Welcome TC518: User-centered Design Tuesday, 6:15-10:00

1. Dr. Jennifer Turns Assistant Professor Technical Communication University of Washington Ms. Anita Salem Founder Principal Consultant SalemSystems, Inc. Welcome TC518: User-centered DesignTuesday, 6:15-10:00

2. Mapping out Day 1 • Introductions • Tell me about yourself • Go over syllabus • Finding potential project teammates… • Introduction to User-centered design and usability • Lecture • Two activities • Revisit syllabus – focus on readings • Project • Overview of activities • Group formation and project selection

3. General Name (and preferred way to address you) Best way to contact you (e.g., email, phone, etc.) Place of employment Domains of interest (e.g., medicine, e-commerce, etc.) Going Deeper Self-characterization: Indicate your level of agreement with the following statements by recording low, medium, or high for each: I consider myself a designer User considerations are critical to my work Evaluation criteria: What criteria you would use to evaluate: a hair dryer a website Design process: Write down the sequence of five or so major steps one should go through in developing and evaluating a new computer system for end users. Tell me about yourself Please record the following information on an index card:

4. Getting a sense of the class… Already are designers… Already prioritize user issues…

5. Syllabus – Learning Objectives+ • Following the course, students may need to • Do user-centered design activities • “Sell” user-centered design activities • Plan user-centered design activities (and make choices) • Continue to educate themselves • By the end of the course, students will be able to: • Critically discuss the concept & complexities of UCD • Identify and explain a variety of factors motivating/enabling UCD • Plan and execute activities that collectively instantiate a UCD process • Identify areas of scholarship useful in design to address user needs • Class elements • Project (70%) • Readings and discussion (10%) • Final exam (20%)

6. Syllabus – Detailed schedule TOPIC C TOPIC D

7. Syllabus - Class Structure Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 • HW: • Readings • Online Discussion • Project Work • HW: • Readings • Online Discussion • Project Work Share results from project exercise 1 (topic B) Share results from project exercise 2 (topic C) Discuss New Concepts via Readings (topic A/B) Discuss New Concepts via Readings (topic C) Discuss New Concepts via Readings (topic D) Discuss project exercise 1 (topic B) Discuss project exercise 2 (topic C) Discuss project exercise 3 (topic D)

8. Syllabus – Project (70%) • Description: • Follow a user-centered design process to explore the redesign of a product/process of your choosing. • Examples: Students may redesign • Blood pressure cuff in local drugstore • Informational website for engineering educators • Check-out process for Internet retailer • Instructions/documentation for photo processing software • Educational toy designed for 5 year old • Student Responsibilities • Project exercises (7, weekly homework, collectively 20% of grade) • Project deliverables (2, significant milestones, each 25 % of grade) • Review/advisory board participation

9. Syllabus - Readings & discussion (10%)

10. Syllabus – Weekly schedule

11. Syllabus – Course Design Principles Assumptions • Learning involves construction of knowledge • Students are diverse, and have knowledge to offer Principles • Provide varied ways for students to learn & demonstrate knowledge • Ensure students have opportunity to learn from each other • Manage participant burden Elements • Practice user-centered design activities • Reflect on user-centered design activities through discussions • Learn from perspectives of others • Various interactions w/ readings (summarize, discuss, synthesize) • …

12. Activity 1: Let’s move around… • Your task: • Identify one or more domains that interest you • Find/meet other students who share domain interests • Talk about • Your motivations for taking this class and • Nature of your interest in the specific domain. • Motivation for this activity: • Projects involve teams • Teams organized around domains • Project easier if teams have prior domain knowledge • Team formation (project selection) by end of class…

13. Activity 2a – Difficult Products • Individually: Think about some product/ process that you have found to be difficult: • What was the nature of the difficulty and the consequences? • What might be included as part of a “user’s experience with the product”? • Group: Share your experiences.

14. User-centered Design • User-centered design is what you do to achieve usable systems • Usability is the way a user-centered design product is evaluated • We will talk about usability then about user-centered design

15. Defining Usability • “The extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals in a specified context of use with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction” (ISO 9241-11) • “The measure of the quality of the user experience when interacting with something – whether a web site, a traditional software application, or any other device the user can operate in some way or another” (Nielsen) • “Usability means that the people who use the product can do so quickly and easily to accomplish their own tasks” (Dumas and Redish)

16. Defining Usability (Barnum, p. 6)

17. Benefits of a usable system (Maquire, p. 589)

18. Usability and User Experience Usability stems from entire user experience: • Device Interface – Visual, tactile, input devices… • Support manuals • Packaging • Computer system • Workspace Each of these aspects of a product/process can be redesigned to enhance usability…

19. Recap and apply… Recap • Usability definitions and dimensions • Benefits of usable systems • Aspects of the user experience Links to activity…considering your “difficult products”: • What does usability look like? • What would be the benefits of usability? • What would be included the comprehensive user experience? • What would we need to know in order to design?

