Working with users, part 2

Hall of FameLOS ANGELES PARKING SIGNS

The Original Parking Sign

Visibility

One format

Mapping

Chronological time slots

Cultural Constraints

Colors and Form

Allows for Errors

Contact information

Tied to Technology

The Hall of Fame

Hall of Fame/Shame

Roll-up Headphones

Hall of Fame

Constraints for pulling the headphones out, will allow you to roll the cord up providing good feedback to the users

Since the headphone cord gets wrapped up like a ball it will provide an easy conceptual model for relating the Wheel shape for interacting with it.

Tangled up headphones don't afford immediate affordance to music

Review of main user discussion

“Imaginary Users” - Personas

• Basis– Cluster users by relevant attributes– Identify clusters– Create “realistic” representatives– Force you to consider whether your design is

appropriate

One Persona

• Patricia is a 31 year old accountant for a technical publisher who has used Windows for six years at the office. She is fairly competent and technical. She installs her own software; she reads PC Magazine; she has programmed some Word macros. She has a cable modem for her home PC. She’s never used a Macintosh. “They’re too expensive”, she’ll say, “you can get a quad core PC with 8 GB of RAM for the price of…”

Another Persona• Nelson has been an English professor at

Wartburg since 1975. He’s written several books of poetry and has been using computer word processors since 1980, but has only used two programs, WordPerfect and Microsoft Word. He doesn’t care how computers work; he tends to store all his documents in whatever directory they get put in.

Examples for a specific domain28 year old single woman with no children. Works full time.

Didn’t go to college. Uses the internet sparingly to email family and friends. She attends movie theaters proximately 3 or 4 times a year. She rents however at least one every other week.

For this user she is more concerned about getting a good value and a good quality price because money is important to her. On the other hand she wants a movie that she can relate to or enjoy.  

When she is looking for a movie she wants to see the ratings that critics have giving the movie, a brief description of the movie, so she can have some idea what it is about. Finally, who is in the movie because there are some actors/actresses that she finds completely repulsive.

Examples for a specific domainA 65 year old grandmother of 13. She works taking care of the house

and feeding her family. She is married to a farmer and finds ways to help out in her spare time. She is also an avid church attendant who likes to be involved with her community. She finds herself using the internet to buy things online for her grandchildren. She also uses MSN to keep in touch with her family.

When it comes to movies this user and her husband would rather go to a theater. She is interested in movies with a good plot. She is open to new ideas and also like to see many different varieties of films. Content is somewhat important but she prefers not to view anything with too much violence. Cost is also important, but not the deciding factor. She would like to attend more drive in movies theatres.

Different types of users

• Characteristics – ability, background, attitude towards computers

• System use

• Novices

• First-time users

• Knowledgeable but infrequent

• Experts

• Job role – e.g., nurse, physician, medical-record maintainer, database administrator

Novices / First-timers

• Novices– Little task or interface knowledge

• First-time users– Knowledgeable about the task, but not the interface

• Goal – get the job done• Design approach

– Step-by-step prompting– Constrained action– Clear procedures– Error recovery– Feedback is crucial

Knowledgeable but infrequent

• They know the task and interface concepts in general, but may find it difficult to remember interface details

• Design approach – Well-designed menus– Consistency, e.g. of terminology– Recognition over recall

Experts

• Power users

• Design approach– Speed is a key – quick responses– Shortcuts– Feedback should be brief and non-distracting– Support for user-defined macros

It’s not just users that differ, it’salso their work contexts

• Physical: dusty? noisy? vibration? light? heat? humidity? hands free?

• Social: sharing of files, of displays, in paper, across great distances, work individually, privacy for clients

• Organizational: hierarchy, IT department’s attitude, user support, communications structure and infrastructure, availability of training

Selecting users to work with

• Brainstorm a preliminary list

• Create a user – task matrix– These tasks are your initial, high-level ideas of

what users are trying to accomplish– Think of what types of users would do each

task

Example User-Task MatrixUsers Query by

PatientUpdate Data

Query Across Patients

Add Relations

Evaluate System

Nurse X X

Physician X X

Appointment Personnel

X

Medical-record maintainer

X X X X

DB Programmer

X X X

Narrowing the list

• Discuss your assumptions

• What do you want to know?– How users define themselves (jobs, tasks,

mental models)– How they differ– How they will use the products over time

Moving on

OK, how do you gather data from users?

