Chapter 9 User-centered approaches to interaction design

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Chapter 9User-centered approaches to interaction
design

• By
• Sarah Obenhaus
• Ray Evans
• Nate Lynch

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Introduction

• Some advantages of involving users
• Main principles of user-centered approach
• Ethnographic-based methods to understand users
  work
• Design techniques that help users take active
  part in design

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Why involve users?

• Best way to ensure that users activities taken
  into account
• Expectation management
• Process that makes sure what user expects is
  realistic
• Users will know what to expect-no surprises
• Users less likely to be disappointed
• Ownership
• Users involved in design have a sense of
  ownership and will be more receptive

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Degrees of Involvement

• Co-opted full time
• Consistent input
• Could lose touch with user group
• Co-opted part time
• Consistent input with careful management
• Remain in touch with user group
• Newsletters, Workshops
• Good solution for large amount of users

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What if short on time?

• Some argue that if the project is large scale and
  the time is short, users will be a waste of
  valuable time
• Braiterman conducted 2 studies that prove
  otherwise
• 3-week web shopping application
• Use paper prototypes
• 3-month gaming website
• Observed 32 teenagers to gain insight

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Too much of a good thing?

• Heinbokel (1996) Users could make project have
  less flexibility and lower team effectiveness
• Communication problems
• Users want more sophisticated designs later in
  project
• Users fears lead to less constructive
  participation
• Users unpredictable and unsympathetic
• Higher stress levels from higher aspirations

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What is user-centered approach?

• Real users and their goals should be the driving
  force behind design
• Three principles
• Early focus on user and their tasks
• Empirical measurements
• Iterative design

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Early focus on user

• Five principles that expand on this
• Users goals are driving force
• System designed to support users behavior
• System designed for users characteristics
• Users consulted from beginning to end, with their
  input taken seriously
• Design decisions taken within context of users,
  their work, and environment

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What is Ethnography?

• writing the culture (Hammersley and Atkinson,
  1983)
• Used to understand work
• Observers sit in on users work environment and
  participate in daily activities
• Experience is collected and documented

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Ethnography and design

• Three ways it is associated with design
• Ethnography of
• Studies of developers and workplace
• Ethnography for
• Studies of organizational work
• Ethnography within
• Integrated into methods for development

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Ethnography continued

• Design deals with abstraction, and ethnography
  deals with detail
• Framework of ethnography for designers
• Distributed co-ordination
• Plans and procedures
• Awareness of work
• Could train developers to do studies

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Coherence

• Intended for integration of social analysis and
  object-oriented analysis
• Present data from ethnographic studies through
• viewpoints
• concerns

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Viewpoints

• Focus question for each that guide observer
  through users workplace
• Distributed coordination
• Plans and procedures
• Awareness of work
• See figure 9.1 for some questions

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Concerns

• Paperwork and computer work
• Plans and procedures awareness of work
• Skill and use of local knowledge
• workarounds
• Spatial and temporal organization
• Physical layout
• Organization memory
• Records and formal documents

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Contextual Design

• Structural approach to gathering info from field
• Seven parts
• Contextual Inquiry, Work Modeling, Consolidation,
  Work Redesign, User Environment Design, Mockup
  and Test with Customers, Putting into Practice

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Contextual Inquiry

• Approach to ethnographic study that follows
  apprenticeship model
• designer works as apprentice to user
• Typical format includes interview, observation,
  discussion, reconstruction
• 4 main principles

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4 principles of Inquiry

• Context
• Importance of going to workplace
• Partnership
• Developer and user should collaborate
• Interpretation
• Observations must be interpreted together by
  developer and user
• Focus
• What do you look for?

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Contextual Inquiry v. Ethnography

1. Contextual Inquiry shorter (2-3 hours)
2. Inquiry interview more intense and focused
3. Designer inquiring, not observing
4. Inquiry has intention of designing a system,
   ethnography has no intent

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Working Model

• Five aspects of work modeled
• Work flow model
• Sequence model
• Artifact model
• Cultural model
• Physical model

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Interpretation Session

• Session occurs after inquiry, work models
  produced at this time as team composes view of
  users work
• Roles of team
• Interviewer
• Work modelers
• Recorder
• Moderator
• Participants
• Rat-hole watcher

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Consolidate Models

• Affinity diagram-organizes notes taken during
  session into hierarchy
• Work flow identify key roles
• Sequence structure of tasks/strategies
• Artifact how people organize
• Physical physical structure commonality
• Cultural what matters to workers

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Work Flow Model
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Sequence Model
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Artifact Model
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Physical Model
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Cultural Model
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Design Room

• Where all work models kept
• All known about customers found here
• Key element to contextual design

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Participatory Design

• Users actively involved in design as equal to
  design team
• Cultural differences has been a problem
• UTOPIA project
• PICTIVE
• CARD

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PICTIVE

• Plastic Interface for Collaborative Technology
  Initiatives through Video Exploration
• Uses typical office supplies to design screen and
  window layouts
• Group or one-on-one sessions of design

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CARD

• Collaborative Analysis of Requirements and Design
• Uses playing cards with pictures of computers
  screens to study work flow options
• Form of storyboarding

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Review of techniques

• Ethnography
• Coherence
• Contextual design
• Participatory design

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Key Points

• Pros and cons of user involvement
• User-centered approach requires much info about
  users
• Ethnography good method for studying users in
  natural surroundings
• Coherence-method that provides focus questions
• Contextual design-method that provides models for
  gathering data
• PICTIVE and CARD-participatory design techniques
  that empower user