User Centred Design
Sept 16, 2016
Announcement
Fall 2016 COMP 3020
• September 21: last day for registration revision
• You’ll be put at the bottom of waitlists for this course if you withdraw after this date
A1 Consistency Example
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Questions?
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Overview of Today’s Lecture
• Principles of User-Centered Design
• (Possibly) Users and Requirements
Fall 2016 COMP 3020
“Know your user!”
Fall 2016 COMP 3020
“Know your user!”
Fall 2016 COMP 3020
Principles of User-Centered Design
Users and their goals should influence design
Design should not just be influenced technology
Focus on users and their tasks right from the beginning
Iterative design and evaluation
Users are consulted throughout the process and their feedback is fed back into the design
Fall 2016 COMP 3020
User-Centered Design Process
Get started in a proven/promising track
Prevents “designer’s block”
Helps us to communicate with others
More reliable than intuition
Forces us to iterate
Helps to keep the users first
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User-Centered Design Process
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Stage GoalsLearn about stakeholders
Discover goals and needs
How is it done now?
What is wanted?
What else has been tried?
Generate lots of ideas
Grasp issues and potential solutions
Produce something tangible
Identify challenges
Uncover subtletiesDiscover problems
Assess progress
Determine next steps
Build final product
Ramp up marketing,
support, and maintenance
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Investigate
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Investigation Questions
Identify users
Identify stakeholders
What are the requirements?
How do they do it now?
How long does it take?
What do they want?
What do they need?
What have they already tried?
Is there another solution?Fall 2016 COMP 3020
Investigation Methods
Interviews
Focus groups
User surveys
…
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ideate
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Ideation -> Idea Generation
“To get good ideas…
Get lots of ideas”
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Ideation
One of the worst things: go with the first one you have
You can always come back to it later
Volume matters the most
Increase chance of success by considering a huge volume of ideas in a systematic wayFall 2016 COMP 3020
Ideation Methods
Structured brainstorming
Sketching
Affinity diagramming
Card sorting
Personas
Role-playing, play-acting
[more later]
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prototype
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Why prototype?
It’s cheap and fast
Easier for users to react to concrete things rather than abstract concepts
Prototyping brings subtleties and nuances to light
Working against some technical constraints is goodFall 2016 COMP 3020
Prototyping Techniques
Paper prototypes
Screenshots
Flip books
Video mock-ups
Hyperlink prototypes
Functional prototypes
[more later]
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Prototyping Fundamentals
Build it fast
Concentrate on unknowns
Don’t be attached to them
easy to throw away
Build multiple concurrently
easier to compare pros/cons
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Evaluate
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Why Evaluation?
What is wrong with automated software testing?
Automated processes can find bugs, but not usability issues
Evaluation gives you a way to move forward
What needs to be fixed, added, removed?
Answers to two questions:
Did we build the right thing?
Did we build the thing right?
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Evaluation Methods
Usability testing
Laboratory experiments
Real-world deployments
Heuristic evaluation
[more on this in the coming weeks]
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Evaluation Drives Iteration
Problem: usefulness/appropriateness
Return to investigation phase
Problem: users don’t understand
Return to ideation phase
Problem: user performance
Return to prototyping phase
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Produce
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Production
These are steps required to go from functional prototype to release candidate
Software architectureProgramming, buildingManufacturingHelp systemsManualsTrainingCustomer supportMarketingBrandingDistribution
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Today’s Messages
Design starts with understanding your user, and should keep users’ interests central through entire process
Design is iterative -> trade-offs are difficult to see in advance
Designs are never “perfect” -> they can be improved
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Who are Your Users?
People who directly interact with the product/application to accomplish a task
But is that it?
Others
Those who manage direct users
Those who receive products from the system
Those who maintain the system
Those who make purchasing decisions
Competitors
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Categories of Users
The large number of people who all have an interest in the design are referred to as stakeholders
Three categories:
1. Primary: frequent hands-on users
2. Secondary: occasional users
3. Tertiary: affected by introduction of system or influence its purchase
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Types of users and factors influencing decisions
User factors affect the development process :
Age: reduce number of tasks, simplified interface
Disabilities: larger buttons, sound cues
Gender: spatial vs. temporal relations
Culture: icons, color
Experience
Three types of experience:
Novices: highly visible functions, restricted set of tasks, tutorials to more complex tasks
Intermediate: reminders and tips, interface facilitates advanced tasks
Experts: shortcuts visible functions, restricted set of tasks, for efficiency, customizable interface
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Activity
Who are the stakeholders for a check-out system at a large grocery store?
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Activity
Check out operators:
primary users: they interact with the system daily
Customers:
tertiary users: they want it to work properly
Managers and owners:
secondary or tertiary users: they may occasionally interact with the system but mostly concerned about satisfied customers, safety and good functionality of system
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Activity
Who are the primary users and stakeholders of the following systems:
an electronic calendar or diary for yourself. You might use this system to plan your time, record meetings and appointments, mark down people’s birthdays, and so on.
an online personal banking system for yourself. You might use this system to check balances, transfer between accounts, pay bills, and so on.
a program for your Comp 3020 prof that will allow him to keep track of student grades, print records, tally up scores, e-mail grades, etc.
Fall 2016 COMP 3020
Activity
The user of such a system is yourself. However, the stakeholders could be people you make appointments with, people whose birthdays you remember, etc…
The user of such a system is yourself, your spouse or anyone else you share your finances with. The stakeholders could be the banking institution, your family, lenders, etc…
Comp 3020 prof and other profs later on. Stakeholders are Comp 3020 students, department, faculty, university
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Requirements
“A statement about a product that specifies what it should do or how it should perform”
The goal is to gather a set of requirements that
Are as clear as possible
Developers will not necessarily be HCI specialists
We can tell when they have been satisfied, or properly considered
Often if you can’t tell when a requirement is satisfied/considered, it is too vague/abstract
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Requirements
5 primary types:
1. Functional
2. Data
3. Environmental / Context of Use
4. User characteristics
5. Usability
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Types of Requirements
Functional
What a product should do
E.g.,
The system should give users access to their cash if they use their debit card
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Types of RequirementsData
What kinds of data need to be stored
E.g.
The system will need to access clients records from the bank to determine if there is sufficient funds
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Types of RequirementsEnvironmental requirements/context of use:
Circumstances in which the product will be expected to operate
physical environment, social environment, organizational environment, technical environment
E.g.,
Users will use the system while being in a rush
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Types of Requirements
User characteristics: What are the requirements imposed by the user group?User Characteristics: ability, background, attitude to computersSystem use: novice, expert, casual, frequentE.g., users will be 15 and older
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Types of RequirementsUsability:
What is required to make the system usable?
Should capture the usability goals and associated measures for a particular product, i.e. learnability, memorability, safety
E.g. easy to learn?
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