Gathering Data from PeopleHCC 729 4/3/14

This week

• Mini-lectures: Connie, Jonathan• Finalizing P2 ideas• Data collection and research methods

Inspirations

Comments on reading

• Contextual design• Cooperative inquiry

Project 2 ideas

• Designing applications of future technology– Personal robotics / drones– Wearable computers

• Now: finalize general idea– Underlying technology– User / task / environment

• Let’s go around and get project updates

Today: Data gathering methods

• How to understand your user

Data Gathering Methods

• Methods for personas and Scenarios• Don’t interact with any users

• Study existing knowledge and data• Ask users to gather their own data

• Diary studies• Gather data through observing users

• Ethnography• Contextual inquiries

• Interact with User• Interviews• Focus groups

Diary Study

Advantages of Diary Study

• Gather lots of data• Data gathers itself!• Gather data from many people at once• Easy to gather data over multiple sessions, or

over time• Can worry less about experimenter bias

• Experimenter isn’t present during data collection

• Many users love doing it

Disadvantages of Diary Study• Users can forget to record their data, or get bored

of the study• Think about how you will motivate them• Think about how much effort they need to

participate, only focus on most important• Users may lose recording materials or data

• Consider when choosing equipment• Have check points where user gives data

• You may gather too much data• Make an analysis plan early

Ethnography

Ethnography

• Primary technique from cultural anthropology Traditional science focuses on objectivity

• Understanding from the “outside”

• Ethnography focuses on understanding the subject as s/he understands her/himself

Ethnography• Studying actual habits and practices of stakeholders in context

– Leave the lab and go find out what is really happening!• Shift from learning about behaviors from lab studies to real

world experiences– This can produce richer and more realistic data about users

• Ethnographer must create detailed records of observations – Notes, discrete video or audio recording

• Ethnographers must take an unbaised and open-ended view of situation. – Ethnographers are observers, not actors

• Roots in Anthropology and Sociology

Advantages of Ethnography

• Your experience is your data

• Can give researcher emotional empathy

• Can provide huge amount of context

• Experiences can be translated literally to design, or feed scenarios

Disadvantages of Ethnography

• Very time consuming

• Your experience is your only data• Heavily reliant on reflection• Individual experience, difficult for group

participation

Extreme Ethnography: Patricia Moore

• At age 26, she transformed herself into a range of women over the age of 80. The disguises involved more than makeup and clothing: She altered her body with prosthetics that blurred her vision, reduced her ability to hear and limited her motion. She relied on canes, walkers and a wheelchair.

• From 1979 to 1982, she was in the roles about every third day for as much as 20 hours at a time. The experiment took her to 116 cities in 14 states and two Canadian provinces.

• Used experience in communication design, product development, environmental design, package design, transportation design, market analysis and product positioning.

• Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4eOyBki3cE• Debatable if this is technically an ethnography…

Contextual Inquiry

Hugh BeyerKaren Holtzblatt

What is Contextual Inquiry?• “The core premise of

Contextual Inquiry is very simple: go where the customer works, observe the customer as he or she works, and talk to the customer about the work.” —Contextual Design (p. 41)

Contextual Inquiry vs. Ethnography

• “...the intention is to understand and to interpret the data gathered, and rather than attempting to take an open-ended view, the investigator acknowledges and challenges her particular focus.” —HCI (p. 471)

What is CI?

• Purpose: obtain data from the users in their context

• Insights about users’ environment• Insights about users’ many tasks• Insights about the people they work with and work

groups• Insights into cultural influences on work

(expectations, norms, policies, values, etc.)• Goal: To help define requirements, validate design

ideas, and prioritize support

Contextual Inquiry’s Roots

• Evolved from ethnography• Observe from the “inside”, as a member of the

community• Design to the needs of the user for current

practice

• Fundamentally an interview, but key is you interview in context

Objective vs. Contextual Questions

• Objective questions: get at facts (what)

• Contextual questions: get at how and why

Example Contextual Questions

1. What is important to the user? 2. How, why are certain choices made? 3. How does the user think about their needs

and goals? 4. How does the user understand the system?• Note: user may not always understand

her/himself, so we study the understanding, and study her/him objectively (in context).

