A Business Monitor Example
User: The CEO of a small start-up
Monitoring Task: The CEO monitors the performance of various aspects of her business by reading a variety of reports generated for her. She stops reading them because the information in them changes rarely, but by not reading them, she feels anxious and disconnected from those aspects of her business.
Situation Description: The application helped the CEO monitor one aspect of her business for which she was concerned and for which she had a report. The situation that she was monitoring for was a spike in the subscription rate of any of her clients, or of any of her clients not meeting their weekly projections. Furthermore, if more than two weeks had elapsed since she'd read the report the more important it became that she read the report. A diagram of the situation description used in the application is below.
Monitoring Task: The CEO monitors the performance of various aspects of her business by reading a variety of reports generated for her. She stops reading them because the information in them changes rarely, but by not reading them, she feels anxious and disconnected from those aspects of her business.
Situation Description: The application helped the CEO monitor one aspect of her business for which she was concerned and for which she had a report. The situation that she was monitoring for was a spike in the subscription rate of any of her clients, or of any of her clients not meeting their weekly projections. Furthermore, if more than two weeks had elapsed since she'd read the report the more important it became that she read the report. A diagram of the situation description used in the application is below.
Outcome: Throughout the three week test period the CEO kept insisting that she hadn't been using the interface, but when questioned further could always recall exactly what the display indicated. The most remarkable result of this test was the marked reduction in her reported anxiety over the performance of this aspect of her business. The interface helped her feel more connected to the business despite having not engaged in any active task to do so.
