CS310 - Human Computer Interaction

5. Week – Needfinding
ASSIST. PROF. DR. ZEYNEP SAGIR
Topics
• Understanding the Needfinding
• Main Needfinding Questions
• Needfinding Methods
• Observation
• Surveys
• Interviews
• Personas
Goals
• Understanding the system requirements and user needs
o “Needfinding”

• Knowing tools and instruments for Needfinding

Human-Centered Design Process
Main Needfinding questions
• Needfinding = Finding Potential User Needs
o What do users need?
o What do users want?

• That also requires

o Who are the users?
o How are they doing it, now?
o What is the context in which they are doing it?
o Can’t we just ask them?
 Know Your «Know Your
Users»

Users
• Who are the users of the system?
o Uniform, or different categories/groups?
o Young/old? Novice/experienced?
o Do not think of “generic” users, split the categories
• *You* are not a [representative] user
o Except by chance (e.g., you are also students, developers, …)
• The client is not a [representative] user
o Bosses, managers, directors, … they believe that they know
their employees. Actually, they don’t
o Always seek the actual users that will use the system
Know Your Users – cont.
• oTalking to users
Surveys
o Interviews
o Understand real current behavior, pain points,
workarounds
• Watching users
o Observation sessions
o Video recording (and analysis)
o Analyze their work (artifact, processes, action
sequences)
o Discuss with users the findings of the observation
(may discover the “why”)
Know Your Users – cont.

• Imagining users
o When real users are not available
o Imagine how a real user would behave (very difficult)
o Building “imaginary” users: personas
• Detailed description of an “example’ persons in a given
role
• Imagine them as they were a real person
• name and image (refer to them by name)
Needfinding methods
• Observation

• Interviews

• Surveys

• Personas
Observation
• Embed in the users’ environment, culture, behavior

• Goal: to obtain the necessary data to influence interface (re)design

• Learn the language of users and their environment

• Listen and observe carefully

o Sometimes ask questions and clarifications

• Audio-Video Record / Take Notes

• Risks:
o Misinterpret observations
o Disrupting normal practice
o Overlooking important information
What learned by observation?
1. What do people do now?
2. What values and goals do people have?
3. How are these activities embedded in a larger ecology?
4. Similarities and differences across people
5. Process vs Practice
• Process: how things are officially supposed to happen, and are
officially part of the training
• Practice: set of workarounds, practical tricks, information learnt from
the field and from experience, etc., that are part of daily activities
Types of observation
• Controlled Observation
• Naturalistic Observation

• Becoming part of the wall

• Becoming “one of them”
 How to Conduct User

Types of observation Observations

https://www.interaction-
design.org/literature/article/how-t

– cont. o-
conduct-user-observations

Controlled Observation: Within a Lab environment

• Easy to reproduce. If you use a quantitative approach –easy to
get similar results by repeating
• Easy to analyze. Quantitative data requires less effort to
analyze than qualitative data.
• Quick to conduct. Recruitment may take a little time, the
controlled observation is fairly fast to run.
• The Hawthorne Effect. The act of observation of how someone
does something can change their approach to carrying out the
task.
Types of observation – cont.
Naturalistic Observation: Studying the user “in the wild”, less
structured
• More reliable. When people use a product in real life – they are much
more likely to encounter the frustrations (and benefits) of real life use
than they are in a lab following a set of instructions.
• More useful for ideation. generate lots of ideas for product
improvement as it opens up possibilities that aren’t found in
quantitative research.
• Difficult to make them replicable.
Types of observation – cont.
Naturalistic Observation: Studying the user “in the wild”, less
structured
• Difficult to include a representative sample. More expensive and
time consuming to conduct, limits the reach of the research. Use this
kind of research to create ideas and then test those ideas with other
forms of research.
• Hard to manipulate external variables. For example, if it’s raining
when you observe your users working on a smartphone – their
behavior is likely to be different to when it’s sunny. You have no
control over the weather “in the wild”.
Types of observation – cont.
 Becoming part of the wall  Becoming “one of them”,
(Complete Observer) like an apprentice (Complete
 Avoid being intrusive or Participant)
modifying behaviors  Undergo training process
o Avoid video-recording or o Official information
interruptions
o Matter-of-fact information
 Schedule time for discussing shared by co-workers
your observations
 Observe all the practices
 Validate your observations with
the users
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Data collection
Subjective Objective
• Impressions • Anecdotes
• Ranking/ratings by users • Critical incidents
on different questions
• Observed errors
• Written summary report
• Observed
• Artifacts and “hints” in the workarounds
workplace

