Home - Key Findings - Lessons Learned - Process - Prototype Walkthrough

Process

The team employed a number of human-computer interaction methods during the course of the project.  These were designed first to glean information about the current work model and systems in use, then to find breakdowns in the current system, and finally to develop and test a prototype designed to alleviate those breakdowns.

Contextual Inquiry

During the first four months of the project, the team spent time at the Allentown, Pennsylvania call center observing PSRs take calls.  They attempted to define the common call types and the common task flows through the systems used by the PSRs.  They also took screen captures of the system in order to start mapping out these task flows, as well as where the PSRs had to go to get information and perform tasks.  From this process, the team was able to identify that most calls coming into the call center fell into three categories:  balance inquiries, check/transaction verification, and overdraft issues.

Heuristic Evaluation

After identifying the areas of the interface used in the three common call types, the team performed a heuristic evaluation on these screens.  This enabled the team to define problem areas in terms of layout, clutter, and decreased usability.  Each team member developed a set of Usability Aspect Reports (UARs), which were then discussed and collated.  These UARs formed the basis of the initial prototypes.

Subject Matter Expert interviews

Given that banking is a very specific domain, in order to design a realistic prototype, the team held a number of very specific interview sessions with Wachovia subject matter experts.  This included a team support leader, a sales and service representative, a team manager, a call center trainer, and a call center manager.  This allowed the team to fill in blanks about important pieces of information relevant to the system, bank policy, and PSR knowledge.

Iterative Design and Test

The first two prototypes were created on paper.  Paper prototyping allowed the team to make changes on the fly, and also reassured the PSRs testing the prototype that they were being asked only to validate preliminary concepts, instead of finalized design decisions.  The remaining six prototypes were developed using Visual Basic with an Access database on the backend.  The prototypes were revised and tested each week.  With each revision, new features were introduced, bugs found during testing were fixed, and revisions and recommendations made by PSRs were implemented.