Can Users Play an Effective Role in Parallel Tools Research?

Commercial experiences have shown that involving users in the software design cycle is a cost-effective way of improving both the quality and the acceptability of tool products. In this paper, we address the issue of whether users also should be involved in the research activities that lay the foundation for parallel tool design. Integrating users changes the basic nature of the software process in several ways, as illustrated with examples from recent Parallel Tools Consortium projects. Tool designers must invest additional time in activities such as preparing example scenarios or prototypes for user discussions, identifying alternatives that can serve as points of departure for user-derived metaphors or models, and analyzing user responses. Our experiences, however, indicate that user suggestions — if identified consistently throughout the design process — are relatively easy to obtain and can actually streamline the development time for research prototypes. Further, when users see evidence that their feedback has influenced design decisions, they may become spontaneous supporters of the project, devoting time and energy to devise other improvements and to promote the tool among their colleagues. Tool researchers may be doing themselves a disservice in overestimating the time and difficulty of working with users. A relatively small amount of user involvement can, in fact, yield substantial benefits in terms of improved usability, broader dissemination, and new possibilities for research funding. Can Users Play an Effective Role in Parallel Tools Research? A growing recognition that products and services should be customer-driven has affected development and production processes in many areas of the economy. In computing, it has had most impact in the area of human computer interfaces (HCI). As increasing attention has been paid to the needs and preferences of software users, it has become obvious to HCI specialists that users can — and should — play an active role in the software design process. Recent publications have described the experiences of businesses that integrated users into the design cycle and found it to be a cost-effective way of improving both the quality and the acceptability of software products [2, 15, 30, 10, 28]. In this paper, we address the issue of whether users should be involved, not in software production per se, but rather in the research activities that lay the foundation for software tool design. Specifically, we consider the tradeoffs if users were to participate more actively in parallel tools research. The first section establishes why parallel tools would appear to be a fruitful area for more direct interactions between researchers and their potential users. This is followed by discussions of the procedures necessary to incorporate users in research projects and the potential benefits to be derived, based on our experiences with recent software tool projects. The costs are then assessed, in terms of researcher effort as well as the effects on time-to-results. A series of recommendations, derived from experiences in acquiring and applying user feedback, indicate how the costs might be kept to a minimum while still allowing the tools researcher to reap the benefits of user involvement.