User Interfaces for Youth Services Information Systems

Aug. 94 - Dec. 96

We have been working with the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services to design advanced user interfaces for an information system used by 600 employees. DJS is responsible for handling juvenile case referral for the entire state of Maryland. Our first step was to observe users, inteview users and managers, and survey 300 users with the Questionnaire for User Interface Satisfaction. We have refined and applied our user interface re- engineering methods to provide guidance for short-term improvements to the current system and are now turning to longer range recommendations. Our proposed interfaces use dynamic queries and starfield displays to the reveal trends and anomalies in case statistics. We are developing new techniques to visualize youth records and personal histories by showing multiple time lines with selectable markers to retrieve detailed information. For managers, we are proposing an organizational visualization tool that will allow effective navigation of large human services databases.

Participants:

Anne Rose, Faculty Research Assistant
Catherine Plaisant, Assistant Research Scientist
Ben Shneiderman, Professor Computer Science
Kent Norman, Professor Psychology
Ajit Vanniamparampil, Graduate Student College of Business
Brett Milash, Graduate Student Computer Science
Laura Slaughter, Graduate Student Psychology
There is a video demonstration of this research project, which is a part of Video Report 1995

Related Papers:

Ellis, J., Rose, A., Plaisant, C. (Sept. 1996)
Putting visualization to work: ProgramFinder for youth placement
CS-TR-3692

Rose, A., Ellis, J., Plaisant, C., Greene, S. (May 1996)
Life cycle of user interface techniques: The DJJ information system design process
CS-TR-3637 , CAR-TR-826

Greene, S. (May 1996)
Process change from user requirements elicitation: A case study of documents in a social services agency
CS-TR-3638. , CAR-TR-827

Shneiderman, B., Rose, B. (Sept. 1995)
Social impact statements: Engaging public participation in information technology design
ACM Proc. of CQL '96: Symposium on Computers and the Quality of Life (Philadelphia, PA, Feb. 14-15, 1996) 90-96. Also will appear in Designing Computers for People - Human Values and the Design of Computer Technology. CS-TR-3537 , CAR-TR-796

Plaisant, C., Milash, B., Rose, A., Widoff, S., Shneiderman, B. (Sept. 1995)
Life Lines: Visualizing personal histories
ACM CHI '96 Conference Proc. (Vancouver, BC, Canada, April 13-18, 1996) 221-227, color plate 518. Video abstract: ACM CHI '96 Conference Companion (Vancouver, BC, Canada, April 13-18, 1996) 392-393. Video available through ACM. CS-TR-3523 , CAR-TR-787, ISR-TR-95-88

Slaughter, L., Norman, K.L., Shneiderman, B. (March 1995)
Assessing users' subjective satisfaction with the Information System for Youth Services (ISYS)
VA Tech Proc. of Third Annual Mid-Atlantic Human Factors Conference (Blacksburg, VA, March 26-28, 1995) 164-170. CS-TR-3463 , CAR-TR-768

Rose, A., Shneiderman, B., Plaisant, C. (Feb. 1995)
An applied ethnographic method for redesigning user interfaces
ACM Proc. of DIS 95, Symposium on Designing Interactive Systems: Processes, Practices, Methods & Techniques (Ann Arbor, MI, Aug 23-25, 1995)115-122. CS-TR-3454 , CAR-TR-765