Bellcore recently replaced its small laboratory that was designed primarily for formal testing of software usability. The new facility is a suite of rooms that handles multiple, independent activities. More importantly, the new space is a manifestation of our philosophy that the best approach to interface design is the cultivation of eclectic design practices early in and throughout the software development process. To that end, the new lab supports other kinds of user-centred design (UCD) activities in addition to formal testing of computerized prototypes of software interfaces. To encourage participatory design, nearly all the rooms are large enough for design meetings, contain entire walls of movable whiteboards, and have small tables so design teams can huddle over paper prototypes and task layouts. In this article we describe the new lab, the rationales behind its features, and the process by which it was designed.

Collaborations in organizations thrive on communication that is informal because informal communication is frequent, interactive, and expressive. Informal communication is crucial for the coordination of work, learning an organization's culture, the perpetuation of the social relations that underlie collaboration, and, in general, any situation that requires communication to resolve ambiguity. Informal communication is traditionally mediated by physical proximity, but physical proximity cannot mediate in geographically distributed organizations. The research described here evaluates the adequacy of a version of a desktop video/audio conferencing system for supporting informal communication in a research and development laboratory. The evaluation took place during a trial in which the system was used by summer employees and their supervisor-mentors. While the system was used frequently, the most common uses and users' assessments suggest that it was used more like a telephone or electronic mail than like physically mediated face-to-face communication. However, some features of its use transcended traditional media and allowed users to gain awareness of their work environment. The paper concludes with a discussion of requirements for successful technology to support informal communication.

Five groups of developers with experience in the design of character-based user interfaces were taught graphical user interface design through a short workshop with a focus on practical design exercises using low-tech tools derived from the PICTIVE method. Several usability problems were found in the designs by applying the heuristic evaluation method, and feedback on these problems constituted a way to make the otherwise abstract usability principles concrete for the designers at the workshop. Based on these usability problems and on observations of the design process, we conclude that object-oriented interactions are especially hard to design and that the developers were influenced by the graphical interfaces of personal computers with which they had interacted as regular users.

In this paper we present a new approach to the use of computer-mediated communications technology to support distributed cooperative work. In contrast to most of the existing approaches to CSCW, we focus explicitly on tools to enable unplanned, informal social interaction. We describe a “social interface” which provides direct, low-cost access to other people through the use of multi-media communications channels. The design of the system centers around three basic concepts derived from the research literature and our own observations of the workplace: social browsing, a virtual workplace, and interaction protocols. We use these design properties to describe a new system concept, and examine the implications for CSCW of having automated social interaction available through the desktop workstation.

This paper reports on a study investigating the strengths and weaknesses of questionnaires as software evaluation tools. Two major influences on the usefulness of questionnaire-based evaluation responses are examined: the administration of the questionnaire, and the background and experience of the respondent. Two questionnaires were administered to a large number of students in an introductory programming class. The questionnaires were also given to a group of more experienced users (including course proctors). Respondents were asked to evaluate the text editor used in the class along a number of dimensions; evaluation responses were solicited using a number of different question types. Another group of students received the questionnaire individually, with part of it presented on the computer; a third group also evaluated an enhanced version of the editor in followup sessions.