Needs Need finding

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Needs Need finding

• John C. Tang
• August 30, 2007

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Pop quiz!

• How do you pronounce my last name?
• Where did I graduate from?
• Anyone want to share what else they found by
  Googling me?

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Class admittance

• Everyone who submitted a course petition last
  time is in!
• If you havent submitted a petition, do so today
• Dont worry about which discussion section you
  registered for (but be consistent)

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Grading

• 10 class participation
• Attendance plus contribution in discussion
  section
• 20 individual assignments
• 20 midterm
• 50 group final project
• Fair (not easy) grader

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Assignments

• Due at beginning of class
• Hardcopy
• 2 copies (one original, one black white copy
  ok)
• At top of every assignment
• Name
• CS 160
• Date

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Today

• Share stories of noticing (un)design
• Need finding
• Contextual Inquiry
• Variation Contextual Interview
• Assignment
• Please ask questions / add insights along the way

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Noticing (un)design

• What designs or un-designs did you become aware
  of?
• What bugs you about it?
• How could it be improved?

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I hate opening these!
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Design process
Modified from Preece, Rogers, and Sharp,
Interaction Design
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The Waterfall Model of the Software Life-Cycle
Requirements Specification
Architectural Design
Detailed Design
Implementation and Unit Testing
Integration and Testing
Operation and Maintenance
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Design process
Modified from Preece, Rogers, and Sharp,
Interaction Design
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Needs and need-finding

• Identifying users needs
• Latent needs, root causes
• Not wants, symptoms, bugs
• Techniques for eliciting and interpreting users
  needs
• Interviews
• Direct Observation
• Needs belong to people (not entities)

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Avoiding three common mistakes

• The first of hopefully many ways this class helps
  you think differently

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Building without a need
DESIGN
IMPLEMENT
EVALUATE
Usable vs. useful
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Usability vs. usefulness

• Usability how easy user interfaces are to use
• Usefulness whether the system can be used to
  achieve some desired goal
• Jakob Nielsen

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Trial and error innovation
NEEDS
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Designing for me
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Identify needs to avoid these mistakes

• Building without a need
• Trial and error innovation
• Designing for me

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Tools for need-finding

• Market research/competitive analysis
• Identifying gaps in the current market
• Identifying gaps in competitors offerings
• Business perspective, customer (rather than user)
  focus
• Team with business folks
• Interviewing prospective users
• Direct observation

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Whats an unfulfilled need you have?

• Not wants
• Not symptoms
• Not solutions
• Needs verbs
• Solutions nouns

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What if I followed you around for a day?

• I might discover that what you really need is
• Better way to manage your schedule
• More sleep
• To communicate with your family more often!

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Asking vs. Observing

• Some of the best designs are unnoticeable
• Norman examples
• Some work-arounds become invisible
• Observing helps you see what, but often need to
  ask to understand why
• Asking and observing are complementary
• Immersion leads to direct observation and better
  interviews

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Collecting user data

• Mostly common sense!
• But only common sense after youve done a few
  examples
• Presenting ideal, taking shortcuts for the class
• Other useful resources
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Contextual_design

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Contextual Inquiry

• Field interviews are conducted with users in
  their workplaces while they work, observing and
  inquiring into the structure of the users own
  work practice. This ensures that the team
  captures the real business practice and daily
  activities of the people the system is to
  support, not just the self-reported practice or
  official policies.
• -- Holtzblatt, Wendell, Wood
• Rapid Contextual Design, 2005

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Contextual Inquiry

• Hybrid approach
• Involves direct observation
• Involves interviewing to elicit more details

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Subject vs. Participant?

