The Bridge compresses weeks or months of task analyzing, product scoping, GUI designing, paper prototyping, and usability testing into as little as three days. Every major and minor step is dependent on the preceding one. The most unique part of The Bridge is its systematic mapping of the tasks into the GUI, via the middle step. Of course, there is no magic. The Bridge is not intended to iron out all the fine details, just enough for the paper prototype to be usability tested.
Some sessions take a bit longer than three days.
And there are many stringent requirements for a Bridge session to be successful. Even with that fine print, The Bridge has been used successfully in dozens of projects, in many companies, by several people, over the last five years. In this presentation we will explain and demonstrate The Bridge, and explain where it fits into the larger software design and development process. Bridging user needs to OO GUI prototype via Task Object Design . Tom Dayton is a Senior Usability Engineer in Sun Microsystem's Usability Labs and Services group, right next to the fragrant salt evaporator in Menlo Park.