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FNAR 678 Presentation notes

Michael

Title: Insight - A Mental Health Design

Good use of stats

Inclusion of Personas

Seems to be rushing a bit

Addressing the misalignment problem

Colorful, simple journey map

Misalignment to sleep tracking? I don’t follow. Well, I suppose sleep can be used to predict problems.

Technical issues related to sleep tracking with people who sleep with others or not in their own bed

What about people living off campus? (most grad students)

Ran quite a bit overtime

Displayed a decent knowledge of his intervention

Alice

Good use of graphical elements - visuals are well-placed

Problems: disconnected sources, inconvenient to get accurate information

Problem being solved: Connecting the research and evaluation process with the post-adoption process, so people can be more aware?

Links potential adopters and fosters with current fosters - resulting in better information and better care

How would one hear about this?

Is this just for Philly?

Interesting IoT integration - but seems disconnected

Many resources for new adopters

Is any of this PAWS specific?

Kashish

Focusing on case for international students

Conversation around mental health in International/Immigrant students is sparse or non-existent

Many end points when interacting with peers

Guided solution only led by peers

Intuitive matching that pairs students with others from home country

...how would a student come to interact with this?

Social media parsing? How does this fit in?

I don’t see how people are flagged to join the app, especially as mentors

You say you don’t need regular engagement, but...?

How do you ensure compatibility? Or prevent abusive mentor/mentee relationships?

Perhaps talk about qualitative research, and the impact of social isolation in general

Ethan

Many agencies

Adoption rate increasing

Adoption process is difficult - takes a long time to go through the process

Short periods where pet and person are in contact before adoption, but influence everything else

Information is fragmented, not much choice in who to adopt

Hard to understand which cats are actually available

Difficult to match cat characteristics with adopters

It feels like it is dragging - a lot of time was spent going over the research

“Cat-Adopter Dating Website” is proposed solution

Adopter preparedness + Cat popularity

How do you deal with multiple people being prepared?

Personal profile? Game systems? What?

This feels like gamification, and not in a good way.

Fosters get to vote on whether adopters should get a pet.

Fosters ALREADY decide on whether or not prospective adopters get a pet.

Will

“Walking the Path to mindful Clarity.”

Journey map is unreadable

Problem Statement: User group filled with anxiety (due to upward comparisons), interactive meditation experience to promote everyday mindfulness

Good way of displaying the research, on specific student feelings

Hypothesis: No social skills help with anxiety. Turn inwards to meditation

Penn Program for Mindfulness - $600

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Course - Underutilized service

Idea is a mindful walking practice, w/context aware scheduling, using calendar data from google to be aware of when students have free time

Feedback and content in mindful walking process

Who is distributing? If meditation via CAPS is already underutilized, how will CAPS promoting this help?

Wenqian

Food Security - surplus from the entire food system

Philabundance is largest hunger relief organization

Main takeaway for interview with Philabundance: Need to feed more people. Perception of waste food must change. People cannot choose what to eat

Currently nothing really fresh in the pack every month; just canned food

Idea: Food preference platform where people select what they would like for the next week. Food organizers have heat map of what kinds of food are desired in different areas.

I’m not sure how I like that the personas of the poor were both black, while both of the NGO workers were white. Social implications...

Recipe suggestion sounds interesting - any filters for things like diabetes?

Current recipes are static, given the boxes of food.

User recipe database?

Jane

PennWell - Mental Health@Penn

Key finding: Resources, support, and policy are decentralized (i.e. leave of absence policy).

Key Quote: “CAPS? That’s all I know.”

Proposes creation of well-researched, central hub

Assessing success via traffic at the hub

This is an output, but what about an outcome?

What is the actual integration you are pointing to?

Apparently by tracking all students’ social media

Why would someone opt-in? I can see potential for a lot of abuse, given historic Ivy League response to depression

Easy appointment making for CAPS? That could be interesting

Name confusion with PennWellness App?

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ensalience-blog · 8 years ago

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Week 11 Reading

Workflow app: So, basically yet another automation app, but iOS specific. I think I’ll probably end up sticking with IFTTT, mostly because I am unable to use Workflow (no iOS device!). Still, the integration seems as if it could be quite useful.