• Questionnaires

• Interviews– Workshops / Focus Groups

• Observations

• Studying Documentation

• Participatory Design

Questionnaires• A series of questions designed to elicit specific

information • Questions may require different kinds of

answers: • YES/NO; choice of pre-supplied answers; comment

• Often used in conjunction with other techniques• Can give quantitative or qualitative data• Good for answering specific questions from a

large, dispersed group of people• But you need to know what questions to ask –

design is crucial

Interviews• Forum for talking to people • Structured, unstructured or semi-structured • Props, e.g. sample use scenarios, prototypes,

can help• Good for exploring issues • But are time consuming and may be

infeasible to visit everyone

Workshops / Focus Groups

• Group interviews • Good at gaining a consensus view and/or

highlighting areas of conflict

Observation• Spend time with stakeholders in their day-

to-day tasks, observing work as it happens• Gain insights into stakeholders’ tasks • Good for understanding the nature and

context of the tasks• But it requires time and commitment

from a member of the design team, and it can result in a huge amount of data

Studying Documentation

• Procedures and rules are often written down in manuals

• Good source of data about the steps involved in an activity, and any regulations governing a task

• Not to be used in isolation• Good for understanding legislation, and getting

background information• No stakeholder time, which is a limiting factor for

the other techniques

Choosing between techniques

• Data gathering techniques differ in two ways:• Amount of time, level of detail, and risk associated

with the findings• Knowledge the analyst requires

• The choice of technique is also affected by the kind of task to be studied• Sequential steps or overlapping series of subtasks?• High or low, complex or simple information?• Task for a layman or a skilled practitioner?

Comparing techniquesTechnique Good for Kind of data Advantages Disadvantages

Question-naires

Answering specific questions

Quantitative and qualitative

Can reach many people with little effort.

Design is crucial. Response rate may be low.

Interviews Exploring issues

Mostly qualitative Interviewer can guide user. Encourages user/ designer interaction.

Time consuming. Artificial setting may intimidate user.

Focus groups Collecting multiple viewpoints

Mostly qualitative Highlights areas of consensus and conflict. Encourages user/designer interaction.

Possibility of dominant characters.

Observation Understanding context of user activity

Qualitative Observing actual work gives insights that other techniques can’t.

Very time consuming. Huge amounts of data.

• OK, instead of just learning from users, what if they are brought into the design team?

Participatory Design

• End users become partners in the design team • Developed in Scandinavia• Two motivations

– Data gathering is imperfect, so designers can’t get to know users well enough to resolve all issues that come up during the design process Better communication and sharing of knowledge will lead to better designs

– Workplace democracy• Protect workers’ rights, allow their voices to be heard• Preserve the quality of their work

• When applied in the USA, the second motivation has been de-emphasized

The PD process

• Users become first-class members of the design team– Active collaborators in all phases, not just

passive participants or data providers

• Users are the subject matter experts• Iterative process – try designs, modify• Workshops• Mockups / LoFi prototypes

We’ll talk about these starting next week

PD upsides

• End users are excellent at providing feedback on proposed designs– Designs are concrete and visible, great “objects to think

with”

• Users bring important “folk” knowledge of their work context– They know more than they can say… so designers

probably won’t get access to this information otherwise

• Often leads to greater buy-in for the final system

PD downsides

• Hard to get users who can be full members of the team– They have full-time jobs, and this isn’t it

• Users aren’t expert designers– While everyone has a contribution to make, producing

designs isn’t one end users should be expected to make

• Users aren’t always right– Don’t expect users to know what they want or

whether/how they could use new technologies

Exercise

• Consider the general task of voting– A voter chooses one (or more) candidate from a

set of candidates for a particular office– In a given election, voters may have to make

choices for multiple offices

Exercise – Part 1

• Consider users– Who are they?– What are relevant user characteristics?

• Result write personas describing two users

Some example users

• Voter

• Poll worker

• Vote counter

• Party official / candidate representative

Next Steps

• Project– User visit plan

• Reading– If not finished yet, read TCUID chs. 1 and 2