Finally, in our observations we discovered users were printing -- a lot. Some was necessary, but much of it seemed inefficient and wasteful. In the mainframe app, data for a task might be scattered across many screens. Users worked around this by printing as many as 30 pages for a task, when the actual data needed was a fraction of that space. After they finished, they would theow the printouts in the recycle pile.

To address this, we worked to get all the relevant task data on one screen. Each data element was mapped directly to the mental model we had described in our research. During prototype testing, we got some great responses from our users about how we had all the data they needed on one page.

We wanted to discourage printing, but we also wanted to respect work style. We had observed that users worked their way through a printed list, checking each item off as they completed it. They also had to manually key item numbers into a different application, which left room for costly errors.

I designed an interactive list feature to mimic their checklists and also give them the ability to copy/paste item numbers between applications.