20. Activity 2b: Difficult Products (cont.) Discuss the following in groups: • Suggest and justify one redesign to this system. • What did the designers fail to take into account, such that the original design was difficult? Why might the considerations not have been taken into account?

21. UCD - Historical context • [Pre-1975]: • Computing systems with specialized interfaces, expert users, • Severe limitations in terms of interface, computing power! • 1977: Release of Apple II with graphical interface • 1985: Gould and Lewis promote User-centered Design • 1988: Norman and Draper, User-centered System Design • [1990’s] – • Interest in field methods, • Rapid increases in computing power and options, • Emergence of prototyping tools, • Global marketplace, • Internet… • 1999: ISO standards for human-centered design • 2001: Special issue IJHCI, Human-centered design • 2002: Special issue IJHCI, User-centered design at IBM

22. User-centered design • Goal: Achieving usable systems • But what is it? • Principles • Process • Philosophy • All of the above • Something else? • Questions: • How does user-experience design compare to other types of design such as software design, navigation design, interface design, interaction design, learner-centered design, and usage-centered design? • How does a user-centered design process compare to other design processes such as the waterfall model and extreme programming

23. Principles for UCD • Early focus on users • Empirical measurement • Iterative design Gould and Lewis (1985)

24. Assumptions behind principles #1: Usability is an important goal. #2: Users are difficult to predict variable, and hard to pin down.

25. “Principles are undervalued”(Gould and Lewis, 1985) • Not worth following • Confusion with similar but critically different ideas • User diversity is underestimated • User diversity is overestimated • Belief that users do not know what they need • Belief that one’s job does not require it or permit it • Belief in the power of reason • Belief that design guidelines should be sufficient • Belief that good design means getting it right first time • Belief that the development process will be lengthened • Belief that iteration is just fine-tuning • Belief in the power of technology to succeed

26. UCD: Process and Products (Maquire, p. 589) Plan UCD: Decisions about which methods to use Specify context of use: Description of users, tasks, context, problems Evaluate against rqmts: Data on how well system meets expectations Specify user/org rqmts: Statements about what the design should fulfill Produce Design Solutions: System specifications

27. Methods available at UCD stages…

28. Activity 2b: Difficult Products (cont.) Discuss the following in groups: • Suggest and justify one redesign to this system. • What did the designers fail to take into account, such that the original design was difficult? Why might the considerations not have been taken into account? And • What process might you follow to explore potential redesigns? • What would you want to know in order to do the redesign?

29. Where are we going from here The design of this class – students will get • Experience user-centered design • Exposure to choices, tradeoffs, other examples • Information and sources for more information Information from the readings… • Selection of topics • Selection of sources

30. Syllabus – Project, Overview • Description: • Follow a user-centered design process to explore the redesign of a product/process of your choosing. • Examples: Students may redesign • Blood pressure cuff in local drugstore • Informational website for engineering educators • Check-out process for Internet retailer • Instructions/documentation for photo processing software • Educational toy designed for 5 year old • Responsibilities • Project exercises – weekly homework • Project deliverables – significant milestones • Review/advsiory board

31. Syllabus – Project, Structure • Project Exercises (7) • Almost weekly homework • Graded credit/no credit, collectively worth 20% of grade • Scaled to fit one week, • One page limit. • Project Deliverables (2) • Each worth 25% of grade • Summarize project progress, mediate next steps • One as paper, one as presentation • Advisory/Review Board: • Students will serve on the advisory/review board for other students.

32. Project - Structure

33. Project – Group Element • Groups of 4-6 students will jointly work on a shared product/process. • Each student will complete each project exercise independently (and be graded independently). • On the day the exercise is due, students will share the results with their group. • As project moves forward, each student can use information created by any group member in making their own decisions.

34. Exercise 1: Comparative Evaluation • Task: Decide which of two products is better… • Using the product you are proposing to redesign and one competitor for this product, conduct an analysis to determine the conditions under which you believe each solution might be better for users and why. • Prepare: A one-page summary describing • The two solutions, • The results of your analysis, i.e., the conditions under which each is better for the user and why, and • Potential implications for redesign. • Bring to class: Copies of summary for • Each team member • Instructors

35. Wrap-up… where we’ve been • Introductions • Tell me about yourself • Go over syllabus • Finding potential project teammates… • Introduction to User-centered design and usability • Lecture • Two activities • Revisit syllabus – focus on readings • Project • Overview of activities • Group formation and project selection

36. Activity 3: Project Selection Within your domain group • Select a shared product/process that will be the basis of your term-long project1. • Give to instructor the team & product info. • Discuss strategies for exercise 1 (with aim of having a broad cross section of information next week). 1Caveat: There will still be time to change next week, although this is not optimal…