My thoughts on DESIGNING PERFORMANCE SUPPORT SYSTEMS

Taking this class was a pleasant experience for me.  I had always wondered about the performance support systems that I had encountered in my day-to-day life and who had designed them.  I admired, and sometime questioned, who had designed and organized the information found in tutorials for my personal computer applications, software that controlled the screen on the ATM, kiosks at the airport and other places where helpful, automated instruction had taken the place of a person. I feel that I found out much about who those designers are and how they planned and created their designs from the instructional activities found in this class.

The class gave me a good start in learning some of the procedures for analyzing needs and designing for usability and interactivity. When faced with the assigned tasks, I wasn’t sure how I would proceed with them, but with direction from the readings, Internet examples, teamwork and the instructor, I succeeded in doing those formerly daunting tasks.  The process that was used in the class for analyzing needs and designing for usability gave me additional perspective on designing lesson plans for the classroom. With both processes, the idea is to make sure that the students learn what is intended and that meaningful interaction is included.

Working in teams turned out well and was a good example of group collaboration. The team that I was assigned to was readily available by instant messenger or by email.  By conferring with the other members of my team, I was able to better identify some of the more significant items on the task lists, details of scenarios and other things we worked on together.  Their added viewpoints also helped me feel confident that the team assignment was done correctly and that the prototype that I would design later had competent planning behind it.

I really enjoyed building the prototype for the design.  As an industrial designer, I have built many things on paper and then as three-dimensional models, so it was fun for me to create something similar in this class. However, classmates advised me that my graphic design style needed a little updating to improve upon my prototype.

All aspects of the class – how it was organized, the text, Internet links, activities within the learning segments and the team efforts gave me in depth understanding on what is involved in performance support.

ARTIFACTS
Team Software Review	Portfolio Task List- .rtf (90 kb)
Exercise - Contextual Components - .rtf (11 kb)	User Interface - .pdf (1.05 mb)
Design Prospectus - .rtf (14 kb)	Usability Report - .rtf (65 kb)