to learn more about this).

Towards the end of the talk, I had a question that someone else asked.  It was, ‘is it possible to draw inspiration from the aviation industry and apply it to medicine?’  It was a very good question.  I’ve read (in another OU module) that an aircraft cockpit can be used as a way to communicate system state to both pilots.  Clearly, this is subject of on-going research, and Harold directed us to a site called CHI Med (computer-human interaction).

Much food for thought!  I came away from the lecture feeling mildly terrified, but one consolation was that I had at least learnt what an infusion pump was.  As promised, here’s a link to the transcript of the talk, entitled Designing IT to make healthcare safer (Gresham College). 

 I recently had the pleasure of attending the PPIG 2011 workshop between 6 and 8 September.  As I might have mentioned in an earlier blog, PPIG is an abbreviation for the Psychology of Programming Interest Group.  There used to be an American equivalent which was called ESP (Empirical Studies of Programmers), but this community seem to have disappeared.  PPIG, on the other hand, is going strong.

This year it was held in the University of York computer science department.  The department had moved since I was last there, forcing me to circumnavigate the campus and arrive at a time when almost all the tea and sandwiches had disappeared.  Thomas Green gave an opening address, and then it was swiftly on to the first presentation.

Mathematics and Visual Impairments

Alistair Edwards gave a talk entitled 'new approaches for mathematics in blind students'.  Mathematics, of course, relies on visual notations.  These notations, it was argued, are an integral part of working with maths.

Alistair holds that view (or, should I say that I understand that he holds the view) that there is more to it than just using an appropriate notation, or having that notation converted into another form.  We externalise parts of our working memory by using pen and paper.  Also, the idea of cancelling (or balancing) an equation by crossing of similar teams from both sides can be viewed as a visual manipulation.

Alistair mentioned a couple of projects, one of which was called Lambda, an abbreviation for Linear Access to Mathematics for Braille Device and Audio-synthesis.  Here, the challenges began to be clear: I didn't know this but different countries have different braille notation for mathematics.  There is, of course, the issue that using an interface to a notation immediately places cognitive barriers in the way that has the potential to make things more difficult to understand.  Users, it was argued, need more direct forms of interaction when working with mathematics.

All in all, a very thought provoking introduction, and it made me wonder how Green's cognitive dimensions of notations framework might be used to analyse interactions to notational systems (such as mathematics or programming languages) by users who may have different modality preferences (i.e. auditory over visual).

New Tech

The first main session of the workshop was called New Tech.  I'll do a very quick run through of the papers from each session.  Jon Rimmer presented the shyness project, and introduced the beguiling ambient computing device called the 'subtle stone', whereby class participants can communicate their emotional state to the lecturer by a click of a juggling ball.  Jon deftly directed us to a series of interesting papers about shyness.

The following paper was closely connected.  It was entitled 'self-reporting emotional experiences in a computing lab', by Judith Good (et al).  Us programmers go through a whole spectrum of different emotions during a programming session, from delight, through to wishing to jump on our laptop (although I don't recommend this).  This is an interesting direction: emotion connects to motivation, and traditionally the PPIG community have more focussed upon the cognitive.

Chris Roast, from Sheffield Hallam University, took us on a tour of a tool that helped to create different internationalised film posters; software localisation through abstraction.

One of the papers that I most enjoyed was by Chris Martin from the University of Dundee, who took dancing robots on a road trip to a number of different schools to further explore whether a robot dance workshop can inspire interest in a technical subject such as computer programming.  Or, does using robots 'sugar coat' a difficult subject, or is there more to it than this?  By robots, imagine small buggies.

In fact, Chris's robots use the same Arduino microcontroller that is central to the TU100 Senseboard. By dance, this is an activity that has a low threshold to success, is created, transcends culture, and where performance can be valued over competition (I made notes during this bit of Chris's talk).

The two other papers in this section described how to make music with a dry marker pen, a whiteboard and a mobile phone by defining your own musical notation (which was pretty cool), and considered the challenges that users of mobile spreadsheets face.

Human and algorithmic complexity

The next presentation was a 'work in progress' paper by yours truly.  I talked about a project (that has been making very slow progress, due to a myriad of different reasons) to explore whether it is possible to link measurements of program complexity to physiological measurements that are known to indicate human cognitive load. 

The workshop participants gave me a whole number of things to think about, including the names of a number of researchers, as well as a clear message of: 'stop procrastinating, just get on with it'.  I'm certainly going to take that last piece of advice.

The following presentation was about the challenge of working with test data.  A subject that can easily cause terror to many a software developer.

Language Formalities

Wednesday yielded a change of plan.  Thomas Green ran a session entitled, 'how to design a notation'.  A programming language is, of course, a form of notation.  Thomas posed interesting questions, like, 'how might we invent a different type of musical notation?', which led onto other questions such as its level of abstraction (what each element of a notation can represent), what you might wish to do with a notation, it's overall purpose, and how you might off load to external representations.

A theme underpinning all this debate was one that is familiar to many human-computer interaction and interaction design researchers: the idea of trading one thing off against another.

Giora Alexandron then presented his paper entitled 'programming with the user in mind' which led us towards considering something called live sequence charts, which is an extension of UML sequence diagrams.  We were introduced to the Play Engine and the PlayGo IDE.

