DP Design Technology - A2.1 User centered reseach methods

A2.1 / User-Centered Research Methods

The designer needs to understand the reasons behind the behaviours, wants, and needs of the user. Designers should select research strategies based on the desired user experiences in the context of the product, service or system. The purpose of user research is to identify needs that reveal the complexities of personae. Real-life scenarios that simulate “actual” user experiences can generate new findings.

A2.1.1 | Understanding users

Understanding users and building empathy is the first step in the design process.

User-centered design (UCD) is a design approach that prioritizes the needs, wants, and limitations of end-users. By developing empathy with users and understanding their experiences, designers can create products that are more relevant, usable, and satisfying.

By focusing on the needs and experiences of users, designers can create solutions that are more relevant, usable, and satisfying. UCD leads to products that are more likely to be adopted and used, resulting in greater user satisfaction and success. By understanding user needs, designers my generate innovative and groundbreaking design ideas.

One strategy for developing empathy is to map out the perceived thoughts, feelings, and actions of users. This can be done through user research.

An empathy map is helpful to develop a better picture of the user and thier needs.

When considering strategies for user research, designers can group users into user populations. A product might be designed for a very specific user population or for multiple distinct populations.

User populations can for instance be classified by age, gender, interests, experience, habits, emotional response or physical condition. This can allow the designer to gather detailed feedback to generate insights for design development that are particular to each group. For example, a group of users who suffer from arthritis in their wrists would have different concerns with the design of a new kettle and give different feedback than a population of students. A user population is to a designer what a market segment is to a marketeer.

We must be careful not to stereotype users or make assumptions about a user group when researching or generating empathy maps. Even though we have classified people to make our research easier, this classification does not determine or define the individual behavior of users.

Examples of user populations might be:

People with Arthritis, Partial paralysis, Parkinson’s disease or Repetitive strain inquiries.
People that are with eye impairments or loss of hearing
People with a reduced sense of touch.
Children.
Elderly or infirm.

A group of users who suffer from arthritis in their wrists would likely have different concerns with the design of a range of products and would provide different feedback than a population of users without arthritis.

A2.1.2 | Personae

Designers can observe and interview members of a user population in order to create fictional characters known as personae, secondary personae and anti-personae.

Personae development supports the design process by identifying and prioritising the roles and characteristics of key audiences for a product, service or system. They create composite individuals that represent the key features of the desired target audience. The product team forms a unified vision of the intended uses of a design through reference to agreed upon personas.

Development of personae begins with assumptions about user profiles, based on data from initial market research. Through interviews and observations, researchers expand and validate the profiles by identifying goals, motivations, contextual influences, and typical user stories for each profile. This is all done so the design team can target specific user needs for each ‘profile’ identified for their target audience - there can be multiple personae for products.

Personae are archetypical stakeholders. Personas are used to aid decisions about product features, use and design. Personas are presented to the design teams as a single human with a name, face, attitudes and goals.

Secondary personae are those who are not the primary target audience for a product, but who have needs the product should nevertheless meet. They are able to provide valuable alternative insights to the development of a product. Anti-personae are those for whom the product is not designed.

There are similarities between a UX persona as used in design and a marketing persona (topic ). Both personas are used for designers to empathize with real users. This helps them to understand their user's goals and feelings. Marketing personas however just represent people who buy products and services. You can buy a product but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to use that product.

Personas created by Virginia Honig, Hala Shih, Leila Johannesen and Caroline Law from IBM.

A2.1.3 | Scenarios

A scenario is an imagined sequence of events in the daily life of a persona based on assumptions or real-life observations by researchers and designers. Trying to simulate “actual” user experiences can generate new insights for a designer. Designers can consider best, worst and average case scenarios that provide a physical and/or social context for each persona they have developed.

While personae tell us who the user is, scenarios tell us what they do. They are descriptions of how the users may interact with a product or system. Each UCD scenario (sometimes called user story) represents one type of user performing steps to achieve a specific goal. A good UCD user story tells the designer:

When the user interacts with the product or system.
Why the user interacts with the product or system.
What the user wishes to achieve through interacting with the product or system.

A2.1.4 | Use Case

A use case specifies the way a user will interact with a product. Use case specifications are formal documents, often with diagrams, that describe specific well-defined interactions between a user and a system. Use cases are often used in formal product testing to verify a product does what is supposed to do. Writing use cases requires user research.

A good use case should include several key pieces of information to ensure it adequately describes the required behaviour of a system or product.