What is it, how does it work?: I can see the convenience of automation if one is actually doing a lot of repetitive tasks. Of course, if one isn’t, then it loses a lot of its value proposition. Due to its success, I can only imagine that many of us are doing trivial things - though I wonder if that’s because we have to or because we’re intentionally using up time?

How to use the workflow app: Ah, the joys of reading in Incognito mode, because of the sandbox environment it provides (read: a malicious ad finds it harder to get at the rest of your computer). I will admit that its ability to save workflows to the home screen and allow one to activate many actions with a single touch is nice - I suppose it says something that it took this long for batch processing to become a think on mobile phones. Or perhaps that its is finally becoming a thing - have we crossed a complexity threshold, I wonder?

What is Temboo: A code generator/library of processes that virtualizes the process of interfacing with APIs, so you don’t have to know each and every one of them yourself. Useful for prototyping, though maybe not for a final product. Basically your IoT skeleton Key.

Your own internet of things: Temboo facilitates fast development with new connected devices, allowing savings in time and memory (important for microcontrollers, which have a limited amount of the latter) by shifting the burden of complexity to the cloud. Of course, this presupposes a working internet connection and introduces another point of vulnerability / failure, which I’m not entirely comfortable with. Still, I suppose the support of multiple programming languages and ability to test is good, but abstracting everything isn’t an answer in the long run.

Building an app with flexibility and power: Temboo wants to make building apps more accessible to regular people, which is well and good, except that this is mostly a technical shortcut, and as responsive as they are to their users, how many people will ever really hear about it, except those already moving in design/development circles? If we want to make building apps more accessible to regular people, we have to foster a level of technical and design literacy among the population at large, so people can, if not be expert programmers and designers, have a basic understanding of what they do, and what some of the tools are if they are interested in building something. Right now, there’s a huge hurdle when it comes to taking that first step, and its mostly mental.

Programming hardware without coding: Page is missing.

Connecting Arduino to 100s of API's: Technically, Temboo is not necessary to make these hacks, though it is nice to see them partnering with a variety of device manufacturers. Given the other material on them, that they have an interest in helping people build their IoT clusters and apps seems about right - though that’s still dependent on hardware compatibility and interfacing. Oh, and making sure your organization actually supports IoT devices connecting to the internet, which they very well might not (Penn’s internet is not IoT friendly, as I discovered while tinkering, and connecting to the net proper again, opens one up to extra vulnerabilities).

Connecting API's without wrappers: The word ‘silo’ is one that’s been brought across to quite a few other fields, I note with some amusement. That said, while Temboo is being pushed as a killer app that removes the need to learn how APIs work and makes updating easier...the platform itself is not intuitive to use, the documentation isn’t especially great, and what happens if Temboo’s choreo library stops working or has a problem?

How to build a cloud saving electricity monitor: The fact that open source tutorials exist for the maker community is rather convenient for anyone seeking to get into it. However...the hardware requirement (and extra cost/effort) is still a significant barrier to adoption and experimentation. Yes, it may not be that expensive, but if I have to go out of my way to get an Arduino or other device, wait for it to arrive in the mail, build it, and then hope and pray that my internet will support it. Well...essentially, it is great that this exists, but that alone isn’t going to make me interested in building something.

Ultra-Contextual design: So many assumptions in this article, like “Wi-Fi is so ingrained in modern life that it disappears into the background.“ While reading all of articles, Erika Hall’s statement that “Assumptions are Insults” lingers in the back of my mind - and is brought up time and time again. Nevertheless... this defines context aware systems as those that "provide information and utilities to people based on the tasks they are trying to accomplish”. Transitioning from a dumb system to a context aware one, however, is not easy, and requires not only understanding the context of use, but what kind of contextual design would fit best. There are many ways to tackle any one problem, after all, and which one is right...depends.