This was followed by a presentation by Ahmad Taherkhani who spoke about 'automatic algorithm recognition based on programming schemas'.  I really liked this paper, since it was a new angle on some very early psychology of programming themes.  I particularly like how Ahmad was attempting to use existing theories to engineer a solution that may not only have practical use (in terms of providing tools to help educators to understand the programming code that students write), but also the act of programming a solution has the potential to allow us to learn more about the theories that are being applied.

The final paper in this session was a work in progress paper by Khuong A Nguyen who used a human-computer interaction technique called cognitive walkthough to learn more about the NXT-G visual programming language that can be used with the Lego Mindstorms hardware.

HCI for the future

Following a tour of a HCI and accessibility lab (which resembles a small apartment), a short panel discussion took place, with Nicholas Merriam and Luke Church taking centre stage.  Nicholas's perspective was especially welcome, since he spoke about the challenge of working with low level embedded software and the role that timing visualisation tools may play when attempting to solve programming problems that seem particularly intractable.  This linked back well to the earlier discussions of notation.

Learners and language design

This session contained two papers.  The first was a paper by Ahmed Alardawi, from Sheffield Hallam, aimed to explore the effect that object-oriented programming language class structure has on the comprehension of computer programs.  What was great about this research was that it clearly made use of existing work, and partially replicated earlier studies, thus adding to evidence.  Babak Khazaei, also from Sheffield Hallam, presented an empirical study on the influence of OCL, an abbreviation for Object Constraint Language (wikipedia). 

Motivation and affect

This part of the workshop contained a single presentation, by Rein Sach, from the Department of Computing at the Open University. 

Rein's paper was entitled, 'what makes software engineers go that extra mile?'  Rein asked software engineers what it was about their work that they enjoyed.  This gave way to an interesting discussion about the perception of the nature of programming work.  Even though developers might have to battle with misbehaving operating systems and maintain servers from time to time, perhaps these activities need to be considered as work rather than nuisances that get in the way of the real task, which is doing the intrinsically rewarding and creative work of creating code.

Invited paper

Thursday kicked off with a presentation by Gerrit van der Veer, from the Open University in the Netherlands and the Free University, Amsterdam.  Gerrit's presentation was about different aspects of design, how technology might be used to gather debate surrounding the artefacts that are created during the design process through a system called CAM, meaning Co-operative Artefact Memory.  A barcode sticker could be attached to different artefacts, such as a sketch or a physical prototype.  Design groups could then use these stickers, with mobile phones, to access a shared Twitter stream that relates to each object, allowing views and ideas to be shared.

Two thoughts came to mind during Gerrit's presentation.  Firstly, I wondered the extent of similarities between design practice (in different disciplines) and what occurs within software development practices that use agile methods, such as eXtreme Programming.  Secondly, CAM reminded me of a tool called OpenDesignStudio used for an Open University design course called U101, Design Thinking.

Another part of Gerrit's presentation was all about service design (i.e. design which yields a product that is not a tangible item).  Gerrit pointed us to a number of resources, such as the Service Design Tools site, and mentioned the importance of culture, by referring to the work of Hofstede (which is studied in the M364 Interaction Design Open University course). 

Cognitive considerations

The final session of the workshop contained two presentations that related to the cognitive dimensions of notations framework, papers by Anna Bobkowska, Maria Kutar and John Muirhead.  Anna introduced a language for the processing of multimedia streams through the use of a visual language.  Maria and John's presentation explored how a cognitive dimensions questionnaire might be used by non-experts.

Miguel Monteiro went on to speak about the cognitive foundations of modularity.  Miguel referred to a programming paradigm called Aspect-oriented programming (wikipedia), a subject that I have heard of many times, but one that I have not explored in a great deal of depth.  Learning more about AOP is certainly something to do at some point.

Qualitative and Quantitative

The final presentation of the workshop was by Gordon Fletcher from the University of Salford.  Gordon's presentation was entitled 'methods and practicalities of qualitative research', but it was so much more than this.  Gordon spoke about data collection in different communities, and mentioned the concept of biographical research (which made me wonder if anyone has thought about applying this technique, perhaps with regards to exploring motivation or software related careers.

I came away with a number of messages, namely, it can be relatively easy to gather qualitative data, but figuring out what to do with it is a whole other issue.  Also, both quantitative and qualitative research can be both systematic and rigorous; these different approaches to research have a lot in common.  An interesting quote was, 'the method has to fit the researcher even more than it has to fit the research'.

Gordon's presentation gave way to a memorable debate on the use of terms.  Undoubtedly the use of language will remain a perpetual challenge when carrying out multidisciplinary research.

Themes

A number of diverse themes were evident within the PPIG '11 workshop, representing its broad membership.  There was a strong theme of computing education and pedagogy.  Programming and educational motivation was also apparent, mixed in with the use and design of visual programming languages.  This connected to the important theme of cognitive dimensions, notational systems and notational design. 

Two interesting inclusions were links to the broader subject of design, and accessibility.  Human-computer interaction and interaction design remains important theme too.  A final theme is (perhaps that isn’t as strong as in previous years) is the application of ethnographic methods to further understand the activity of programming.  It was great to hear from a broad spread of presenters who are exploring many different research areas.