Colloquia Archive
Value-Driven Design for "Infosuasive" Web Applications
April 30, 2008
AbstractAn infosuasive web application is mainly intended to be at the same time informative and persuasive, i.e., it aims at supporting knowledge needs and it has also the (declared or not declared) goal of influencing user’s opinions, attitudes and behaviors. Most web applications, in fact, are infosuasive (except those whose aim is mainly operational). In this paper, we investigate the complex set of elements that informs the very early design of infosuasive web applications. We propose a conceptual framework aimed at supporting the actors involved in this process to integrate their different viewpoints, to organize the variety of issues that need to be analyzed, to find a direction in the numerous design options, and to represent the results of this activity in an effective way. Our approach is value-driven since it is centered around the concept of communication value, regarded as a vehicle to fulfill communication goals on specific communication targets. We place the analysis of these aspects in the wider context of web requirements analysis, highlighting their relationships with business values analysis and user needs analysis. We pinpoint how values and communication goals impact on various design dimensions of infosuasive web application - contents, information architecture, interaction, operations, and lay-out. Our approach is multidisciplinary, and was inspired to goal-based and value-based requirements engineering (often used in web engineering), to brand design (often used in marketing), and to value-centered design “frameworks” (as proposed by the HCI community). A case study exemplifies our methodological proposal, discussing a large project in which we are currently involved.
BiographyDavide is currently Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the University College London (Dept. of Computer Science), on leave from a Post-Doc research position at the University of Lugano (Faculty of Communication Sciences, TEC-Lab), thanks to a Fellowship for Advanced Researchers funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. He has a PhD in Communication Sciences from the University of Lugano (2003). He was visiting scholar at the University of Toronto (Computer Science dept.) and at the NC State University of North Carolina (Computer Science dept.). He held a Post-Doc researcher at TEC-Lab (Technology Enhanced Communication Laboratory) of the University of Lugano, has been lecturer for the course "Usability Lab" at the Master of Technology-Enhanced Communication for Cultural-Heritage (TEC-CH). He also lectured at the Politecnico di Milano for the master courses "Usability of Interactive Applications", "Web Design Project", and "Usability Project" for the faculty of Informatics Engineering. He has worked as scientist, project manager and consultant both in research projects and in professional mandates, and he has published extensively in the area of Internet application design, requirements engineering for hypermedia and web systems, usability and user experience design methods. Recently, thanks to the experience at UCL, he is exploring information architecture and user-centered design methods for improving the usability of bioinformatics applications.
