A Fundamental Challenge

1
A Fundamental Challenge

• Imagine a world where designers
• Realize that they are making decisions that
  affect users
• Make these decisions based on knowledge about
  users, tasks, and contexts, rather than
  assumptions

2
Project Sharing

• Team discussions
• Share results of contextual inquiry
• Discuss what you know and need to know
• Class-level discussion
• Share one challenge, one surprise, and one lesson
  that you think you would not have discovered with
  another technique

3
Discussion of Readings

• Facilitate class discussion of topics / ideas /
  themes garnered from the online discussion,
  related to assigned readings.
• Discussion Leaders
• 1. Walter Boelter 2. David Krizan 3. Annabel
  Sherwood
• Insights from supplemental reading.

4
Topic C Characterizing users

• Driving Questions
• What would we want to record and share about
  users? About tasks? About the environment and
  circumstances under which users do tasks?
• How will information on users, tasks, and the
  task environment be used in design?
• What properties do user and task
  characterizations need to have in order for them
  to serve as useful tools for the design team?
• What challenges and issues can arise in user and
  task characterization?

5
Analyzing Users

• Goal of analyzing
• Analyzing users is like
• Excavating
• Peeling an onion
• Surveying, getting the lay of the land
• How are techniques for analyzing (e.g., user
  lists, personas) like tools?

6
User Attributes

• Motivation
• Capabilities
• Beliefs
• Attitudes
• Goals
• Problems
• Preferences
• Values

7
Motivation

• Drives behavior
• Some are obvious, many are subtle
• Point at specific usage patterns
• Provide a reason why those behaviors exist
• Capture motivations in the form of user goals

8
User Goals

• Types of User Goals
• Life Goals
• Personal aspirations beyond the context of the
  design
• Explain why the user is trying to accomplish end
  goals
• Example be an expert earn a promotion
• Experience Goals
• Simple, universal and personal unconscious
  difficult to articulate
• How do they feel or the quality of the
  interaction
• Example Confident, competent (dont feel stupid)
• End Goals
• Expectation of a tangible outcome
• Something in mind you expect to accomplish
• Examples find the best price complete the order

9
User Goals

• False Goals
• Save key strokes or mouse clicks
• Run on the web
• Be easy to learn
• Speed up data entry
• Make use of latest technology
• Increase visual appeal
• Consistency across platforms
• Consider if the product/system were transparent,
  would the goal change?

10
User Goals

• Extracting Goals (Cooper)
• Hear goals directly during interview
• Whats a good day?
• Whats a bad day?
• What are the most important things you do?
• If it were magic, what would it help you do?
• Infer goals from actions
• How are people behaving currently?
• What are they trying to accomplish?

11
Exercise Extracting Goals

• Irene, 73, Widow (Cooper)
• Actions
• Lives alone in a small town
• Sees daughter and grandkids once a month
• Other family far away
• Reads newspaper front-to-back each morning
• Keeps TV on for background noise
• Plays bridge on weekends
• Volunteers for hospital and welcome wagon
• Only drives locally (not on highways)
• Sends lots of greeting cards and letters

12
Exercise Extracting Goals

• Irene, 73, Widow (Cooper)
• Actions
• Lives alone in a small town
• Sees daughter and grandkids once a month
• Other family far away
• Reads newspaper front-to-back each morning
• Keeps TV on for background noise
• Plays bridge on weekends
• Volunteers for hospital and welcome wagon
• Only drives locally (not on highways)
• Sends lots of greeting cards and letters

13
User Goals

• Exercise PhotoBook (Cooper)
• Debbie, 27, Mom
• Have her baby forever. They grow up so fast!
  Capture every phasethose first steps and other
  great moments.
• Keep the Grandparents happy. They look forward
  to the latest pictures.
• Spend time enjoying photos. Putting together an
  album, an excuse to relive events.
• Spencer, 35, Amateur Photographer
• Take the perfect photo. Capture the quality in
  his minds eye!
• Find that photo! He can see it, but cant
  remember where he put it, unless he spends a lot
  of time categorizing.
• Dont waste time organizing. Categorizing is
  just a chore.

14
Synthesizing User Information

• Turning data into information
• User Lists
• User Profiles
• Personas
• etc.
• Helps designers to
• Understand the implications of design decisions
  in more human terms
• Engage empathy toward the human being that will
  use the design

15
User Lists

• Attributes
• Skills
• Professions
• Job types
• Learning styles
• Stages of use
• Character Matrix

16
User Profiles

• Descriptions of the users
• Narrative
• Visual description
• List
• Prime examples / Archetypes
• Enhance with specifics from observations and
  interviews
• Fill in with unique characteristics of other
  actual users in the user group

17
Personas

• Descriptive model of the user based on behavioral
  data gathered from actual users
• User attributes
• Details
• Environment
• Typical workday
• Current solutions and frustrations
• Relevant relationships
• What the user wants to accomplish
• Why the user wants to accomplish the end goal
• Look for patterns separated along ranges of
  behavior
• Service-oriented lt- -gt Price-oriented
• Necessity lt- -gt Novelty

18
Synthesizing User Information

• Challenges
• User each person left to his own conceptions
  of the user and what the user needs
• Projecting your own goals, motivations,
  capabilities
• Giving edge cases priority
• Making assumptions about the user
• Avoiding stereotyping

19
Filling Gaps

• Discover things you want to know that you didnt
  think to ask
• Follow-up
• Interview
• Repeat inquiry
• Revisit recording

20
Analyzing Users - Comments

• Techniques/Representations
• Are tools
• That have an audience
• Should be complementary
• Are varied

21
Requirements

• Based on the users goals, capabilities and
  context.
• Consider non-user goals (corporate, technical,
  customer), but not at the expense of the user.
• Successful products meet user goals first.
• Regard user personal goals (chief dignity) as
  more significant than the corporate or
  Information Technology goals.
• Meets end goals, but fails to satisfy experience
  goals (inverse a toy).
• Good interaction design is devising interactions
  that achieve the business goals without violating
  the goals of users.

22
Project ExerciseUser Analysis

• Using the contextual inquiry data generated
  collectively by the team, generate a synthesis of
  what you know about the users.
• Prepare a one-page description of these results
  and potential implications for redesign.
• Bring copies of the exercise to class (one copy
  for each member of the team, one copy for the
  instructor) and also post it to your design
  portfolio.
• Due next Thursday

23
Looking back / Looking ahead

• Where weve been
• Topics Readings and discussion
• What is UCD?
• What to know about users?
• Collecting information about users
• Doing contextual inquiry
• Project
• Insights about users, tasks, and contextual
  issues
• Actual data from observing real users
• Sharing among team members
• Resulting in user information to analyze and
  synthesize

• Where were going
• Project exercise
• Results of synthesis of user information
• Readings
• On tasks and context, characterizing and
  synthesizing, communicating
• Summaries One page
• Issue Statement A reminder
• 1. Linda Moschell 2. Cynthia Putnam 3. Susan
  Shinoda 4. Dina Fesselmeyer