Contextual Inquiry Stages

CI Stages: #1 Interview Warm Up

• Introduce yourself, describe interests and the CI approach

• Promise confidentiality

• Get permission to tape

• Start recording

CI Stages: #2 Transition

• Re-state rules for the CI

• Get the customer to do their work

• Set ground rules (e.g., you ask questions, they can defer)

CI Stages: #3 Do the CI

1. Observe• Record artifacts, usage, temporal sequences

2. Create, share, validate interpretation

3. Refine interpretation (based on validation)

4. Follow up and ask questions

Writhdrawal and Return

• Try to follow a pattern that Contextual Design calls withdrawal and return

• •Researcher observes a key moment in the pattern of action

• •Researcher asks about this, and the pair withdraw momentarily from the task

• •Pair discuss issue (refine interpretations) •Afterwards, participant returns to the task

CI Stages: #4 Wrap-up

• Skim back through your notes; summarize what you have learned

• Validate your ideas

• Understand customer’s fit within the organization

Principles of Contextual Inquiry

Principles of Contextual Inquiry

• 1. Context: Understand the user’s work in a situated, real-world environment

• 2. Partnership: Develop rapport and a joint approach to design w/ user

• 3. Interpretation: Develop meaning and validate your observations w/ user

• 4. Focus: Develop a topic range and maintain a clear focus

Things to Avoid When Conducting a CI!

Don’t be Afraid of Being Too Nosy

• Don’t be too polite!

• If you are curious, ask right away.

• If you ask later, it might be too late; the participant may already have forgotten about it.

• If you don’t know, don’t guess.

Don’t Disrupt the Task

• Keep in mind the task is work.• Good times not to ask questions:

• Phone conversations • Operating machinery• Remembering data or process

• Think about asking people to take regularly scheduled discussion breaks.

Retrospective Contextual Inquiry

• Retrospective methods can be a nice if you can’t interrupt, process is intermittent, or you can’t observe it

• Tape / record task and have them view it• Focus on the past; not future

• User brings relevant documents and objects• Step through process• Repeatedly query them about what happened

in between the steps they recall / viewed

Respect the Participant

• Be sensitive to cues from participant.

• Remember: they are the expert at what they do.

• Recognize and respect the time and effort they are spending to participate.

• Respect boundaries participant sets.

Interview the right person

• You want to interview the person who is directly involved in the task you want to study.

• It is also helpful to interview someone who is positive about the task at hand, and about participating in a CI.

Interviewing Users

Buy this book!

Slides adapted from Lisa Anthony, Ravi Kuber, Lauren Serota, Amy Hurst

Avoid leading questionsAvoid questions that suggest or “leads” the user to the answer or

contains the information the examiner is looking for.

Spot the leading questions"Do you agree that we need to save the whales?”“What do you think about the state of the whales?”

“How would this software improve your commute?”“Would this software impact your commute?”

“What impressions did you have about the interface?”“What was your favorite feature in the interface?”

Avoid leading questions

Think of a question you are going to ask your participants about your interface

Try writing it in two different ways:– Ask the question in a neutral way– Prime the user to give a positive (or negative)

answer?

How to avoid leading questions

Try and stay away from “yes/no” questionsInstead, ask questions that encourage users to use

their own words and think

Be careful not to give away your opinions, or study goals in questions.

Instead, stay neutral. Ideally, the participant shouldn’t realize you had anything to do with the design of the system.

Focus Groups

Why focus groups

• Create a “design team”• Empower participants to engage with

creative ideas• Find commonalities, trigger memories of focus

group members– “Oh yeah, I’ve had that experience too…”

• Can be more time efficient than interviews (but usually isn’t)

Why focus groups are hard

• One person dominates conversation

• Shy participants hesitant to engage

• Run out of things to talk about

Why focus groups are hard

• One person dominates conversation

• Shy participants hesitant to engage

• Run out of things to talk about

• Turn taking, sub-teams, ask focused questions to everyone

• Structured meetings (“today we’ll talk about riding the bus”)

Structured activities

• Give focus group participants concrete activities to work through

• Some tools exist for generating creative ideas (e.g. IDEO Method Cards) … we’ll discuss more next week

Cultural probes

• A way to gather more about individuals’ lived experience– Can be a kind of extended diary study

• Create structured activities in which participants gather data about their own experiences

The cultural probe package

For next week

AssignmentReadings

Assignment

• Gather data about your target users, and create realistic personas– Make preliminary connections with user groups

• Understand how / where they are performing similar tasks without this amazing futuristic technology

Describe Task and Environment

• In 100-150 words describe how your users are currently doing these task.

• If they are not currently doing these tasks, explain why you think they will be motivated to do these tasks in the future

• In 100 words describe where they are currently doing these tasks, or future locations you think they would want to

Personas and variables

• Develop at least 3 personas that represent your target users

• These personas should highlight at least 5 important variables that relate to their interest in technology

• You choose which variables are most relevant to this domain

• Personas should highlight how these people differ across these variables

• Include name and picture for each persona

Describe your methods

• In 100-200 words describe how you gathered this data

• What pre-existing resources did you use?• Did you interact with humans? If so, what did

you do? • At this point, I discourage interviews or focus

groups and encourage trying a contextual inquiry

In-Class Activity

• Finalize groups• P2 idea feedback• Make a plan for creating personas

– Who to talk to?