User Centred Design

Sept 16, 2016

Announcement

Fall 2016 COMP 3020

• September 21: last day for registration revision

• You’ll be put at the bottom of waitlists for this course if you withdraw after this date

A1 Consistency Example

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Questions?

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Overview of Today’s Lecture

• Principles of User-Centered Design

• (Possibly) Users and Requirements

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“Know your user!”

Fall 2016 COMP 3020

“Know your user!”

Fall 2016 COMP 3020

Principles of User-Centered Design

Users and their goals should influence design

Design should not just be influenced technology

Focus on users and their tasks right from the beginning

Iterative design and evaluation

Users are consulted throughout the process and their feedback is fed back into the design

Fall 2016 COMP 3020

User-Centered Design Process

Get started in a proven/promising track

Prevents “designer’s block”

Helps us to communicate with others

More reliable than intuition

Forces us to iterate

Helps to keep the users first

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User-Centered Design Process

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Stage GoalsLearn about stakeholders

Discover goals and needs

How is it done now?

What is wanted?

What else has been tried?

Generate lots of ideas

Grasp issues and potential solutions

Produce something tangible

Identify challenges

Uncover subtletiesDiscover problems

Assess progress

Determine next steps

Build final product

Ramp up marketing,

support, and maintenance

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Investigate

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Investigation Questions

Identify users

Identify stakeholders

What are the requirements?

How do they do it now?

How long does it take?

What do they want?

What do they need?

What have they already tried?

Is there another solution?Fall 2016 COMP 3020

Investigation Methods

Interviews

Focus groups

User surveys

…

[more on this later]

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ideate

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Ideation -> Idea Generation

“To get good ideas…

Get lots of ideas”

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Ideation

One of the worst things: go with the first one you have

You can always come back to it later

Volume matters the most

Increase chance of success by considering a huge volume of ideas in a systematic wayFall 2016 COMP 3020

Ideation Methods

Structured brainstorming

Sketching

Affinity diagramming

Card sorting

Personas

Role-playing, play-acting

[more later]

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prototype

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Why prototype?

It’s cheap and fast

Easier for users to react to concrete things rather than abstract concepts

Prototyping brings subtleties and nuances to light

Working against some technical constraints is goodFall 2016 COMP 3020

Prototyping Techniques

Paper prototypes

Screenshots

Flip books

Video mock-ups

Hyperlink prototypes

Functional prototypes

[more later]

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Prototyping Fundamentals

Build it fast

Concentrate on unknowns

Don’t be attached to them

easy to throw away

Build multiple concurrently

easier to compare pros/cons

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Evaluate

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Why Evaluation?

What is wrong with automated software testing?

Automated processes can find bugs, but not usability issues

Evaluation gives you a way to move forward

What needs to be fixed, added, removed?

Answers to two questions:

Did we build the right thing?

Did we build the thing right?

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Evaluation Methods

Usability testing

Laboratory experiments

Real-world deployments

Heuristic evaluation

[more on this in the coming weeks]

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Evaluation Drives Iteration

Problem: usefulness/appropriateness

Return to investigation phase

Problem: users don’t understand

Return to ideation phase

Problem: user performance

Return to prototyping phase

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Produce

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Production

These are steps required to go from functional prototype to release candidate

Software architectureProgramming, buildingManufacturingHelp systemsManualsTrainingCustomer supportMarketingBrandingDistribution

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Today’s Messages

Design starts with understanding your user, and should keep users’ interests central through entire process

Design is iterative -> trade-offs are difficult to see in advance

Designs are never “perfect” -> they can be improved

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Who are Your Users?

People who directly interact with the product/application to accomplish a task

But is that it?

Others

Those who manage direct users

Those who receive products from the system

Those who maintain the system

Those who make purchasing decisions

Competitors

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Categories of Users

The large number of people who all have an interest in the design are referred to as stakeholders

Three categories:

1. Primary: frequent hands-on users

2. Secondary: occasional users

3. Tertiary: affected by introduction of system or influence its purchase

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Types of users and factors influencing decisions

User factors affect the development process :

Age: reduce number of tasks, simplified interface

Disabilities: larger buttons, sound cues

Gender: spatial vs. temporal relations

Culture: icons, color

Experience

Three types of experience:

Novices: highly visible functions, restricted set of tasks, tutorials to more complex tasks

Intermediate: reminders and tips, interface facilitates advanced tasks

Experts: shortcuts visible functions, restricted set of tasks, for efficiency, customizable interface

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Activity

Who are the stakeholders for a check-out system at a large grocery store?

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Activity

Check out operators:

primary users: they interact with the system daily

Customers:

tertiary users: they want it to work properly

Managers and owners:

secondary or tertiary users: they may occasionally interact with the system but mostly concerned about satisfied customers, safety and good functionality of system

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Activity

Who are the primary users and stakeholders of the following systems:

an electronic calendar or diary for yourself. You might use this system to plan your time, record meetings and appointments, mark down people’s birthdays, and so on.

an online personal banking system for yourself. You might use this system to check balances, transfer between accounts, pay bills, and so on.

a program for your Comp 3020 prof that will allow him to keep track of student grades, print records, tally up scores, e-mail grades, etc.

Fall 2016 COMP 3020

Activity

The user of such a system is yourself. However, the stakeholders could be people you make appointments with, people whose birthdays you remember, etc…

The user of such a system is yourself, your spouse or anyone else you share your finances with. The stakeholders could be the banking institution, your family, lenders, etc…

Comp 3020 prof and other profs later on. Stakeholders are Comp 3020 students, department, faculty, university

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Requirements

“A statement about a product that specifies what it should do or how it should perform”

The goal is to gather a set of requirements that

Are as clear as possible

Developers will not necessarily be HCI specialists

We can tell when they have been satisfied, or properly considered

Often if you can’t tell when a requirement is satisfied/considered, it is too vague/abstract

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Requirements

5 primary types:

1. Functional

2. Data

3. Environmental / Context of Use

4. User characteristics

5. Usability

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Types of Requirements

Functional

What a product should do

E.g.,

The system should give users access to their cash if they use their debit card

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Types of RequirementsData

What kinds of data need to be stored

E.g.

The system will need to access clients records from the bank to determine if there is sufficient funds

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Types of RequirementsEnvironmental requirements/context of use:

Circumstances in which the product will be expected to operate

physical environment, social environment, organizational environment, technical environment

E.g.,

Users will use the system while being in a rush

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Types of Requirements

User characteristics: What are the requirements imposed by the user group?User Characteristics: ability, background, attitude to computersSystem use: novice, expert, casual, frequentE.g., users will be 15 and older

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Types of RequirementsUsability:

What is required to make the system usable?

Should capture the usability goals and associated measures for a particular product, i.e. learnability, memorability, safety

E.g. easy to learn?

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