From High Tech to Low Energy: Finding the Key to Behavior Change

Susan Mazur-Stommen, ACEEEeSource Meeting, Charlotte, NCApril 11, 2012

Why is your job hard? Products are not designed to solve

problems for the user Products do not enhance the user

experience (UX). Products are designed from a ‘we know

best’ perspective

Constraints Constraints are assumed to be solely

technical or economic in nature. Product generation often comes

externally from competitors internally from other stakeholders

Your job is now either: to create a need for the product, to explain the product

User-Centered Design - Apple ‘Design with the user in mind’

Apple’s strategic vision has successfully transformed the way people interact with, purchase, manage, and store their information and media.

User-centered design is elegant, and EFFICIENT. Focus on user needs allows companies to

avoid costly mis-steps

Google – Engineer-driven design Google is successful in a more brutal

‘bull in the china shop’ sort of way long string of misses to equal (or perhaps

even surpass) the number of hits Google flops when they put out products

without a reason strong-armed users into using Google+ and

users revolted by creating their OWN solutions

Focus on function Not on tech. Focus on user

needs. Focus on desired

functionality. What should it do?

Side-step depending on tech

User Centered Design - What is it?

UCD requires that, “designers test the VALIDITY of their assumptions with regards to consumer behavior in the real world with actual users.”

Products born from a UCD process fold into the user experience (UX) and integrate with the user’s pre-existing complex of behaviors and activities, rather than forcing users to change them to accommodate a new product, service, or process.

“The term ‘user-centered design’ originated in Donald Norman’s research laboratory at the

University of California San Diego (UCSD) in the 1980s” (Abras, Maloney-Krichmar, Preece, 2004)

The basic message is -- if your product needs a manual, it does not have the user’s

needs at its center.

UX FAIL

The path to failure Focus on:

Engineering Is your organization

oriented towards solving technical problems or human needs?

Aesthetics Is there a desire to look

good at the expense of functionality?

Sales Is your approach ‘one-

size’ fits all? Are solutions pushed

regardless of problem?

Leave out: Customer input

Do you have a genuine interest in hearing customer complaints? Is there a belief that

your organization can learn from users?

How can they reach you? Is it easy?

User testing Do you explicitly test

assumptions with users before rolling out products and programs?

Iterative design How do you ‘bake’ what you

learned into next cycle?

Birth of User Centered Design

Profit margins can be swiftly eaten away if customers need to make heavy use of technical support infrastructure

A false sense that appropriate data mining would provide all of the necessary information for product design and development.

“[One] of the design engineers proposed initiating early investigations of consumer behavior and preferences through data mining, pattern matching, and sensor data analysis.

When we suggested ethnography as another important method for gaining insights into users’ preferences and “pain points”, the presenter responded in a rather authoritative manner that fieldwork was appropriate for the later phases of the project when prototypes would be tested on users, but “obviously” not for the first where, he said, the design team would be dealing with "purely technical" issues.

We responded that ethnography is appropriate any time that user and practice data could have an impact on design.”

What is ethnography and how do you use it?

Classical ethnographic methods have been traditionally used by anthropologists, such as: secondary data analysis observing activities of interest recording field-notes participating in activities informal and semi-structured interviewing

Henry Peder Lundsgaarde was an ethnographer working with software developers as far back as the 1970s, when the contributions of ethnography to technical design was seen as highly experimental and theoretical but by the 1980s they were well established within advanced research centers like Xerox PARC.

Since then, the use of ethnography in product design has spread to many, if not most, of the biggest technology and software companies (Microsoft, Intel, Intuit, Cisco)

Ethnography is….• Ethnography is a holistic approach

to the study of cultural systems.• Ethnography is the study of the

socio-cultural contexts, processes, and meanings within cultural systems.

• Ethnography is the study of cultural systems from both emic and etic perspectives.

• Ethnography is a process of discovery, making inferences, and continuing inquiries in an attempt to achieve emic validity.

