HCI 510 : HCI Methods I User Needs. HCI 510: HCI Methods I Norman’s Assignment Stuff we missed from last week Interactive Touch Screen Technology - Example

HCI 510 : HCI Methods I• User Needs

HCI 510: HCI Methods I

• Norman’s Assignment

• Stuff we missed from last week

• Interactive Touch Screen Technology - Example

• Participatory Design – Introduction

• Participatory Design – Process– Affinity Diagramming

• Participatory Design – Methods








NORMAN’S Assignment

Think like a usability engineer. Select an object from your home.

Analyse it as a usability engineer would.Not the whole object …Just one or two functions.

How do you determine what actions are available at any moment with this object ?

How is feedback provided ?

What is the conceptual model of the system ?

What are the affordances of the object ?

Due on February 9th 2010








HCI 510: HCI Methods I (Last Week)

• User Centered Design - Introduction

• Usability

• User Centered Design - Process

• User Centered Design - Methods

• User Centered Design – Questions

• Affordances

• Norman’s Principles of User Centered Design

User Centered Design - Process


1. Specify the context of useIdentify the people who will use the product, what they will use it for, and under what conditions they will use it. 2. Specify requirementsIdentify any business requirements or user goals that must be met for the product to be successful.


3. Create design solutionsThis part of the process may be done in stages, building from a rough concept to a complete design.

4. Evaluate designsThe most important part of this process is that evaluation - ideally through usability testing with actual users - is as integral as quality testing is to good software development.


A Typical User Centered Design Methodology

Most user-centered design methodologies are detailed in suggesting specific activities, and the time within a process when they should be completed. The following shows a typical UCD process.

In this version, the UCD activities are broken down into four phases:

1. Analysis, 2. Design, 3. Implementation and 4. Deployment,



1. Analysis Phase

• Meet with key stakeholders to set vision• Include usability tasks in the project plan• Assemble a multidisciplinary team to ensure complete expertise• Develop usability goals and objectives• Conduct field studies• Look at competitive products• Create user profiles• Develop a task analysis• Document user scenarios• Document user performance requirements



2. Design Phase

• Begin to brainstorm design concepts and metaphors• Develop screen flow and navigation model• Do walkthroughs of design concepts• Begin design with paper and pencil• Create low-fidelity prototypes• Conduct usability testing on low-fidelity prototypes• Create high-fidelity detailed design• Do usability testing again• Document standards and guidelines• Create a design specification



3. Implementation Phase

• Do ongoing heuristic evaluations• Work closely with delivery team as design is implemented• Conduct usability testing as soon as possible

4. Deployment Phase

• Use surveys to get user feedback• Conduct field studies to get info about actual use• Check objectives using usability testing

You may notice that “usability testing” appears several times throughout the process, from the first phase to the last.

Providing a positive user experience is an ongoing process.

HCI 510: HCI Methods I (Last Week)

• User Centered Design - Introduction

• Usability

• User Centered Design - Process

• User Centered Design - Methods

• Affordances

• Norman’s Principles of User Centered Design

User Centered Design - Methods

USERS

It is necessary to think carefully about who is a user and how to involve users in the design process.

Obviously users are the people who will use the final product or artifact to accomplish a task or goal.

But there are other users as well.

The people who manage the users have needs and expectations too.

What about those persons who are affected in some way by the use of the artifact or use the products and/or services of the artifact?

Shouldn’t their needs and expectations be taken into consideration in the design process?


USERS

Eason identified three types of users: primary, secondary, and tertiary.

Primary users are those persons who actually use the artifact;

Secondary users are those who will occasionally use the artifact or those who use it through an intermediary;

Tertiary users are persons who will be affected by the use of the artifact or make decisions about its purchase.

The successful design of a product must take into account the wide range of stakeholders of the artifact.

Not everyone who is a stakeholder needs to be represented on a design team, but the effect of the artifact on them must be considered.


Background Interviews and Questionnaires:Collecting data related to the needs and expectations of users; evaluation of design alternatives, prototypes and the final artifact at the beginning of the design project.

Sequence of Work Interviews and Questionnaires:Collecting data related to the sequence of work to be performed with the artifact early in the design cycle.