A UX perspective of design for context-aware adaption pdf white paper: Automated methods to assess quality of life may not be best, as this paper notes, given that one only has limited inputs to work from. How much can one realistically interface with and be aware of at any given time? With many studies in context-aware adaption failing to include the user in the process of developing or adapting HCI policy and implementations...we’re going to keep running into issues, as not all users are the same, and every use case is slightly different. Automation is good, but it isn’t everything.

Wharton - on why UX is about Data: Individual UX has become table stakes - if you can’t do that much, you shouldn’t be playing the app game. And well, you can’t really get a good personalized UX without data to understand each user’s context - though it is important to note that having a non-offending default set of parameters might be useful as well, and that pinging for data to improve an experience can quickly become aggravating, if that is not what a consumer is interested in. A user may not want a smart solution - a user may simply want something ‘dumb’ - or to be completely in control, without having data fed to him or her. Still, I’ll agree with the statement that “it’s common for apps to have a long-winded sign-up process that asks you every question under the sun. This is not a recipe for success.”

Even IFTTT was guilty of that. I just wanted to browse what their library of interactions was capable of without having to first connect to every bloody service I intended to use. It might seem dumb, because why not integrate sign-in with browsing, right, but maybe I don’t want to sign in if the interaction I want isn’t there. Maybe I don’t want to have another point of failure/slowdown/frustration when I’m trying to build an applet. Today’s UX may be all about the individual user experience, but still having good design to fall back on couldn’t hurt, especially if the process of gathering the data is a pain in and of itself.

Context aware computing? Contextual philosophy, how droll. It is important to remember that, per ACM, context is in and of itself an abstraction, and that abstractions are not easy to talk about. Sure, we can say that “context, in the general sense, is something we create in the process of being and doing, a thing we make with our mind in our body so we can interact with another mind in another body,�� but what does that really mean? With such a definition, pretty much anything can be context (and whether it can be calculated or not, whether it is embodied or emergent from interactions is a whole other can of worms). What makes this article interesting is that it tries to see what lies at the intersection of these, the common ground, the interfaces between ideas and cultures, and argues that design should be about foregrounding culture and backgrounding technology, which is something that most of the other readings missed.

Don Norman: TED talk 3 ways design make you happy: The talk of neurotransmitters and how the brain functions at different of processing is rather fascinating, especially when we think about how it interacts with the design choices we make, and how various levels and emotions can be played against one another. By synthesizing beauty, functionality, and reflectiveness - the ability to tell stories about an experience, or create a coherent one, we can make more effect, coherent designs. Designs resilient in the face of user stress or frustration, designs which are salutogenic.

Drone TED talk: Important points to note from this talk are towards the end, when he mentions how “Interaction doesn't have to be virtual. It can be physical.” And there almost always is a physical component to interaction, since we can’t automate all of our lives. In the end though, as with so much technology, how it affects us and how pervasive it is may not be a technical choice, but a social one.

Grocery store video: Supermarket experiences are inherently manipulative through appealing to people’s senses, and the experiences they choose to present. Color and smell (why fresh fruit and veggie displays, and flower displays) are some of the first things you encounter. Also, the small verbal cues and hints - the mere suggestion of something in another context - can be enough to get someone thinking about something subconsciously, which, when it later boils up to the surface, seems as if it was their idea to begin with. I mean, this really isn’t too different in principle from Jobs (or any other boss) hearing an employee’s idea, automatically dismissing it or brushing it off, and a week later presenting it as their own, believing that they came up with it completely in and of themselves. More than just the direct message of manipulation, what I take away from this is how tightly everything is connected, and how everything influences everything else.

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ensalience-blog · 8 years ago

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Week 10 Reading

Paper Prototyping: A useful thing, paper prototyping. I’ve used it pretty extensively in my game design experience, since it is much less expensive to create “flip through” prototypes than even HTML click-through prototypes, especially if what you’re concerned with is not appearance, but user interaction. People usually find it easier to criticize something that doesn’t look as fancy, which ties back to what has been said over and over earlier on: that people are social creatures, and often want to please the questioner, so if one presents something that looks too polished, one may not get the feedback one needs. The index card approach is something I may steal for my future work, since it is a bit more portable than full sheets of paper!

