Rethinking the HICSS website via Contextual Design

Motivations for the project

  Every January, attendees from all corners of the globe come to Hawaiʻi for the Hawaiʻi International Conference on System Sciences also known as HICSS. It is here where researchers come together to present the latest and greatest ideas. Each research paper submission hopes to push the boundaries of what’s known in their respective fields. Whether it’s analyzing the effects that social media or new ways to prevent cyber fraud, HICSS has it all. But one complaint from attendees was that the submission/review site needed some TLC. But where do you start in order to overhaul a currently running website? In the course ICS 622: Human-computer interaction course we learned about a method called “contextual design”. This paradigm was something that is used by companies in to create the new. When it came time for groups I chose the project that looked to remake/add features to the HICSS submission/review website. In particular, we wanted to find a way to help mini-track chairs have a more positive experience with the website. Mini-track chairs are normally in charge of: reviewing papers, finding reviewers for those papers, among a myriad of other responsibilities. Our mission was to come up with ideas to help them complete their responsibilities rather than hinder them.

The lovely HICSS(non-submission/review site) homepage

Contextual Design is cool, even when it's done remotely.

  As we read through the Contextual Design textbook, we would learn about the techniques used in Contextual Design and attempt them later on our own. Despite the distance learning setting, there were tools to help us coordinate different portions of the project. Platforms such as Discord, Google Drive, Zoom, and MIRO were tools that kept us in sync. One interesting technique used in Contextual Design was to do a Contextual Inquiry and an interpretation session following that. The inquiry session would have us observing the user and their routine when performing tasks such as finding a reviewer or reviewing a paper. With Zoom’s screen share feature, the interviewer(s) and note taker were able to see exactly what the user was seeing. Periodically the interviewer leading the session would question them about certain decisions in order to clarify or understand the thought process behind them. These thoughts were taken down by a note taker, and saved for the interpretation session. After that the members who weren’t a part of the inquirer would interpret the notes. Then as the notetaker and interviewer of the inquiry went through the notes, other members would interpret these notes to draw conclusions and find key takeaways from the inquiry. From there, the interpretations would have been written down in a separate set of notes consisting of takeaways. Other takeaway notes could have been quotes from the user or peculiar user actions that could be useful in designing ideas. Another technique was known as the Affinity Diagram, where all the interpretation notes were sorted into particular groupings. To get an idea of what this looks like, see the figure below this paragraph. With the Affinity diagram it was easy for our group to understand what mattered most to HICSS mini-track chairs. The main difficulty of the Affinity Diagram was categorizing the interpretation notes.

About 10% of the affinity diagram using the MIRO app. It was perfect for creating a virtual wall of post it notes

A big mahalo and what did we find out?

  I would like to thank my group fellow members: Darlene Agbayani, Micah Chao, Derrick Luyen, and Holm Smidt. This project required a lot of time, effort and coordination outside of class, and they really made the contextual design process enjoyable . I would like to thank all the anonymous mini-track chairs who participated in this survey as well. Without them, we wouldn’t have been able to collect the data in the first place. I think the discoveries we made and the new features we came up with were awesome. One interesting discovery we made was the HICSS is considered a top-tier conference in the world of Information and Computer Sciences. Many people who attended were not only glad to have it in such a wonderful place like Hawaiʻi , but they consider being invited as an academic honor. Another realization was that a majority of the mini-track chairs considered the novelty of a paper to be a significant factor when accepting papers into the conference. We also learned that there needed to be a consistent and informative way to present data to mini-track chairs. But it had to be done in such as way that it lets them use their own tools such as spreadsheets. This would allow them to have their own workflow, but give them the information upfront. That way they can avoid going through multiple windows.

Link to the report

The report highlights how we made certain decisions throughout the project in order to come up with features.