Focus Groups:Include a wide range of stakeholders to discuss issues, share their thoughts, feelings, attitudes, ideas, and describe their requirements early in the design cycle. It's often necessary to have an experienced moderator and analyst for a focus group to be effective.

On-Site Observation:Collecting information about the environment and context in which the artifact will be used early in the design cycle.


Participatory Design:Participatory design actively involves users in the design and decision-making processes. This often takes the form of a mini-project to generate prototypes to feed into a project design process. Participatory design sessions require an experienced moderator. This usually occurs early in the design cycle.

Role Playing, Walkthroughs, and Simulations:Evaluation of alternative designs and gaining additional information about user needs and expectations; prototype evaluation. This usually occurs early to mid way through the design cycle

Usability Testing:Collecting quantitative data related to measurable usability criteria in the later stages of the design cycle.

Final Interviews and Questionnaires:Collecting data related to user satisfaction with the artifact in the final stages of the design cycle.


Worksheet 3

The following table lists a range of user centered design techniques.Fill in the cost, output type and sample size for each of these techniques.


Worksheet 3

Interactive Touch Screen Technology









There's been some discussion over the reasons why so many people don't understand touch screen, or "surface" computing, even though research in this area has been going on for years.

As the new owner of the HP TouchSmart, I know that I get it.


The research I've conducted in this area suggests that people will "get-it" only if there is a strong commitment to develop touch-screen "surface" applications through a user-centered, participatory design process. In my view, this should incorporate principles of ethnography, and ensure that usability studies are conducted outside of the lab.

This approach was taken with Intel's Classmate PC. Intel has about 40 ethnographic researchers, and sent many of them to work with students and teachers in classrooms around the world.


Here are some thoughts:

When I try to explain my fascination with developing touch-screen interactive multimedia applications, (interactive whiteboards, multi-touch displays and tables, and the like), many of my friends and family members eyes glaze over. This is particularly true for people I know who are forty-ish or over. Even if you are younger, if you never saw the cool technology demonstrated in the movie Minority Report, or if you have limited experience with video games, or if you haven't came within touching distance of an interactive whiteboard, the concept might be difficult to understand.


The reality?

Even people who have the opportunity to use surface computing technology on large screens do not take full advantage of it. Multi-touch screens are often used as single-touch screens, and interactive whiteboards in classrooms are often serve as expensive projector screens for teacher-controlled PowerPoint presentations.

Most importantly, there are few software developers who understand the surface computing approach, even with the popularity of the iPhone and iPod Touch. Most focus on traditional business-oriented or marketing applications, and have difficulty envisioning scenarios in which surface computing would be a welcome breath of fresh air


More thoughts:

After studying HCI (Human-Computer Interaction), and relating this knowledge to what I know as a psychologist, my hunch is that the "Window Icon Mouse Pointing-device" (WIMP) and keyboard input mind-set is embedded in our brains, to a certain extent. Like driving a car, it is something automatic and expected. This is true for users AND developers.


Think about it. Suppose one day, you were told that you no longer were allowed to control your car by turning on the ignition, steering the wheel, or using your feet to accelerate, slow down, or stop the car! Instead, you needed to learn a new navigation, integration, and control system that involved waving your hands about and perhaps speaking a few commands.

For new drivers who'd never seen a car before, this new system would be user-friendly and intuitive. Perhaps it would be quite easy for 16-year-old kids to wrap their heads around this concept. For most of us, no. Imagine the disasters we would see on our streets and highways!


When we think about how newer technologies are introduced to people, we should keep this in mind.

In my mind, spreading the word about surface computing is not a "if you build it, they will come" phenomenon, like the iPhone. We can't ignore the broader picture.

I believe that it is important that the those involved with studying, developing, or marketing surface computing applications realize that many of us simply have no point of reference other than our experiences with ATMs, airline kiosks, supermarket self-serve lanes, and the like.


Value of ethnographic research:

"Intel looked closely at how students collaborate and move around in classroom environments. The new tablet feature was implemented so that the device would be more conducive to what Intel calls “micromobility”. Intel wants students to be able to carry around Classmate PCs in much the same way that they currently carry around paper and pencil."

