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H7 Where will the tool be used?

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Theme: CONTEXT?

Quick Start

  • Heuristic Question: Where will the tool be used?
  • Location affects availability of the tool. Offices, at home, on customer site, countries / time zones, behind firewalls, indoors, outdoors, quiet or noisy environments.
  • Location may affect the ability of the person to use the tool. Location may be of the person, of the tool, of co-workers.
  • Quality in Use Attributes: Context coverage
  • Product Quality Attributes: Operability
  • Mapping Heuristics to Quality Attributes

Explanation and sub-questions

Click for further explanation

Think about: Individuals and teams may be working in different offices, at home, on customer sites, in different countries, in different time zones, behind firewalls, indoors or outdoors, in quiet or noisy environments.

Key questions to ask yourself:

  • Geography:
    • Are teams working across different physical locations?
    • Have you considered country/cultural differences e.g. character sets, currencies, use of color and symbols, translations?
    • Have you considered writing/reading direction (left to right, right to left, top to bottom)?
    • Where else might the teams be who use the tool?
  • Technical environment:
    • Will the tool work with intermittent or no connectivity (e.g. if used on transport)?
    • What infrastructure / technical environment are different people working on?
    • Is the tool findable?
    • Is it findable in the place people want to use it?
    • Where else might the tool need to be accessed from?
  • Physical environment:
    • Is it usable in different physical environments (light and noise levels may affect usability)?
    • Are there interruptions inherent in the environment where the tool will be used - perhaps because people are in their workplace rather than a test lab?
    • Where else might the tool be used?
Research Points and Quotes

We found that people were mandated to use tools that were not available to them because of their location. For example, tool behind a firewall, on different infrastructure, or even access given by job title rather than by need to access the tool. We also found that tools might be available, but not be findable by those who could benefit from them. Simple questions help you gain insights.

"Stuck in limbo..."

Mini usage case An example of simple questions to gain insights, in one small study we asked 12 people working together on a project to rate their mobile and internet connectivity, and to list what devices and operating system platforms they would prefer to use.

Piechart shows about one third of the team had poor connectivity and two thirds good connectivity(connectivitypie.jpg)

Bar chart shows just under 60% used Windows, just over 40% Mac, and a small number Linux. Nearly 70% used a laptop or PC, just under 60% worked on their phone, just over 40% used an apple Mac, and around 15% used a tablet.(devicegraph.jpg)

Activities, tools and techniques to help answer the questions

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Click for activities

To understand where the tool will be used, you need to understand both its technical environment and the physical location of the people who will use it.

We have tabulated the Quality in Use and Product Quality Attributes in a priority order based on the input from industry practitioners during our research. Use that data to help you focus on the optimal product attributes to meet the QiU/UX goals for your tool. We've included quotes from practitioners that you can use to help you understand your own goals, stakeholders, and contexts, plus a cross reference between the heuristics and the quality attributes. These may help with context development. You may need to revisit your personas to strengthen them with localization points. Design a way for people to find the tool and its supporting training materials.

To help you here are some links to external articles that discuss some of the areas you might to consider and some activities about the geographic, technical and physical location for the tool and its users that you may need to consider:

  • Understanding and designing to understand “Where” is not a trivial challenge.
  • Where: geography
  • Where: technical environment
    • Service modelling to understand what technology environments to consider
    • Infrastructure mapping for example against the OSI model
    • Ecosytem mapping to see how the interactions people have with the tool sit within an overall environment
    • Map the organizational locations where the tool might be used to understand how security and firewalls may be needed, or may be blockers to use.
  • Where: physical environment
    • Map the physical locations where the tool may be used (inside, outside, challenging locations, etc) to focus on how rugged the tool needs to be

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