Making Monitoring UIs Suck Less

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