February 24th, 2004

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TLC 321Introduction toUser Centered Design

• February 24th, 2004

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In the next hour

• Know thy users
• for they are not you.
• Understand user centered design
• Distinguish between good and bad design
• Delve in to User Research
• Discover the joy yourself

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Prerequisites

• You do not see things as users do, know what they
  know, want what they want, or work how they work.
  
• Empathy
• Common sense
• Attention to detail
• Perseverance
• Practice - lots of it

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Affordances constraints

• Affordance
• Properties that determine how a thing
• could possibly be used
• Constraints
• Limitations on the number of possibilities
• Mapping
• Relationship between controls and actions

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Whats wrong?
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Whats wrong?
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Whats wrong?
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Whats wrong?
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Whats wrong
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Whats wrong?
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Whats wrong?
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Tenets of design

• KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid!
• Speak users language
• Get the mappings right
• Make things visible and exploit the power of
  constraints
• Strive for consistency
• Give feedback
• Design for errors
• Provide help for complex tasks

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User centered design process

• All methods are wrong
• some are more wrong than others.
• A process or approach that
• focuses on users, rather than the product, by
  involving them as much as possible.
• integrates knowledge and expertise from different
  disciplines.
• is highly iterative.

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UCD Overview
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User research

• The study of what makes peoples lives
• difficult and how to make them easier.
• What users want (Conceptual)
• What users need (Preference)
• What can they do (Ability)
• Personas and scenarios
• A fictitious person for whom you are designing
• Represents the archetypal qualities of your
  audience

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User research
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Information Architecture

• A structure based on the patterns inherent in
  data that allows users to accomplish their goals.
  - Adaptive Path
• Is the information available where the users
  expect it to be?

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Information Architecture
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User interface design

• Communicate functions and content to
• the user in an accessible manner.
• What can the users do from here?
• Can all intended users access it?

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User interface design
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Visual design

• Enhance the communication of content
• and functionality by making it
• engaging and attractive.
• Style guides and design templates

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Mock-ups Prototypes

• Low fidelity models of the final
• design.
• Check that users requirements are met by the
  design at different stages of development.

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Usability

• Testing the system for learnability, efficiency,
• memorability, errors and satisfaction.
• Happens throughout the design process
• Testing without the users
• Checklists, metaphor analysis, cognitive
  walkthroughs
• Testing with the users
• Prototype tests, experiments, observations

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User Research Methods

• Observation
• Controlled
• Ethnography
• Competitive Evaluation
• Logging
• Survey \ Questionnaire
• Focus Group
• Interview
• Choice depends upon What? Who? How Many? Time?
  And budget?

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Types of Interviews

• Informal
• Structured
• Flexible or open-ended
• Semi-structured

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Interviewing 101

• Three stages
• Preparing
• Conducting
• Reporting

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Types of questions

• Behaviors
• about what a person has done or is doing
• Opinions/values
• about what a person thinks about a topic
• Feelings
• - respondents sometimes respond with "I think
  ..." so be careful to note that you're looking
  for feelings
• Knowledge
• to get facts about a topic
• Sensory
• about what people have seen, touched, heard,
  tasted or smelled
• Background/demographics
• standard background questions, such as age
  education.

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Putting it all together

• Exercise 1
• You work for Pager Magic Inc. You have been
  assigned to conduct user research to propose
  improvements for the next version of paper
  airplane model 3.