Intel's approach uses participatory design and allows the set of applications developed for the Classmate PC to reflect the needs of local students and teachers. Schools from many different countries were included in this study.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuN7Mc0S1TU








Participatory Design

Participatory design (also known as 'Cooperative Design') is an approach to design that attempts to actively involve all stakeholders (e.g. employees, partners, customers, citizens, end users) in the design process to help ensure that the product designed meets their needs and is usable.

The term is used in a variety of fields e.g. software design, urban design, architecture, landscape architecture, human-computer interaction, product design, sustainability, planning or even medicine as a way of creating environments that are more responsive and appropriate to their inhabitants and users cultural, emotional, spiritual and practical needs.

For some, this approach has a political dimension of user empowerment and democratisation.

For others, it is seen as a way of abrogating design responsibility and innovation by designers.

Spinuzzi, C., The Methodology of Participatory Design, Technical Communication, Volume 52, Number 2, pp 163-174, 2005.












As the name implies, the approach is about design--producing artifacts, systems, work organizations, and practical or tacit knowledge.

Participatory design draws on various research methods (such as ethnographic observations, interviews, analysis of artifacts, and sometimes protocol analysis), these methods are always used to iteratively construct the emerging design.

Participatory design's many methods ensure that participants' interpretations are taken into account in the design. These methods are used through the entire research project; the goal is not just to empirically understand the activity, but also to simultaneously envision, shape, and transcend it in ways the users find to be positive.



Participatory design started in Scandinavia through a partnership between academics and trade unions.

Since that time it has worked its way across the Atlantic, becoming an important approach for researchers interested in human-computer interaction, computer-supported cooperative work, and related fields.

Participatory design has undergone many changes - but its core has remained more or less constant.




Pelle Ehn, a primary participant in the UTOPIA project, describes its design philosophy, which they called the tool perspective:

The tool perspective was deeply influenced by the way the design of tools takes place within traditional crafts... new computer-based tools should be designed as an extension of the traditional practical understanding of tools and materials used within a given craft of profession.

Design must therefore be carried out by the common efforts of skilled, experienced users and design professionals.

Users possess the needed practical understanding but lack insight into new technical possibilities.

The designer must understand the specific labor process that uses a tool.

Winograd, T., Bringing Design to Software, Addison-Wesley, 1996


Participatory design attempts to examine the tacit, invisible aspects of human activity; assumes that these aspects can be productively and ethically examined through design partnerships with participants, partnerships in which researcher-designers and participants cooperatively design artifacts, workflow, and work environments; and argues that this partnership must be conducted iteratively so that researcher-designers and participants can develop and refine their understanding of the activity.

The result of the research typically consists of designed artifacts, work arrangements, or work environments.



Participatory design's object of study is the tacit knowledge developed and used by those who work with technologies.

It's important to understand this focus because tacit knowledge, which is typically difficult to formalize and describe, has tended to be ignored by the theory of cognition that has tended to dominate human-computer interaction: information processing cognitive science .



Knowledge is situated in a complex of artifacts, practices, and interactions; it is essentially interpretive, and therefore it cannot be decontextualized and broken into discrete tasks, nor totally described and optimized.

In the constructivist view, participants' knowledge is valorized rather than deprecated, and their perspectives therefore become invaluable when researching their activity and designing new ways to enact that activity.

"Knowing and learning," as Barbara Mirel says, "take place in a dynamic system of people, practices, artifacts, communities, and institutional practices“.

Mirel, B., Applied Constructivism for User Documentation, Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 12:7-49, 1998


Good systems cannot be built by design experts who proceed with only limited input from users.

Even when designers and prospective users have unlimited time for conversation, there are many aspects of a work process—such as how a particular tool is held, or what it is for something to "look right"—that reside in the complex, often tacit, domain of context.

The UTOPIA researchers needed to invent new methods for achieving mutual understanding, so that they could more fully understand the work world of graphics workers.



Requirement specifications and systems descriptions based on information from interviews were not very successful.

Improvements came when we made joint visits to interesting plants, trade shows, and vendors and had discussions with other users; when we dedicated considerably more time to learning from each other, designers from graphics workers and graphics workers from designers; when we started to use design-by-doing methods and descriptions such as mockups and work organization games; and when we started to understand and use traditional tools as a design ideal for computer-based tools.



One goal of participatory design is to preserve tacit knowledge so that technologies can fit into the existing web of tacit knowledge, workflow, and work tools, rather than doing away with them.

