DocuTech Scan and Makeready

The main screen had a dashboard view of all the current settings. Simple programming could be done here, with more complicated controls available from the square "child window" buttons.

The Full Cut Tabs child window allowed near-WYSIWYG positioning of text on tab stock.

This was one of the very first user interface projects I worked on as a greenhorn in Xerox's Industrial Design / Human Interface department. In 1997, Xerox was preparing to phase out the old workhorse production printer, the DocuTech, and introduce a next-generation printer whose UI ran on Windows rather than Xerox's proprietary but clunky OS.

The DocuTech was enormously popular with its owners and users (largely people in print and copy shops, as well as large companies' in-house print operations), so our challenge as designers was to keep the easy-to-use WYSIWYG elements they loved while introducing our improvements.

Our revamped UI retained the "dashboard" view DocuTech users knew and loved, giving summary information about current settings and allowing users to dive into "child windows" to do more detailed settings using WYSIWYG mocks.

We had the luxury of a long development cycle on this project, so we were able to do contextual inquiries, visiting customer sites to better understand their needs and workflows, and run usability tests with expert users. Through improvements in technology and user interface efficiency, we were able to measure a time on task reduction of 40%.