Lex van Velsen, PhD

IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication

Call for Submissions for a Special Issue:
Designing a Better User Experience for Self-Service Systems

IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication Call for Submissions:
  Autumn 2012 Special Issue on Designing a Better User Experience for Self-Service Systems

 

Guest editors: Thea van der Geest, Judy Ramey, Stephanie Rosenbaum, Lex van Velsen


Format and goals:
Have you conducted formal research or done  a case study on some aspect of the design of the user experience for a ‘self-service’ application? Have you faced the challenge of creating and systematically analyzing or evaluating the user experience for systems where users do what clerks, government employees, or other “services” people used to do for them?

 

If so, we invite you to contribute to the Autumn 2012 special issue of

 

IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication on

Designing a Better User Experience for Self-Service Systems

 

We aim at bringing together a set of empirical and critical service design studies and user-focused evaluations of the user experience of  “self-service” systems.

 

If you think your study is a good fit for this special issue, be sure to let us know as soon as possible. Submit a two-page abstract summarizing your approach and your findings before 1 September. We will use the abstracts to select authors, who will be invited to submit a complete article. (See below for the timeline for submissions.)
 
Prospective authors should have:
•  Taken part in a systematical evaluation or case study of a self-service system or process
•  Analyzed or evaluated the problems and solutions for creating a good self-service user experience
•  Obtained organizational approval for publishing about the self-service systems study.

Requirements for abstracts:

Abstracts for reports on empirical, user-focused studies on self-service (two pages long) should address:

1. Theoretical perspective: from what point of view are you analyzing and evaluating the self-service process or system?

2. Research questions: what was the self-service research focus, and how will it add to our understanding and knowledge of self-service?

3. Method: how did you go about investigating the research questions? Who were your participants, and how did you collect data and analyze it?

4. Findings: what did you learn?

Discussion: what are the possible implications and limitations of your results for service application designers and other professional communicators? What future work is called for?

 

To help the authors use criteria similar to our peer reviewers and clarify their experience in a manner that others can use to generalize from, abstracts for case studies (two pages long) should address at least the following:

· Explicit description of the problem(s) designers were trying to solve.

· Methodology: How the case study data was compiled.

· Project particulars: Relative budget, relative amount of development time, constraints, technologies used (i.e. proprietary or open source).

The case studies should address one or more of the following themes:

1. Pre-design approaches, methods, or results:  User studies of context of use, users’ expectations of service, prior knowledge, etc.

2. Actual design: What cues were included for boosting users’ performance and perceptions (sense of trust, privacy protection, confidence, empowerment)? How were user problems with the self-service avoided or solved?

3. Failure strategies: How could people escalate their ‘problem’ from the self-service situation to an interaction with human or organizational support, then return successfully to the self-service environment?

Results: Approaches, methods, and metrics for determining the impact and quality of self-service.

 

Prospective authors who have other ideas for relevant articles for this special issue, please contact the editors.

 

Timeline for submissions

1. Drop a note if you’re interested to contribute, as soon as possible!

2. Abstract submission deadline: September 1st, 2011.

3. Notification of authors: October 1st , 2011. Those whose abstracts are accepted will be invited to submit a complete article.

4. Submission of complete articles: January 15th , 2012.

5. Review back to authors: March 1st , 2012.

6. Revised and resubmitted articles submitted for second review: May 1st, 2012.

Final and complete articles submitted: July 1st, 2012.

 

For all questions and notes concerning the special issue, and for the abstract of your proposed article, please send a e-mail to:

Thea van der Geest, t.m.vandergeest@utwente.nl

or the co-editors,

Judy Ramey, jramey@uw.edu

Stephanie Rosenbaum, stephanie@teced.com

Lex van Velsen, l.s.vanvelsen@utwente.nl