Barbara Mirel: Interaction Design for Complex Problem Solving February 23, 2005

TITLE
Interaction Design for Complex Problem Solving: Developing Useful and Usable
Software

PRESENTER
Barbara Mirel, Associate Professor at the University of Michigan and author
of Interaction Design for Complex Problem Solving: Designing Useful and
Usable Software.

ABSTRACT
Do you work in software or web usability? Do you design interfaces for or
document complex decision making, information retrieval, or exploratory
analysis? Do you need to learn how to better use interactive visualizations
for your own purposes or for your customers or clients? In this seminar,
Barbara Mirel, professor at the University of Michigan focused on
Human-Computer Interactions, will share her research into how to improve
interaction design and employ visualizations to support the demands of
users' complex work activities. Her talk will include theory and practice,
illustrated by selected case studies and design examples. Mirel advocates a
strategy for usability and design work that addresses the specific
challenges of performing knowledge-based, complex work in complex systems,
which are different in kind not just degree from straightforward,
skill-based work.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY...

Michigan Chapter of the Usability Professionals' Association (UPA)
Southeast Michigan Chapter of the Society for Technical Communications (STC)
Southern Michigan Northern Ohio Chapter of the ACM SIG CHI (MOCHI)

HOSTED BY...

Compuware Corporation www.compuware.com

WHEN

Wednesday February 23, 2005, 6-8:15PM

WHERE

Compuware Corporation Corporate Headquarters Building, Detroit, Michigan

COST

$ 5 for Michigan MI-UPA, SE Michigan STC, and MOCHI members
$ 5 for Compuware (host company) employees
$15 for all others

FOOD and REFRESHMENTS will be provided, and parking will be free

SCHEDULE

6:00 Arrive, Eat, Network, Meet speaker, Book signing
6:50 Announcements
7:00 Presentation
8:00 Q&A and Meet the Speaker
8:15 Done

For those who have not had enough, your parking validation is good for the
evening and this is your opportunity to wander down to the Hard Rock Caf?,
ice skate across the street in Campus Martius Skating rink, or have a
croissant at Au Bon Pain.

RSVP

Email uid@compuware.com if you plan to attend.

This will ensure smooth building access and food for everyone.

LOCATION

Compuware Corporation
One Campus Martius
Detroit, MI 48226


DIRECTIONS

Compuware Corporation is located in downtown Detroit with easy and obvious
access from all major highways. Directions are also available at



>From Jefferson Avenue downtown, turn West on Woodward for 3 blocks.

Compuware is just around the traffic circle that contains Campus Martius
Park.

Exit right off the traffic circle, driving past the Hard Rock Caf?.

Turn Left at the first light, Farmer Street, which goes between the
Compuware building and Compuware's parking garage.

Turn right into the "visitors" parking garage, get a ticket, park, and come
into the Compuware building to the Concierge desk.

INSTRUCTIONS

Park, bring your parking pass to the concierge desk on the 1st floor
(located between Hard Rock Caf? and Borders Book Store).

Concierge will give you free parking, a building pass, and directions to the
meeting room.

If you want to purchase one of the presenter's books (see listings below),
get it at Borders next to the Concierge before you come to the meeting.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Barbara Mirel is a visiting Associate Professor and Research Investigator at
the University of Michigan School of Information. She has held such
positions as a cognitive engineer at the VHA National Center for Patient
Safety in Ann Arbor and senior manager of human factors at Lucent
Technologies in Illinois.

At Lucent, she guided, directed, and coordinated all usability and
user-interface activities for Visual Insights, a Lucent venture, and worked
closely with systems engineers in interaction design and user-interface
design. She also worked as a consultant for the Information Architect/IT
Department of Argonne National Laboratories and for the New Product Division
of Continental Bank of Chicago. She has taught seminars to IBM information
developers and Caterpillar managers, project leaders, and design engineers.

Mirel is the author of Interaction Design for Complex Problem Solving:
Designing Useful and Usable Software (Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann, 2003). She
also co-edited, with Rachel Spilka, Writing in the Workplace: New Research
Perspectives (Southern Illinois University Press, 1993), which won the 1993
NCTE Award for Excellence in Technical and Scientific Writing for the Best
Collection of Essays.

Mirel also published a chapter in that collection, and one in another
award-winning anthology, Effective Documentation: What We Have Learned from
Research (MIT Press, 1988), edited by Stephen Doheny-Farina.

About the Michigan Chapter UPA

www.miupa.org

About the Southeast Michigan Chapter of STC

http://www.stc-sm.org/

About the Southern Michigan Northern Ohio Chapter of CHI

http://www.si.umich.edu/mochi/