Listen to the Users

Building user involvement into the early stages
Involving users in the initial design phase can decrease re-design efforts later in the project. Managers, consultants, and programmers should seek out a few key technicians to ask their input. As mentioned earlier, the efforts and processes that a user goes through to enter or revise an object can be quite different on different systems. It can be quite different on different data models on the same system. By reviewing the data requirements of the particular project and looking at initial process steps, the input that a user provides can be invaluable in designing an interface that will be most effective and efficient.

For example, in developing a field inventory data capture system, technicians were instrumental during the early design phase. Several of the lead data collectors were brought into the office to assist in the design. They first spent a day with operators on other projects to see the steps that were being taken to enter data. They looked at the pros and cons of different interfaces and then tried to incorporate the best ideas. Several of the other interfaces required a number of clicks or in some cases bringing up two or three other menus to enter data for a particular object. The data collectors asked that the system be designed so that only one menu had to be brought up and that all required attributes appear on that menu. As can be seen in the sample menu below, an interface was built that met the needs of data collectors.

Incorporating users throughout the project
All processes benefit from being scrutinized throughout the life of a project. Regularly held team meetings are the key to encouraging the type of communication that needs to Conductor Attribution Application – permits the user to view and edit conductor attributes for facilities take place to leverage the users’ involvement. It is important that the technical personnel tasked with maintaining the system attend these meetings, as it is most effective for them to hear suggestions and ideas directly from the users rather than through a manager. The users and the designer can engage in conversation to clarify the users’ expectations and fully understand the requests that they are making. Their interaction fosters an environment of creativity and can result in addressing the problem in a new way, generating a solution that otherwise would not have been apparent. An environment of open communication needs to exist with the understanding that suggestions are made in the spirit of process improvement.

During these meetings, the team leaders should ask the technicians which tasks seem to take the longest and get their input on what could be done to improve the process. On one particular project, the edgematching of conductors between maps was taking nearly two minutes to complete. The process at the time was that the maps on the south and west would have conductor added between the maps to the poles on the north and east sides. The technicians would call up the source to the north or east and add the pole on their map that conductor was being added to. After adding the conductor, the pole that had been created temporarily would be deleted.

The recommendation from the technicians was to create temporary global edgematch nodes on the sheet edges. The first technician to come to a sheet edge would be responsible for creating the global edgematch node, and the string of conductor would be tied to the temporary node. The technicians working on the other maps would display the global edgematch nodes and, if a global node existed, would tie to it. This simple solution to the edgematch process cut the edgematching time by over 80%.

Another example of how the users have recommended improvement in the process was how electrical conductor was being entered tangent to a pole. This project required that the conductor attribute have the two pole numbers to which the conductor was attached. The developer for this model allowed the user to establish what the offset was to be for a given segment of conductor and the direction of the offset. The technician would then digitize the two poles that the conductor fell between and the system would draw that line string. The technician would then need to go back to the previous piece of conductor and move the two pieces of conductor so that they would snap together.

This process was taking one to two minutes to complete. During one of the team meetings, the users were asked how the time for data conversion could be improved. One technician stated that he was spending too much time snapping conductor together. As the conversation continued, one of the other users asked why they couldn’t just pick at the two lines and let the system snap the vectors together. Bingo! A very easy solution was generated that eliminated a task that was taking ten to thirty seconds per operator.

Exposing users to other systems
Another area that will help in improving the processes within an organization is to expose some of the lead technicians to the industry and the different systems and interfaces used. For example, asking a few technicians to attend a conference like GITA would be extremely productive. Those technicians would have the opportunity to ask questions to the different vendors, who could give the technicians a better understanding of what can be done with a user interface.

The greatest gain to be achieved by having lead technicians attend an industry conference with many different vendors showing their wares is in the development of user interfaces and the types of menus that are used to input or update. Systems that use strictly pull down menus to maintain and input data are time-consuming and hard to use; menus that minimize clicks and the moving of the cursor are superior. However, technicians may not realize the many possibilities that exist for user interface design, and exposing them to this information will enable them to provide better input into process improvement. The technicians can then work with the developers and system maintenance personnel to redesign the menu user interface to improve the throughput. The user knows what data is required to be entered from the data sources and what wasted steps they are taking to enter this data.

Only a few of the suggestions that I have heard from users have been mentioned above. However, their suggestions have cut costs, increased productivity, and saved time on innumerable projects over the years. Actively seeking out the users’ input also has the benefit of increasing morale and fostering a team spirit. It is important to get your users together, to ask them to make recommendations as to what changes can be made to a process or to the menus to improve the throughput of data. Take the users’ suggestions and analyze the steps they go through to see if wasted strokes can be changed or automated. Go after the big ones first – those processes that require the greatest time and can be implemented in the shortest time. And lastly, educate your key users by allowing a few of them to attend conferences so they can see and evaluate all of the different systems and interfaces that are being used in the industry. No one system has a lock on being the best for every situation. In short, listening to your users creates a superior system and process.