3-01 (September 2001) Education and Training by Ulf-L. Andersson Sweden

 

Abstract

Analyses of users, functions, situations, risks and cost/benefit, together with functional testing which guarantees that needs are met, provide the basis for the real-life projects which the students of technical communication perform at Karlstad University in Sweden. Tutor support throughout is vital. This article gives examples of such projects from the latest academic year. They show that the students can often demonstrate that technical information is highly worthwhile, as is the value of having a holistic approach to the tasks.

 

Introduction

University education of technical communicators consists largely of courses in various admittedly important tools (e.g. language and picture handling, use of computer programs, legal aspects). But it is at least equally important to allow students to solve difficult information problems in real-life projects under the guidance of experienced tutors. At Karlstad University in Sweden students can study technical communication in three terms: A, B and C. Each term corresponds to 20 weeks of full-time work.

For access to the studies, the students must have an engineering education or corresponding academic education. The education is also conducted in the form of distance courses in which the 20 working weeks are divided into two terms and where the students study while continuing their ordinary jobs. Project tasks of 5 working weeks are included at levels A and B. At the C level the project task corresponds to 10 working weeks. Here are some examples of projects which were finalized in May 2001:

 

Usability Pays

You can only compensate for bad design with paper work to a certain extent. That fact came home to nurse Inger Lindahl when, a year ago, she worked on her project for the A course in her education as a technical communicator at Karlstad University in Sweden. The task she chose was to try to make a better instruction than the existing one for a ventilator (respiration aid) which had been difficult to handle at her place of work. Her colleagues at the hospital received Inger's new instruction (slimmed from 45 to 6 pages!) with enthusiasm, but the ventilator still had its difficult handling.

As a five-point B project Inger Lindahl has now redesigned the instrument panel and the setting logistics, produced a computer simulation of the design and tested it on nurses and others. The results are very good. Handling is easy and intuitive. The apparatus does not give the user unnecessary problems and the general handling instruction for the user consists of just five points (there is a more exhaustive one for the medical application of the ventilator).

This is what Inger herself wrote about the original handling characteristics of the apparatus in the report to be prepared for each project in the B course:

"In the original version the control panel of the ventilator is a big problem. Several different functions are hidden behind some buttons. The parameter names round the display are tightly printed and are set in upper case, which makes them unnecessarily difficult to read. As they are placed round the display they come outside the illumination. This means the user must have a flashlight at night if the patient is not to be forced to sleep with a light right by the bed. But the big problem arises when the alarm and parameter settings are to be changed. The time margin is 5 seconds to step up to the right parameter, change the values and confirm. For people using the ventilator frequently this is no problem, but for somebody using the apparatus maybe two or three times a year this is very frustrating. If the user is not quick enough the display returns to the standard set-up and the whole procedure has to be repeated for all parameters."

Let me quote a part of Inger's risk analysis: "The risk analysis of ventilator and respirator care can be summarised by saying that the consequences of wrong handling or misjudgements can in the worst case be life-threatening. If the apparatus sounds the alarm it must unconditionally be investigated and the error corrected. If the patient is not feeling well, this can be due to the settings of the ventilator. Having a ventilator with a confusing setting panel creates an additional risk factor. For example, if the nurse on duty forgets to confirm an alteration of a setting, the setting will return to the standard one and thus the patient may, for example, not receive the intended air volumes. Besides, the nurse may not even notice this. She may already have turned her back and hurried on ...".

With Inger's new design of the apparatus these problems and dangers do not arise. It remains to be seen if the manufacturer (who was not involved in the project) appreciates the advantages of her design.

 

Demands on Working Methods

As tutor for the B project, I not only require that the analyses of receivers, objectives and situations are performed and used, but also expect that realistic functional tests on representative test subjects are included as an integral part of the work (Andersson 1999). I also require that the students try to evaluate the potential profits from the project. All too often people count only what the information (or broader humanware) will cost - not the gains it gives when it works. It is not just a case of meeting standardised demands that information is available, but also that is must function well.

The ventilator which Inger Lindahl had as a starting point is intended to be used in ordinary wards, but the personnel often feel uncertain of the handling of the apparatus and instead send the patient to intensive care (with heavily raised daily costs). Some of these patients could even be cared for at home (if the apparatus was easier to handle) with further reduced care costs and improved quality of life. And there would be a greater market for the manufacturer - if usability had been taken into consideration.