• In traditional science, subjects are
  subjected to experiments and research to help
  the researcher develop understanding
• In direct observation-oriented design,
  participants participate in helping the
  researcher develop understanding

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Your relationship to the subject

• In a scientist/subject relationship
• Scientist does controlled actions or asks
  questions
• Subject responds in some way
• Scientist collects data, goes back to their
  office, and analyzes the data to understand the
  subject

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Your relationship to the interviewee

• In an interview relationship
• Interviewer asks a question
• Interviewee responds immediately
• As soon as there is a pause, the interviewer
  asks another question from the list, repeat until
  done

Great if you know what questions to ask in
advance.
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Your relationship to the master

• In a master/apprentice relationship
• Master is doing stuff
• Master explains what theyre doing to the
  apprentice
• Apprentice asks clarification question, master
  answers and continues doing, repeat until
  apprentice can do it
  
• This relationship is at the heart
  of contextual inquiry

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Your relationship to the participant

• In a CI researcher/participant relationship
• Participant is doing stuff
• Participant explains what theyre doing to the
  researcher
• Researcher asks a clarification question, the
  participant answers, keeps doing
• Researchers goal is to develop
  understanding
• of what the participant is doing
• in partnership with participant

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Not quite a master/apprentice relationship

• Researchers goal is not to learn to do the task
• Instead, goal is to learn how the participant
  does the task, to learn how to support it
• And to enlist the participants active
  assistance in understanding the task

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Partnership

• In Contextual Inquiry, the researcher and the
  participant are partners
• Participant knows their process better than the
  researcher
• Researcher has the distance to see patterns and
  important features in the participants process
  and practice
• Researcher needs to partner with participant for
  rich understanding

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Direct Observation

• Observe participants engaged in the desired
  activity
• In the typical context of that activity
• In a manner that allows you to partner with them
  to elicit more rich details about the process

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Participant Observation

• Doing the activity along with the participant
• First-hand experience
• May require acquiring domain knowledge
• Actively engaged, and allows questions along the
  way
• May be harder to take notes

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Passively observe

• Some activities dont afford involvement by the
  researcher
• Solitary
• Remote
• Time-shifted
• Less disruptive
• May miss some details
• May require follow-up to ask questions
• Perhaps augmented via technology

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Asking questions

• Confirming understanding
• How do they feel about
• What is frustrating them about
• How they compare one thing with an other
• Why did they just do that? (but try to phrase
  without Why)

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Asking open-ended questions

• Confirming understanding
• Did you just delete all your messages?
• How do they feel about
• How do you like the organization and colors of
  this interface?
• What is frustrating them about
• It looks like you cant do something, what are
  you trying to do?
• How they compare one thing with an other
• What are the reasons you prefer searching rather
  than foldering?
• Why did they just do that? (but try to phrase
  without Why)
• It looks like you just deleted 10 messages, what
  was the reason for doing that?

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Avoid asking about

• Predicting what they would do / like / want
• Imagining a hypothetical scenario
• Whether they would like a certain feature or
  product
• Estimating how often they do things

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Decide how youre going to record the inquiry

• Written notes
• Audio record
• Pictures
• Video
• Usage logs
• An additional observer
• Combination of methods
• Privacy and informed consent (more later)

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Good method only part of the answer!

• Good participants
• Good setting
• Good timing
• Flexibility

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Good participants

• Screen participants youre targeting
• List attributes youre looking for
• Wouldnt go to a senior center to study facebook
• Can learn from why people arent good subjects
• Some people tell you what they think you want to
  hear
• Some people tell you more than you want to hear!

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Good settings

• In situ Latin phrase for in the place
• Location and circumstances where they will engage
  in the desired activity
• Relaxed, natural, no distractions
• Dissuade interruptions (cell phones)
• Avoid potential for social pressures
• Largely driven by the activity

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Good timing

• Avoiding hectic times
• Sometimes can schedule during times of high
  concentrations of activity
• Respect the schedule
• State duration in advance
• Stick to it (unless they give permission)
• Honor scheduled appointments

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Flexibility

• Follow the participants where they lead
• The participant who didnt use it
• Then proceeded to explain why she didnt use it
• Not every participant will be useful

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Contextual Inquiry example

• Say you want to design an on-line dating service
• You want to improve the process of finding dates
• Its a social networking topic
• Its a topic where people act very differently
  than they say they act
• Hopefully fun (without offending anyone)

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Picking people to observe

• People who find dates very easily (expert)
• People who have a hard time finding dates
  (problem child)
• People who have never been on a date before
  (novice)
• People who said yes when you asked them
• Availability is not a skill

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Picking a place

• Senior Center?
• Bar?
• Dorm dances / frat parties?
• Student Union?
• Perhaps best informed by your participant

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Whens a good time to observe

• Finals week?
• Spring break?
• Weekend

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How are you going to observe

• Participant Observation
• Make it a double date
• Informed consent less of an issue
• Passively observe with follow-up
• But if Jim is successful, it might be hard to
  follow-up with him for a while!
• How would you get informed consent?
• Have Jim explain the situation
• Inform afterwards
• Limit data collected on others

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How are you going to record it?

