The development of a touch screen based communications terminal

Abstract

This paper discusses a successful attempt to improve the design of a communications terminal for professional applications involving significant improvements to customer and operator contact, and improving the level of operator focus during the design phase. This included visits to sites to capture requirements through interview and observation of working practices, and to get insight into typical communication tasks. A clear task focus was maintained during the design phase by using a dialogue description tool, the Task Action Description, developed in-house to support the integration of the dialogue specification, the graphic design and the software design. Customer and operator feedback on the design was obtained. The value of team work is also discussed. The success of the design can be attributed to a direct involvement of users in the development process and to the integration of human factors specialists, graphic designers, software engineers and marketing experts in the development team. The conclusions drawn highlight: (1) the importance of direct first hand exposure to the daily working environment of the operators by the team as a whole; (2) the problem of how to articulate operator requirements in such a form that they are taken into account in the design development; and (3) the progressive evolution of organisations and changes in work practices.