Homework 3 – Sample Solution

1. Homework 3 – Sample Solution • Targeted Application • Electronic medical records (EMR) system in the “Designing Human-Centered Distributed Information Systems” paper

2. User Analysis • Identify characteristics of users such as expertise and skills, knowledge base, age, education, cognitive capacities and limitations. • Ex) • Doctors: 20’s-50’s, highly educated, advanced skills to use devices and technologies • Nurses: 20’s-50’s, highly educated, advanced skills to use devices and technologies • Registration personnel: 20’s-50’s, enough schooling, pre-educated to use devices and technologies for EMR systems. • Billing Staffs: 20’s-50’s, enough schooling, pre-educated to use devices and technologies for EMR systems. • Patients: any age, different levels of education and capability -> a patient application should be simply and easy to use.

3. Distributed User Analysis • Analyze division of labor, overlap of knowledge and skills, pattern of communication, and social interaction perceptual variations, and so on. • Ex) • Doctors and nurses have partially overlapping job responsibilities, skills, experiences, and knowledge bases. • Billing staffs and registration personnel have different job responsibilities, but similar technical skills and education.

4. Functional Analysis • Identify top-level domain structure and ideal task space independent of implementations. • Ex) • Medical record function to access personal information of a patients and medical records from medical equipments and diagnosis of patients. • Alert function to doctors and nurses. • Schedule function for medical examination, operation, etc. • Automatic billing function • Communication function

5. Distributed Functional Analysis • Analyze top-level interrelations and constraints of human and artificial agents in the domain. • Ex) each function can be an artificial agent and each user group can be a human agent. • “Patient record module ” manages all information from medical equipments and diagnosis from doctors. A patient record is initialized by the registration personnel. • “Alert module” gets a patient’s medical record and current status from “patient record module”. If needed, it sends alert to doctors and nurses in charge and proximity. • “Schedule module” gets a request from doctors or patients, checks doctors’ work schedules, and notify this schedule to doctors, nurses, and patients. • “Automatic billing” interact with “patient record module” and automatically updates each patient’s bill. This module periodically sends bills to patients. Billing staffs can access these information. • “Communication module” supports communication channels between human agents and artificial agents.

6. Task Analysis (1) • Identify system functions that must be performed, procedures and actions to be carried out, information to be processed, pattern and dynamics of information flow, input and output formats, constraints that must be considered, communication needs, and the organization and structure of the task. • Ex) Alert function • Medical decision support: makes decision based on medical records and current status of a patient. • Alert: If necessary, alert to doctors and nurses in charge and within proximity. Medical record function Medical records and current status Medical decision support Alert communication function Doctors and nurses in charge and proximity

7. Distributed Task Analysis • Analyze space and time distributions of activities, information flow dynamics across human and artificial agents, and compatibilities between agents. • Ex) • “Medical decision support component” should be running over time. However, “alert component” is activated by “medical decision support component.” • Alert can be sent to doctors and nurses in charge as well as within proximity. The location awareness leads dynamic decision on alerting.

8. Representational Analysis • Identify the best information display and the best information flow structure for a given task such that the interaction between users and systems is in a direct interaction mode. • Ex) Schedule function • After scheduling of examination, a patient will receive the confirmation on his/her mobile device. The confirmation has the date and time, location, and doctor’s name as texts. At the end, there can be directions or messages with scroll box. Date/time Location Doctor Direction

9. Distributed Representational Analysis • Analyze how the same information can be distributed across human and artificial agents in different ways under different implementations, and find out which implementation is most efficient for which task. • Ex) • “Schedule function” can have “reminder” component which sends daily schedule to doctors, nurses, and patients . This reminder can be displayed differently on each side. On the patient side, the message includes date/time, location, doctor’s information. On the doctor or nurse side, it includes date/time, location, patient name, and examination/surgery information. • The doctor’s reminder can be implemented in different ways. First, all information can be displayed on one screen with scroll bar. Second, they can be sorted by time and only the appointment time with a patient’s name can be displayed on the screen. When a doctor or nurse clicks each appointment, the detailed information will be displayed on the new screen. The second implementation is more efficient for users.