In contrast to rationalist studies that assume workers' tasks can be broken down into their components, formalized, and made more efficient, participatory design assumes that tacit knowledge cannot be completely formalized.

The knowledge is too layered and subtle to be fully articulated. That is why action-centered skill has always been learned through experience (on-the-job training, apprenticeships, sports practice, and so forth). Actions work better than words when it comes to learning and communicating these skills.



Greenbaum and Kyng identify four issues for design:

1. The need for designers to take work practice seriously—to see the current ways that work is done as an evolved solution to a complex work situation that the designer only partially understands

2. The fact that we are dealing with human actors, rather than cut-and-dried human factors—systems need to deal with users' concerns, treating them as people, rather than as performers of functions in a defined work role.

3. The idea that work tasks must be seen within their context and are therefore situated actions, whose meaning and effectiveness cannot be evaluated in isolation from the context

4. The recognition that work is fundamentally social, involving extensive cooperation and communication

Greenbaum , J. and Kyng. M., Design at Work. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1991.


Today, some of the concepts of participatory design are becoming standard practice in the computing industry. The emerging common wisdom in the major software-development companies is that it is important to design with the user, rather than to design for the user.

Participatory-design researchers have devised a variety of techniques to facilitate the communication of new technology possibilities to workers—to give the ultimate users insight into what it would be like to work with an envisioned system.

These techniques include the low-fidelity mockups and role-playing activities (as in UTOPIA), as well as technology-aided methods such as the use of quick-and-dirty video animation to simulate the patterns of interaction with a new interface.

Muller, M. and Kuhn, S. (eds). Special Issue on Participatory Design, CACM 36:4, June, 1993.


In a panel at the 1994 Participatory Design Conference, Tom Erickson of Apple Computer set out four dimensions along which participation by users could be measured:

1. Directness of interaction with the designers

2. Length of involvement in the design process

3. Scope of participation in the overall system being designed

4. Degree of control over the design decisions




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAinLaT42xY


www.ted.com

Go to the TED website and watch a few talks – they are all great.

Try and focus on ones related to Design and HCI.

Tim Brown’s one on creativity and play is good, Theo Jansen’s sculptures are pretty awesome. Steve Jobs is interesting. Derek Sivers makes you think differently in just two minutes...


www.ted.com

Pick which ones you like that tell you something about the design process or method.

This could be an abstract thought about how we do things or practical tips to help you design objects.

You can do this assignment for up to two of the talks – 10 points of extra credit for each one.

Due on February 23rd.


www.ted.com

Briefly describe one of the TED talks that you liked.

Why do you think this talks can help in the design process ?

Give a practical example of the ideas from the talk being applied (and not an example that was actually in the talk).

http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_weird_or_just_different.html








Participatory Design Process

Research design Participatory design is still developing and consequently its research design tends to be quite flexible.

For instance, the early Scandinavian work tended to rely on union-sponsored workshops and games involving heavy direct interaction between designers and users, while later work in the U.S. has tended to supplement targeted interaction with less intrusive methods such as observation and artifact analysis.



But three basic stages are present in almost all participatory design research:

• Stage 1: Initial exploration of workIn this stage, designers meet the users and familiarize themselves with the ways in which the users work together. This exploration includes the technologies used, but also includes workflow and work procedures, routines, teamwork, and other aspects of the work.

• Stage 2: Discovery processesIn this stage, designers and users employ various techniques to understand and prioritize work organization and envision the future workplace. This stage allows designers and users to clarify the users' goals and values and to agree on the desired outcome of the project. This stage is often conducted on site or in a conference room, and usually involves several users.

• Stage 3: PrototypingIn this stage, designers and users iteratively shape technological artifacts to fit into the workplace envisioned in Stage 2. Prototyping can be conducted on site or in a lab; involves one or more users; and can be conducted on-the-job if the prototype is a working prototype.



• Stage 1: Initial exploration of work

Since initial exploration tends to involve examining technology use on site, Stage 1 draws from ethnographic methods such as observations, interviews, walkthroughs and organizational visits, and examinations of artifacts.

