Oracle Leads Enterprise Software User Experience Session at HCI International 2009
By Anna Wichansky, Senior Director, Advanced UI User Experience, Oracle
Sitting in my office on a cold, gray day in December, my mind wanders back to a sunny rose garden in full bloom, and the wonderful week I spent in San Diego last summer at the 13th International Conference on Human Computer Interaction. This was an opportunity to network with user experience (UX) professionals in my main area of professional interest, namely enterprise software usability, and find out the latest and greatest from Oracle colleagues as well as those of other companies. This conference was one of 10 affiliated conventions for UX professionals that were held at the Town and Country Resort & Convention Center on July 19-25, 2009. Town & Country is a wonderfully sprawling resort in the old style of southern California hotel properties, built out rather than up, with hundreds of mature native plants and rose bushes, and lots of side paths, nooks, and crannies to explore. More than 4,000 participants from academia, research institutes, industry and governmental agencies in 73 countries submitted contributions to this forum. HCII2009 hosted 1400 papers, 23 tutorials, poster sessions, and exhibits. Thanks to the mild climate in San Diego, we spent almost as much time out of doors chatting as we did sitting inside listening to presentations. The atmosphere was very friendly and open, and it was great just to sit down at a table with professionals from Europe, Japan, China, and Australia and talk about the papers and demos we had seen. I learned about where young researchers from Japan were job-hunting, European views of the economic crisis and its effect on behavioral research, and how brain waves were being used in Spain to assess perceptions of virtual reality environments. In particular, the research on augmented reality intrigued me. These highly realistic simulations of virtual environments allow users to become completely immersed in experiences with new types of technologies. While the main applications I saw included training and warfare systems, the research is clearly leading to methods and instrumentation that can be used to enhance usability testing of software. These might include specialized non-invasive caps with electrodes which are worn by test participants, to measure changes in brain activity as they use technology. Methods to correlate brain wave patterns with our more traditional eye-tracking data were presented, as well as studies of these patterns in relation to mental workload in non-military situations. By far an outstanding highlight of the conference was a tutorial on ISO standards for usability by Nigel Bevan, a leading British authority on international standards for usability. Nigel presented both introductory and advanced classes on this topic, which were well-worth the price of admission to the conference. I will provide a more detailed summary and review of relevant new standards for UX in a future usableapps article. The paper session I organized, which supported the Human Interface and Management of Information program track, featured a total of seven papers, four by Oracle contributors and the rest by other industry experts, on enterprise software UX design. The session was well-attended with a lively audience of academics, consultants, and industry representatives. I was particularly pleased to get kudos and well wishes on my discussion of the Oracle Usability Advisory Board, how it was formed, and how customers are using it to drive usability to the next level in next-generation products at Oracle. Papers were published in the conference proceedings, which are available on DVD and in Volume 8 of a 17-volume paperback set. I’ve provided links below to the abstracts of the Oracle papers presented at the conference for your reading enjoyment. All authors are from our Applications UX group unless otherwise noted. Customer Boards as Vehicles of Change in Enterprise Software User Experience. Anna Wichansky Crafting Contemporary Enterprise Application User Experiences Jeremy Ashley and Misha Vaughan Designing for the Next Generation: Generation-Y Expectations Patanjali Venkatacharya; Sean Rice; and Lulit Bezuayehu From Research to Product: Integrating Treemaps into Enterprise Software Joseph Goldberg; Jonathan Helfman; and John Beresniewicz (Oracle USA Configuration Management Group) Estimating Productivity: Composite Operators for Keystroke Level Modeling. Jeff Sauro The Factor Structure of the System Usability Scale- James R. Lewis (IBM Software Group) and Jeff Sauro Usability Maturity: A Case Study in Planning and Designing an Enterprise Application Suite – Jeremy Ashley and Kristin Desmond
Tags: Academia Research, Brain Waves, Cold Gray Day, Economic Crisis, Full Bloom, Hotel Properties, Human Computer Interaction, Japan China, Mild Climate, Native Plants, Nooks And Crannies, ORACLE BLOGS, Poster Sessions, Professional Interest, Realistic Simulations, Rose Garden, Side Paths, Software Usability, Software User, Virtual Environments, Virtual Reality Environments
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