More paper prototyping: If you digitize the paper prototype and put it on an iPhone, can it really be called a paper prototype? Especially if users are just swiping through the stack, as the Indiana University academics had in their paper. I suppose adding hyperlinks to allow users to click through would restore some of the functionality and explore, but if you’re going to do that, why not just go ahead and make a clickthrough prototype?

Even more paper prototyping: The obligatory myths section. While there’s a lot of useful content here, the author is far too quick to dismiss some of the benefits of both wireframes and digital prototypes. Paper prototyping can be a tremendously powerful tool, but it is only one tool in a designer’s toolbox, and isn’t necessarily useful for every single situation. Also “ Wireframes are usually produced towards the end of the initial design phase, not at the beginning” and “they are a bureaucratic overload”? Really?

5 steps to prototyping: This article is a fair bit more practical and less condescending than the previous one. Keeping the primary task stickied is a good suggestion, and this contains a nice list of useful tools for wireframing and prototyping.

Building clickthrough prototypes: This focuses almost exclusively on how to build clickthrough prototypes in the Prototyping on Paper app, but the principles hold true most software applications that turn mockups or sketches into clickthrough prototypes. It is true that using clickthrough prototypes can be quite useful for a number of thing, and better capture user interactions. Of course, if someone needs to install an app and create an account to see your prototype, this may be less than useful, since the point was to reduce the hassle to the user, and the more steps in the process, the more attrition is likely to result.

Design thinking for social innovation and sustainability (10min video): Ah yes, co-designing. This comes up in games a good bit, where players are being brought into the design process early on. I wonder if the specific term of social innovation is necessary, given that an innovation is supposedly there to solve a problem a user is facing to begin with. In this context, it really seems like its just flagging things that don’t come from the business world.

Explore this project site on design thinking practice: The day 2 observation about “using existing objects, frameworks and technologies for new purposes is key to solving social problems intuitively" really struck home to me. It can be fun to invent and use cutting edge technology, but is that really what’s appropriate for a given problem and audience? The map view is also neat, but when one is going back and forth from it to the problems/solutions being explored, waiting to have it load is impractical, hence I switched to the grid format. All in all, the site gave me a lot to think about in terms of how to identify problems, and looking to simple solutions first.

Changing the way we do things on the web: Enabling collaboration across apps is a useful thing, given that while many apps are (understandably) only concerned about building up their own userbase, there are plenty of people not on apps like facebook or instagram that might want to see pictures, learn about events that are posted there, or such. In some ways, Facebook has become something of a hub, but one that only works if you know what you’re looking for since there’s such deluge of information there. I can see how this could be interesting as a way to populate some of the events section of my intended solution by scraping available data...

What is IFTTT & how can it improve your life: Automating trivial but time-consuming tasks is definitely one way to improve one’s quality of life, though one has to be sure one is being logical about the way one is automating. The list of partners is pretty impressive, I admit.

Things too?: While knowing that IFTTT can link to IoT devices is handy, I can imagine this also poses a number of security vulnerabilities if someone was to compromise the IFTTT server. Its functionality is also dependent on what a user has access to, so it is important to remember that this isn’t a panacea - if someone doesn’t already use channels it supports (less common these days, but still happens), this won’t be as useful.

The Ultimate Guide: The example integrations and recipes here are good as an example of what can be done on IFTTT. One simple thing would be “If I say I’m going to a Facebook Event, add it to my Google Calendar.” It’s less an ultimate guide and more a “here are some useful integrations” list, though it offers some good suggestions.

Evolving design for the internet of things: product design: I suppose my view on this is somewhat colored by the fact that I’ve been working in digital for quite some time, so it is odd to me to see this call for integration of digital services. It is also odd to me to see product designers are the ones that re generalized as “designers,” while designers from other disciplines are just called app designers, and website designers, service designers, as if they have no claim to the general designer label. Especially in a world where the digital is becoming every more prominent. Is it the pushback against the virtual, I wonder?