This stage is typically conducted on site, during the normal work day. In the earlier Scandinavian iterations, this initial exploration tended to be highly interactive and intrusive: the researchers generally aligned themselves with relatively powerful workers' unions that believed in the projects and could insist on the sorts of disruptions caused by walkthroughs and organizational visit.

In North America, unions were much weaker and workers were not in a position to force participation, nor were they terribly interested in such projects. So researchers turned to less intrusive ethnographic and ethnomethodological techniques such as observations and interviews.

Although the methods draw from ethnography, they are oriented toward design as well as description, so they tend to be focused and enacted differently, with more interaction in mind. Much of that interaction takes place during the second stage, in discovery processes.



• Stage 2: Discovery processes

Stage 2 is where researchers and users interact most heavily, and it also typically involves group interactions.

Again, discovery processes tended to be more interactive and intrusive in the earlier Scandinavian iterations than in the later North American iterations, but in all implementations they are more interactive than traditional ethnographies.

Because of participatory design's orientation toward design, the goal is to cooperatively make meaning out of the work rather than to simply describe it.

Methods used during this stage include organizational games, role-playing games, organizational toolkits, workshops, storyboarding, and workflow models and interpretation sessions.



• Stage 3: Prototyping

Finally, this stage involves a variety of techniques for iteratively shaping artifacts. These techniques include mockups, paper prototyping, cooperative prototyping among others.

Finally, and just as importantly, results are disseminated in forms that users can understand and share--a continuation of the "language games" that allow researchers and users to collaborate, and a way to continue to support the empowerment and participation of users.

The tone for this dissemination was set early on, in the UTOPIA project: results were discussed in everyday language in a union publication called Graffiti.

Another example is contextual design's practice of "walking" through affinity diagrams and consolidated models with participants and of providing a room with diagrams and prototypes posted on the walls so that workers, managers, engineers, marketing people, and customers can see the state of the project in progress.









Affinity Diagramming

Affinity Diagramming

Have a Go at Affinity Diagramming

Imagine that Damian has decided to run the rest of this course online …

What issues are there in this for you as ‘users’ ?

Use an affinity Diagramming approach to identify, group and discuss these issues …








Participatory Design Methods

Muller claims that participatory methods occur in the hybrid space between software professionals and end-users.

He has an influential argument that the border or boundary region between two domains – two spaces – is often a region of overlap or hybridity – i.e., a third space that contains an unpredictable and changing combination of attributes of each of the two bordering spaces.

Within this hybrid third space, the old assumptions of both the colonizers and thecolonized are open to question, challenge, reinterpretation, and refutation.

Enhanced knowledge exchange is possible, precisely because of those questions, challenges, reinterpretations, and renegotiations.

These dialogues across differences and – more importantly – within differences are stronger when engaged in by groups, emphasizing not only a shift from assumptions to reflections, but also from individuals to collective.

Muller, M.J., Participatory Design: The Third Space in HCI (revised). In J. Jacko and A. Sears (eds.), Human-Computer Interaction: Development Process. Mahway NJ USA: Erlbaum, 2008




Muller extends the HCI analyses to make an analogy between the concept of two spaces, and the problem of HCI methods to bridge between two spaces – the world of the software professionals, and the world of the end-users.

Each world has its own knowledge and practices; each world has well-defined boundaries.

Movement from one world to the other is known to be difficult.

We can see this difficulty manifested in our elaborate methods for requirements analysis, design, and evaluation – and in the frequent failures to achieve products and services that meet users’ needs and/or are successful in the marketplace.



Traditional scientific practice in HCI has focused on instruments and interventions that can aid in transferring information between the users’ world and the software world.

Most of the traditional methods are relatively one-directional – e.g., we analyze the requirements from the users; we deliver a system to the users; we collect usability data from the users.

While there are many specific practices for performing these operations, relatively few of them involve two-way discussions, and fewer still afford opportunities for the software professionals to be surprised – i.e., to learn something that we didn’t know we needed to know.



Methods Discussed by Muller include :

• Sitings• Workshops• Stories• Photos• Games• Prototypes



Siting

One of the simplest parameters that can be manipulated to influence hybridity is the site of the work. At first, this appears to be a simple issue.

There are usually two approaches to participatory design: 1. Bring the designers to the workplace. 2. Bring the workers to the design room.

