Dayton/Cincinnati, Ohio

World Usability Day events in southwest Ohio

In support of World Usability Day, professionals and colleagues in the Dayton-Cincinnati region hosted an interactive networking meeting at LexisNexis. Sponsored by LexisNexis and the Tri-State Chapter of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, participants and attendees experienced brief demonstrations, panel sessions, and networking. Several associated workshops were held earlier in the day. Food was provided. There was no charge.

Evening schedule

5:00 Presenters arrived to set up Posters/Demos
5:30 Posters/Demos, Networking, Dinner buffet
6:30 Remarks: Leslie MacDonald: President, Tri-State Chapter, HFES
Darren Kall: Sr. Director, LexisNexis User eXperience, Host
Waldemar Karwowski: President, Human Factors and Ergonomics Society
7:00 Panel Discussion: Exploratory research to inform design and innovation
Peter Jones (moderator)
Gary Klein, Klein Associates
Lyman Casey, Centralis Partners
Kevin Simons, Reed Elsevier
8:00 Break-out discussions, continue posters/demos, networking

Morning/afternoon workshops

In addition to the evening session, 3 additional sessions were held earlier in the day.

10:00-4:00 Workshop: Cognitive Work Analysis for Design
2:30-4:30 Field Working the Data: How do we analyze ethnography and build cases for design?
2:15-4:45 Converging Perspectives on Data (CPoD) - Final Show

Workshops descriptions

Cognitive Work Analysis for Design, 10:00-4:00, Gavan Lintern, General Dynamics, Dayton, Ohio

Cognitive Work Analysis constitutes a set of tools for Knowledge Acquisition and Knowledge Representation that are specifically tailored to analysis and design of large-scale information systems. In this workshop, we will introduce participants to the major analytic tools and their representational products. Approximately 50% of the workshop will be devoted to participatory exercises in analysis and design. The key focus for the workshop is to give participants experience with the more challenging methods of Cognitive Work Analysis and to show them how to use the resulting analytic products for design. The exercises will be tutorial in nature and will be oriented specifically towards abstracting and clarifying the central concepts of Cognitive Work Analysis.

Field Working the Data: How do we analyze ethnography and build cases for design?, 2:30-4:30, Peter H. Jones, Redesign Research

This workshop is intended for participants with human factors and user experience (UX) research backgrounds who have worked with ethnography projects, or at least are very interested in conducting them. While its easy to talk about field research methods, sampling, and data gathering, the methods and mechanics of analysis are usually hidden. How do we get started, what do we look for, what's important to analyze once you've collected your observations? Of course, if you collect first and ask questions later, its too late. Good ethnography needs a theoretical framework, a lens under which observations show up as meaningful and that permits us to detect patterns.

The primary purpose of the workshop is to provide a forum for interactive discussion about field research practices for exploration, innovation, and user understanding. Peter will present some case study examples of data analysis and theory-building from prior studies. These will be used as starting points to explore alternatives and best practices in data collection, rapid and deep analysis, and "frameworking." Participants experienced with field studies are encouraged to bring reports or actual raw data with them to share in discussions.

Converging Perspectives on Data (CPoD) - Final Show, 2:15-4:45, Emily Patterson, The Ohio State University

The interdisciplinary initiative at Ohio State University - Converging Perspectives on Data (CPoD) - pursues innovative solutions to data overload problems in information analysis and comprehension tasks. This summer, interdisciplinary teams of faculty and graduate students participated in the Institute for Collaborative Innovation (ICI), a unique immersion experience. Overall, we tell this year's story of how we advanced the state-of-the-art in addressing challenges in inferential analysis exacerbated by data overload conditions.

The CPoD is an interdisciplinary consortium of world-class researchers in Information Analysis and Comprehension. The consortium pools expertise in cognitive systems engineering, political science, design, cognitive science, field research, perception, and computer science to solve problems at the intersections of people, technology and work. The CPoD is affiliated with the Institute for Ergonomics and the Cognitive Systems Engineering Laboratory.

More information

See Southern Ohio World Usability Day for additional information such as a map, directions and contact information.