The Internet of Things is Everywhere: The term Trojan Horses has rather negative implications, especially where security is concerned, so I’m not sure its appropriate for this article. That said, the article does highlight the main issue of IoT - that things don’t work together nicely, and even when they do, it takes time to set up. It’s something to adapt to eventually, but frankly, things like IFTTT are probably going to be more useful for now than something like Amazon Alexa - at least as long as one requires the use of voice to control Alexa-enabled devices. Voice is cool for a week. Then it gets tiring. What we really need is a better automation hub.

IOT Roadmap to a connected world: Interop, open standards, and security will need to be improved before wide acceptance of IoT comes. Or else, it will simply pervade our lives silently until something happens and catastrophe results. There is something to be said for not wanting to have too many sensors around you unless you know where the data is going, though at this rate, I’m not sure we’ll have a choice about it for that long...

The future is the Internet of things: We know that the pitch for IoT is “smart” everything, but what, really, is smart? Who manages the data? Who controls what is seen and unseen? How is everything secured? And how do we patch the exploits when some devices don’t allow for remote patching? Even if everything is secure, our devices are programmed to spy on us by default, sending data analytics to “trusted partners”, like everything else, which has incredible implications that I doubt most have thought of. But who knows, maybe the next generation will just accept it as natural and I’m shouting at the tide.

Fabric, Fashion and the internet of things: I’m a little annoyed that Forbes tries to keep me from reading content when I’m using an ad-blocker, while they don’t make any effort to control the content of their ads. Ads are also part of the user experience, and if a company doesn’t make an attempt to make sure that they aren’t malicious or disruptive (like the bloody autoplaying videos, which interrupt my listening experience with their bloody announcements and headlines when I AM NOT INTERESTED), it doesn’t have a right to control how I want to browse. I am also concerned about the implications of trying to track fraudulent returns, and if people who have received gifts unknowingly are going to be blamed for having these goods, much as possession of stolen property itself is criminalized (but at least you might be a bit more aware of the latter).

The internet of things you don’t need: Ah, Ian Bogost. I thought I recognized the tone of his article, given that he talks a lot about game stuff - and I recently re-read his “Gamification is Bullshit” article. Honestly, I find myself agreeing with a lot of what he says here - that a lot of the consumer-driven IoT stuff is something of a distraction. Surely it is better for us to learn better habits than just to automate them out of mind, and grow lazy in our thinking?

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ensalience-blog · 8 years ago

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Week 9 Reading

Task analysis: a UX designers best friend: Task Analysis is one of those things that can seem very daunting when you first approach it, but becomes fairly intuitive over time, especially when one is a systems designer. Basically, it involves taking tasks and arranging them into a flow that a user needs to follow to achieve their desired outcome - agnostic to various technologies. The key is not to lock down a specific solution, or even to presuppose one, but to see what points of intervention exist that might point to one. A nice link to the scientific method flow in that regard.

Tools for mobile ux: Task flows: “But the task-flow diagram has a more important role, in making sure that you and the whole team are keeping the user and the context of each feature well in mind.” Well, yes, that’s what models and diagrams are for. I suppose. The article also addresses the point that understanding is better than speed, and that a full fledged prototype may be unnecessary if a sketch can take its place (not that a prototype would do much good if it doesn’t actually run on the platform one wants). And I suppose the article is also hammering home the point of this blog - that we must document so we know what we did and why. Amusing.

UX Case study : wine research: ...this was perhaps not the best article to be reading when I am already feeling like a glass of merlot. Nevertheless...this is a nice case study of how an extant product can be improved, and definitely has some lessons I can take away for my work.

How to create a journey map: Defines the components of a Journey map, provides a sample of one, and walks one through the process of making one. Visual depictions certainly are easier to share than stacks of postits and interview transcripts, and easier to interpret at a glance. I do imagine the time required to make one differs depending on if one is part of a team or operating independently, however!

The Value of Journey Maps: There is none who have the zeal of a recent convert, I suppose. Then again, there’s nothing like collecting and trying to represent a huge volume of information to show you that maybe writing an extensive report that no one will read isn’t the best use of one’s time.

