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 (don’t 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 • What’s a good day? • What’s 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 phase–those 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 mind’s eye! • Find that photo! He can “see” it, but can’t remember where he put it, unless he spends a lot of time categorizing. • Don’t 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 <- -> Price-oriented • Necessity <- -> 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 didn’t 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 user’s 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. Where we’ve 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 we’re 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 Looking back / Looking ahead