CS 544 User Centered Design

1. CS 544User Centered Design Participatory Design, Contextual Inquiry Acknowledgement: Some of the material in these lectures is based on material prepared for similar courses by Saul Greenberg (University of Calgary), Ravin Balakrishnan (University of Toronto), James Landay (University of California at Berkeley), monica schraefel (University of Toronto), and Colin Ware (University of New Hampshire). Used with the permission of the respective original authors.

2. System centered design

3. System centered design • What can be built easily on this platform? • What can I create from the available tools? • What do I as a programmer find interesting to work on?

4. User Centered System Design • Design is based upon a user’s • abilities and real needs • context • work • tasks • Golden rule of interface design: “Know Thy User”

5. User Centered System Design • An approach which views knowledge about users and their involvement in the design process as a central concern • Involving users, can include anything from… • Observing users’ working practices as part of collecting system requirements, to • Using psychologically based user modelling techniques, to • Including user representatives on the design team

6. User Centered System Design • Gould’s 4 principles: • Early, continual focus on users • Direct contact – through interviews, observations, surveys, participative design – to understand cognitive, behavioral, attitudinal, and anthropometric characteristics of users – and their jobs. • Early, continual user testing • Early on, intended users do real work with simulations and prototypes; their performance and reaction s are measured qualitatively and quantitatively • Iterative design • System (functions, user interface, help system, reading material, traning approach) is modified based upon result so fuser testing • Testing cycle is repeated • Integrated design • All aspects of usability evolve in parallel; • All aspects of usability under one focus.

7. Participatory Design • Problem when user has a limited role in the design • designer’s intuitions can be wrong • interviews etc not precise • designer cannot know the user sufficiently well to answer all issues that come up during the design • Solution • designers should have access to pool of representative users • END users, not their managers or union reps! The user is just like me

8. Participatory Design • Users become first class members in the design process • active collaborators vs passive participants • Users considered subject matter experts • know all about the work context • Iterative process • all design stages subject to revision • Scandinavian approach to collaborative design • Cultural homogeneity, a welfare state inclined toward “empowering” rather than replacing workers, and “codetermination laws” that grant workers a voice in technologic innovation in their workplaces • Building unique systems within specific user organizations • Contrast with North America where interest is from developers of commercial products

9. Participatory Design • Up side • users are excellent at reacting to suggested system designs • designs must be concrete and visible • users bring in important “folk” knowledge of work context • knowledge may be otherwise inaccessible to design team • greater buy-in for the system often results • Down side • hard to get a good pool of end users • expensive, reluctance ... • users are not expert designers • don’t expect them to come up with design ideas from scratch • the user is not always right • don’t expect them to know what they want • conservative bias to perpetuate current practices • don’t expect them to fully exploit the potential of new technologies

10. Participatory Design of a Portable Torque Feedback Device • Goal: increase the quality of presence for chemists using a molecular modeling application • Presence: quality of human-computer interaction that makes systems more transparent to the user, makes greater user of the sense, and makes the abstract concrete • from a generic 2-D joystick to a smaller simpler cheaper specialized 1-D torque-feedback device • No finished product, financial cutbacks, economic reality

11. Methods for involving the user • At the very least, talk to users • surprising how many designers don’t! • Interviews • used to discover user’s culture, requirements, expectations, etc. • contextual inquiry: • interview users in their workplace, as they are doing their job • Explain designs • describe what you’re going to do • get input at all design stages • all designs subject to revision • important to have visuals and/or demos • people react far differently with verbal explanations • Learn their job!

12. Ethnography • Research ethnographers attempt to understand a workplace through immersion in and extended contact with it and through a subsequent analysis of this experience • Most useful very early in development, build an understanding of existing work practices thorough enough to illuminate the possibilities for and implications of introducing technology • Principal cost is time • Ethnographers are not trained as designers, trained to “interfere” as little as possible with the community • Ethnographic studies most often provide warnings – detailed descriptions of work practices that new technology may disrupt • E.g., Lucy Suchman, formerly at Xerox Parc, ethnography of air traffic controlers

13. Contextual Inquiry • Approach that falls squarely between observation and interview • Intensely interviewing people while they work • Principles: • Context: • the best way to understand work practice is to talk to people in their actual work environment • people speak about their work in abstractions – often presenting an idealized model • difference between summary information and ongoing experience – most people do not conceptualize their work, they just do it! • access ongoing experience – being present in the work context leads to more information

14. Principals (cont’d) • Partnership: • users are the experts – they are the ones doing the work! • share control during the inquiry – users have the information we want to know • creating shared meaning – to prevent self-listening, share design ideas as they occur • reflection and engagement – engagement occurs through active listening and reflection occurs when we stop t consider and integrate information into our evolving understanding • Focus • not trying to understand the full organizational culture • maintain focus in order to complete the inquiry in a reasonable amount of time

15. Conducting a contextual interview • Identify customers • Arrange visit (typically one day) • Select initial users (consider roles you want to cover) • Use multiple interviewers if possible (to cover as many users as possible, to bring different perspective) • Set the focus before the interview • Structure the interview • Introduction: establishing a relationship • Ongoing work inquiry: users works, interviewer observes and occasionally asks questions • Wrap up: summarize what was learned, ask if possible to call with further questions, invite user to forward further comments

16. Analyzing contextual inquiry information • Transcribe the interview • Fix the focus of analysis • Record understandings: coding transcripts or Post-It notes • Description of users’ work • Flow or structure of the work • Description of problems in their work • Description of problems with the computer tools • Design ideas that emerge from understanding of their work • Questions for subsequent interviews • Structure the understanding: affinity diagramming

17. Readings and References • Chapter 3 Introduction BGBG 187 – 195 (Considering Work Contexts in Design) • Good, M. (1992). Participatory Design of a Portable Torque-Feedback Device, http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=142750.142895, (Reprinted in BGBG p. 225 - 232) • Holtzblatt, K., and Jones, S. (1993). Conducting and Analyzing a Contextual Interview (Excerpt reprinted in BGBG p. 241 - 253)