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Thursday, 06 March 2008

Concept Models

The following notes are from the Concept Models session, presented by Dan Brown, at Interaction08.

Presentation slides - click on Download File as the text is all garbled on the slideshow but the PDF is fine.
Video

  • Have to create the tools to use in creating the design
  • You have requirements now what? Sketch, scenarios, flow charts, mockups, wireframes, whiteboarding
  • What if the requirements are unclear or incomplete?
  • Can use Concept Models to flesh out underlying concepts (nouns) and connections between them (verbs)
  • Ex. Design an expense report. Nouns = Employee, Expense, Amount, Manager, etc.
  • Concept Models represent reality through nouns connected to verbs
  • Helps to
    • establish an agreed upon vocabulary
    • bring out questions
    • understand new domains
    • synthesize new ideas and start designing
    • determine key concepts to focus on
    • determine relationships & interactions you need to design for
    • define scope, minimize concepts you don't need to focus on
    • define views (pages, states) and components (elements)
  • From the model then blow out detail as needed for each concept. what should this look like online?
  • Ex. concept is Expense, what are the components - amount, receipt, category, etc.
  • The determine how to represent the lines = interactions, online?
  • Collect & categorize all possible interactions which can then map to a pattern.
  • Determine a particular kind of relationship always map to a particular interaction?
  • Steps:
    1. Gather concepts
    2. Create connections
    3. Research and elaborate
    4. Validate concepts and connections (are these the right ones?)
    5. Simplify - remove redundant or unnecessary concepts
  • Always ask questions!!
  • Share concept models with stakeholders
    • set expectations, what this is, purpose, how to review it
    • generate questions
    • explain implications: if we take away X users will not be able to...
    • go in with a set of questions, generate conversation: what's missing?, are these correct?, do these relationships matter?, correct labels/wording?, can we enforce these relationships?
  • Final thoughts
    • use when underlying structure is unclear to help get clarification
    • use to help escape the page metaphor
    • use to bridge gap between what & how
    • helps in understanding the problem and coming to a solution
    • useful in translating concepts into objects for developers, have them validate concepts

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