Thoughts on HCI Requirements Elicitation

Glenn Fink16 Nov 2004

Agenda

• The Projects• What Worked• What Didn’t Work• What’s Hard Work• What I Haven’t Tried (Yet)• Conclusions

The Projects

• AVO HUD• Workload Monitoring Visualization• Network Eye

AVO HUD

Workload Monitoring

Workload Monitoring

Network Eye

Network Eye

What Worked

• Semi-structured interviews– HCI Experts– Domain Experts– Expert Users

• Audio recording, taking notes afterward• Paper and PowerPoint prototypes

What Didn’t Work

• Transcribing audio interviews verbatim• High-fidelity prototypes

– Never meet user expectations– Result in discussion of meaningless features

• Changing the interview protocol during the study– This may not be avoidable in exploratory

studies

What’s Hard Work

• Distilling quantifiable facts from semi-structured interviews

• Making sure users understand low-fidelity prototypes the same way you do

• Written interviews– Requires follow-up live interviews– You may never get the results

What I Haven’t Tried (yet)

• Broad Surveys• Lab-based Studies• Diary Studies• Field studies (tag-along)

Conclusions

• Research is always hard!– It’s relatively easy to:

• Schedule interviews• Take notes• Get a good feeling for the subject

– It’s relatively hard to:• Talk on the same wavelength as your subjects• Distill useful facts from interview notes• Write up your findings coherently