Publication statistics
Pub. period:1987-1994
Pub. count:7
Number of co-authors:14
Co-authors
Number of publications with 3 favourite co-authors:
Linda MacAulay:5Andrew Hutt:4Nick Donnelly:2 Productive colleagues
Chris Fowler's 3 most productive colleagues in number of publications:
Alistair G. Sutcli..:148Linda MacAulay:12Paul Booth:9
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Chris Fowler
Publications by Chris Fowler (bibliography)
Fowler, Chris, Stuart, Jonathan, Lo, Tony and Tate, Mike (1994): Using the Usability Laboratory: BT's Experiences. In Behaviour and Information Technology, 13 (1) pp. 146-153.
“British Telecommunications PLC (BT) is a global telecommunications company providing a wide range of products and services, supported by a large research and development organization which includes a Human Factors Unit (HFU). Part of the HFU's work is to ensure that BT's current and future products and services are useful and usable. A team within the HFU has recently carried out a reassessment of the processes, tools and techniques required for effective and efficient usability evaluations. The existing facilities, reasons for change and benefits to the company are described in the context of a usability evaluation framework.”
© All rights reserved Fowler et al. and/or Taylor and Francis
Earthy, Jonathan, Pullinger, David, Fowler, Chris, Page, Stephen and Sutcliffe, Alistair G. (1992): HCI, Where's the Practice?. In: Monk, Andrew, Diaper, Dan and Harrison, Michael D. (eds.) Proceedings of the Seventh Conference of the British Computer Society Human Computer Interaction Specialist Group - People and Computers VII August 15-18, 1992, University of York, UK. pp. 477-479.
MacAulay, Linda, Fowler, Chris, Kirby, Mark and Hutt, Andrew (1990): USTM: A New Approach to Requirements Specification. In Interacting with Computers, 2 (1) pp. 92-118.
“The problem of inadequate requirements specification is well known. It is argued here that many of the problems stem from an insufficient user orientation on the part of the specifiers. A number of current approaches to requirements specification are reviewed and the need for a methodological approach to requirements capture and specification is discussed. The criteria for the design of a good methodology are deduced from the literature and a novel approach to requirements specification is described: this is the User Skills and Task Match (USTM) methodology. USTM is assessed against other current approaches and the specified criteria. The aim of the USTM methodology is to provide a user-centred approach to requirements specification. Attention is focused on users and their environment at the earliest stage of development in order to facilitate production of software that provides appropriate functionality and that clearly supports users in carrying out their roles at work, i.e. supports the users' cognitive, social and organisational needs. USTM involves generating data about users and their environment and then following a structured procedure in order to derive functional and nonfunctional requirements. The methodology is designed for use by groups of people, typically from marketing, product design, document design and user organisations, who are concerned with the specification of requirements for 'generic' systems. A 'generic' system is one that is designed to satisfy the needs of many different customers/markets (e.g. a point-of-sale system or personnel system).”
© All rights reserved MacAulay et al. and/or Elsevier Science
Fowler, Chris, MacAulay, Linda, Castell, Adrian and Hutt, Andrew (1989): An Evaluation of the Usability of a Human Factors Based Requirements Capture Methodology. In: Sutcliffe, Alistair G. and Macauley, Linda (eds.) Proceedings of the Fifth Conference of the British Computer Society Human Computer Interaction Specialist Group - People and Computers V August 5-8, 1989, University of Nottingham, UK. pp. 359-371.
“This paper reports the results of an evaluation of part of the USTM (User Skills Task Match) Methodology. USTM is a Human Factors based methodology which addresses the earliest stages of the product development cycle i.e., from the initial idea, through feasibility assessment to requirements specification. The paper discusses evaluation results from the first part of the methodology which is concerned with requirements capture. The users of the methodology are multi-disciplinary design teams typically consisting of senior designers, strategic marketeers and technical authors. The objective of the evaluation reported here was to establish whether the methodology met a number of usability criteria including ease of use, usefulness, ease of learning and enjoyability. The main methods of evaluation used were questionnaires and structured interviews. The results are generally very favourable in terms of the objectives set. In particular it was found that the attitude of the design teams towards Human Factors changed quite significantly after using the methodology. They found focusing on the user and the user's environment at this early stage most informative and felt that Human Factors had an important contribution to make. Although the responses to questions on 'ease of use' and 'ease of learning' questions were favourable to the methodology, there was a general feeling that too much paper was generated and that the methodology could be better supported by employing an automated tool kit. The design teams also appreciated the team building nature of the workshops associated with the methodology and reported improvements in team dynamics and in shared understanding of the product opportunity. The overall results of the evaluation show that the design teams found the methodology usable, enjoyable and valuable.”
