Visualizing and communicating how things will be used is very powerful and important.
My memory may be faulty, but I think it's Alan Cooper's "About Face" that basically advised not just describing the interface and how it'll be used, but how Bob the 73 year old luddite who hates all computers is going to interact with it (context in flight movie systems). Creating characters and having them interact with technology that doesn't exist yet is what SF writers DO.
I have a copy of About Face on my desk that I keep meaning to read, but I have read Alan Cooper's "The Inmates Are Running The Asylum" which definitely discusses an in-flight entertainment system to be used by, amongst others, an elderly gentleman who really has got better things to do than burrow through menus and directories to find a movie to watch. Could you be thinking of that? Maybe they both used that example (although I think for Cooper, it was personal history rather than example).
I had an online discussion with him about that inflight entertainment system. I suggested just putting a channel selector knob on the thing. Flip through the movie posters, and if you stay on-channel for a few seconds, the movie starts. Then it turns out it has pay-per-view channels and has to have a whole payment interface, something he doesn't mention in the book.
My memory may be faulty, but I think it's Alan Cooper's "About Face" that basically advised not just describing the interface and how it'll be used, but how Bob the 73 year old luddite who hates all computers is going to interact with it (context in flight movie systems). Creating characters and having them interact with technology that doesn't exist yet is what SF writers DO.