Often, your job is to do something only when traffic gets too high, server load is off, no one appears to be logging in, or some crisis happens. That means you must keep an eye on things, in addition to all your other tasks. Conrad Albrecht-Buehler demonstrates “Heed,” a means of automating your monitors and distilling data, so a simple slide bar indicates whether things are running smoothly or careening into the red zone.
Heed is a scale and a framework to help observers of a system evaluate which situations need scrutiny and when. Conrad shows examples of Heed displays that encourage situational awareness. Learn how the framework and interface can be applied.
Examples of Heed users include a CTO who must monitor server traffic, a CEO who monitors several programs for which she gets lengthy reports, and the host of an on-line forum who needs to be sure that people can get onto the forum and that discussions are running as they should.
Conrad Albrecht-Buehler is a member of the User-Interface Advanced Development team at VMware in Palo Alto, where he is always on the lookout for new and challenging user problems to explore and design remedies for. He received his Ph.D. at Northwestern University studying human-computer interaction with Professor Don Norman and was adjunct faculty at Northwestern's Segal Design Institute, where he taught user-centered design. His research focuses on designing interfaces that enable users to cope with complexity and large amounts of information.
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