Imran Hussain

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Virtual University Human-Computer Interaction
Lecture 20User Research Part II

• Imran Hussain
• University of Management and Technology (UMT)

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In the Last Lecture

• Qualitative Research vs. Quantitative Research
• Qualitative Research Techniques
• Stakeholder Interviews
• Subject matter expert (SME) interviews
• User and customer interviews
• Literature reviews
• Product/prototype and competitive audits

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In Todays Lecture

• Qualitative Research Techniques
• Ethnographic field studies

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Common Issues in Software Engineering

• Users cannot articulate their needs
• Software engineers complain of changing
  requirements
• Software engineers dont respect users
• users are a pain

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The Solution Ethnographic Field Studies

• One-on-one interviews
• Directed ethnographic interview techniques
• Observing users (Work/lifestyle observation)
• Immersive observation

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User-Centered Design (UCD) Approaches

• User-centered design approaches (a philosophy)
• Involves finding out about users, their goals and
  tasks
• Involves users in development process
• Principles of UCD
• Early focus on users and tasks
• Empirical measurement
• Iterative design

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User-Centered Design Approaches

• A.k.a. Naturalistic Observation

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Ethnography

• Branch of anthropology (a social science)
• Literally means writing the culture
• Deals with scientific description of individual
  human societies
• In anthropology
• Ethnography understands behaviors and social
  rituals of entire culture
• In human-computer interaction
• Ethnography understands behaviors and rituals of
  people interacting with individual computer-based
  products

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Ethnography Framework

• Structures presentation of ethnographies
• Enables designers to use efficiently use
  ethnographic data

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Dimensions of Ethnography Framework

• Distributed Coordination
• Focuses on distributed nature of work
• Plans and Procedures
• Focuses on organizational support for work
• Awareness of Work
• Focuses on how people keep themselves aware of
  other peoples work

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Ethnographic Field Study Methods

• These provide notational and procedural
  mechanisms that allow designers to gain
  first-hand information
• 2 methods
• Coherence (Viller and Sommerville, 1999)
• Contextual Design (Beyer and Holtzblatt, 1996)

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Contextual Inquiry

• An ethnographic interviewing technique
• Based on observing and asking user questions
• Based on master-apprentice model of learning
• Based 4 principles

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Principles of Contextual Inquiry

• Context
• Partnership
• Interpretation
• Focus

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Principles of Contextual Inquiry

• Context
• Observe in normal working environments
• Partnership
• Adopt collaborative tone
• Interpretation
• Analyze and interpret data, but verify
  assumptions
• Focus
• Subtle direction of interviews

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Improving Contextual Inquiry

• Shorten the interview process
• 1 hr-long instead 1-day long interviews
• Use smaller design teams
• Perform sequential interviews with same team
• Identify goals first
• Identify and prioritize goals, then relate tasks
• Look beyond business contexts
• Use in consumer domains

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Preparing for Ethnographic Interviews

• Need to capture entire range of user behaviors
• Identify diverse sample of users
• Create a hypothesis that identifies users to
  interview

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The Persona Hypothesis

• Primarily based on behaviors
• Also considers target markets and demographics
• Product domain also considered
• Business user behavior different then that of
  consumer users
• Addresses at a high level
• Who might use this product?
• How would their needs and behaviors might vary?
• Ranges of behavior and types of environments?

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Roles in Business and Consumer Domains

• User types vary based on needs and behaviors in
  different domains (business, technical, consumer)
• Roles
• Common sets of tasks and information needs
  related to distinct classes of users
• Business and technical contexts
• Roles often map to job descriptions
• Consumer contexts
• Roles map to lifestyle choices

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Behavioral Variables

• Distinguish users based on their needs and
  behaviors (e.g., e-commerce)
• Frequency of shopping (frequentinfrequent)
• Desire to shop (lovehate)
• Motivation to shop (bargain huntingsearching for
  just the right item)
• User types defined by combination of behavioral
  variables

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Demographic Variables

• Make use of demographic data (from market
  research data)
• Age, location, gender, income
• Identified through user data

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Domain Expertise vs. Technical Expertise

• Domain expertise
• Knowledge of a specialized subject pertaining to
  a product
• Technical expertise
• Knowledge of digital technology

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Environmental Variables

• Company size (small multinational)
• IT presence (ad hoc draconian)
• Security level (lax tight)

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Creating an Interview Plan

• Create an interview plan based on persona
  hypothesis
• Explore all possible variables in 4-6 interviews
• Map variables to interview screening profiles
• An interviewee might cover a number of variables
• E.g., young female office worker, 20 years old,
  university educated, loves to shop (this covers
  variables of age, gender, education, designation,
  desire to shop, etc.)