19-Soft-B2 User Interface · May 2015
Nivaar worked solution (AI-drafted; not reviewed by a licensed engineer)
National Exams, May 2015 — 04-Soft-B2, User Interface (closed book, 3 hours). Part A: answer any FIVE of the NINE questions (10 marks each); Part B: answer ALL FIVE questions (10 marks each), all based on the same case study — Happy Medical Clinic, a Toronto medical clinic switching from paper-based practice to an electronic health record (EHR) system purchased from VisualEHR Inc., an off-the-shelf vendor willing to customize the product to the clinic's needs. Most questions call for essay-format answers; clarity and organisation count. This solution answers all fourteen questions as a full study resource.
Reference texts. Rogers, Sharp & Preece, Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction, 5th ed., Ch. 1–3 (interaction design, cognitive aspects, mental models), Ch. 9–10 (prototyping, personas), Ch. 11–12 (data gathering, requirements), Ch. 15–16 (evaluation, lab vs. field studies); Nielsen, Usability Engineering, Ch. 4–6 (usability heuristics, iterative design, usability testing); Shneiderman, Designing the User Interface, 6th ed., Ch. 2 (guidelines, principles), Ch. 12 (internationalization); Norman, The Design of Everyday Things, Ch. 1–4 (visibility, affordances, feedback, conceptual models).
Question text not reproduced: the examination questions are © Engineers and Geoscientists BC. Open the official past paper (linked at the top of this page) to read the question, then follow the worked solution below.
| Attribute | Class 1 — Front-desk receptionist/scheduler | Class 2 — Physician/clinician |
|---|---|---|
| Educational level | High school diploma to college certificate (medical office administration) | Medical degree (MD) plus clinical residency training |
| Computer expertise | Moderate — comfortable with everyday office software (scheduling, email, basic data entry); little to no formal IT training | Variable, often lower relative to time available — comfortable with basic applications but has minimal time or patience for a steep learning curve during a patient visit |
| Age range | Roughly 20–55, likely skewed toward a younger, more digitally native workforce for an entry-level administrative role | Roughly 30–65, spanning early-career physicians through senior practitioners closer to retirement, some with decades of paper-chart habits |
| Other relevant demographics | High task frequency (uses the system continuously all day, every day); interruption-heavy environment (phone, walk-ins); values speed and low error rate for repetitive tasks (booking, check-in) | Uses the system in short, frequent bursts between/during patient encounters; extremely time-pressured (a few seconds of friction per patient adds up across a full day); strong preference for minimal clicks and for information visible without navigation, since attention must remain on the patient |
These two classes are deliberately chosen because they represent the extremes of the clinic's user population along the dimensions that matter most to design: the receptionist is a frequent, dedicated power user for whom the system is the primary work tool and efficiency features (keyboard shortcuts, batch operations) pay off, while the physician is an infrequent-per-session, highly time-pressured, low-tolerance user for whom visibility and minimal navigation matter far more than raw feature depth. A design optimised only for one class risks badly under-serving the other, which is why both must be explicitly represented (ideally with personas built from real interviews) before design begins.
