Presentation: Jeff Johnson and Austin Henderson, "Conceptual Models"

Conceptual Models: Core to Good Design

The most important step in designing a user interface for a desktop or web-based application is to design a coherent, task-focused conceptual model. Unfortunately, this step is often skipped in software development. The result is incoherent, arbitrary, overly-complex applications that expose irrelevant concepts to users. This talk explains what conceptual models are, why they are valuable, and how to create them. It is based on a recent book of the same title by Jeff Johnson and Austin Henderson.

Jeff Johnson is Principal Consultant at UI Wizards, Inc., a product usability consultancy (uiwizards.com). He also is a principal at WiserUsability.com, a consultancy focused on elder usability and accessibility. After earning B.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Yale and Stanford Universities, he worked as a UI designer and implementer, engineer manager, usability tester, and researcher at Cromemco, Xerox, US West, Hewlett-Packard Labs, and Sun Microsystems. He has taught at Stanford University, Mills College, and the University of Canterbury. He has authored many articles and chapters on Human-Computer Interaction, as well as the books GUI Bloopers, Web Bloopers, GUI Bloopers 2.0, and Designing with the Mind in Mind. His latest book, coauthored with Austin Henderson, is Conceptual Models: Core to Good Design (2011).

Austin Henderson's 45-year career in Human-Computer Interaction includes user interface research and architecture at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory, Bolt Beranek and Newman, Xerox Research (both PARC and EuroPARC), Apple Computer, and Pitney Bowes, as well as strategic industrial design with Fitch and his own Rivendel Consulting & Design. The primary goal of his work has been to better meet user needs, both by improving system development to better anticipate those needs, and by broadening system capability to enable users themselves to better respond to unanticipated needs when they arise in a rich and changing world.