Welcome TC518: Usercentered Design

1
Welcome TC518 User-centered Design
2
Mapping out Week 1

• Introductions
• Tell me about yourself
• Go over syllabus
• Finding potential project teammates
• Introduction to User-centered design and
  usability
• Lecture
• Two activities
• Revisit syllabus focus on readings
• Project
• Overview of activities
• Group formation and project selection

3
Tell me about yourself
Please record the following information on an
index card

• General
• Name (and preferred way to address you)
• Best way to contact you (e.g., email, phone,
  etc.)
• Place of employment
• Domains of interest (e.g., medicine, e-commerce,
  etc.)

• Going Deeper
• Self-characterization Indicate your level of
  agreement with the following statements by
  recording low, medium, or high for each
• I consider myself a designer
• I consider myself adept at incorporating user
  considerations into my work
• Evaluation criteria What criteria you would use
  to evaluate a) a hair dryer, b) a website
• Design process Write down the sequence of five
  or so major steps one should go through in
  developing and evaluating a new computer system
  for end users.
• Techniques What techniques do you use (have you
  used) to focus on users in your work?

4
Getting a sense of the class
Already are designers
Adept at prioritizing user issues
5
Syllabus Learning Objectives

• Following the course, students may need to
• Do user-centered design activities
• Sell user-centered design activities
• Plan user-centered design activities (and make
  choices)
• Continue to educate themselves
• By the end of the course, students will be able
  to
• Critically discuss the concept complexities of
  UCD
• Identify and explain a variety of factors
  motivating/enabling UCD
• Plan and execute activities that collectively
  instantiate a UCD process
• Identify areas of scholarship useful in design to
  address user needs
• Class elements
• Project (70)
• Readings and discussion (10)
• Final exam (20)

6
Syllabus Detailed schedule
7
Syllabus - Class Structure
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3

• HW
• Readings
• Online Discussion
• Project Work

• HW
• Readings
• Online Discussion
• Project Work

Share results from project exercise 1 (topic B)
Share results from project exercise 2 (topic C)
Discuss New Concepts via Readings (topic A/B)
Discuss New Concepts via Readings (topic C)
Discuss New Concepts via Readings (topic D)
Discuss project exercise 1 (topic B)
Discuss project exercise 2 (topic C)
Discuss project exercise 3 (topic D)
8
Syllabus Project (70)

• Description
• Follow a user-centered design process to explore
  the redesign of a product/process of your
  choosing.
• Examples Students may redesign
• Blood pressure cuff in local drugstore
• Informational website for engineering educators
• Check-out process for Internet retailer
• Instructions/documentation for photo processing
  software
• Educational toy designed for 5 year old
• Student Responsibilities
• Project exercises (7, weekly homework,
  collectively 20 of grade)
• Project deliverables (2, significant milestones,
  each 25 of grade)
• Review/advisory board participation

9
Syllabus - Readings discussion (10)
10
Syllabus Weekly schedule
11
Syllabus Course Design Principles

• Assumptions
• Learning involves construction of knowledge
• Students are diverse, and have knowledge to offer
• Principles
• Provide varied ways for students to learn
  demonstrate knowledge
• Ensure students have opportunity to learn from
  each other
• Manage participant burden
• Elements
• Practice user-centered design activities
• Reflect on user-centered design activities
  through discussions
• Learn from perspectives of others
• Various interactions w/ readings (summarize,
  discuss, synthesize)

12
Activity 1 Lets move around

• Your task
• Identify one or more domains that interest you
• Find/meet other students who share domain
  interests
• Talk about
• Your motivations for taking this class and
• Nature of your interest in the specific domain.
• Motivation for this activity
• Projects involve teams
• Teams organized around domains
• Project easier if teams have prior domain
  knowledge
• Team formation (project selection) by end of
  Thurs

13
Activity 2a Difficult Products

• Individually Think about some product/ process
  that you have found to be difficult
• What was the nature of the difficulty and the
  consequences?
• What do you think contributes to (causes) the
  difficulty?
• Group Share your experiences.

14

• User-centered design is what you do to achieve
  usable systems
• Usability is the typical way a user-centered
  design product is evaluated
• We will talk about usability then about
  user-centered design

15
Defining Usability

• The extent to which a product can be used by
  specified users to achieve specified goals in a
  specified context of use with effectiveness,
  efficiency and satisfaction (ISO 9241-11)
• The measure of the quality of the user
  experience when interacting with something
  whether a web site, a traditional software
  application, or any other device the user can
  operate in some way or another (Nielsen)
• Usability means that the people who use the
  product can do so quickly and easily to
  accomplish their own tasks (Dumas and Redish)

16
Defining Usability (Barnum, p. 6)
17
Benefits of a usable system
(Maquire, p. 589)
18
Usability and User Experience

• Usability stems from entire user experience
• Device Interface Visual, tactile, input
  devices
• Support manuals
• Packaging
• Computer system
• Workspace
• Each of these aspects of a product/process can be
  redesigned to enhance usability

19
Activity 2b Difficult Products (cont.)

• Building on your discussion of a difficulty and
  contributing factors, discuss the following in
  your group
• Is the difficulty a usability issue? If so, what
  aspects of usability are relevant? If not, are
  there other difficulties that are usability
  related in nature?
• What might be included as part of a users
  experience with the product? How does the
  answer to this question affect your diagnosis of
  contributing factors?
• What might be the benefits of a more usable
  version of this product?
• Also (time permitting) What did the designers
  fail to take into account, such that the original
  design was difficult? Why might the
  considerations not have been taken into account?