Inaugural online book | Application Concepting Series No. 1
100 Ideas for Envisioning Powerful, Engaging, and Productive User Experiences in Knowledge Work
Opening thoughts Table of contents Preface / Publication information Introduction: The case for Application Envisioning Primer on example knowledge work domains A. Exploring work mediation and determining scope (9) B. Defining interaction objects (10) C. Establishing an application framework (10) D. Considering workers’ attentions (7) E. Providing opportunities to offload effort (6) F. Enhancing information representation (11) G. Clarifying central interactions (7) H. Supporting outcome exploration and cognitive tracing (4)   H1. Active versioning   H2. Extensive and reconstructive undo   H3. Automated historical records and versions   H4. Working annotations I. Working with volumes of information (7) J. Facilitating communication (7) K. Promoting integration into work practice (13) L. Pursuing aesthetic refinement (5) M. Planning connection with use (4) Glossary Bibliography About the author Download E-Book or Order Softcover Book In addition to this website, Working through Screens is available in several other formats: - Softcover print on demand books - Free letter size .pdf - Free large format .pdf - Free "Idea Cards" .pdf View all Working through Screens Formats Contact Our Consulting Studio info@FlashbulbInteraction.com 206.280.3135 Studio Updates From our FlashbulbUX Twitter feed:   Follow FlashbulbUX on Twitter Feedback on Working through Screens? Email us your thoughts or Twitter @FlashbulbUX		Idea Category H. Supporting Outcome Exploration and Cognitive Tracing Valued computing tools can play a supporting role in divergent and malleable pathways of thought and action. Designing this kind of support requires an understanding of peoples’ burdens in certain types of scenario oriented thought and action. During application envisioning, product teams can map and explore areas of targeted work practices where people productively consider multiple options or “look back” through previous possibilities and choices. By taking time to explore how users might test different scenarios or retrace their earlier cognitive paths, teams can highlight opportunities to tailor and extend their products in novel and highly useful ways. As part of arriving at successful outcomes, knowledge workers often become highly skilled at thinking through potential approaches before pursuing a chosen trajectory. They may make explicit efforts to keep track of their various predictions and lines of thinking as they accomplish their efforts. Or they may circumstantially reflect back after some interval of time, reconstructing their pathways through an examination of their memories and the external artifacts of their actions. Interactive applications can allow knowledge workers to externally test scenarios and react to their outcomes without committing to permanent action. Trusted computing tools can accurately store and dynamically revert to certain points within the progressions of onscreen views that flow from workers’ explorations — often in greater detail than individuals can mentally visualize in their own recollections. By removing these memory burdens and providing such externalized flexibility — outside of workers’ own heads — applications can supplement users’ top down thinking about their problems with rapid, free experimentation and serendipitous, chance operations. In some specialized activities, interactive simulations based on domain specific rules and information representations can transform slow and effortful practices into fluid sandboxes for thinking work. In addition to supporting workers’ exploration of outcomes, the creation and storage of interactive historical trails can be valuable for cooperative and collaborative work, recovery from errors in work practice, and evaluation of major incidents. This category contains 4 of the 100 application envisioning ideas in this book:   H1. Active versioning   H2. Extensive and reconstructive undo   H3. Interaction object or function history   H4. Working annotations Product teams can use these ideas to explore functionality concepts for supporting, or effectively extending, workers’ abilities to consider potential outcomes and retrace their interactions. Ideation focused around such support can help teams uncover innovative opportunities to effectively externalize otherwise internal work practices, potentially allowing for more creative, higher quality knowledge work outputs. The central notion of this category is most closely related to the “Exploring work mediation and determining scope” (A), “Considering workers’ attentions” (D), “Providing opportunities to offload effort” (E), and “Working with volumes of information” (I) categories. < PREVIOUS PAGE  |  NEXT PAGE > Back to top  |  View Table of Contents All original contents of Working through Screens online book are subject to the creative commons license (Attribution-NonCommercial- ShareAlike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/) unless otherwise noted. Please attribute the work to “Jacob Burghardt / FLASHBULB INTERACTION Consultancy.”