Comments on: Interaction Modeling

By: arhythmt

arhythmt — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Excellent article! Very clear description.

By: nemrut

nemrut — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Very informative article. I always referred to them as simply ‘flow diagrams.’ You’ve provided a few more academic terms to my User Experience vocabulary

By: mqueen

mqueen — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Glad I could help with the lingo! There is another distinction though. Suppose you ‘diagram’ 1 user during a session. I would be inclined to call that a flow diagram too! However, suppose you diagram 10 users? Then, user cognitive states like “edit list for X” becomes, “edit” as more users exhibit the same behavior. Then, you get some predictability (with a level of abstraction). More users will do this edit stage! As soon as corroborated predictability sets in … then it’s a model. Intuitively, the phrase “model predictions” is commonly used with that same meaning. BTW, that speech always gets a standing ovation

By: keithpulverngccom

keithpulverngccom — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Excellent!!…a very conicse but elegant explanatiion…although it seems somehow sad that after all this time we still have to explain “it” so often. I suppose that it comes from Customers being told and then actually believing they will get a “free design” and “save money” having the programmers sort of “design-while-coding”.

Nothing shows up as quickly as a lack of design (or blueprint or plan) as evidenced by several big-name federal agencies being forced to abandon multi-million dollar development projects because they attempted to follow the Evolutionary Model instead of the Intelligent Design Model.

By: mqueen

mqueen — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Of this you speak the truth. And, your comment, “… believing they will get a ‘free design’ and ‘save money’ having the programmers sort of ‘design-while-coding’.” — sounds like the voice of experience

That is a case study I’d like to read.

By: cwodtke

cwodtke — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I don’t know if you have noticed it… but there is a little mysterious “suggest” link. This allows you to “suggest” a comment be considered as an article. Matt, if you think Keith’s comment would be a case study you’d like to read, why not click it and try!

By: whitneyq

whitneyq — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

This sounds a lot like The Bridge, a participatory analysis design and assessment (PANDA) technique developed at Bellcore by Tom Dayton, Joe Kramer and others. It’s focused on a participatory workshop in which a variety of stakeholders (business, users, experts) created three views, which they called something like Current, Blue Sky, and Real. It was intended for working on large object-oriented expert systems. The writeups are all pretty dry, but the actual sessions (at least the ones I saw) were much more lively and engaging.

By: mqueen

mqueen — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I haven’t heard of The Bridge though many similar methods exist in the expert systems lit. Practice mapping, for example, is a much more complex version of interaction modeling that often involves decision analysis techniques in lieu of the cognitive bias warrants I described above. Was there any mention of whether The Bridge enjoyed any success (case studies, anecdotes, etc.)?

By: sammurraysutton

sammurraysutton — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Excellent article – still holds up even three years later I’d say. Basically formalizes a technique that I’d been trying to express in a much more naive way through my own efforts.