[HCI] Week 05 Contextual Design Part II

Lecture 5

Contextual Design Part II

Human Computer Interaction/COG3103, 2016 Fall Class hours : Monday 1-3 pm/Wendseday 2-3 pm Lecture room : Widang Hall 209 5th October

CONTEXTUAL ANALYSIS : CONSOLIDATING AND INTERPRETING WORK ACTIVITY DATA

The UX Book Chapter 4

Lecture #5 COG_Human Computer Interaction 2

INTRODUCTION


Figure 4-1 You are here; in the contextual analysis chapter, within understanding user work and needs in the context of the Wheel lifecycle template.

INTRODUCTION

• Contextual Analysis

– Contextual analysis is the systematic analysis—identification, sorting,

organization, interpretation, consolidation, and communication—of the

contextual user work activity data gathered in contextual inquiry, for the

purpose of understanding the work context for a new system to be designed.

• Flow Model

– A flow model is a diagram giving the big picture or overview of work,

emphasizing communication and information flow among work roles and

between work roles and system components within the work practice of an

organization.


INTRODUCTION

• Work Activity Note

– A work activity note is used to document a single point about a single concept,

topic, or issue as synthesized from the raw contextual data. Work activity

notes are stated as simple and succinct declarative points in the user’s

perspective.

• Affinity Diagram

– An affinity diagramming is a hierarchical technique for organizing and

grouping the issues and insights across large quantities of qualitative data and

showing it in a visual display, usually posted on one or more walls of a room.


INTRODUCTION

• Work Activity

– Affinity Diagram A work activity affinity diagram (WAAD) is an affinity diagram

used to sort and organize work activity notes in contextual analysis, pulling

together work activity notes with similarities and common themes to highlight

common work patterns and shared strategies across all users.

• Work Role

– A work role is defined and distinguished by a corresponding job title or work

assignment representing a set of work responsibilities. A work role usually

involves system usage, but some work roles can be external to the

organization being studied.


INTRODUCTION

• Contextual Analysis Is Data Interpretation

– Interpretation of raw work activity data is accomplished through:

• building a flow model and

• synthesizing work activity notes

– Data consolidation and communication are accomplished by, respectively:

• building a work activity affinity diagram (WAAD) from the work activity notes

• walkthroughs of all these work products


INTRODUCTION


Figure 4-2 Data interpretation in contextual analysis.

ORGANIZING CONCEPTS: WORK ROLES AND FLOW MODEL

• Managing Complexity with Work Roles and Flow Models

– We need two things to help control the complexity and wrap our heads around

the problem:

• a big picture of the work domain, its components, and how information flows

among them

• a way to divide the big picture into manageable pieces

– Because these two things are somewhat in opposition and cannot be done by

one single means, we need two complementary concepts to solve the two

parts of the problem, respectively:

• a flow model to provide the big picture

• the concept of work roles as a basis to divide and conquer



• Identify Work Roles as Early as Possible

– a work role is a “collection of responsibilities that accomplish a coherent part of the

work.” The work activities of the enterprise are carried out by individual people who act

in the work roles, performing tasks to carry out the associated responsibilities.

– Example: Initial Work Role Identification in MUTTS

• The two obvious work roles in MUTTS are the ticket seller and ticket buyer.

• The event manager interacts with external event sponsors and venue managers to book

events for which they sell tickets.

• The financial manager is responsible for accounting and credit card issues.

• The advertising manager interacts with outside sponsors to arrange for advertising, for

example, ads printed on the back of tickets, posted on bulletin boards, and on the

Website.



• Start Sketching an Initial Flow Model as Early as Possible

– A flow model is your picture of the work domain, its components and

interconnections among them, and how things get done in that domain.

– A flow model captures workflow relationships among key work roles.

– A flow model tells who does what and how different entities

communicate to get work done.




Figure 4-3 An initial flow model sketch of the MUTTS system.

CREATING AND MANAGING WORK ACTIVITY NOTES

• The main point of contextual analysis has two basic parts:

– Converting raw contextual data into work activity notes

– Converting work activity notes into a work activity affinity diagram

• Transcribing Interview and Observation Recordings

• Reviewing Raw User Work Activity Data



• Synthesizing Work Activity Notes

– As you create each new work activity note, tag it with a source ID, a unique identifier of

the person being observed and/or interviewed when the note was written.

– Paraphrase and synthesize instead of quoting raw data text verbatim.

– Make each work activity note a simple declarative point instead of quoting an

interviewer’s question plus the user’s answer.

– Filter out all noise and fluff; make each note compact and concise, easily read and

understood at a glance.