Journey maps: My first question is why are there so many bloody names for the same thing? Pick one and stick with it. Aside from that, surprisingly user-friendly, talking about the benefits of the timeline and the wheel layouts, which none of the others had done before, stating that there were no templates (even as they provide a sample).

Tools to create journey maps: I will certainly look at them, though I’m not actually a big fan of prezi.

Storyboarding the customer experience: Look, as a designer, I know storyboarding is useful, having used it extensively in the past. As a storyteller, I know that humans respond better to narratives than simple facts. Is this really new content? Then I remember that I’m a PhD student and thus a bit more experienced than a number of others. In either case, a useful tool, like the task flow.

Wireframing for the beginner: A useful tool, and honestly, an indispensable part of the design process, since the article is absolutely right that it would be a good way to invite conversation and feedback before you get to a complete prototype. At this point, I’m repeating myself.

UX sketching: This article breaks down the different approaches to and types of sketches for UX research. The recommendation of the time limit is useful and prevents one from accidentally turning a sketch into an artifact.

Wireframing tools and techniques: Now these are a useful set of tools, but online and offline. I do use Balsamiq and sketch, but I suppose I may find myself looking at other programs and platforms for this sort of work. I’m appreciative of more resources, since the net is a very big place.

Wireflows: A UX Deliverable for Workflows and Apps: Combining the wireframe with a task flow, we get a wireflow. Flowcharts lack page content, a wireframe by itself is not so good at showing the processes of interaction, and both are pants at displaying mobile apps and integrating into their workflow. Thus, restrictions were eased and and the hybrid was created.

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ensalience-blog · 8 years ago

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Week 8 Reading

Just Enough Research (Chapter 8): And now we get to Analysis, with the card-sorting activities and the creation of an affinity diagram. It’s a more manual process than I’m used to, since in science we often use software packages to analyze surveys for us, looking at the frequency with which certain terms are mentioned or the emotional qualities associated with such. From there though, we go to Personas, which allow designers to become user advocates provided that the personas are clear and based on thorough research, much as a nurse can only be a patient advocate if one is aware of what the patient actually needs/desires.

“And the user type with the highest value to your business may not be the one with the most value to the design process” - This is a particularly insightful line. Most of the time, they are conflated, but I suppose with design, one may be possibly looking to move beyond existing user groups and types, so it really depends on one’s design goals.

It is also easy for assumptions to creep in at this point, and it is critical that they not be allowed to, as those can poison one’s design later on.

Nice definition of intuitive as “matching the user’s mental model.” It is about what I had in my mind, but somewhat more concise. With conceptual models though...look, I took an entire class about those, which is where I developed this.

About Face; The essentials of Interaction Design (Chapter 3): Long, you say? Not as long as the papers and nursing book chapters I have to read! Besides, generating models of data is something I do all the time (in research, and nursing, and even game design), laying out the relationships between things so we can operationalize how to study them or such.

More to the point, they become something one can point to when discussing a design, whether a research design or a product.

About Face nicely touches on some of the possible traps that Personas are meant to help avoid by formally defining the user one is creating for, and their goals and abilities. It also mentions that Personas should not be reused between products, given that each product is different - and developing a true cross-functional persona would take a great deal of time and effort, more than just creating a persona for another product.

What I found most useful though, was a discussion of how personas differed from other user models, and in fact, how they often addressed the weaknesses of such, something I had not seen before.

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ensalience-blog · 8 years ago

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Week 5 +6 Reading

Just Enough Research (Ch 7): On my first read through, I picked up the meaning of the greek word on which heuristics was based - something I’d never actually bothered to learn before, as I mostly infer the definitions of unknown words from context - which can sometimes be problematic. As to usability testing, I’ve seen firsthand what happens when a company doesn’t do proper usability testing and its main product is a digital platform. It fails.

“The greatest danger inherent in the actual designer or developer of the system facilitating the test is that they will not be able to sit idly by while their creation fails to perform or elicits derision from the participant.“ - Pretty big danger, yes, since to a designer, how something works might seem obvious. Sadly, what one is trying to identify is whether it is useful for someone who may not be intimately familiar with it.

