user research: trying to answer the why and how questions

user research: trying to answer the why and how questions aga szóstek(at)gmail.com

why doing user research in the first place?

- users have different goals than designers

- users do not care for design success

-  there is more than one user per solution

-  there is more than one solution per problem

traditional user research -  formal -  informative -  answers -  precision -  understanding -  raw data

generative methods -  informal -  inspirational -  questions -  ambiguity -  empathy -  interpretation

user research: an example

PhD  project:  Sebas1an  Denef    Promoters:  David  V.  Keyson  i  Reinhard  Oppermann      

How do firemen deal with dangerous situations in the midst of the action? How could their actions be supported through interactive technologies?

OBSERVATIONS

TOOL ANALYSIS

ROLE PLAYING

BUILDING EMPATHY

using generative methods: an example

Welcome Experience at a telecom provider Aga Szóstek, Marcin Piotrowski, Joanna Kwiatkowska    

first month with a telecom provider

provider

first impressions

user

trial period

uncertainty

building relationship

gaining trust

adjusting offer

explaining payment

upselling

partcipants -  20 persons (50% M, 50% F) -  recruited at the door of the provider’s shop -  committed to buy a postpaid plan -  signing an agreement to participate

diary / blog study

love / hate letters

creative workshop

why and when traditional user research?

-  works great for the defined design space -  helps to objectify discovered phenomena -  supports task oriented design -  resolves interaction problems -  focuses in iterative measurement of progress -  enables comparison

why and when generative methods?

-  high complexity of the design issues (so called: wicked problems)

-  uncertainty what truly is the design challenge

-  need for flexibility to approach the solution

-  building empathy

who should participate?

snowball sampling: when you want to find users who have similar

interests, jobs or lifestyle

extreme case sampling: when you want to find users who are extreme

representatives of certain behaviours (e.g. firemen for a decision-taking study

homogenous sampling: when you want to find users who are very much

alike in a certain aspect

maximum variation sampling: when you want to find users who are very different

with respect to a certain aspect

convenience sampling: when you just want to find users

who are together for some reason (eg. a workshop) and agree to participate in the study

opportunistic sampling: when you just want to find

truly random users

references

Denef, S.; Keyson, D.; Oppermann, R. Rigid Structures, Independent Units, Monitoring: Organizing Patterns in Frontline Firefighting. In Proceedings of the 2011 SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Austin, TX, USA, 5–10 May 2011; pp. 1949–1958. Pallot, Marc, et al. "Living lab research landscape: From user centred design and user experience towards user cocreation." First European Summer School'Living Labs'. 2010.