user research: trying to answer the why and how questions aga szstek(at)gmail.com

why doing user research in the rst place?

-users have dierent goals than designers -users do not care for design success -there is more than one user per solution -there is more than one solution per problem

traditional user research - formal - informative - answers - precision - understanding - raw data generative methods - informal - inspirational - questions - ambiguity - empathy - interpretation

user research: an example PhD project: Sebas1an Denef Promoters: David V. Keyson i Reinhard Oppermann

How do remen deal with dangerous situations in the midst of the action? How could their actions be supported through interactive technologies?

OBSERVATIONS

TOOL ANALYSIS

ROLE PLAYING

BUILDING EMPATHY

using generative methods: an example Welcome Experience at a telecom provider Aga Szstek, Marcin Piotrowski, Joanna Kwiatkowska

rst month with a telecom provider provider rst impressions user trial period uncertainty building relationship gaining trust adjusting oer explaining payment upselling

partcipants - 20 persons (50% M, 50% F) - recruited at the door of the providers shop - committed to buy a postpaid plan - signing an agreement to participate

diary / blog study

love / hate letters

creative workshop

why and when traditional user research?

- works great for the dened design space - helps to objectify discovered phenomena - supports task oriented design - resolves interaction problems - focuses in iterative measurement of progress - enables comparison

why and when generative methods?

- high complexity of the design issues (so called: wicked problems) - uncertainty what truly is the design challenge - need for exibility to approach the solution - building empathy

who should participate?

snowball sampling: when you want to nd users who have similar interests, jobs or lifestyle

extreme case sampling: when you want to nd users who are extreme representatives of certain behaviours (e.g. remen for a decision-taking study

homogenous sampling: when you want to nd users who are very much alike in a certain aspect

maximum variation sampling: when you want to nd users who are very dierent with respect to a certain aspect

convenience sampling: when you just want to nd users who are together for some reason (eg. a workshop) and agree to participate in the study

opportunistic sampling: when you just want to nd truly random users

references Denef, S.; Keyson, D.; Oppermann, R. Rigid Structures, Independent Units, Monitoring: Organizing Patterns in Frontline Fireghting. In Proceedings of the 2011 SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Austin, TX, USA, 510 May 2011; pp. 1949 1958. Pallot, Marc, et al. "Living lab research landscape: From user centred design and user experience towards user cocreation." First European Summer School'Living Labs'. 2010.