• Written notes? Could be awkward
• Audio record? Maybe in just momentary dictations
• Pictures? Perhaps you could work a few in as a
  double date with a cameraphone
• Video? Thats a (bad) reality TV show
• This inquiry may rely heavily on your own memory
  and reconstruction

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Actually observing

• Picked the person, Jim
• Picked the place, the Albatross Pub
• Picked the time, Labor Day weekend
• How will you understand how Jim gets a date?

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The interviewer says

• Why not just ask Jim how he gets dates?
• But Jim might not entirely know
• When he summarizes it for you,
• he might not remember vital details
• he might gloss over important difficulties
• he might forget time he met someone after an
  embarrassing slip and fall in the bathroom
• he might be making it all up
• Indirect memories are filtered

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The experimental psychologist says

• Why not design a test for finding dates under
  different conditions in a lab?
• But what if the lab task omits important
  features of the actual real-world situation?
• Like the jerk also competing for a date?
• Or the range of candidates in the pub?
• Or the influence of alchohol?

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In a Contextual Inquiry

• If youre studying dating behavior, go to the
  local dating scene
• That way youll see what really happens, and how
  people really make decisions.

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Youre at the pub with Jim

• First start with a conventional interview
• Introduce self, explain interview procedure
  (consent, recording, how CIs work)
• Ask Jim to summarize what goal he will be
  working towards during the CI
• Dont take too long on this

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Switch to observation mode

• Researcher should clearly and very explicitly
  end the interview and invite them to proceed with
  their activity
• Important, because if its not completely clear,
  encounter may devolve into a traditional
  interview (this relationship is more familiar to
  people)

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OK

• Now have Jim go about his normal tasks, exactly
  as he would if you werent there pretending to
  look at the menu, scoping the place, trying to
  start conversations, eating, drinking
• As hes doing it, ask him to explain whenever
  its not 100 obvious (or note for later
  follow-up)
• And take lots of notes

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Context

• Even in context, people will drift into
  generalities and abstractions (even fantasies)
• You can bring the user back to the important
  (and often more true) details by drawing their
  attention to concrete objects or events

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Follow-up interview

• Best if prompted with concrete details from
  activity
• Stories from written notes
• Pictures or clips from recordings
• Try to reconstruct how they were feeling at the
  time

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Retrospective CI

• Sometimes want to study an activity that occurs
  intermittently or one you cannot be physically
  present for
• Ask what theyve done in the past, not what they
  would do in the future
• Invite them to bring artifacts, documents from
  the past activity
• Repeatedly query them to probe about what
  happened in between the steps they recall

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Leverage data collection

• Sometimes you can leverage natural or augmented
  data collection
• For example, to study web browsing behavior,
  could review browsing history
• Or, to study mobility paths, could ask them to
  wear an augmented cell phone
• Be careful to protect privacy and
  confidentiality when you do something like this!

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Another perspective

• Variation on Contextual Inquiry that leans more
  towards an interview

(Thanks to Michael Barry for this model)
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Stages of Contextual Interview

• Introduction
• Kickoff
• Build Rapport
• Grand Tour
• Reflection
• Wrap-Up
• Stanford University, Hasso Plattner Institute of
  Design

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Introduction

• Establish an interview partnership
• The informant may be confused as to exactly what
  is happening
• Be direct Why dont we sit down here?, put
  them at ease
• Find a good place for the interview if possible
  arrange comfortable seating, adequate lighting,
  and a low noise - traffic location

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Introduction (2)

