Don Rickert Research and Design Work: Mostly (but not all) Things

The Brain Attack Virtual Conference (Updated Post)

Don Rickert, as Project Lead, was responsible for ALL aspects of this project, including constructing a sound stage, organizing the video production crew, union negotiations, managing a large team of expert contributors, including world-renowned specialists in artificial intelligence, information retrieval,  MPEG encoding for streaming video (WAY before YouTube, when you needed a Teradata(tm) supercomputer to stream large video files), cognitive science, design, software engineering, video direction, video production and neuroscience.

The Brain Attack Virtual Conference was the first documented commercially viable website to include embedded streaming digital media (video and audio).

During the first four days of May 1997, a conference on "brain attack" (i.e., stroke) was held at the Camelback Inn in Scottsdale , Arizona . This conference brought together twelve prominent researchers and practitioners in the field of brain attack for the primary purpose of generating content for a "virtual conference" web site. The contents of the Brain Attack web site included text versions of the presentations, audio and video of the presenters, radiological images, instructive illustrations and animations, as well as selected links to other relevant web sites.

Don Rickert served as Project Manager and Brad Wiederholt, the other founding Partner of Don Rickert Research & Design's parent company, Wiederholt & Rickert Partners, LLC as Director/Producer.

Postscript: The website was taken off-line by AT&T reportedly for legal exposure reasons, in the fear that untrained visitors could misinterpret and misuse the key life and death information on brain attack (i.e. strokes) that was disseminated via the website.

Unfortunately, only a few grainy images survive from the Brain Attack Virtual Conference website. They are shown below. Click on any of the thumbnails to see a larger view.

    

These images are also posted on Facebook.

Online Reference Products

The term "online reference" can apply to everything from a CD-ROM or DVD-based reference to a multi-million dollar online virtual medical conference. Some of those that Don Rickert has worked on are:

The Brain Attach Virtual Conference Website (NCR)

This was a large "virtual conference" (massive website) on stroke (a.k.a. Brain Attack).Don Rickert, as Project Lead, was responsible for ALL aspects of this project, including managing a large team of expert contributors, including world-renowned specialists in artificial intelligence, information retrieval, streaming video (WAY before YouTube, when you needed a Teradata(tm) supercomputer to stream large video files), cognitive science, design, software engineering, video direction, video production and neuroscience.

APRICOTS (NCR)

APRICOTS was a produce identification training system for grocery store cashiers. It was developed by the NCR Human Interface Technology Center. Don Rickert was responsible for the usability evaluation research of this project.

IE-Expert (Product of James Martin & Company)

A comprehensive online and print reference to the Information Engineering Methodology (IEM). Don Rickert led user interface design, creation of end-user documentation and usability testing on this product.

AD-Expert (Product of James Martin & Company)

An online repository of detailed knowledge and experience in using the Information Engineering Methodology within IBM's AD/Cycle environment. Don Rickert led user interface design, creation of end-user documentation and usability testing on this product.

FastPROJECT and FastPACE (Products of James Martin & Company)

FastPROJECT was an online tool that assisted in generating project plans. FastPACE was a related step-by-step online guide to project completion that provided detailed procedures for every development task. Don Rickert conducted usability research as part of both of these related initiatives.

Help Desk Assistant (The George Washington University Computer Center)

This was a hypertext system for a University help desk that supported over 100 software products and systems, with a user population of over 20,000. Its purpose was to assist part-time help-desk personnel in referring problems that they could not solve to the appropriate full-time staff expert. Don Rickert directed all aspects of this product, including user research.

Problem and Solution Knowledge Base for Help Desk Personnel (The George Washington University Computer Center)

This was a related hypertext system, also for a University help desk that supported many products for many users. It's purpose was to collect solution sets in a format that was easy to retrieve. Rickert directed all aspects of this product, including consumer research.

Electronic Brochure for the George Washington University

This was a hypertext brochure on a diskette. It was implemented in Hypercard for Mac computers and IBM Linkways for Intel computers.Don Rickert directed all aspects of this product, including user research.

Computer Purchase Configuration Assistant for Students (The George Washington University Student/Faculty Computer Purchase Program)

This was a hypertext "decision tree" tool to help students and faculty to navigate a complex set of purchase options in a computer purchase program. Rickert directed all aspects of this product, including consumer research.

Program Guide and Related Collateral Materials for the Bell-Atlantic (now Verizon) Stargazer Interactive TV Market Trial

These guides were print catelogs of available videos-on-demand. Don Rickert and his team developed, through extensive user-centered design and user testing, the portion of the guides dealing with the use of the equipment, especially the remote control device.

APRICOTS: System to Teach Cashiers How to Correctly Identify Produce Items by Name

APRICOTS was a project of the NCR Human Interface Technology Center (HITC), where Don Rickert consulted for several years.

While the whole concept of a system to teach fruit and vegetable recognition sounds funny (it did to Don Rickert at first), this is actually a big deal for grocery chains. Millions of dollars are lost every year from cashiers confusing some kind of really expensive leafy green for iceberg lettuce, and so forth.

The system taught cashiers to identify produce items by name and price lookup (PLU) code. The training provided external instructional events to support the cashier's internal processes of learning. Interviews and observations were used to understand the cashiers' job and relevant issues in produce recognition training. Then, an adaptive instructional design strategy and associated graphical user interface was developed.

Don Rickert designed the user research of APRICOTS in order to obtain feedback from cashiers on the effectiveness of APRICOTS' underlying instructional design compared to current training methods.