This is the title

1
Providing Strategic User Information to Designers
Joy Goodman, Pat Langdon, John Clarkson
Initial Survey An initial small-scale survey of
designers found that only 3 out of 19 respondents
had received any training in user research. It
also found a wide range of methods with widely
varying popularity (Thanks to Cherie
Lebbon who carried out the survey)
Motivation To foster good design for older and
disabled people, we need to engage with the
actual design process in real situations and to
do this, we need to know more about what the
design industry actually does.
Method Multiple convergent methods to obtain a
rounded picture
Surveys
Insight into designers work practices
Interviews and Observations
Literature Review A review of the literature on
designers work practices shows

• Current Design Methods
• A wide range of methods
• Not always applied in a formal, accepted way
• Implicit, lightweight methods dominate
• Common methods include
• sketching, modelling, scenarios, self-observation
  and reference to self-experience

Future We are conducting observations of
designers on real design products, backed up by
interviews. A larger scale survey is also being
carried out to obtain a wider view. If you would
like to help by completing a questionnaire,
please let us know.

• Characteristics of Methods
• Common methods tend to be those that
• can be adjusted to individual needs
• can be used in an intuitive and iterative manner
• enable designers to visualise their ideas
• provide an appropriate level of detail for the
  current
• phase of design

Conclusions Initial work indicates that a method
set or toolkit should provide methods that can
be overlapped, combined and used in flexible
ways. More information and reassurance about user
research and guidance as to the selection of
methods would help their take-up.

• Problems with Methods
• Common problems with methods include
• being seen as too artificial
• requiring too many resources
• fitting poorly with designers work practices
• lacking documented reliability
• Designers are often wary of user research in
  particular
• afraid it will constrain designing
• uncertain of its benefits
• resistant to change