 

Startling Gains

The estimates of information costs and profits made by the students at Karlstad almost always show great profits (so big that they often choose to cut them down so that the calculations will not seem so exaggerated!). If the profits from good information can be big, the losses if necessary information is not used can also be big. The R&D lab where Ulf Kronsell works has a quality manual that does not have the highest status among all users (or at least among non-users). As a B project at Karlstad, Ulf chose to make a more accessible and easy-to-use version that could be made available on the lab's intranet. The project grew as it proceeded and the resulting quality information is now to be used in the entire group of co-operating labs.

Ulf calculated a number of possible profits and losses which could occur and came to a profit of 4 MSEK (US$ 360 000) for an occasion when the information worked (or a corresponding loss if it did not work). Perhaps he thought that he had made rather a high estimate, but a few days later he happened to come upon a specific example where the calculation turned out to be quite realistic.

Five Weeks of Full-time Work During Spare Time A five-point project is to correspond to five weeks of full-time work. At the distance courses in Karlstad where most of the students already have jobs, I encourage them to find a project within their own places of work. This often means that the project work is greater than five working weeks. But it can create problems when planned work is put on ice so that the student must look for a project outside the ordinary work (it can be really demanding to perform five weeks of full-time work during a term on top of the ordinary full-time job).

Göran Wallin was unlucky in this way, as the intended project at work was delayed, so that he had to replace it with an external project on top of his ordinary job. (Hopefully, however, he can pick up the intended project and extend it to a ten-point C project during the study year 01-02.) As a B project he instead chose to produce a manual for a special vehicle. In practice each individual vehicle is unique (because there can be a large number of variations of the accessories). The company has no technical communicator and until now the technicians have produced the information themselves.

Now they wanted help in producing something better, something that could become a model for how they were to proceed. Göran has produced a manual for one vehicle, and has sketched out how the employees can continue to produce individual manuals for the vehicles they manufacture. To make things easy for the company he has assumed that they can use a digital camera, computer and colour printer to produce the pages, coat them in plastic and put them in a ring binder. With this do-it-yourself method the company will be able to accompany each vehicle with an individualised manual of paper (plastic coated to resist dirty surroundings) and the same information in PDF format on a CD.

It should be possible to produce each individualised manual for 800 SEK (US$ 70) including the cost of work (largely through exchanging "modules"). This cost is quite negligible in comparison to the selling price of the vehicle. The company calculates that through increased sales a good manual can raise the annual profits by a half to one million SEK (US$ 45 000 - 90 000). Their customers should also be able to profit from good manuals, because a stoppage on this type of vehicle costs at least 700 SEK/h (US$ 63/h).

Göran functionally tests his information to show up the little mistakes one always makes: "obvious" things that are obvious only to oneself but not to the intended receivers, and information that can be interpreted in another way than intended (you become aware of this other possible interpretation only when you test the information on other people). But there is a risk that in the future the company's own personnel will not consider that they have time for this functional testing. The manuals will, of course, continue to look good - but they will not necessarily function satisfactorily.

 

Great variation of projects

The B projects in the distance course in technical information at Karlstad University show a wide range of projects. This spring, projects have been presented dealing with simplified handling in the exchange of drawings between consultants and their clients (to be able to function with the client's data base), simplified and standardised handling of samples at an analysis firm, instructions for running machines at a manufacturing company (where the analyses and preparations already pointed at the possibility of simplified working methods), a visualised workshop manual for a gearbox, and an improved section about a difficult diagnosis function for boat motors.

At the full-time course the participants do not have the same possibility to find projects at their own jobs (as they are full-time students). Here, instead, they see what they can find at companies in the region (even if they can get help from the university in looking for project themes). In the spring group they include design of product data sheets for apparatus for the Internet via the electrical power supply, brochures on parts in electric ship propulsion, home page for "cellar workshops" with advanced numeric machine tools and instructions for a newly invented machine for manufacturing o-rings.

But perhaps it is still more important for the full-time students to work in real-life projects and struggle with realistic problems in information work. When they have tested and adjusted and tested again until they have something that works well with the users they will have learnt things that no lectures could teach them.

 

Conclusions

Students who, with the help of an experienced tutor, have carried out a successful project have far greater chances of applying their knowledge than if they were only subjected to theoretical lectures and exercises within the school. The real-life projects also give them a more holistic view of how problems in technical communication can be solved, not only with information but also by helping hardware and software designers to make the humanware parts of their design more user friendly.

Reference:
Andersson, Ulf-L, Humanware - practical usability engineering, Trafford Publishing 1999
(http://www.trafford.com/robots/99-0031.html)  

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