HUMAN COMPUTER INTERACTION 17

Interviews
Main Forms of Interviews
• Surveys
o Fast, more superficial
o Sets of questions with predefined possible answers
o Paper-based or on-line
• In-person interviews
o Time-demanding, in-depth knowledge
o Structured vs Unstructured
o One-to-one vs Focus groups
Beware!
• Users don’t know what they want
• Maybe subconsciously, but not rationally
• They will tell what they think you like to hear
Stop Asking Users What They
Want
https://uxplanet.org/stop-asking-us
ers-what-they-
want-21e9ba646bce
Choosing participants for interviews
• Representative of target users
• May be current users of a similar system
• Might also be the non-users (for a new product)
• Incentives, motivations, small gifts
Executing interviews
• Schedule time&place comfortable for users
• Introduce yourself, explain your purpose
o You are not testing them; they are helping you

• Begin with open-ended, unbiased, non-leading questions

• Ask the question and let them answer
o Give enough time. The 2nd reply is often more interesting than the 1st.

21
Examples of open-ended questions
• ‘Tell me about your typical day.’
• Tell me three good things about. .. ’
• ‘and three bad things.’
• ‘What has gone wrong with the application recently? How
did you cope?’
• ‘What else should we have asked about?’
Bad questions – to avoid
• Is feature [x] important to you?
• ‘Leading’ question
• What would you like in a tool?
• User are experts in their domain, not expert in design
• What do you like in [x]?
• Assuming question. Maybe he doesn’t like it
• HowHumans
often do you do [x]?
• May obtainare very bad at estimating (and biased in the answers)
• by log analysis (if an application already exists)
• Binary questions (yes/no)
Surveys
• Main Forms of Surveys
• On-line surveys
• Paper surveys
• Telephone surveys
Surveys
• Familiar, cost-effective, potentially reaching a very wide
audience
• Results can be easily visualized and analyzed with statistical
methods

• Should be very careful with setting the goal of the survey\

• First define what statistics and/or charts you need, then
design the survey structure and questions
Survey structure

• Declare the purpose of the survey and the expected time

• One or more sections with targeted questions
• Background information about the users
• Limit “mandatory” fields to a minimum
Background information (examples)
• Background demographics (age, gender, origins, native language,
education)
• Experience with computers (specific applications or software
packages, length of time, depth of knowledge)
• Job responsibilities (decision-making influence, managerial roles,
motivation)
• Personality style (introvert versus extrovert, risk taking versus risk
averse, early versus late adopter, systematic versus opportunistic)
• Reasons for not using an interface (inadequate services, too
complex, too slow, afraid)
• Familiarity with features
Types of Questions
• Open-ended questions
o Solicit specific motivation, to avoid too generic answers
o Require methodology for analyzing the responses
• Closed-ended questions
o Only one possible choice
o Ordinal values: a scale of ordered possibilities (e.g., from
1 to 5)
o Nominal values: alternatives, with no ordering
relationships (e.g., city or department)
Warnings
• If possible, use two simpler questions instead of one complex
one (separate the factors of interest)
• Avoid negative words in the question
• Biased questions solicit biased responses
 PERSONAS
• Persona is detailed description of an “example’ person in a
given role
• Goal: to help someone envision the intended users of a
system
• Imagine them as they were a real person
• A name, age, defined lifestyle, workstyle, image
• Frequently performed tasks
• Tools and resources used
• Creating Personas for User Experience Research - YouTube
 PERSONAS
Pros
• Efficient and clear way to express design requirements
• Helps show the team who they are designing for
• Easy to explain to upper management
• Helps you see users as people rather than a set of design
requirements
Cons
• Viewed as less “scientific” (under debate)
• You can only use a small number of personas so designing
them well is important
• Can be difficult for some developers to use, design
requirements are more functional and personas are more
conceptual
Source: AdobeBlog 32
Source: UX Mastery 33
Source: Medium 34
Building a Persona
• Can be used to combine data from other methods
• Based on a combination of real people and design
requirements gathered from the client
• Methods like interviews, focus groups, contextual
inquiries, and surveys can be used to learn about the
target audience
• These should reveal several types of people
• Each type you are interested in can be converted to a
persona
Personas – In Class Activity
• Activity in teams.
• Assume to design a mobile app to organize daily activities
for busy moms.
• Design the persona that will help understand the target user
and its context.

(20 min)