It should include a brief description of the user's goal or objective. This helps to focus the use case on what the user wants to achieve.
It should provide a description of the actions or steps involved in achieving the user's goal.
It should describe what happens if something goes wrong or if the user deviates from the expected path. This helps identify potential issues that need to be addressed.
It should identify any dependencies or interactions with other use cases or systems.
It should include acceptance criteria that define the expected results or behaviour of the system.

These key elements will allow stakeholders to better understand the system's requirements and ensure that they are met.

7.4.0 | Research methods and data

Primary research is the collection and analysis of original information and data from the focus groups, target audiences, individual people or organisations perceived as the actual intended market for the product, system or service. Primary research:

User trails.
User research.
Field trials.
Product analysis.
Observation.

Secondary research involves the analysis of existing information even though it might have been collected for a purpose other than the issue being investigated. Secondary research involves the use of existing, and there is a lot out there. It is easier, quicker and a lot cheaper to use secondary research than collecting original data. Secondary research:

Literature search.
Blog posts.
Online forums
General web search

Measuring sets of variables or quantities, and their relationship to one another produces quantitative data. This form of research is built around numbers, logic, and objective data. For example; a design team wants to determine the usability of an app interface and user satisfaction. The team would ask a ‘population’ of users to fill out a questionnaire. The information gathered would then be scored and measured. The resulting information can focus the direction the design team needs to take in order to develop the product or use it as a final evaluation.

Quantities are measurable

Qualitative data deals with subjective indicators such as words or images. This date often results from interviews and literature searches. Qualitative research is open to bias and it can be difficult to reproduce its results.

Qualitative data is essentially concerned with how and why people behave in a certain way. Whereas quantitative data is more focused on the who, what, where and when. At its simplest, qualitative research consists of asking actual or potential customers their attitudes, interests and opinions towards the product or topics the design team is interested in.

Qualities are subjective

7.4.1 | Field Research

Is a company’s product really as good and useful as they think it is? Do they really know who’s buying their product? One way to find out is to go into the field and observe their customers firsthand. Watching people in a retail store, for instance, may shed some light on how they manage shopping lists and purchase items on impulse. Field studies are a qualitative primary research method that market researchers and designers use to better understand consumers' needs and wants. What is key to this method is that it takes part in the users' real-life environment - such as at the store, at work, in the home etc.

Field research is also useful when redesigning a product. Using a field study may discover that a redesign may be solving the wrong problem or that parts of the old way of doing things are working well, so they should be kept.

Field research is a powerful tool as it allows a designer to see what people actually do, as opposed to hearing what they think they do. What people say not always matches what they do. For instance, the customer may say something is easy to do to avoid looking silly, but when you independently observe them, you can see all the inefficiencies and problems customers may have completing tasks.

One of the major drawbacks to field studies is their cost.

7.4.2 | Method of Extremes

One common way of selecting testing subjects for user research is the so-called ‘method of extremes’. Using this method, sample users are selected to represent the extremes of the user population, plus one or two intermediate values. For example, in a study to establish a recommended height of a kitchen worktop three groups of users were selected.

The shortest would be the 2.5th percentile range - 1500 mm tall or less.
The mean range or the 50th percentile - 1625 mm tall ± 25mm.
The tallest would be the 97.5th percentile - 1740 mm tall or more.

Deciding which percentile range to design for will depend on what you are designing, and who you are designing for.

If you were designing a doorway using the height, shoulder and hip width of only an average person, half the people using the doorway would be taller, and half would be wider. Since the tallest people aren’t necessarily the widest, you need to consider the extremes for each dimension. In this case, you would need to design with the dimensions of the widest, and the tallest people in your user population group, to ensure the vast majority of users can walk through it normally.

Usually, you will find if you pick the right percentile range, 95% of people will be able to use your design. Sometimes you can’t accommodate all of your users, because there are conflicting solutions in your design. In this case, you will have to make a judgement call about what is the most important feature, and which ones the user will have ‘live’ with. However, you must never compromise on safety, and if there is a real risk of injury, you may have to use more extreme percentiles - the 1st or 99th percentile to make sure everyone is protected and not just 90% of people.

7.4.3 | Observation, interviews and focus groups

A user trial involves the observation of people using a product and the collection of comments from those who have used the product. In user observations a person's behaviour is often just as important as the collection of their comments. You can observe a person using a product and not ask for comments, this would still be a user trial.

Users can be given products to test over a period of time. This is often done as part of commissioning new products or redesigning an old product. Manufacturers obtain feedback from users to see if the design or existing product meets the needs of that target market. The manufacturers can then identify and rectify any problems with the product before mass production goes ahead and the product enters the market.

