Publications

Current references

2006

K-MADe : un environnement pour le noyau du modèle de description de l’activité

Baron, M. Lucquiaud, V. Autard, D. et Scapin, DL. K-MADe : un environement pour le noyau du modèle de description de l'activité. Proceedings of the 18th French-speaking conference on Human-computer interaction, Montreal, Canada, April 18-21 2006.

2005

Proposition d'un noyau et d'une structure pour les modèles de tâches orientés utilisateurs

Lucquiaud, V. Proposition d'un noyau et d'une structure pour les modèles de tâches orientés utilisateurs.Proceedings of the 17th French-speaking conference on Human-computer interaction, Toulouse, France, September 27-30 2005, p. 83-90.

2002

Outils de modélisation des tâches utilisateurs : exigences du point de vue utilisation

Lucquiaud, V. Scapin, Dominique. Jambon, Francis. Outils de modélisation des tâches utilisateurs : exigences du point de vue utilisation. Proceedings of the 14th French-speaking conference on Human-computer interaction, Poitiers, France, November 26-29 2002, p. 243-246.

K-MADe history and past references

The initial work concerning task modelling for user interfaces (Scapin, 1988) had several objectives: to consider the way in which users represents their task, not the logic of the data-processing, or the “prescribed” task; to take into account the conceptual and semantic aspects, not only syntactic and lexical aspects; to obtain a structuring of the tasks in a uniform way; to carry out descriptions from a declarative point of view (state of things) as well as procedural (way of reaching these states); to allow parallelism and not only sequential representation(synchronization of the tasks); and to be computable.

From these first ideas and various requirements, a first task analysis model (“MAD”: Méthode Analytique de Description) was proposed (Scapin, D.L. & Pierret-Golbreich, C., 1989, 1990) at the intersection of ergonomics, computer science, and artificial intelligence. Moreover, the tool EMAD was developed (Pierret, C., Delouis, I. & Scapin, D.L., 1989); Delouis I., Pierret C., 1991).

In parallel, a method for task information gathering was defined (Sebillotte S., 1991); it consists mainly of semi-directed interviews based on the “Why?” “How?” technique. Also, one practical methodology of task analysis for extracting the relevant characteristics useful for the design of interfaces was also proposed (Sebillotte, S. & Scapin, D.L., 1994).

Since then the work has been continued according to an iterative process: development; for example: implementation of the model in an object oriented fashion, organization of the tasks at various levels of abstraction, validation in the field (house automation, management of ship fires, air traffic control, railway regulation, etc), modifications, validations again (further references are available upon request).

Research work (Gamboa-Rodriguez, F. & Scapin, D.L., 1997) also focused on the design and specification of interfaces. Two models were designed: a task model (MAD *) and a model for conceptual interface design (ICS), as well as procedures for moving from one model to the other, and links with the low level interface aspects (via the toolbox ILOG-Views). The work led to the implementation of the task analysis editor EMAD * and to a software design environment (ALACIE).

Delouis I., & Pierret C. (1991) : EMAD, manuel de référence, Rapport interne INRIA.
Gamboa-Rodriguez, F. & Scapin, D. L. (1997). Editing MAD* task descriptions for specifying user interfaces, at both semantic and presentation levels, in Proceedings DSV-IS '97, 4th International Eurographics Workshop on Design, Specification, and Verification of Interactive Systems, Granada, Spain, 4-6 June 1997
Pierret, C., Delouis, I. & Scapin, D. L. (1989). Un outils d’acquisition et de representation des tâches orienté-objets (Rapport de recherche N° 1063). Rocquencourt, France : Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique.
Lucquiaud, V., Scapin, D. L. et Jambon, F. (2002). Outils de modélisation des tâches utilisateurs : exigences du point de vue utilisation. IHM 2002, Poitiers, 26-29 Novembre 2002.
Scapin, D. L. (1988). Vers des outils formels de description des tâches orientés conception d’interfaces (Rapport de recherche N° 893). Rocquencourt, France : Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique.
Scapin, D. L. et Bastien, J. M. C., (2001). Analyse des tâches et aide ergonomique à la conception : l'approche MAD* in Systèmes d’information et Interactions homme-machine, C. Kolski (Ed.), Hermés
Scapin, D. L. & Pierret-Golbreich, C. (1990). Towards a method for task description. In L. Berlinguet and D. Berthelette (Eds.), Work with Display Unit. Amsterdam : Elsevier, 371-380.
Sebillotte S. (1991) : Décrire des tâches selon les objectifs des opérateurs, de l'interview à la formalisation, Le Travail Humain 54,3 p193-223
Sebillotte, S. & Scapin, D. L. (1994). From users' task knowledge to high level interface specification. International Journal of Human-computer Interaction, 6, 1-15.