• Ethnography is an iterative process of learning episodes.

• Ethnography is an open-ended emergent learning process, and not a rigid investigator-controlled experiment.

• Ethnography is a highly flexible and creative process.

• Ethnography is an interpretive, reflexive, and constructivist process.

• Ethnography requires the daily and continuous recording of field-notes.

• Ethnography presents the world of its host population in human contexts of thickly described case studies

The best way to think about ethnographic research, is that:

it tends to generate a lot of data which can be ‘pruned’ to reveal answers through coding

ethnographic data can be laid alongside macro-scale economic/survey type data to seek matches and confirmations of patterns

we are not seeking 'reliability' so much as 'validity' and ‘utility’. we can insert questions on the fly as they come up. one case study should not necessarily replicate another, they should give

us various facets of a phenomenon or set of phenomena: we can pre-refine the data we will be getting through question creation and

sample selection. OR we can let the data take us wherever we will. Much of interest in anthropology has been in finding counter-intuitive

understandings to everyday issues.

How much does it cost and how much can it save you? Ethnographic research can run from 25-300K, it

depends on the nature and complexity of the questions one is asking. The cost of the ethnographic component will be a small slice

of total project development and implementation cost, yet without it, the team may well be working on the wrong design.

Large amounts of money can be saved by not going down the wrong path

Article from Harvard Business School - http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/2514.html

FAQ sheet from ethnographic research firm - http://www.ethnographic-research.com/faq.html

How can UCD help utilities? What problems arise when utilities do not understand how

consumers use/manage products? Customers values, habits, beliefs

Customers do not know how they use energy E.g. turning down the A/C dial to get it ‘cooler faster’ E.g. blaming

Customers do not use energy-saving features

"For many durable consumer goods, it is widely acknowledged that the major part of the environmental impacts is caused during the use phase, in particular through energy consumption...However, the actual demand for energy during the use phase depends also on the way people use a product in daily practice. For instance, energy-saving features only are sustainable if they are actually used by consumers.”

Customer spending and saving Consumers are not rational actors, purely economic incentives often fail

E.g. Peak-time demand response programs

How can UCD help? How can Utilities use User Centered design to enhance their

product offerings? Rates Bill design/complaints Peak load management Rebate participation

How do I do UCD? What steps should utility marketing managers take to implement

user centered design? Test older offerings using ethnographic methods, this can be

an enlightening exercise that is still low-cost, low risk. Go beyond surveys and focus groups to understand the

distinction between attitudes and behavior Sometimes folks perceive ethnographic research and market

research as competitive alternatives when they are, in fact, complementary.

market research is primarily concerned with making business decisions and forecasting the size of the market.

Ethnography is concerned with design decisions that are based on a true understanding of users’ needs.

At the most basic level, UCD is about observing closely, listening deeply, and responding truly.

Be open to what you hear. No one enjoys the feeling that their good ideas and

hard work are being ignored or misunderstood; but often the most vociferous critic has good insights and valid critiques.

If you don’t feel comfortable interacting on this level with random customers (and that’s ok!) hire a pro: investigate a marketing shop that specializes in ethnography.

Example 1 – Pacific EthnographyExample 2 – Tandem Research

http://www.inkblurt.com/2012/02/08/the-path-to-fail/

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/395247/examples-of-usability-disasters

http://rosenfeldmedia.com/uxzeitgeist/lists/threefour/oh-noes-books-about-failure

http://uxfail.org/

http://www.designforusability.org/wp-content/wever-2008-user-centred-design-for-sustainable-behavior.pdf

http://www.imaginecup.com/downloads/GuidelinesForUserCenteredDesign.pdf

http://www.springerlink.com/content/jp26281q33j0t240/

http://www.cusag.umd.edu/documents/WorkingPapers/ClassicalEthnoMethods.pdf

https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#referencelibrary/GettingStarted/RoadMapiOS/HumanInterfaceDesign/RM_iHIG_Station/Fundamentals/Fundamentals.html

References