Work package 2: User analysis Anne Sofie Fink, DDA

1. Work package 2: User analysis Anne Sofie Fink, DDA

2. Outline of this session • Introduction of user analysis • The User Expert Team • Relation to other work packages • Approach and plan • Tasks for this meeting • who to interview and information needs • Summary of the review of existing material

3. Objectives for the User Analysis • Ensure that the software tools developed through the MADIERA project offers functionality and solutions that are in accordance with the users’ needs.

4. Benefits from user analysis • Developers will have fewer discussions about what users want and how to best provide it • Contributors will spend less time reworking a vague design once they begin coding • The project team will avoid re-engineering a project to accommodate overlooked, but critical product requirements • Development will cost less source: softwaredesignworks.com

5. The User Expert Team Members: • Bjarne Øymyr, NSD • Pam Miller, UKDA • Anne Sofie Fink, DDA • Margaret/John??, Nesstar Ltd. • Jouni Sivonen, FSD • Dimitra, EKKE

6. Responsibilities of the ‘User Expert Team’ • Data collection and reporting for the user analysis • Review of reports written by WP leader • Taking parts in discussion about methods, techniques, users’ needs etc. • Acting the role of the user’s representative within the local project teams and at other occasions

7. Relation to other WP’s • The team wishes to deliver a user analysis that is a useful tool for the development process • To the User Expert Team, team members involved in WP3, WP4, WP5 and WP6 are considered users • In order to deliver this tool the team needs to know ‘user’ requirements from WP3-6 to the user analysis Quality Assessments: • The analysis is in line with the aim and limitations of the project • WP2 becomes an integrated part of the entire project

8. Approach to User Analysis • A user analysis focused at researchers • A qualitative approach is chosen since what is needed is understanding not quantification • The technique Contextual Design by Beyer & Holtzblatt is chosen (prior experience from FASTER) • “The challenge for CD (user analysis): to make a design team’s understanding of their customer explicit and giver them enough distance to see the work practice as a whole”

9. About Contextual Inquiry (1) “Go to the users workplace and watch them do their own work; talk to them about their work and engage them in uncovering aspects of work; develop a shared understanding with the user about the aspects of work that matters; direct the inquiry from a clear understanding of your own purpose.” Principles: • CONTEXT: Go where the work is and watch it happen • PARTNERSHIP: Talk about the work while it happens • INTERPRETATION: Find the meaning behind the words and actions • FOCUS: Challenge your entering assumptions

10. About Contextual Inquiry (2) Interview structure • Introduce yourself and your focus • Promise confidentiality • Explain that you want to be taught about the work • Observe, ask questions and suggest interpretations • Keep the user concrete, don’t accept generalisations • Tape record the interview but take notes, too • Wrap up: summarise your understanding of the work and make sure the IP feels understood

11. About Contextual Inquiry (3) Master / apprentice model for interviewing: • will help to unravel the vital from the irrelevant • more natural to stop and explain • protects user from talking in generalisations • use of real artifacts to ground explanations • role of apprentice adopts humility, inquisitiveness and attention • attitude: everything is new, nothing taken for granted • test hypothesis and interpretations continuously with user

12. About Contextual Inquiry (4) • Experiences from FASTER • to watch work can only be a part of the interview • and conversation without work is valuable data, too • the interviewer must structure the session by asking prepared questions • sometimes users do not know or care about the issue raised - don’t force users to make a statement • although valuable it might be difficult to come up with interpretations during the interview and may sometimes seem in appropriate to suggest them • Nobody in the User Expert Team is experts in contextual inquiry and the users are never ideal respondents • We can cope with that

13. About Interviewing Members of the User Expert Team must have a thorough understanding of the project and it’s limitations before entering ‘the field’ Before the interviews the team members will be provided with: • Texts on Contextual Inquiry • Practical guidelines for how to carry out interviews • Lists of information needs from WP leaders • An interview guide that will help to structure the interview and get information on all relevant issues • Guidelines for how to report the interviews to WP leader

14. Plan for the user analysis (1) STEP 1: • Define user groups who perform different kinds of research activities (based on brainstorm) • Select a representative sample, app. 2 at each site • a brief note with recommendation about how to recruit and from which of the user groups to recruit will be send out • Do we need a formal text that present the project? • Create an interview guide (based on brainstorm) STEP 2: • Carry out the interviews • Report the interviews to WP leader

15. Plan for the user analysis (2) STEP 3: • WP leader make a write-up • User Expert Team make a review of the report • The report is distributed to all team members • Reporting to the MKS is made

16. Tasks for this meeting • Who to interview? • An outline of research segments • What’s the needs for information about users for WP3, WP4, WP5 and WP6? • Concerning both content, structuring and interface • Are there products on the web that we can point the user to in order to support ‘watching while working’ • Important that we share understanding of important concepts with users e.g. what’s does the user mean by ‘integrated’, ‘comparable data’, ‘multilingual, etc.

17. Review of existing material (1) FASTER Findings on researcher are still relevant: • One stop shopping concept • Detailed and extensive metadata information • Support of personal networking • Fast processing – analysis • Support of broad range of export formats • A generic tool that can inform the users about updates, changes, etc. Read ”User Analysis for Client Functionality”: http://www.faster-data.org/paperdoc/D3-2-1.doc

18. Review of existing material (2) Findings from review - broad level: • The challenges to the data archives is to carry their well-estimated and known brands forward and let them be exploited by the portal in order to make it part of a network for research. • Support the research culture, which is well-established. If the project succeed in this aspect it must be expected that it is incorporated into the culture as an important artefact. Findings from review - specific: • Provide resources, which are only available to a group of users (a network) • Agent technology/automatic notification was not a subject, which was touched by the FASTER interviews. But as this is a kind of manging tool toward use of the net, it is supported.

19. Review of existing material (3) • Coverange of specific topic or subject area adds to the efficiency of using the web as resource. • Build a portal structure with a great sustainability and keep the users informed if changes of content are made. • The preference for searches based on systematised information is a challenge. Although already picked up in NESSTAR the feature could be made more sophisticated, e.g. letting the user define the base and structure of a subject tree. • Although easy and automated identification of comparable data was not explicitly touched by the interviews, support for this is found in the respondents’ demand for systematised and structured search procedures. • Additionally support for features such as capturing “failed” search-terms, coherent naming and identification system etc. is implicitly found.

20. Review of existing material (4) • A challenge to cartography based search is to give users a both simple and flexible tool. • Ready-to-use tools for evaluating the reliability of a data set. For instance by providing frequency of use tables for data sets, number of users and who or distributor. An alternative mean could be to provide information about adjoining data. • An aspect of reliability is letting the use know if the data material has been processed by a data archive and/or what kind data quality checks the material has been through. • Links to knowledge products will add to the means for evaluating reliability. Links from knowledge products to the “collective memory” of the data will add to this, too.

21. Review of existing material (5) • Tree structure for metadata is not easy and straightforward to use. MADIERA should make information about studies more easily and accessible. As an example it could be made possible to read study descriptions and codebooks at length on the screen and as print out. • Users demand formats that suits their specific needs, MADIERA must provide a optimal range of formats for the users to choose from letting them jump tiresome editing. • Another challenge is for MADIERA to be able to be used as vehicle for data exchange among users sharing data in networks. • NESSTAR supply a bookmark facility, could this be made even more sophisticated and supply a possiblity for storing statistical procedures? • Could the advanced tools for graphic presentation be used for none-NESSTAR-data sets e.g. researchers’ own data sets?

22. That was it...