When collaborating with users in our design environment (e.g., a meeting space at the company), we can invite a number of users from different plants and learn from hearing them exchange work experiences…

Being in a foreign environment (and with other users), users will tend to take a more general view of things.

When collaborating with users in their work context, users tend to feel more at ease as they are on their home ground – we are the visitors. Tools and environment are physically present and easy to refer to. This makes for a conversation grounded in concrete and specific work experiences.



Workshops

In PD, workshops are usually held to help diverse parties (“stakeholders”) communicate and commit to shared goals, strategies, and outcomes (e.g., analyses, designs, and evaluations, as well as workplace-change objectives).

Workshops are often held at sites that are in a sense neutral – they are not part of the professionals’ workplace, and they are not part of the workers’ workplace.

More importantly, workshops usually introduce novel procedures that are not part ofconventional working practices. These novel procedures take people outside of theirfamiliar knowledge and activities, and must be negotiated and collectively defined bythe participants.

Workshops are thus a kind of hybrid or third space, in which diverse parties communicate in a mutuality of unfamiliarity, and must create shared knowledge and even the procedures for developing those shared knowledge.and new initiatives.



Workshops

The best-known workshop format in PD is the Future Workshop, whose overall framework proceeds through three stages:

• Critiquing the present; • Envisioning the future; • Implementing – moving from the present to the future.

These three activities involve participants in new perspectives on their work, and help todevelop new concepts and new initiatives.



Stories

Stories and storytelling have played a major role in ethnographic work since before there was a field called “HCI”.

Stories in participatory work may function in at least three ways.

• First, they may be used as triggers for conversation, analysis, or feedback.

• Second, they may be told by end-users as part of their contribution to the knowledge required for understanding product or service opportunities and for specifying what products or services should do.

• Third, they may be used by design teams to present their concept of what a designed service or product will do, how it will be used, and what changes will occur as a result.



Photographs

There are many ways to tell stories. One approach that has informed recent PD work is end-user photography.

It can be noted that both (a) taking pictures and (b) organizing pictures into albums are, of course, familiar activities to most people in affluent countries. T

These activities allow end-users to enter into a kind of native ethnography, documenting their own lives.

It is important that the informants themselves (the end-users) control both the camera and the selection of images.

They thus become both authors and subjects of photographic accounts of their activities.



Games

From theory to practice, the concept of games has had an important influence in participatory methods and techniques.

When properly chosen, games can serve as levelers, in at least two ways.

First, games are generally outside of most workers' jobs and tasks. They are therefore less likely to appear to be "owned" by one worker, at the expense of the alienation of the non-owners.

Second,… [PD] games… are likely to be novel to most or all of the participants. Design group members are more likely to learn games at the same rate, without large differences in learning due to rank, authority, or background… This in turn can lead to greater sharing of ideas…

In addition, games… can help groups of people to cohere together [and] communicate better. One of the purposes of games is enjoyment -- of self and others -- and this can both leaven a project and build commitment among project personnel.



Prototypes

Low-tech prototypes may lead to “third space” experiences because they bring people into new relationships with technologies – relationships that are “new” in at least two important ways.

First, the end-users are often being asked to think about technologies or applications that they have not previously experienced.

Second, in participatory work with low-tech prototypes, end-users are being asked to use the low-tech materials to reshape the technologies – a “design-by-doing” approach.

In this way, participatory work with low-tech prototypes involves much more user contribution and user initiative than the more conventional use of “paper prototypes” as surrogates for working systems in usability testing




Next Week

Task .

Read up on all the methods and techniques used in participatory design.

I recommend Spinuzzi’s “The Methodology of Participatory Design” and Muller’s “Participatory Design : The Third Space in HCI”

In class you will be asked to write up a design process for a specific design brief.

You will not be assessed on the design itself but rather on your ability to come up with techniques and methods to involve users in the design process.

Next Week

Task .

Read up on all the methods and techniques.

You should be able to justify the tasks you assign in your design process.

The task will take approximately 20 minutes.

This is NOT an open book test, you are expected to know the methods you are to use.

This task will be worth 20 pointsand it will take place on Feb 16th.

Documents

HCI 510 : HCI Methods I User Needs. HCI 510: HCI Methods I Norman’s Assignment Stuff we missed from last week Interactive Touch Screen Technology - Example