Chapter 4
Agenda/Learning Objectives
Understand what we need to learn about users
1) Understand what we need to learn about users
a) We need to know:
i) what users want and need
ii) what they experience in their use environment
b) UCD involves direct interaction with users where they work and live
c) You cannot rely solely on in-house exercises, such as brainstorming, to determine your users
goals, needs, wants, and environmental influences
d) You cannot make assumptions about who may be your users.
i) Ex: law school web site
2) Introduce method
a) What users actually do + what users say + where the designer sees how the user interfaces
with design = See-Say-Do
b) We watch (observation), they talk (verbalize), they act (performance)
c) What do you look for?
3) Identify appropriate user research methods
a) Existing data analysis
i) Helps avoid rework, and allows you to delve deeper into your other methods by asking
questions or looking for material that is new and important to understanding the context
of your design
(1) Google analytics and statistical data
(a) Auto-generated quantitative data
(2) User forums and customer support
(a) Dialog space for users and designers
(b) Share ideas, troubleshoot problems, praise or complain
(c) User reviews and survey logs have similar data
b) Observations
i) Site Visits
(1) Designer embeds themselves in users environment to understand the intricacies of
the users work and how the design (existing or developing) fulfills the need of users
task
(2) Time consuming, but allows the designer to see first-hand what happens when the
user interfaces with different designs
(8) Carry out multiple site visits with different users to get a thorough overview
(9) You should report on three areas for a site visit:
(a) User analysis: A user analysis means that you learn everything you can about
what the user does, thinks, and says. Further, you want to gather user
demographics. What you learn from the site visit about the user should help go a
long way in defining who the user is, what the user wants, needs, likes, and
doesnt like.
(10) Get permission from user/organization
(d) Inform user/organization about what youll be doing
(e) Determine what you want to find out
(1) Follow the user and take notes on their tasks, difficulties with those tasks, and
environmental factors that influence task completion
(2) Goal is to answer:
(a) What does the user have to do?
(b) What does he or she want to do?
(c) How does he or she perform his or her tasks?
(d) What knowledge about the task does the user need before performing tasks?
(e) What aspects of the task/s are simple or difficult?
(f) How does he or she use the product or how would the product be used to
perform particular tasks?
iii) Fly on the wall
(1) Blending into the users environment and taking notes on user characteristics, the
environment, and how they use things within that environment
(2) The key is that you do this without the user knowing youre there
(3) Less invasive, focuses on observing vs. getting feedback
(4) Advantages:
(a) No interference with user so they act normally
(b) Can observe users who dont typically volunteer for studies
iv) Emotion assessment
(1) How users respond emotionally to a product has a crucial impact on their adoption
and use of it
(2) Users make emotional decisions about products all the time
(3) Emotional assessment methods:
(a) Emotion Heuristics
3. gazing away,
4. smiling,
(ii) Observe users while they interact with a product and make note of their
physical reactions
(iii) If they are expressing negative reactions as they work, then your next step is
to determine why. Assessing emotion using these heuristics probably wont
be helpful if you arent asking the user to do or react to something, but when
used alongside other data analysis, it can help you get a good sense of the
affect your product has on your user
(c) Microsoft Product Reaction Cards
(i) Designed to measure desirability
c) Self-reporting methods
i) Self-reporting data: user answers questions based on their experience without a
researcher verifying the correctness of that information
ii) Can provide information about user motives, wants, needs, and desires
iii) Balance self-reporting data (and any other type of data) with other research methods
iv) Focus Group: users invited by a company, designer, or research team to provide
feedback about a specific topic
(1) Goal is to unveil user opinions, attitudes, beliefs, and assumptions about the topic in
question
v) Surveys: sets of questions (closed- or open-ended) that give you a broad sense of user
demographics and preferences
(1) Can get user feedback in a relatively short amount of time
open-ended questions
vi) Interviews: questions with qualitative answers
(1) Quick and easy way to understand how users perceive their use environment, their
frustrations with the usability of designs, their motives or purposes for using a
particular product or design, and their own perceived needs
(2) Can be done quickly and even spontaneously if you have access to users
vii) Diary Studies: user records activity over specific timeframe
(1) Can capture user processes and problems that could not have been during a short-
d) Designer Analysis
i) Designer or researcher is using previously collected data or knowledge to determine user
needs or processes
(1) Affinity diagrams: help you discover what relationships exist between ideas and
concepts discovered during data gathering
(a) Start with big concepts, such as user characteristics, and then narrow your scope
further after successive rounds of testing
(d) Affinity Diagram Steps:
(i) Find a large, flat surface where you can work. This might be a blank wall,
whiteboard, or large window.