© All rights reserved Fowler et al. and/or Cambridge University Press
Hutt, Andrew, Donnelly, Nick, MacAulay, Linda, Fowler, Chris and Twigger, Deborah (1987): Describing a Product Opportunity: A Method of Understanding the Users' Environment. In: Carroll, John M. and Tanner, Peter P. (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 87 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference April 5-9, 1987, Toronto, Canada. pp. 61-74.
“Information System Companies are aware that the marketability and usability of their products are increasingly dependent on acquiring an early knowledge of the requirements of users. This paper describes the first stage of the User Skills Task Match (USTM) methodology. The methodology addresses human factors needs at the requirement specification stage in the product development life cycle. The first stage of the methodology provides a method for describing the users and their environment. It should be applied at an early stage of the development life cycle, that is, when it is first perceived that there is a potential market for a particular product. This stage is referred to as the Product Opportunity stage and the process is called Describing the Product Opportunity (DPO). The paper describes DPO and reports the subjective and objective evaluations that have been carried out. DPO has met with some measure of success in causing design teams to reassess their products in view of an increased understanding of the users' environment.”
© All rights reserved Hutt et al. and/or ACM Press
Booth, Paul, Fowler, Chris and MacAulay, Linda (1987): An Investigation into Business Information Presentation at Human-Computer Interfaces. In: Bullinger, Hans-Jorg and Shackel, Brian (eds.) INTERACT 87 - 2nd IFIP International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction September 1-4, 1987, Stuttgart, Germany. pp. 599-604.
“Many commercial software packages aimed at the business community advertise graphical data presentation as a selling point. However, the general growth in the use of information display techniques in I.T. systems has not been matched by a proper consideration of their effects and at the moment, the evidence regarding display format preference is somewhat contradictory. An experiment is reported which was concerned with information display format (i.e: graphical and tabular) preference at the human-computer interface. Subjects from both business and non-business backgrounds performed a decision-making task after completing the visualiser-verbaliser and conceptual tempo cognitive style tests. The results suggested that the visualiser-verbaliser and conceptual tempo cognitive style dimensions are unlikely to be of use in predicting display format preference at the human-computer interface. Moreover, there were indications that individuals will use information in both graphical and tabular formats regardless of their own stated preferences. Nevertheless, as stated display format preferences were widely dispersed, it is suggested that users of computer systems should be allowed to choose the format in which information is presented.”
© All rights reserved Booth et al. and/or North-Holland
Hutt, Andrew, Donnelly, Nick, MacAulay, Linda, Fowler, Chris and Twigger, Deborah (1987): Describing a Product Opportunity: A Method of Understanding the Users' Environment. In: Diaper, Dan and Winder, Russel (eds.) Proceedings of the Third Conference of the British Computer Society Human Computer Interaction Specialist Group - People and Computers III August 7-11, 1987, University of Exeter, UK. pp. 61-74.
“Information System Companies are aware that the marketability and usability of their products are increasingly dependent on acquiring an early knowledge of the requirements of users. This paper describes the first stage of the User Skills Task Match (USTM) methodology. The methodology addresses human factors needs at the requirement specification stage in the product development life cycle. The first stage of the methodology provides a method for describing the users and their environment. It should be applied at an early stage of the development life cycle, that is, when it is first perceived that there is a potential market for a particular product. This stage is referred to as the Product Opportunity stage and the process is called Describing the Product Opportunity (DPO). The paper describes DPO and reports the subjective and objective evaluations that have been carried out. DPO has met with some measure of success in causing design teams to reassess their products in view of an increased understanding of the users' environment.”
© All rights reserved Hutt et al. and/or Cambridge University Press
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