How to Define your User: Contained an example of a short user profile, a stepping stone to a full persona. I am unsure as to the worth of the example of Spotify though, as I rather think they may have defined their user before creating their product, rather than vice versa!

Objectives of user research: Providing broad areas (Who, What, Where, When, How, Why) around which to build questions is a nice touch. Defining the steps is also useful.

Capturing User Needs and Pain Points: I don’t think I’ve heard of the term Lean UX before, though in practice, it basically sounds like what is being covered in Just Enough Research.

How to Conduct User Interviews: A lot of this information has been covered in other sources, though I appreciated how this article advised the facilitator to show consideration for the interviewee. Also can’t help but not that for our final projects. we all worked alone, without two UX researchers focusing on a single user.

Open-Ended vs. Closed Questions: This is really basic material that is covered in any course that talks about surveys, or experimental design. I suppose since this class is aimed at underclassmen, its a useful enough article.

Field Studies: Already generally covered in Just Enough Research. That being said, this lays out the whys and why nots of field studies quite well, as well as where and then they fit into a research plan.

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ensalience-blog · 8 years ago

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Week 4 Reading

How to Conduct UX Research like a professional: Rather than how to conduct UX Research, this article should be titled “why we need research, and some helpful guidelines for those getting started.” It’s not as detailed and thorough as Just Enough Research, nor as short and to the point as “The UX Research Plan That Stakeholders Love”, and I don’t really see the purpose it serves. Plus, was there a need for those pictures with human heads and direction arrows on them? If I wanted an overview, I’d read a book giving me an overview of the design research process. If I’m on a page like this, it is for helpful tips and suggestions, and this didn’t have very many of those. (And there’s an irony, that a UX Research page doesn’t seek to match itself to the needs and expectations of a user).

The UX Research Plan That Stakeholders Love: This was rather more helpful, as it addressed one thing and did it well, rather than trying to give a topical overview and falling flat on its face. Found the research plan useful when writing my own.

How I Plan User Research: Very to the point, covering practical things like recruitment incentives and some sample questions that the previous article did not cover. The bit about not being able to specify that one was giving away Amazon gift cards was actually insightful and actionable, given that I do a lot online surveys (though to date, I’ve mostly used Steam cards).

User Interviews: The Beginners Guide: When one is as busy as I am, practicality is a word to swear by (or perhaps I’ve just become too jaded from reading academic papers which seem like research for research’s sake, rambling on and on about sound and fury signifying nothing). Breaking this down to a paragraph about what one is doing and then offering practical tips and suggestions is a wonderful way to lay this out. It offers context to what it is proposing in a way that isn’t overbearing, and shows how these user interviews can be used in user journeys and personas - a viable next step.

I preferred Tips for writing a Discussion Guide to Creating an effective discussion guide for your user Research. Something about the first seemed to work better, both in terms of being easy to read and understand. For someone who really would just be getting started, it is more useful to have a model of how a session is broken down. Not being a slave to a discussion guide is one thing, but knowing general guidelines and having a direction to go in is another!

And finally, back to Just Enough Research (Chapter 5, 6), which after reading some of the prose online is a breath of fresh air. Shows how useful an editor can be, eh? Chapter 5 brings up context once again, but also how dangerous assumptions can be. I admit I never thought of them as insults before, but I suppose when applied to design, they very much can be, as it means one is not really taking a user’s actual needs into consideration (case in point: the frustrating UI/UX of Tumblr).

Using House as an example of how everyone lies is an interesting choice, as that too, carries with it the assumption that one has seen the show. I’m beginning to notice the many, many pop culture references in the book, and I have to say, it isn’t always welcome. Still, it gets the point across that we are seeking good data from imperfect sources, and all that such implies. It is interesting that Just Enough Research doesn’t care for focus groups, and how far focus groups have deviated from their original purpose, if the chapter can be believed. I can see where it is coming from about the artificial environment, however.

From chapter 6, the tip about usability testing competing products is indeed a great way to identify pain points one could exploit. Useful.

