Chapter 9: User-centered approaches to interaction design

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Chapter 9 User-centered approaches to
interaction design

• Zhaoqi Chen
• Scott Castle
• 05/06/2002

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Content

• Introduction
• Importance of involving users
• Degrees of involvement
• What is user-centered approach
• Applying ethnography in design
• Coherence
• Contextual design
• Involving users in design

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Introduction

• User-centered development involves
• Finding out a lot about users and their tasks
• Using this information to inform design
• Data-gathering techniques
• Method for naturalistic observation
• ethnography

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Introduction(2)

• Another aspect of user-centered development
• User involvement in the development process.
• Different degrees of involvement
• Through evaluation studies (Ch10-14)
• Users contribute actively to the design itself
  to become co-designer.

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Importance to involve users

• Developers can gain a better understanding of
  users needs and goals, leading to a more
  appropriate, more usable product.
• Non-functionality aspects
• Expectation management
• Ownership

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Expectation management

• The process of making sure that the users views
  and expectations are realistic.
• Ensure that there are no surprises for users when
  the product arrives.
• Its better to exceed users expectations than to
  fall below them.

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Techniques for EM

• Involving users throughout development
• Adequate and timely training

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Ownership

• Users who are involved and feel that they have
  contributed to a products development are
• more likely to feel a sense of ownership.
• more receptive to it when it finally emerges.

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Degrees of involvement

• Users may be co-opted to the design team.
• Full-time, part-time
• Users may be kept informed through
• regular newsletters, or
• other channels of communication.

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Degrees of involvement (2)

• Compromise situation for large number of users
• Representatives from each user group
• Other users are involved through design
  workshops, evaluation sessions and other
  data-gathering activities.

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A well-designed system

• Should make the most of human skills and judgment
• Should be directly relevant to the work in hand,
  and
• Should support rather than constrain the user.

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User-centered approach

• Principles
• Early focus on users and tasks
• Empirical measurement
• Iterative design
• Olympic Messaging System (OMS)
• First reported large computer-based system using
  these three principles

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Early focus on users and tasks

• Users tasks and goals driving force
• Users behavior and context of use
• systems are designed to support them
• Users characteristics are captured and designed
  for.
• Cognitive aspects
• Physical aspects

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Early focus on users (2)

• Users are consulted throughout development
• All design decisions should be within
• the context of the users
• their work, and
• their environment

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Understanding users work

• Applying ethnography in design
• writing the culture
• Aims to find the order within an activity
• Users are observed as they go about their normal
  activities.

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Design and Ethnography

• The goals of them are opposite
• Design is concerned with abstraction and
  rationalization.
• Ethnography is about detail.

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Framework

• Help designers use the presentation of
  ethnographies
• Three dimensions
• Distributed co-ordination
• Plans and procedures
• Awareness of work

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Alternative approach

• Train developers to collect ethnographic data
  themselves.
• Give the designers first-hand experience
• Two methods
• Coherence
• Contextual design