This method -- part of the suite of techniques designed by Karen Holtzblatt and Hugh Beyer known as Contextual Design -- is particularly well-suited to projects in which an existing piece of software or a website already exists but needs to be re-architected.  It's not uncommon for software to have started out small and grown larger as programmers add code to satisfy growing user requirements and functionality requests.  The original navigation sometimes loses its effectiveness, even if the content and functionality hidden inside are valuable.

Method

A Reverse User Environment Design (UED) starts at the beginning screen and identifies all the major functionality, independent of its location.  This helps the design team to see what the conceptual model of the software has become.  Once realized, re-designed navigation can better reflect user priorities and taskflows.

Results

This picture (right) shows what a conducting this method looks like in its initial stages.  We are documenting functionality in the application relevant to user workflow, including what it links to and from.  When done, programmers recognize the UED as use cases that have evolved over time -- the UED addresses the same kinds of details as a use case -- like preconditions, post-conditions, assumptions and related functionality. An example use case is provided for reference.

Timeframe

Creating the UED can take several working sessions, depending on the size and scope of the software, hardware or website being deconstructed.

Preparations

Need only access to the product and login capability to any applications with the ability to create "dummy" data safely.

Additional Reading

For more on Reverse UED, please see the founder's website at: http://www.incent.com, or their book: Contextual Design: Defining Customer-Centered Systems by Hugh Beyer and Karen Holtzblatt (1998), Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Inc. Amazon sells it.