Subject Name:Human Machine Interaction

Unit No:2 Unit Name: Understanding Goal Directed Design

Mr. B J Gorad

Unit No: 2 Unit Name: Understanding Goal Directed Design

Lecture No: 13 & 14Users : Beginners, Intermediates, Experts

We already know that, When we design any system it is necessary to identify

potential users of system.

Designers needs to verify their design decisions on the end users for any

computer system or user interface

Websites, Applications, other user interfaces or services have too much impact

on types of user

Prior to starting any design there should be clear cut idea of the business,

potential users who are going to experience the system

Introduction

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One of the biggest challenges is: how to address the needs and requirements of

all types users?

Introduction

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However, in today’s globalized market users comes from different levels and finding the

right balance between designing for beginners or experts is an increasingly complex and

important task.

“if you are designing for everyone – you are designing for no one.”

Consumers with different desires

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As a designer what should I do ??

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If you just address needs without the context of the user

you end up with something unusable by anyone

When we design user interfaces we try to understand who our end users are –

are they beginners with no / least prior computing experience (least,

no experience for the product designing)

are they experts who can find their way around easily? (high

experienced and skilled)

Sometimes, Your users are not in a homogeneous group – rather, they

are a mixed bunch of people consisting of users with different levels of

experience and familiarity with the UI you are designing.

(Intermediates)

Most Users are neither Beginners nor Experts

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We can divide the users’ skill spectrum into three parts.

The first part comprises beginners,

the middle is where so-called intermediates belong, and

the third part is for experts.

They are explained by bell’s curve

Skill Spectrum of Users

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Users: Beginners, Intermediates, Expert

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Skill Spectrum is divided into 3 parts based on age, IQ Level, Skill Set and Distribution of population distributions

Fig. Gauss Classic Statistical Bell Curve

The bell curve is a nice representation to classify the users

but it does not give us a full understanding of the users’ behavior and dynamics

(It depends on Application to application)

As you probably know from your own experience, if you start as a complete

beginner and use some piece of software, you won’t be staying a beginner for

too long.

You will learn new ways of getting tasks done faster and easier, you will

probably learn some shortcuts and grasp a number of available concepts and

features enabling you to be more productive.

In other words – you will move from the beginners to the intermediates part of

the skill spectrum.

Skill Spectrum Dynamics

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Some of us will probably move forward to the experts part of the spectrum -

some professional certificate as a proof that you are an expert or specialist in

the specific tool or technology.

But – those certificates don’t last forever – you need to renew them – meaning

that after some time – you will slip back to the intermediates part of the

spectrum.

The reason is actually fairly simple – maintaining high levels of expertise and

competence is extremely difficult today with increasing competition and new

versions and editions of tools and technologies.

Skill Spectrum Dynamics

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The Conclusion is –

“All users do gravitate towards the central part of the skill spectrum (Intermediates)”

Case study –

1. Classify the tools and technology used by you according to beginner, intermediate and expert level

Skill Spectrum Dynamics

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Type writers Keyboard

Skill Spectrum Dynamics

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1968

Our goal, when we look at the user interface design discipline, is to create user

interfaces that will look appealing and useful for all users – but that will be able

to adapt and support the fact that users are migrating from beginners to

intermediates.

Also, we need to be smart and reasonable enough to allow intermediate users

to move towards becoming experts so that they can extend their abilities and

increase their productivity and satisfaction.

It’s probably easiest to summarize it all by saying that we need to be very

pragmatic – accommodate the beginners and experts but optimize our UIs to

the largest segment of the users – intermediates.

Design for everyone , optimize for intermediates

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Provide tutorials, menus, & dialog boxes for beginnersProvide shortcuts & online reference for experts (& intermediates)

User strategies for choosing an item from a menu

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• Beginners:

• Read all options, then decide

• Hence, keep menus small

Intermediate:• Scan to desired item then select• Hence keep menus well organized and keep frequent items at top

• Expert:• Jump to item (knows where it is) and then select• Hence keep same items in same positions at all times

Design for Intermediates

WordStar was hard to use for first- time user and infrequent user, so when its competitor

provides the same power for intermediate users, while makes it easy for novices to start.

WordStar, unable to keep up with the competition, and loosed the market

This is the only phase we are all definitely going to get a taste of.

For how long we will stay beginners is almost completely up to UX and

interaction designers.

users usually will go from beginners to intermediates, but they might just turn

away and quit using the product if they don’t find it easy enough and

understandable for them to use.

To make sure that users will start using the UI and move to becoming

intermediates later, as designers we must ensure that the things they see, use

and feel in the UI resonate well with their mental models and their perception

of the UI.

Accommodating Beginners

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The two major focus areas within the UI for users are menus and messages in

dialog boxes.

Menus :

Users browse through the menus and their hierarchical architectures,

reading all the labels and basically trying to get an overview and

understanding of where specific options and features are positioned.

Dialogs and Notifications :

Users they tend to read them slower, trying to understand them thoroughly

even though in many cases they don’t feel very confident about executing or

cancelling specific actions.

Accommodating Beginners

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It is wrong however to assume that beginners will rely heavily on help and

support systems.

The main purpose of those systems is to serve as reminders, reference points –

not always as starting points.

However, adding walkthroughs that appear for beginners and guide them

through the user interface, explaining the main ideas, concepts and scope of

the particular software is good idea.

Just make sure that users who don’t need those instructions anymore can easily

turn them off.

Accommodating Beginners

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A really good idea that is now relatively often used as an example of an irritating

UI metaphor was the infamous Clippy from the early editions of the Microsoft

Office suite.

