Art Center Interactive Design 4 - #2 Understanding Users
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Understanding Users Art Center Interactive Design 4 | Week 2 | Joy Liu
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Art Center Interactive Design 4 Lecture Slides #2 (week 2) Understanding Users
Transcript of Art Center Interactive Design 4 - #2 Understanding Users
Understanding Users
Art Center Interactive Design 4 | Week 2 | Joy Liu
So… who exactly is going to use your product? and what do we need to know to understand them?
One of usability’s most hard-earned lessons is that ‘you are not the user’.
If you work on a development project, you’re atypical by definition. Design to optimize the user experience for outsiders, not insiders. The antidote to bubble vapor is user testing: find out what representative users need. It’s tempting to work on what’s hot, but to make money, focus on the basics that customers value.
Jakob Nielsen, “Growing a Business Website: Fix the Basics First”, 2006.
by The Oatmeal, http://theoatmeal.com/comics/restaurant_website
Why?
Who?
What?
Where?
When?
How?
The Five Ws and One H
Know your enemy & know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster.
Sun Tzu “The Art of War”
Don’t need to reinvent the wheel.‣ How does the general market feel about this topic? ‣ What are the constraints or cultural impact on this topic? ‣ What are some products that hinder market adoption? ‣ What has been successful for people regarding this topic? ‣ What has been painful for people regarding this topic?
Research Methods tools to help you determine users
1. Survey 2. Interview 3. Ethnographic Research 4. Contextual Inquiry 5. Longitudinal Study
Survey
‣ Large sample set ‣ Quantitative data ‣ Pattern discovery
‣ May be shallow ‣ Need to set up good questions beforehand
Interview
‣ Qualitative data ‣ Insights into thoughts and ideas ‣ In-depth research
‣ Participants may not be diverse enough ‣ May be skewed
Ethnographic Research
‣ “Understand how people live their lives” ‣ Broad range ‣ Observational, nonintrusive
‣ Time consuming ‣ Resource consuming
Contextual Inquiry
‣ Combines observation with interview ‣ “I noticed you did x, can you explain why?”
‣ May be intrusive and take users out of their natural environment
Longitudinal Study (Diary Study)
‣ Users document about their experience in a diary over a period of time
‣ Realistic scenarios, no artificial environment ‣ Post-mortem analysis
‣ Extremely time consuming
“Interviewing isn’t the right approach for every problem. Because it favors depth over sample size, it’s not a source for statistically significant data.”
Steve Portigal, Interviewing Users
Interviewing Users the art of asking questions
“Do you know anyone else I can speak to?”
Ask Good Questions
‣ cannot be answered with yes or no ‣ cannot lead to a dead-end ‣ cannot suggest answers to participants ‣ no trailing ellipsis
Open-Ended vs. Closed Questions
“So do you cook?”
“How do you go about cooking on a weekday?”
Leading Questions
“Look at this page, would you say this feature is better than that one?”
“Is this feature helpful or not helpful to you? Why?”
Intention vs. Behavior
“How many times do you plan to go to the gym?”
“In the last 3 months, how many times did you go to the gym?”
Keep’em Talking!
“Tell me more about that…”
“What do you mean by…”
“Help me understand better…”
Proper Etiquette
‣ Ask permission to record ‣ Be friendly ‣ Avoid interruption (Respect silence and pauses!) ‣ You’re there to gain info, not establish friendship ‣ Right amount of small talk (it’s a conversation!)
Personas externalize your characters
Fictional, archetypal users that lead to different collections of needs and behaviors, which help guide decisions.
It allows the team to keep a vivid image of each user group.
Biographical info Demographics
Behaviors Personality Traits
Needs, Desires, & Goals
Ideal Features, UX Goals
Gears & Equipments
Photo Representation
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‣ Who is John? ‣ What does he look like? ‣ How old is he? ‣ Where does he live? ‣ What does he do for a living? ‣ How much does he make? ‣ What does he use daily? ‣ What does he do for fun? ‣ What does he say? ‣ What is his goals in life? ‣ Why does he need this product? ‣ What is he frustrated about? ‣ What does he dislike?
Persona Example - philosophie.com
Previous student works
‣http://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/personas.html
‣http://www.ux-lady.com/diy-user-personas/
‣http://uxmag.com/articles/using-proto-personas-for-executive-alignment
‣http://www.portigal.com/blog/from-sxsw-diving-deep-best-practices-for-interviewing-users/
‣http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2008/07/preparing-for-user-research-interviews-seven-things-to-remember.php
‣http://www.slideshare.net/edanzico/user-interview-techniques
Resources & Reading