User trials usually create primary quantitative data collected by questionnaire or interview if you require more qualitative data. User trials and observations are useful and appropriate for gaining information on ease of use (ergonomics), performance, price, and aesthetics. The usability of the products can be tested, to find out how it is used and abused in a real-world context. Users can identify strengths and weaknesses in a product. The product can be a prototype but must have significant functionality in order to be meaningfully used in user trials.

Examples of ‘observing’ user trials could be: observing and obtaining user’s responses with the layout of street furniture, trying a new food product, using a new toothbrush design, collecting ergonomic data for a bicycle design that is being redesigned, using a new refrigerator design, etc.

Advantages of Observation user trails:

Easy to organize.
Cheap to undertake and administer - non-specialists can be used to record basic data entries.
Unexpected use and abuse may be discovered.
Allows designers to control the test environment.

Disadvantages of Observation user trails:

Time-consuming
Costly for certain industries. A number of products actually have to be made to be tested.
Interpretation of collected data may be difficult
Results can be biased.

7.4.4 | Questionnaires

A common method of collecting user responses is through interviews or questionnaires. These are similar to user trials in that users/consumers are directly involved. However, in this case, the user merely answers questions posed to them about a product or context, but they may not have to have interacted with the actual product.

Interviews and questionnaires conducted by a designer are a form of primary research and can gather both qualitative and quantitative data. They are particularly important when trying to establish a design ‘need’, when formulating the Design Brief and Design Specifications.

Focus groups are facilitated sessions with a group of individuals from a target audience brought together to discuss specific elements of your product and user experience. Focus groups are usually more focused on the usability of the product than on user preferences as they only involve a small sample of users. Focus groups can be used at many stages of the design process and are focused at gathering quantitative data.

For example, a prototype may be shown to a group of users who are then asked to give their views on it, to compare it to other similar products with which they may be already familiar. This will give the design team some indications of how a user responds to their product, both positively and negatively. Less specific preferences or attitudes can be explored by asking a group to discuss more general features of a broad product type, using open questions like, “What annoys you the most about lawnmowers?” or “Which gardening activities would you like new products to help you with”.

7.4.5 | Affinity diagramming

Affinity diagrams or affinity mapping are graphic tools designed to help organise loose, unstructured qualitative ideas generated in brainstorming or problem-solving meetings. Guidelines for Affinity mapping:

Identify a general theme: These themes may be associated with a problem or opportunity, or simply a situation in our physical or social environment.
Collect fact, opinions and ideas: data or information may be generated by a group of people in a number of formats. For example, work teams, focus groups, user trials, expert appraisals etc.
Express and enter the data in a common format: You may use sticky notes on a table, cards on a table or a digital ‘padlet’ - making sure the data can be ‘moved around’.
Identify the groups/clusters: Identify, label or describe the group regarding their common attributes or characteristics. Good, bad, weakness, strength etc.
Cluster the data together: organise the data or information into cohesive groups.
Repeat steps 4 and 5 to form super groups or clusters: it may be possible to relate two or more of the initial groups or cluster together and develop ‘super groups’. Super grouping can be repeated until the facts or opinions are suitably classified or organised.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UynxDyr0lAo: the final process is to present an organised set of facts, opinions and ideas and make sense in terms of providing help the nature of the situation or theme from step 1.

7.4.6 | Participatory design, prototype and usability testing sessions

Participatory design seeks to include the intended users in either the research, concept, design or production of a product. It does not just ask users' opinions on design issues, but actively involves them in the design and decision-making process.

During a participatory design workshop developers, designs, and users work together to design an initial prototype. This initial prototype would then feed into a traditional design process - the difference being, that users have already had significant input so the product should already appeal to the target audience.

Projects which only utilise participatory design are very rare. One disadvantage of participatory design is that it requires an experienced moderator with thorough knowledge of the domain to guide everyone through the process.

7.4.7 | Natural environments and usability laboratories

Usability testing can be carried out in a usability laboratory. Typically, users are seated with an instructor who observes them performing a particular task with the product. Another group of observers might be behind a one-way mirror, where they can record the activity and note insights. Often the tests are recorded for later reference and analysis.

Sometimes, to make users more comfortable and therefore more likely to interact with a product more realistically, a designer may allow users to test their products in their homes or places of work - in their natural environments - and monitor them remotely.

7.4.8 | Testing houses versus usability laboratories

Testing Houses provide formal, often government or industry-certified, testing services. Testing houses might provide licenses to sell or produce a product in a particular market. Testing houses usually focus their testing on quantifiable data. This data is gathered with scientifically valid and reliable testing methods by (certified) industry experts. Usability laboratories provide a more exploratory form of testing focussing more on qualitative data.

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