Designing a user interface to enable collective decision-making

Very little research or advice is available on designing interfaces for collective decision-making, yet this forms an important component of many industrial information systems. Industrial interface design is normally centred on the underlying technologies. This workshop considers the features an interface requires for collective decision-making using both a user-centred approach and a technical approach to interface design with the aim of demonstrating the advantages of the user-centred approach. 

This co-design workshop enables researchers from different disciplines to meet, learn about an industrial problem, exchange ideas and work together creatively. Participants are presented with an industrial maintenance scenario which contains three personas who have different levels of decision-making (e.g., an operator, a line manager, and a business partner). Participants work in small groups. Some groups are presented with a narrative scenario and take on the role of a persona, considering the decisions undertaken and the user interface interactions and information requirements for that persona. Other groups are given a technical description of what the system does to develop an understanding of the industrial process. Participants use the information derived from considering the narrative scenario to create an interface mock-up based on a user-centred approach, whilst the industrial process description is used to develop a technology-centred design. The workshop evaluates the results of both approaches and compares the advantages and disadvantages of the interface mock-ups developed.