(ii) Search through data individually. Make note of each piece of relevant data
(words, images, numbers, etc.).
(v) Limit each group to containing five notes. After five notes, start a new group.
(vi) Actively discuss where notes should go. Not everyone will agree about note
placementthats okay. The point of this activity is to discuss how data
relates to the teams different perspectives. Discuss as a group where notes
go and how they relate to other items in the group. If the group does not
come to a consensus, duplicate the note and put it in both groups.
(2) Use case: document how users perform within their environment using the tools
afforded to them
(a) Use cases are not only good for getting an idea of the users workflow, but these
use cases can lead to writing scenarios as you proceed with your UCD project
(b) Key parts:
(v) Describe the basic course in the description for the use case. Describe it in
terms of what the actor does and what the system does in response that the
actor should be aware of
(vi) When the basic course is described, consider alternate courses of events and
add those to “extend” the use case
(3) Task analysis: tells us more than just the steps to complete a task
(a) Helps us:
(i) learn about users’ goals and their ways of working
(ii) breakdown tasks into smaller steps to show what users must do to meet their
(4) User matrix: User matrix helps you identify user groups using characteristics that
were representative among different groups
(a) Categorize data based on user characteristics observed or found through other
methods
(b) How you design your user matrix will be determined by the data you have
collected (i.e. demographic, behavioral)
(c) Prioritize user characteristics before brainstorming, analyzing, and creating
content for your user matrix
e) User and use diagrams
i) Shows us our own assumptions about the user, and our expectations for how the
interface will respond to user needs
(1) User flows: gives you knowledge about the particular conditions that users face as
you construct tasks or test the interface
(i) Have user start where he naturally would
(2) User journey maps: visual depiction of what a user needs and what steps they take to
fulfill those needs as they interact with a product (map should represent real
behavior or the actions that the user takes, not something we assume the users will
do)
(a) Benefits:
(3) Storyboarding: technique to understand the users narrativetheir story about what
they need, how they would engage with a design, the actions they would perform,
problems they would encounter, and end of their use of the product
(a) Benefits:
(i) Helps you think about what the user will do with the product
(ii) Helps fellow stakeholders, even users, communicate with you
(iii) Helps communicate your design goals, your understanding of users and the
features they need to be successful within the product environment, to
stakeholders
(b) Storyboarding tips:
(i) Start with a hypothesis about who your products user is, where you think
they will use the product, and how they will use it
(vi) Make sure you convey for each storyboard panel the users thought and/or
emotion at that stage, what the user is saying and doing, and what is
happening in the scene such as the environment
(c) Storyboarding steps:
(i) Collect your storyboard materials and all existing user research
(ii) Choose one representative user for your storyboard
(iii) Start from the beginning. What is the first interaction the user will have with
the product? Illustrate this first interaction in the first frame
(4) Card sorting
(a) Card sorting: technique to see how users would group or categorize information
(b) Two kinds:
(i) Open-sorting: has users group cards on their own with no pre-existing
taxonomy (or structure). Then, users would indicate what each group of
(c) In each case, the user should be allowed to have a non-sort pile, or a pile
where they feel cards have no home in any created category.
(d) Card sorting steps
(i) Write each idea, concept, or statement on an index card
(ii) Determine whether you want to use open- or closed-sorting
(iii) Find at least six representative users to participate in your card sorting
activity
(5) User profiles and personas
(a) User profiles: set of defining characteristics, based on research, which represents
a particular group of users
(b) Personas: fictional characters based on research created to represent an actual
4) Review: Takeaways, Discussion Questions, UCD Quests
a) Review key points
b) Group discussion and Q&A
c) Prepare UCD Quest assignments (or present on previous activities)