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       Call for Participation:  INTERCHI'93 Workshop

      Working with the Users Throughout the Lifecycle:
          Nomadic Practice in User Centered Design

               Amsterdam, The Netherlands
                 Sunday, 25 April 1993

INTRODUCTION

This workshop proposes the concept of "nomadic practice in user
centered design" (Nomadic UCD).  Nomadic UCD is a set of
activities, approaches, and theoretical perspectives that help
practitioners to work with users in the users' own work context.
The goal is to design, develop, and deliver products and services
that fit into the users' world-views and work-lives.

Although a number of people are tacitly working in this area, we
do this in the course of an overall practice that includes not
only nomadic practice, but also fixed-location laboratory
methods, field methods that tend to keep the focus on the
developers' world or on the computer artifact, and an emphasis on
participatory design with the users rather than on the full
development lifecycle of activities with the users.  The purpose
of this workshop is to sharpen our attention to the nomadic
aspects of our UCD practice throughout the lifecycle, to assess
their value, and to understand and improve our nomadic practice.

Floyd (1987) framed one of the key issues for nomadic practice.
She distinguished between product-oriented software engineering
(focus on the computer artifact and on the needs of the
development cycle), vs.  process-oriented software engineering
(focus on the human problems to be solved, and on the needs of
the users).  Carter (1989) dealt with similar themes, when she
contrasted the somewhat aloof, precise, and engineering-oriented
architect paradigm, vs. the embodied, informal, user-focused
handiworker paradigm in software engineering.  Each author called
for a considered balance between the two models of practice that
she described.  This workshop, too. advocates balance between
conventional laboratory-focused UCD and the nomadic components
that are the focus of our concern.  But first we need to learn
more about what the nomadic components are -- or could be.

The participatory design movement often emphasizes a radical
refocusing on the users (e.g., Bjerknes, Ehn, and Kyng, 1987;
Greenbaum and Kyng, 1991; Muller, Kuhn, and Meskill, 1992;
Muller, Wildman, and White, 1992; Namioka and Schuler, 1990).
The movement has suggested a number of approaches that contribute
to nomadic practice, including structured conferences, hands-on
design, participatory prototyping, cooperative evaluation, games
and theatre for design, and so on.  Much of the work in
participatory design, however, has focused on design and
analysis, and has tended to scant later stages of the development
lifecycle (or iteration), especially assessment.  This workshop
is intended to span a broader range of activities, techniques,
and lifecycle concerns than is usually treated by participatory
design practitioners, while maintaining the theme of users as
co-equal participants in usability activities.

THEMES

Three general themes of Nomadic UCD appear to have motivated
practitioners to develop this type of practice:

  o  User Participation and Empowerment.  Nomadic practice helps
     us to bring users into the design and development process as
     colleagues, on an early, frequent, and -- above all -- equal
     basis.  Users can thus have a significant impact on the
     design of the system, and can help to make it serve their
     needs.

  o  Marketing.  Nomadic practice places the practitioner in the
     users' workplace, showing customer concern and customer
     focus.

  o  Practitioner Challenge and Growth.  Nomadic practice
     challenges practitioners to develop methods for effective
     design and assessment outside of traditional laboratory
     facilities.  We learn to rely more on our skills, and less
     on our technology (although some technologies are
     sufficiently portable to be part of nomadic practice -- see
     below).  In this way, we repeatedly learn to "do more with
     less," and to find ways of recruiting users and customers
     into our work.

GOALS

The workshop's goals are as follows:

  o  Provide a focus for the INTERCHI community to strengthen the
     themes described above.

  o  Understand what we already know (and what we are already
     doing) in Nomadic UCD.

  o  Improve and enhance nomadic practice by (a) highlighting
     this aspect that is part of many of our practices; (b)
     developing a resource of nomadic practices; and (c)
     answering some of these more detailed questions:

       -  What practices are part of nomadic UCD work?

       -  What practices are could be modified so that they would
          work in a nomadic UCD context?

       -  What technology is -- or could be -- used in the
          "nomadic" part of nomadic practice?  What technology
          subsets might be needed for, e.g., nomadic requirements
          analysis, nomadic design, and nomadic usability
          testing?

       -  What is needed at our home base?  Is there a non-
          nomadic support facility for a nomadic practice?

       -  What activities cannot be practiced nomadically?  What
          facilities or technologies are required for the
          remaining, essential non-nomadic activities?

       -  How formal does nomadic UCD need to be, to make a
          convincing case to developers and customers of
          transferable methods and methodology? Can this
          formality be achieved purely through nomadic practice?
          Does it require a "home" to go back to, a lab, a
          showplace?

APPLICATION

People will be invited to participate on the basis of a 3-5 page
position paper describing your work in nomadic user centered
design.  Please send position papers to the following address by
5 February 1993:

     Michael J. Muller / Nomadic UCD Workshop
     U S WEST Advanced Technologies
     4001 Discovery Drive, Suite 280
     Boulder CO 80303 US
     michael@advtech.uswest.com or muller.chi@xerox.com
     +1-303-541-6564 (voice)  +1-303-541-6003 (fax)

Following review by the workshop committee, invitations to the
workshop will be issued by 19 February 1993.

REFERENCES

 [1]  Bjerkes, G., Ehn, P., and Kyng, M. (Eds.) (1987).
      Computers and Democracy:  A Scandinavian Challenge.
      Brookfield VT:  Gower.

 [2]  Carter, K. (1989).  Two Conceptions of Designing.  In
      Bodker, S. (Ed.), Proceedings of the 12th IRIS:
      Information Systems Research Seminar In Scandinavia.
      Aarhus, Denmark:  Aarhus University, 101-110.

 [3]  Floyd, C. (1987).  Outline of a paradigm change in software
      engineering.  In Bjerkes, G., Ehn, P., and Kyng, M. (Eds.)
      (1987).  Computers and Democracy.  Brookfield VT:  Gower.

 [4]  Greenbaum, J., and Kyng, M. (1991).  Design at Work.
      Hillsdale NJ:  Erlbaum.

 [5]  Muller, M.J., Kuhn, S., and Meskill, J.A. (1992).  PDC'92:
      Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference.
      Cambridge MA:  Computer Professionals for Social
      Responsibility.

 [6]  Muller, M.J., Wildman, D.M., and White, E.A. (1992).
      Taxonomy of Participatory Design Practices:  A
      Participatory Poster.  Poster at CHI'92.

 [7]  Namioka, A., and Schuler, D. (Eds.) (1990).  PDC'90:
      Conference on Participatory Design.  Seattle WA:  Computer
      Professionals for Social Responsibility.
- --
Michael J. Muller
U S WEST Advanced Technologies
4001 Discovery Drive, Suite 280 / Boulder CO 80303 US
michael@advtech.uswest.com  +1-303-541-6564 (voice)  +1-303-541-6003 (fax)


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