Ways of Collecting Information

1. Ways of Collecting Information • Interviews • Questionnaires • Ethnography • Joint Application Design • Books and leaflets in the organization • Prototypes

2. Interviews • Interview Purpose • Interview Planning • Interview Time • Interview Recording • After the interview

3. Interview • Types of information gathered by interview • Opinion: (what is the problem?) • Feelings: (employees attitude, culture) • Goals: (organization goals) • Informal procedures: (how work is actually done?)

4. Interview Planning • Read background material • Establish interview objectives • Decide who to interview • Prepare the interviewee • Make appointment • How long (maximum 45 minutes) • What is the objective of the interview • Write questions and check the structure

5. Types of Questions • Open-ended Questions • Give the user the freedom to answer in any length • Closed Questions • The answer is always finite (bipolar questions) • Probe (follow-up) Questions • A sign of listening (ask for clarifications)

6. Open-ended Questions • Put the interviewee at ease • Pick up vocabulary • Get details • Suggest other questions • More interesting for interviewee • Easier for interviewer • Lose control of interview • Take a lot of time • Interviewer is not ready • No clear objective • Difficult to analyze

7. Closed Questions • Save time • Easy to analyze • Keep control of interview • Cover lots of ground • Get to the point • Boring for interviewee • Can’t get details and miss useful information • No emotional contact

8. DON’T • Avoid leading questions • You will get biased answers • Avoid double-barreled questions • They can answer one and forget the other • Hard to distinguish which answer is which

9. Organizing Interviews • Pyramid (Inductive) • Start with detailed and closed questions, then open questions • Funnel (deductive) • Start with open-ended questions then closed • Diamond • Start with specific closed questions, then general open questions then conclude with closed • No order

10. Pyramid Interview

11. Funnel Interview

12. Diamond Interview

13. Organizing Interviews • Pyramid: • Used with someone who doesn’t want to speak • Needs introduction to the subject • Funnel • Get all the details quickly • Give freedom to speaker • Diamond: • Takes longer • Keep the speaker interested

14. Organizing Interviews • Structured Interview are easier to analyze • Interviewer has more control • Needs less training • Unstructured interviews are more flexible

15. Interview Time • Be on time • Introduce yourself • Say the purpose of the interview • Explain the recording technique • Pick up special vocabulary • Listen to redirect your questions accordingly • Control the length of the answers • Rephrase to make sure you understood correctly • Last question: Anything to add? • Summarize and tell him what is next.

16. Recording the Interview • Audio: (Take permission and tell the interviewee how it will be used) • Advantages: • Full accurate record of interview • Better eye contact • Disadvantages • Interviewee may be nervous • Note Taking • Advantages: • Could be the only way to record • Keep the interviewer alert

17. Interview Report • Write it as soon as possible • Captures the important points in Interview

18. Joint Application Design (JAD) • Alternative to personal interview • Used for requirement analysis and user interface design • Includes users, analysts and mangers • Meet for 2-4 days outside offices • Define the objectives of the sessions • Brainstorming

19. JAD • Includes: • Session leader • Session recorder • Session observer (advisor) • Give participants papers about the workshop days before it for preparation • Analyst doesn’t ask, but acts as an expert • Requires certain room facilities (e.g. presentation equipments)

20. JAD Personnel JAD involves: • Analysts • Users • Executives • Observers • Scribe • Session leader

21. JAD • Advantages: • Save time • Users can interact with analysis process • Creativity (different people looking for solution) • Disadvantages: • Requires commitment of time from people • Requires certain organization structure

22. Questionnaires • An information gathering technique which can be used to collect: • Beliefs: what is right or wrong? • Attitude: what they want? • Behavior: what do they do? • Characteristics of users

23. Questionnaires • Used before interviews to sense where the problem is • Used after interviews to quantify results from interviews • Used if you want to find the percentage of people who support/disagree with something • Used to gather massive data about problem • Used if the users are distributed

24. Preparation of Questionnaire • Identify the objective of questionnaire • Decide who gets the questionnaire (sampling) • Prepare the questionnaire • Write the questionnaire • Administer the data

25. Questionnaires • Questionnaires are more difficult: • The analyst is not their to clarify things and follow up • So… • Questions should be clear and short • Use familiar vocabulary for respondent • Order the questions logically • Anticipate the respondent answer to plan the administration process

26. Questions Types • Open Questions: • Should be narrow enough to anticipate answer • Difficult to administer (analyze and interpret) • Easy to prepare • Closed Questions: • Put all the options of an answer • Sometimes mutually exclusive • Easy to administer (Quantified)

27. Scaling • Assigning numbers or symbols to measure some attitude • Feelings: (hate, like, not bothered, like a lot) • Belief: (agree, disagree, disagree strongly, don’t care)

28. Forms of Measurement • Nominal: options are classifications • Ordinal: options are ordered classification but the difference between them are not specified • Interval: difference between options are equal • Ratio: represents real measurements (have absolute zero)

29. After Preparing the Questionnaire • Ask yourself, is the questionnaire: • Valid? • Is it measuring what you want to measure? • Reliable? • Does it provide consistent answers? • External Reliability: on different settings (same conditions) • Internal Reliability: within the same setting, but questions asked in different ways

30. Problems with Scales • Leniency: • Rate everything to be good • Central tendency: • Rate everything as average • Halo problem: • Impression from one question carries to another

31. Solving the central problem • Create a scale with more points (e.g. 5 instead of 3) • Make differences between the 2 ends small • Change the strength of the description words Solution

32. Questionnaire Format • Allow white space • Allow space to answer • Tell the respondent what to do • Consistency in style (color, font, positions of items, sectioning) • Order of questions • Cluster related questions • Put important questions to the respondent first • Delay questions that are controversial

33. Administration • Gather all the respondents and do one setting • Personally hand out questionnaires and collect them • Respond is responsible for collecting, filling and returning the questionnaire • Use mail to send and receive questionnaire • Distribute it electronically (web site, email)

34. Sampling • Sampling is a process of systematically selecting representative elements of a population. • Which of the key documents and Web sites should be sampled. • Which people should be interviewed or sent questionnaires.

35. Sampling Design Steps To design a good sample, a systems analyst needs to follow four steps: • Determining the data to be collected or described. • Determining the population to be sampled. • Choosing the type of sample( random, based on criteria) • Deciding on the sample size (based on cost and time)

36. Obtaining Hard Data Hard data can be obtained by: • Analyzing quantitative documents such as records used for decision making. • Performance reports. • Records. • Collect blank forms • Ecommerce and other transactions.

37. Quantitative Documents • Collect blank forms and notice their: • type • Distribution method • Who receive them

38. Analyzing Qualitative Documents Qualitative documents include: • Memos. • Bulletin boards • Organization Web sites. • Manuals. • Policy handbooks.

39. Observation • Observation provides insight on what organizational members actually do. • See firsthand the relationships that exist between decision makers and other organizational members. • Behavior • Activities • Environment

40. STROBE STRuctured OBservation of the Environment-- a technique for observing the decision maker's environment • Office location (shows interactions and flow of info.) • Storage of data • Use of computer equipments • External information sources. • Organization and neatness