Monday, February 23, 2009

How have others conducted parallel design?

McGrew (2001) published an article confirming the value of parallel design. McGrew's case study was the user interface for an invoice reconciliation program. He scheduled a one-day session with several participants, including the project manager, a designer, two subject matter experts, a technical writer who was scheduled to do the training, three users, and a human factors engineer.

They began by having each person independently sketch a proposed user interface on a large sheet of paper using colored felt-tip markers. The sketches then were posted on the wall for all to see and evaluate. After viewing the design solutions proposed by others, each participant sketched two new designs. McGrew required that each new design include at least one idea from another person's design and an idea that no one had yet proposed. Again, all participants reviewed all the design solutions. They began to agree on an optimal design fairly early in the process and were able to reach consensus on the final user interface before the end of the day.

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