Field research and interaction design

transcript

Field studies and interaction designnicolas nova | liftlabHead, Geneva | October 2009

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Inspiration

Expiration (creation)

Inspiration

Investigation of existing usages, habits, environments or product’s potential

In-depth understanding of people’s behavior, belief, preferences and context

Potential issues and problems turned into design opportunities

Potential solutions existing in other contexts or proposed by specific users

(generally not “requirements”, “needs”)

“Needs” - The Holy Grail?

“designing to meet observed needs reinforces structure and removes its capacity to invent futures”

Matt Webb

“it's the old thing..you have research or consumer insights or whatever? and the assumption should be to find the flex points where things can sort of fit into "consumer's" practices, but not rigidly”

Julian Bleecker

Starting point or filter for ideas

Formative research

Summative research

Sociology Ergonomics - human factors

Psychology

+ marketing research...Thursday, October 15, 2009

Design research / User research / Field research / Ethnography / Design ethnography / Contextual research / Usage research / User-centered design / User safari / User modeling / ...

Research FOR design

Science or Facts versus informed opinions to orient action?

ProblemIssueBrief

Literature review/desk research (secondary research)

Formative research

Evaluative research

Field research(primary research)

Solution

(prototyping)

Field/lab research

Starting points for desk research:

• Conferences: CHI( ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems), DUX (Designing for User eXperiences), EPIC ( Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference), Interact, Interaction, ...

• Journals: ACM interactions

• Weblogs: Putting People First (http://bit.ly/U0Ga), Future Perfect (http://bit.ly/cyBKO), Design investigations (http://bit.ly/55BFH), ...

➡ Understanding people in their context: what are they doing? how are they doing what they do? what does it mean?

➡ Apply this knowledge to design issues (interaction design and beyond)

➡ Interprete, synthesize, infer: not only collecting informations but, rather analyze them to draw implications

➡ A trained Observer/Researcher matters

➡ Investigate an activity (find one’s way in an urban environment) before the design of a location-based service

➡ Understand the use of a technique (2D camera such as Eye Toy and webcams) to draw implications for the following technique (3D camera)

➡ Explore specific behavior (cooperative play with Nintendo DS) or motivations (collecting weird objects)

➡ Describe the appropriation or acceptation of a device (e-books in public transports)

➡ Explore how a certain service is hybridized with existing practices (how rendezvousing evolved with cell-phones)

Descriptions

after designing a solution

before designing a solution

methodology...(inspired by) ethnography

Investigate people in their context

samplingThursday, October 15, 2009

Quantitative Qualitative

Verbal

Visual

Survey

Questionnaires

Photography

Artifacts

Observation

Participant observation

Interviews (individual/groups)

Confrontation to material (video/photo)

design issue

user research / data gathering

data analysis

implications for design

communication

design issue

data analysis

communication

observation / participant observation(photo, video, notes)

interview (open, in-depth...), contexual interview, lead-users/expert interview

diary, beeper, ...

survey / census / photo survey

shadowing

➡ combinations as well

design issue

data analysis

“Thick/rich” descriptions: context, process/sequence of actions, ...

Problems or recurring events (to be categorized): repetitions, cycles, clusters, absence, growth...

Lists of ressources employed for the activity (tools, people, ...)

research FOR design

What comes out of these research?

➡ Question designers’ opinions with field data

➡ Show people’s life, reality-check, understand the complexity/subtelty and peculiar aspects of situations

➡ Critique of normative visions about the future (3D Web, intelligent fridge,...)

➡ Propose products/services concepts loosely related with motivations, needs problems or tasks

➡ Understand adoption barriers to a product, feature...

➡ Evaluate and prioritize concepts, ideas and solutions

➡ Learn from a culture, community of users (extreme, lead) or new markets

➡ Understand people’s creativity to craft their own solutions

Ask questions

➡ Does what you observe in ... can be applied to ... (=urban signage? new media consumption)?

➡ Is there a digital equivalent to X or Y? Does it matter?

➡ Draw lessons about why people do X or Y? Which of these motivations could be transferred to other contexts?

➡ If you see people using device A or B? What sort of services/features can you envision about A or B?

➡- ...

design issue

data analysis

implications for designintermediary objects

Persona/user profiles

Scenarios/vignette

Experiences models

Problem lists

Prototypes

inform inspire

contraints, sometimes quantitative (% of internet access, etc.)

material for design

users? people? consumers?

➡ what vocabulary? what vocabulary to work altogether? (designers, UX, engineer, marketing, etc.)

“we tried but it did not work”

“we ask our users... what they wanted and it did not work”

➡ Confusion between observing behaviors (interprete) and ask people what they want/need (“Faster Horses” Henry Ford)

Fit into people’s life OR change people’s life?

➡ Tension between satisfying people’s needs/expectations (reinforcing the existing) versus inventing new futures

References

➡ IDEO (2009). Human-Centered Design Toolkit, http://bit.ly/EUHLL

➡ IDII, Ivrea (2003-2004). User Research at IDII, http://bit.ly/4e7rY6

➡ Kuniavsky, M. (2003). Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner's Guide to User Research, Morgan-Kauffman.

➡ Saffer, D. (2007). Designing for Interaction : Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices, New Rider Press.

➡ Visocky O’Graddy, J+K (2006). A Designers’s Research Manual. Design Field Guides, Rockport.

➡ Wasson, C. (2000). Ethnography in the field of design, Human Organization 59(4): 377-388, http://bit.ly/TYfg8

Menu for next courses

➡ Course’s blog: http://usages.wordpress.com/

➡ Each course will address a certain set of techniques

➡ Next course will be about theoretical considerations (sampling, theoretical frameworks) and observations

Assignement

➡ Each student will have to read a research paper and present it to the class:

• 10 minutes, no slides

• Outline: summary + why is it relevant for design + personal opinion

• For next course: “Reading Ahead” by Portigal Consulting (Slides: http://bit.ly/geX6l Blogposts: http://bit.ly/19jAd4 )

➡ Project:

• Choose a research question (related or not to your personal project or a studio project)

• Go observe users/usages related to this question (passive observation and photography)

• Prepare a 5 minutes presentations (with slides) of the main findings, we will discuss the results in class at the next course

• For each course there will be a similar assignement with regards to the projects. Project completition will consist in the addition of all the assignements

Let’s discuss your question

thanks

nicolas@liftlab.com