Accommodating Beginners

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While it was useful for beginners,

intermediates and experts felt that Clippy

was too annoying. Do you remember those

clever “It looks like you’re writing a letter”

remarks?

The important – probably fundamental – thing is the fact that nobody wants to

remain a beginner for the entire period the UI and application is being used.

One of the goals that we must think about before we even start designing is

that the user interface as such must be built in a way that it enables users to

shorten the period they will be beginners as much as possible and advance into

the central part of the skill spectrum – intermediates.

Accommodating Beginners

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While beginners were looking for answers to questions like “What does this

program do?”, “Where do I start?” and “How to do I use this?”,

“intermediates are looking for access to desired features.”

The answers to the questions asked a few lines above are in the past for them –

they have grasped those basic concepts and now they are here to use the tool.

Accommodating Intermediates

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Another UI pattern really helping a lot is the usage of ToolTips. Though

beginners will find so called “rich tooltips” useful as well, intermediates (and

even experts to some extent) will use ToolTips as helpful notes showing the

functions and features in the simplest way.

Accommodating Intermediates

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Though their number is much smaller than intermediates and it’s probably even

smaller than the number of beginners, experts are an extremely important

group of users.

Their number might be small in absolute figures but their impact and

influence is extremely high and important.

After all – we all tend to trust experts and ask them for advice and help.

Experts might be into some rarely used features needed for really complex

scenarios, they will definitely require some shortcuts and abilities to

manipulate the UI without the mouse (think about keyboard shortcuts).

Accommodating Experts

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Accommodating Expert

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They will even find that some graphical user interfaces are, in fact, slowing them

down and might turn to consoles – interfaces like the one from Consoles –

Terminals, PowerShell on the picture below. Ex. Server Administration

Unit No: 2 Unit Name: Understanding Goal Directed Design

Lecture No: 15Understanding Users

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Understanding Users

The success of any product or digital design is totally dependent on how it

meet the requirements of stakeholders and the product itself.

The designer should always understand the user.

It is not the case that the designer should understand who the user is but the

experience level of the user should be totally accommodated.

The deep knowledge of the user can not only be achieved by analyzing the

numbers obtained in quantitative study during market research but also the

deep knowledge about the user will be obtained in various qualitative

research techniques

Qualitative v/s Quantitative Research

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Quantitative Research Qualitative Research

It is a statistics of the human activities that answers questions like “how much” or “how many”

The detailed information that provides the knowledge about behavior, attitude, and aptitude of the user.

It helps to forecast the use, usage, and usability of the interface.

It helps to identify any existing same or similar products are available.

It tries to resolve the quantity of the copies of the product to be delivered to certain group of users

Qualitative research also helps in environmental contexts of the product being designed.

Helps in earlier dialog between developers and end users and tend to make a decision that how many end users need to be asked detailed questions related to qualitative research.

Qualitative research provides the creditability and authority to design team, as the design decisions and traced from the quantitative research.

Stakeholder interviews

Subject Matter Expert (SME) interviews

User and customer interviews

User observation/ethnographic field studies

Qualitative Research Technique

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Get Primary Vision of the Product –like how it will benefit for day to day activitiesBudget and scheduleTechnical and Nontechnical issuesBusiness Drivers – to find out exactly what product is going to achieve

SMEs have domain knowledge but they are not designers.

SMEs have exact knowledge to improve the overall usage of the product.They gives rough draft of required layout of proposed system.

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Qualitative Research Technique

User Observation / Ethnographic Interviews

User should not be questioned every minute rather their behavior should be observed and accordingly conclusions should be made.

The Combination of immersive observation and directed interview is termed as ethnographic interview

Context : Interview should be in free environment and should not be special room. Also termed as Contextual Inquiry which sometimes helps to achieve qualitative research

Partnership : Ask few questions and parallel to it observe the user behavior, as user is not fully concentrating on interview rather performing day to day activities.

Interpretation : Interviewer must gather actual information and make interpretation based on actual data captured and should have pure interpretation on responses given and not by own experiences.

Focus : Focus should be on relevant information that needs to be captured and not questions that may have non-functional data.

Unit No: 2 Unit Name: Understanding Goal Directed Design

Lecture No: 16Modelling Users Personas

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Modeling Users Personas

How to really innovate any business problem or need?

You have a business need?

Business

But, consumers have needs too

Consumer

Design Thinking is framework to innovate and think different

Consumers with different desires

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As a designer what should I do ??

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If you just address needs without the context of the user

you end up with something unusable by anyone

So as a designer......

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As all users do not hold the same characteristics.

We need to have summary of various observations of the users and create some model to represent the usefulness or test the same.

Using our research to create descriptive model of interaction design, we add

some flavors to it that is referred as personas. Personas help us to provide the precise way of thinking and representing how

users behave, how users think, what exactly they are willing to accomplish, and why they want to do so.

Personas help us to determine, communicate, build consequences, measure, and contribute the design quality of the product.

Personas are represented as individual people, group of users that may be archetypes and stereotypes.

Personas may also explore ranges of behavior and they must have motivations for the users.

Modeling Personas

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Modeling users: Personas

How do you use this research data to come up with a design that will result in a successful product?

Personas can be created by adopting various techniques and they are specified below.

1) Identify behavioral variables.

2) Map interview subjects to behavioral variables.

3) Identify behavioral patterns.

4) Synthesize characteristics and relevant goals.

5) Check for redundancy and completeness.

6) Expand description of attributes and behaviors.

7) Designate persona types.

Steps in Constructing Persona

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Thank You