USER-CENTERED APPROACHES TO INTERACTION DESIGN

USER-CENTERED APPROACHES TO INTERACTION DESIGN

1. Understanding users' work: applying ethnography in design

   • Ethnography is a method that comes originally from anthropology and literally means "writing the culture"
     • distributed co-ordination
       • Dimension focuses on the distributed nature of the tasks and activities, and the means and mechanisms by which they are co- ordinated
     • plans and procedures
       • Dimension focuses on the organizational support for the work, such as workflow models and organizational charts, and how these are used to support the work
     • awareness of work
       • Dimension focuses on how people keep themselves aware of others' work
   • Coherence
     • Claims that presenting the data from an ethnographic study based around a set of "viewpoints" and "concerns" facilitates the identification of the product's most important use cases
       • Concerns
         • Paperwork and computer work
         • Skill and the use of local knowledge
   • Contextual Design
     • Contextual Design is another technique that was developed to handle the collection and interpretation of data from fieldwork with the intention of building a software-based product
     • Contextual Inquiry
       • Is an approach to ethnographic study used for design that fol- lows an apprenticeship model: the designer works as an apprentice to the user
         • It is much shorter than a typical ethnographic study
         • The interview is much more intense and focused than an ethnographic study, which takes in a wide view of the environment
         • In the interview, the designer is not taking on a role of participant observer, but is inquiring about the work
         • In the interview, the intention is to design a new system, but when conduct- ing an ethnography
   • WORK MODELING
     • SEQUENCE MODEL
     • ARTIFFACT MODEL
     • CULTURAL MODEL
   • INTERPRETATION SESSION
     • The work models are captured during an interpretation session. The team has to build an agreed view of the customers, their work, and the system to be built
   • Design Room
     • everything the team knows about the customer and their work

2. Involving users in design: participatory design

   • PICTIVE
     • Plastic Interface for Collaborative Technology Initiatives through Video Exploration
       • Uses low-fidelity office items, such as sticky notes and pens, and a collection of design objects to investigate specificscreen and window layouts for a system.
         • empower users to act as full participants in the design process
         • improve knowledge acquisition for design
   • CARD
     • Collaborative Analysis of Requirements and Design
       • s similar to PIC- TIVE, but uses playing cards with pictures of computers and screen dumps on them to explore workflow options

3. Why is it important to involve users at all?

   • The 2 important aspects
     • Expectation management
       • Is the process of making sure that the users views and expectations of the new product are realistic.
     • Ownership
       • Users who are involved and feel that they have contributed to a product's development, are more likely to feel a sense of "ownership" towards it and to be receptive to it when it finally emerges
   • Degrees of involvement
     • Different degrees of user involvement may be implemented in order to manage expectations and to create a feeling of ownership

4. What is a user-centered approach?

   • Gould and Lewis 3 principles
     • Early focus on users and tasks
       • This means first understanding who the users will be by directly studying their cognitive, behavioral, anthropomorphic, and attitudinal characteristics
         • User's tasks and goals are the driving force behind the development
         • Users' behavior and context of use are studied and the system is designed to support them
         • Users' characteristics are captured and designed for
         • Users are consulted throughout development from earliest phases to the latest and their input is seriously taken into account
         • All design decisions are taken within the context of the users, their work, and their environment
     • EMPIRICAL MEASUREMENT
       • users interact with simulations and prototypes and their performance and reactions are observed, recorded, and analyzed
     • ITERATIVE DESIGN
       • This means that design and development is iterative, with cycles of "design, test, measure, and redesign" being repeated as often as necessary

5. Andrea Navarro 1196414

   • Preece, rogers and sharp, "interaction design in human interaction", john willey and sons, inc, 2002.

Images and files in the map