• Describe your purpose
• Were going to explore how decisions get made in
  the Emergency Room.
• Outline the interview
• Were going to spend the day with you. Well be
  watching how the organization works, and later
  ask you and your staff some questions.
• Let them know that their knowledge is important
• "I've never been a waiter. It looks pretty hard
  to keep all your customers happy. Can you help me
  understand how you do it

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Kickoff

• Shift the focus to them by having them introduce
  themselves and their lives
• At the end of your introduction, make a clear
  transition over to them
• So maybe the best place to start is to have you
  introduce yourselves and tell us a bit about the
  band
• Clarify with lots of follow-up questions. This
  section helps to get the respondent talking and
  feeling at ease

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Build Rapport

• Most of your time will be spent making a
  connection
• Informants may be defensive initially, providing
  only short answers Oh you know...normal stuff.
  Just like everyone else. No big deal
• Be patient. Continue asking descriptive questions
  to build their confidence and trust.
• Reassure the informant that they are doing okay
  I dont know...is this the kind of thing you
  want to know? Tell them Absolutely, exactly
  what we need

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Grand tour

• Explore the details of their world both physical
  and mental
• Look for critical issues and disconnects
• This may be a walk around a bedroom, factory, or
  device (e.g., mobile phone)
• There is incredible detail in the Grand Tour,
  including things you would never think to ask
  Tell me about the picture in your battery door
• Ask your informant to act out interactions or
  open up hidden areas

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Reflection

• Take a break and review what you have learned,
  then encourage personal insights and discussions
  of why
• After you have spent a good deal of time with the
  informant, they may be more able to offer up
  personal insights, describe their plans, dreams,
  passions, etc.
• Its okay here to offer theories about the
  informant for their evaluation or to ask the
  informant to generate their own theories

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Wrap-up

• Amazing things happen when the interview is over
• At the end of the allotted time, thank them and
  tell them how helpful they have been. Ask them
  for any final thoughts, or if they have any
  questions for you
• The notion that the interview is over often jars
  loose a lot of comments, thoughts, and insights.
  Keep the camera/tape recorder rolling

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Guidelines for Observation

• Cast aside your biases
• Note contradictions between saying and doing
• Listen to personal stories
• Watch for work arounds
• Distinguish solutions vs. needs
• Look beyond the obvious

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How many participants?

• Depends on what youre doing
• Statistical power needs 50
• Richer feedback more like 12
• Intuitive feel / diminishing returns
• When you start hearing similar themes
• When you stop learning new things
• Well be asking for specific numbers, but in
  working world, youll need to decide based on
  experience and constraints (time, )

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Appreciate your participants!

• Some companies hire from temp agencies, paid for
  usability study
• Even token appreciation is helpful
• Lunch vouchers
• Company SWAG
• Early access to technology
• Social status
• What would work here at Berkeley?

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Supplementary methods

• After contextual inquiry
• Better understanding enables forming more focused
  questions
• Adding more breadth
• More time-efficient

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Focus Groups

• Interviews in groups
• Efficient way to collect opinions from more than
  one person
• Diversity can elicit further reactions among
  participants
• Sometimes can leverage natural social groupings
• Can be tricky to schedule

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User surveys

• Once you have a better idea of questions to ask
• Can reach large numbers of people
• Mail, telephone, web survey
• http//www.surveymonkey.com/
• http//info.zoomerang.com/
• Well talk more about this later

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Assignment Idea List (Due Sept. 4)

• List of ideas where technology could improve your
  life
• Initial focus on your needs
• Fixing something frustrating or a new idea
• Focus on social networking needs
• Coordinating with friends
• Awareness of family members
• Collaborating with classmates
• Bullet list with short paragraph
• Looking for volume of ideas!!!

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Idea List example

• Redesign allergy medication packaging
• Id like to redesign the packaging of my allergy
  medication so I can easily take the medication,
  also ensuring that it hasnt been tampered with,
  minimizing wastefulness in packaging, and
  allowing easy transport for when I travel.
• Please turn in 2 copies

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Next time

• Rapid Viz reading (uploaded on web)
• Idea List due
• Sept. 4 meeting in Woz Lounge
• Ill have office hours 130-230 today
• 6th Floor alcove