Users

1
Users

• People act toward technology in a way that is
  based on the meaning that it has for them.
• Design continues in use.

2
Where does user and task analysis come from?

• Anthropology and ethnography
• Thursdays readings
• cognitive psychology
• technical communication, tech writing
• instructional systems design
• market research
• Market research tends to focus on attitudes and
  opinions, user and task analysis on behavior.
• Participatory design and Scandinavian model

3
Starting a user and task analysis

• Assemble group of people who interact with users.
• - Including sales, service personnel help staff
• Brainstorm preliminary list of users and
  potential users. Create a user/task matrix or a
  user/characteristic matrix.
• Discuss the relevant characteristics that you
  assume are typical of your user community.
• Decide how to test your assumptions.

4
Types of Users

• Primary users
• Secondary users
• E.g., the customer of the travel agent
• Gatekeepers, early adopters
• User communities
• new learners and experts, teachers and students,
  those administering and operating systems, those
  who use products and those who supervise them,
  those who repair products and those who break
  them.
• Users as buyers a potential design conflict
• Market researchers tend to concentrate on the
  people who buy designers (ideally) concentrate
  on the people who perform tasks.
• Surrogate users
• May not speak effectively for the products
  users.
• (But may be efficient source of information
  e.g., librarians)

5
Sources of user identities

• functional specifications
• targeted users or goals
• organizational priorities
• users you are mandated to serve (e.g., people in
  specific organization, doing specific jobs)
• structured analyses and marketing studies
• people currently using you or a competitor
• observations, surveys, user feedback, user
  registrations
• RD projected users

6
What do you want to know about your users?

• Users and their jobs
• What they do
• what they know about their tasks tools
• their mental models and vocabulary
• User communities
• Disciplines, work groups, organizational units
• People who communicate with one another
• People who share knowledge, expertise,
  orientation
• Individual differences
• personal characteristics preferences, physical
  cultural differences
• motivational differences
• E.g., willingness to change vs. hostility toward
  learning something new.

7
Representative Users as Subjects

• Validity
• defining relevant characteristics
• demographics are cheap and easy but often
  irrelevant
• age as a proxy for experience ask about
  experience
• race, ethnicity as proxy for language
• gender?
• Experience or expertise

8
User characteristics Expertise

• Expertise is relative
• In degree
• How to define more, less expert
• Relative to others who are the referents?
• To a domain
• Content area, functionality
• E.g., researchers versus technicians students
  vs. faculty
• Technology
• Expertise changes over time
• Help users to use local expertise
• Image library users who knew the photographers
  needed photographer names

9
Local Definitions of ExpertiseCalFlora on
plant identification

• Professionals can generally answer yes to one of
  the following
• I am a professional botanist or have professional
  training in botany.
• Although not a botanist, I am a professional
  biologist expert in the plants for which I will
  be submitting observations
• Although I do not have formal credentials, I am
  recognized as a peer by professional botanists
• Experts can generally answer yes to this
• Although I do not consider myself to have
  professional-level knowledge, I am quite
  experienced in the use of keys and descriptions,
  and/or am very familiar with the plants for which
  Ill be submitting observations.
• Non-experts should be able to say yes to this
• I am confident that I know the correct scientific
  names of the plants for which Ill be submitting
  observations.

10
Some Tensions in User-Centered Design

• Current and/or known users and uses vs. unknown,
  future, emergent
• New or different users
• Users change over time (learning)
• New or different uses
• Customization for a specific group vs. universal
  (or at least more general) design
• Trying to be too many things to too many people?

11
Ethnography

• Useful method studying peoples behavior and
  understandings
• Can learn from anthropologists, sociologists,
  others who have extensive experience with this
  method
• Course IS272 Qualitative Methods addresses in
  more detail

12
Ethnography and HCI (Blomberg)

• studies of work
• where new technology might be introd but w/o
  explicit design agenda
• studies of technology in use
• situated use of specific technologies, classes of
  technology
• participatory/work-oriented design
• people who use/are affected involved in design
  based on their understandings of their work

13
Central premises

• It is difficult for people to articulate tacit
  knowledge and understandings of familiar
  activities
• So we observe them as well as talk to them
• Participants act (toward technology) based on
  their own understandings and meanings
• So we listen to them as well as observe them

14
Presuppositions (Blomberg)

• Natural settings
• Holistic
• concern with understanding relation of particular
  activities to the constellation of activities
  that characterize a setting
• Descriptive of lived experience
• how people actually behave, not (just) their
  accounts
• withhold judgment, recommendations, design
• Members point of view
• Use their categories, language
• Your point of view affects what you see and
  understand

15
Ethnographic Data Collection Methods

• Observation
• Video, photography
• Interviews
• Participation (do it yourself)

16
Getting Access

• Whose approval, agreement do you need?
• Officially
• Really (they can let you in and not tell you
  anything)
• Why should they let you in?
• Benefits to them? What will they learn? Better
  system design? A way to communicate their point
  of view?
• Concerns about deleterious effects
• Privacy
• Power relations among participants

17
Getting Access (II)

• Who are you?
• Double hermeneutic (Giddens) observing and
  writing about them will affect them
• Knowing that they are observing you and reviewing
  your work affects you

18
Representation how to report what you learned?

• Textual accounts
• Descriptive reports
• Scenarios
• Storyboarding techniques
• Video (edited)
• Case-based prototyping

19
Difficulties with Ethnography

• Harder to do well than it appears
• High resources demands
• Human resources time and expertise
• Calendar time
• Difficult translating observations and
  understandings for others
• How to link to design?
• How to use to develop designs of more general use

20
But

• Useful as an orientation, set of principles
• Important reminder to stay grounded in the users
  actual experience and understandings