Lada had some excellent comments about task and scenario. Kuutti
(1995) notes that the key aspects of all scenarios are that (1) they
describe a process leading to a goal and (2) they explain a system
from the perspective of a user or other stakeholder. While we are
often focused on user scenarios, stakeholder scenarios (customer, IT
manager, tech support within a company) can also be quite useful. One
additional note is that there are different categories of scenarios.
Here is a list that I extracted from the CHI literature.
1. Misuse scenarios. Misuse scenarios document threats toward a
system that involve:
-- Hostile actors (vandals who put superglue in vending machine
slots, for example)
-- Safety problems
-- User goals that are not compatible with system goals
2. Exception scenarios (these looks at the rare events or interactions)
3. What-if scenarios (to explore future possibilities)
4. Alternative scenarios - different ways to do the same thing.
5. Making-sense scenarios -- These scenarios show people trying to
understand how to use, troubleshoot, and maintain a system
6. Technology scenarios -- Scenarios that highlight possibilities for
novel technology like haptic interfaces or smart badges.
7. Concept of operation -- A concept of operation is a set of
high-level scenarios that describes in conceptual terms (without
details of the operating system or specific technologies) the general
operation of a complex system (for example, a rail system or
powerplant).
8. Alternative world scenario -- An imaginary situation; sometimes
used as input to a simulation.
9. Organizational Scenarios -- Organizational scenarios are those that
depict potential consequences for groups with different people in
multiple roles. For example, what happens when you introduce a
technology that eliminates some jobs or puts different people in a
position of power.
10. Scenario Timelines - McGraw and Harbison (1997) describe a
technique, the scenario timeline, for visualizing and analyzing
activities involving multiple actors over time.
Some excellent references are:
Alexander, I. (2004). Negative scenarios and misuse cases. In I. F.
Alexander, & N. Maiden (Eds.) Scenarios, stories, use cases through
the systems development life cycle. New York, NY: Wiley, pp. 119-139.
Alexander, I. F., & Maiden, N., (Eds.) (2004). Scenarios, stories, use
cases through the systems development life cycle. New York, NY: Wiley.
Carroll, J. M. (Ed.) (1995). Scenario-based design: Envisioning work
and technology in system development. New York, NY: Wiley.
Carroll, J. M. (1997). Scenario-based design. In M. G. Helander, T. K.
Landauer, and P. V. Prabhu (Eds.). Handbook of Human-Computer
Interaction (Second Edition). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier.
Pp. 383-406.
Carroll, J. M. (2000). Making use: Scenario-based design of
human-computer interactions. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Chauncey
On Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 5:00 PM, Marijke Rijsberman
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Chiwah,
>
> It's useful to make a distinction between scenario and task if you associate
> not only goals with the scenario but also "fit"--fit with the user's goal/s,
> context, and desires.
>
> At the task level it can be appropriate to figure out whether people are
> able to do X and it's easy to think of quantitative measures to capture
> their ability to do X. At the scenario level, which is in most cases a
> million times more important, quantitative measures are more of a stretch.
> You can ask people to rate things on a Likert scale, of course, but the
> richness comes from the qualitative data. Better to have your team observing
> than to try to translate findings into something quantitative.
>
> Marijke
>
>
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