User research for interaction design Personas. Cultural probes. Technology probes

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User research for interaction designPersonas.
Cultural probes. Technology probes

• Victor Kaptelinin
• vklinin_at_informatik.umu.se090-786 5927
• Feb 27, 2006

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Personas
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An introduction to personas

• Fictional people
• Alan Cooper (1999) The inmates are running the
  asylum
• Focus on initial investigation phase
• Personas at Microsoft

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Problems with an early approach

• The characters are not believable
• The characters were not communicated well
• Limited understanding of how to use personas
• Limited or no high-level support

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Actual issues

• How best to create user abstractions?
• How much can be fictional and what should be
  based on data?
• What data is most appropriate?
• Can multiple related product teams share a common
  set of abstractions?
• etc

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A foundation document contents

• Market size and influence
• Demographic attributes
• Technology attributes
• Technology attitudes
• Communicating
• International considerations
• Quotes
• References

• Overview
• A day in the life
• Work activities
• Household and leisure activities
• Goals, fears, and aspirations
• Computer skills, knowledge, and abilities

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Benefits of personas

• Strong focus on users
• Making assumptions about the target audience more
  explicit
• Medium for communication
• Focus on specific target audiences

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Risks of personas

• Temptation of personas reuse
• Marketing vs product development different needs
• Overuse

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Personas concluding remarks

• How personas work
• Combining personas and other approaches
• Scenarios and task analysis
• Contextual design and ethnography
• Participatory design and value-sensitive design

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Cultural probes

• Collections of tasks designed to elicit
  inspirational input from people on their
  individual lives. An alternative to traditional
  user study methods (e.g., quistionnairs, focus
  groups, ethnography)

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Usage of cultural probes

• User-Centered Inspiration
• An example of a CP
• Postcards
• e.g., your favorite device
• Maps
• e.g., emotional maps
• Camera
• e.g., something beautiful, ugly
• Photo album
• From probes to designs
• Projects Presence, Equator

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Technology probes

• Simple, flexible, adaptable
• Three goals
• social science understanding the needs and
  desires of users in a real-world setting
• engineering field-testing of technology
• design inspiring users and researchers to think
  about new technologies

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IT at home

• The impact on families
• Design of technologies for homes and families
• The interLiving project (EU)

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Probes, technology probes

• Probe an instrument that is deployed to find out
  about the unknown
• Technology probe a probe combining the goals of
  collecting information, testing technology, and
  inspiring users and designers

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Features of TP (as opposed to prototypes)

• Functionality simple
• Flexibility open-ended
• Usability not a main concern
• Logging very important
• Design phase early in the design process

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Examples

• messageProbe
• videoProbe