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ensalience-blog · 8 years ago

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Week 3 Reading

Just Enough Research, Chapters 3-4: Process & Organization Research: Well, if it hasn’t been hammered in enough that research happens in a context, research happens in a context - though I’m not sure if I would liken a large corporation to Australia. I lived in Australia for some time, and North America is far more dangerous in many ways.

I suppose one of the questions I have, given the overlap of design research with the roles of people like business analysts, is “how does one avoid stepping on too many toes?” You want to get research done, certainly, but you don’t want to actually put someone out of a job, or cause bad blood through making someone irrelevant (presumably), so how does one manage that sort of conflict?

In the work with user communities I do, I’ve seen myself that soliciting input can defuse confrontation, though I’d never have though to summarize it as pithily as “Inquiry is flattery.”

Very practical that it gives clear guidelines as what just enough organization research is.

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ensalience-blog · 8 years ago

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Week 2 - Reading Notes

IDEO & Design Thinking: As someone who has been in the nursing field (and has helped to teach a design course in the school of nursing in the past), I’m not unfamiliar with the benefits of design thinking, nor with how difficult it can be to get people to realize what they are doing is also design, since there is often a very stereotypical view of what a designer is. The myth of the creative genius - and also the creative eccentric who is detached from the process - is unfortunately persistent, and often leads to resistance when it comes to teaching about design.

The Contrarian View: I think the author of this article has a very particular perspective on the idea of design thinking, given that this really sounds an entitled going “it’s popular, so now it sucks” about a major television series. Frankly speaking, I’m not sure how Creative Intelligence is supposed to be any less of a parlour trick than Nussbaum calls design thinking, given it is mentioned in the same breath as IQ - which itself is a very limited, stilted way of looking at intelligence. Teaching people to be creative is good. Attempting to measure that creativity with some formal CQ scale, however, is just going to lead to someone coming up with something as stilted as IQ. I will also note that the article was published in 2011, and I’ve seen neither hide nor hair of the CQ concept since. Good riddance to it.

5 Big Benefits of Design Thinking: I think the most important point this made was that design thinking isn’t just creativity and innovation for its own sake. Rather, it has to create value and solve real-world problems - and we have a ton of those in the world as it is. I foresee some difficulties with this and with the empathetic part of design, however, if one gets into a situation where parts of a user group are starkly divided among themselves as to what an issue is. It’s interesting that the article mentions the government as a place where it can be employed - I think pieces of it can, but it depends what level of government one is looking to as well, and the problems one is trying to solve. It’s not a panacea, which I suppose is what Nussbaum was really trying to say in the last article, in reaction to how it gets touted as a cureall so often.

Design Thinking Comes of Age: I will say that when I think of Serious Play, design thinking isn’t exactly what comes to mind, given the context I work in. I will also say that it is easy for an article to say “organizations should” or “organizations must”, without considering how difficult a transition towards accepting more ambiguity might be. We have today’s trend of everything going towards evidence-based practice, based on some conceptual framework, which in a lot of ways hampers experimentation, because it favors an incremental process, not revolutionary ones. That’s what’s safe, after all, what gets funded, what works - and so I can see in some ways why design thinking was touted as this cure to all ills, because without the hype, there would be resistance. But with the hype, which it falls short of, people are getting jaded. So I ask - what’s better, especially since designers are hardly free of conflicts of interest in that regard...

Just Enough Research, Ch 1-3: It is interesting to see this sort of approach to research, given that in the doctoral program, the research I do is science, meaning there’s a whole other philosophy behind it. I rather prefer the whole “research is critical thinking” philosophy, but to each field has its own requirements. The book makes a good case for involving the entire team in research, given that it helps build investment and spreads the feeling of ownership - so that one isn’t being told what to do, but is discovering a way to do it. Chapter 2 is also quite clear about breaking down the types of research, as well as the types of objections one is likely to encounter, so it is useful in that regard. Listening for the “click” is something that doesn’t tend to fly in science either, but then, I suppose it isn’t science, as much one word is bandied about wildly in both.

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