– Be brief: Keep a note to one to three succinct sentences.

– Each note should contain just one concept, idea, or fact, with possibly one rationale

statement for it. Break a long work activity note into shorter work activity notes.



• Synthesizing Work Activity Notes

– Make each note complete and self-standing.

– Never use an indefinite pronoun, such as “this,” “it,” “they,” or “them”

unless its referent has already been identified in the same note.

– State the work role that a person represents rather than using “he” or

“she.”

– Add words to disambiguate and explain references to pronouns or other

context dependencies.

– Avoid repetition of the same information in multiple places.



• Extending the Anticipated Data Bins to Accommodate Your Work Activity

Note Categories

– Examples of typical data categories you might encounter in your raw data are:

• User and user class information

• Social aspects of work practice (how people interact with and influence each other)

• Emotional impact and long-term phenomenological aspects

• Task-specific information

• Physical work environment

• Design inspiration ideas

• Printing Work Activity Notes


CONSTRUCTING YOUR WORK ACTIVITY AFFINITY DIAGRAM (WAAD)

• What You Need to Get Started

– Here is how you should prepare the room:

• Tape up a large “belt” of butcher paper or similar around the walls of the room

(Curtis et al., 1999) as a working space for posting work activity notes.

• We have found that blue “painter’s tape” holds well but releases later without

pulling off paint.

• Set Rules of the Game

• Avoid Inappropriate Mind-Sets in Dealing with Work Activity Notes

– Sit on your designer and implementer instincts.

– Do not make sweeping decisions involving technology solutions.



• Growing Clusters

• Compartmentalizing Clusters by Work Roles

• Topical Labels for Clusters

• Work Activity Note Groups

• Speeding It Up

• Stay Loose

• Do Not Get Invested in Data Ownership



• Monitoring Note Groups

• Label Colors

• Labeling Groups

• Grouping Groups

• Number of Levels

• Representing Hierarchical and Nonhierarchical Relationships

• Walkthrough of the WAAD: Consolidation and Communication




Figure 4-7 Team studying clusters to form groups.



Figure 4-8 Second-level labels for groups of groups shown in pink.



Figure 4-9 Building a WAAD on a large touchscreen.



Figure 4-10 The WAAD that we built for the MUTTS example.

ABRIDGED CONTEXTUAL ANALYSIS PROCESS


Figure 4-11 A close-up of the MUTTS WAAD.

ABRIDGED CONTEXTUAL ANALYSIS PROCESS

• Plan Ahead during Contextual Inquiry by Capturing One Idea per Note

• Focus on the Essence of WAAD Building

• Use Finer-Grained Iteration to Address Pressure for Early Deliverables


Figure 4-12 Coarse-grained iteration of contextual inquiry, contextual analysis, requirements, and design.

HISTORY OF AFFINITY DIAGRAMS

– “This process exposes and makes concrete common issues, distinctions, work

patterns, and needs without losing individual variation.” (Wood, 2007)

– The original conception of affinity diagrams is attributed to Jiro Kawakita (1982)

in the 1960s.


Figure 4-13 Finer-grained iteration among contextual inquiry, contextual analysis, requirements, and design.

Exercise 4-1: Flow Model Sketch for Your System

• Goal

– Get practice in making an initial flow model sketch for the work practice of an organization.

• Activities:

– For your target system sketch out a flow model diagram, in the same style as our flow model sketch for MUTTS, shown in

Figure 4-3, showing work roles, information flow, information repositories, transactions, etc.

– Draw on your raw work activity data and construct a representation of the flow of data, information, and work artifacts.

Even if there is no existing automated system, you should capture the flow of the manual work process.

– Start with representing your work roles as nodes, add in any other nodes for databases and so on.

– Label communication and flow lines.

– If you do not have enough contextual data from your limited data-gathering exercise, make some up to make this work.

• Deliverables

– A one-page diagram illustrating a high-level flow model for the existing work process of your target system.

• Schedule

– Given the simplicity of the domain, we expect this exercise to take about an hour.


Homework


Finish the Class Exercise 3-1

Complete Flow Model Sketch for

Your System

Finish the Class Exercise 4-1

1 2 3

Your Blog Post #5 - 150 words or fewer

Iterate your concept and flow models - Upload sketches and diagrams

on your pinterest boards - Boards can be divided into a

few such as - Users/Actors - Entities - Context - Benchmark system cases - flow diagrams

Your Blog Post #6 - A one-page Diagram - 5 Benchmark Cases You

may wish to refer

Submission Due : 11: 59 pm Friday 7th October

[HCI] Week 05 Contextual Design Part II

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