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Sitemaps, Storyboards, and Specifications

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Sitemaps, Storyboards, and Specifications: A Sketch of Web Site Design Practice as Manifested Through ArtifactsMark W. Newman and James A. Landay Group for User Interface Research, Computer Science Division University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, CA 94720-1776 USA +1 510 643-3043 {newman, landay}@cs.berkeley.edu ABSTRACT Through a study of web site design practice, we observed that web site designers employ multiple representations of web sites as they progress through the design process, and that these representations allow them to focus on different aspects of the design. Designers also employ multiple tools during the course of a design project, including graphic design, web development, presentation, and word processing software, as well as pen and paper. Sketching on paper is especially important during the design exploration phase of a design project, when designers wish to explore many design possibilities quickly without focusing on low-level details. Web site design tools intended to support the early phases of the design process should employ informal interaction techniques and should integrate well with other applications that designers use regularly. Keywords Ethnography, Interaction Design, Web Site Design, Information Architecture, User Interface Design, Work Analysis, User Studies, Informal Interfaces. INTRODUCTION We undertook a study to identify current practices in the field of web design. The goal of this study was to illuminate issues that will guide the design of informal tools for supporting web site design. By “informal” we mean tools whose user interfaces are designed to support natural, ambiguous forms of human-computer interaction [11]. Examples of interaction modes that informal interfaces support include speaking, writing, gesturing, and sketching. We are interested in the exploration of informal interfaces in general, and in our research group we have developed informal applications to support graphical user interface design [15] and group note taking [5, 14]. We know that designers in general employ ambiguous means of expression and communication (such as sketching on paper) when they are exploring design ideas [4, 10, 22]. Since web design is an emerging field, the tools to support it are not yet mature. We believe that there is a real opportunity for improving the state of the art. In the remainder of this paper we present related work, describe the study that was conducted, present the picture of web design that was observed through the study, and discuss the implications of our study towards future web design tools. RELATED WORK Several work practice studies have appeared in the literature that are especially relevant to our study of web site designers. Sumner and Stolze’s study of speech application designers [21] and Bellotti and Rogers’ study of editorial staff at several publishing companies [1] showed that designers and editors use multiple intermediate representations of products during their creation, some of them similar to the representations found in this study. A certain amount can be learned about web design practice by reading the growing body of literature that covers it [8, 17-19]. Unfortunately, much of this literature is prescriptive rather than descriptive in nature, and may not accurately reflect what designers are actually doing in the field. To learn what designers do, there is no substitute for direct contact. We elected to conduct a first-hand investigation into web design practice through field visits and interviews with professional designers. Our approach was inspired by the methods proposed in, for example, [3, 12]. DESCRIPTION OF STUDY We interviewed eleven designers involved in the web site design process. Ten of these designers were at five different companies and one was a freelance designer. We also collected and studied many artifacts of the design process, including sketches, prototypes, written documents, presentations, finished web sites, and several other types of artifacts, some of which will be discussed later. All interviews were conducted in the designers’ offices, which facilitated the observation of artifacts and allowed us to observe their working environments. .Years of experience # of participants Less than 5 years 7 Between 5 and 10 3 More than 20 1 Table 1a: Designers’ Professional Experience Background # of participants Graphic design 8 Computer Science 2 Cognitive Science & Library Science 1 Table 1b: Designers’ Professional Background Responsibility # of participants Graphic design 4 UI Design/Information Architecture 3 Hybrid 4 Table 1c: Designers’ Current Responsibilities Who Was Interviewed Four of the five companies we observed were design firms that are typically contracted by outside clients to design sites or interactive products. The fifth company was a large Internet directory and search engine (i.e., a “portal”). The designers represented a range of professional design experience levels (see Table 1a). All of the designers with more than five years of experience had been involved in designing user interfaces for software applications before getting involved in web site design, and one of them had been involved in print design as well. Most of the designers interviewed had backgrounds in graphic design in terms of education and experience (see Table 1b). In terms of the designers’ current responsibilities, four were focused almost exclusively on graphic design, three were focused exclusively on user interface design/information architecture, and four had responsibilities that were general enough to incorporate aspects of both kinds of design (see Table 1c). The meanings of the terms “graphic design,” “user interface design,” and “information architecture” are discussed in the next section. None of the designers were involved in programming or development of the final, production versions of the sites they designed. What Was Asked Each participant was asked to choose a recently completed or nearly completed project, and to walk the interviewer through the entire project, explaining what happened at each phase. The designer was asked to show examples of


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