INTERACTIVE SYSTEM DESIGN & EVALUATION

  1. Users

PERSONAS

KNOW THE USER

IMPORTANCE OF USERS

TYPES OF GAME PLAYER Gamer types

  • UX without user research is not UX (Hoa Loranger)
    UX - U = X (X means you got it wrong)

TYPES OF USER

ANALYSIS

TO MAKE ASSUMPTIONS

  • Make clear the assumptions you can and cant make about users
    • Use these assumptions to design for your users
    • Designing for beginners or disabled all the time is the wrong answer
    • Not designing for them at all is the wrong answer

ASSESS NEED

  • Different users use the same system
    • Consider what they need the system for.
    • How much they actually 'need' to use the system:
      • Can they accomplish results another way
      • Can they push work onto other people
      • Can they reject your system
      • and not do business with your organization
  • Discretionary user: Can choose to use the system or not use it
  • Primary user: The person who actively uses the system (help desk staff, clerk)
  • Secondary user: the person being served by a primary user (customer)
  • User Analysis: What you need to know about the users.
  • Task Analysis: Know their tasks and goals.
  • Environment Analysis: Know the users surroundings and what effect they have on performing a task.
  • Different interactive systems have different kinds of users
  • Different people use the same system
    • What can they do based on:
      • Age
      • Physical abilities (The Equality Act)
    • What they want based on:
      • Needs
      • Priorities
      • Attitudes
    • What they know:
      • Domain knowledge
      • Computer knowledge
      • Cultural knowledge

IDENTIFYING USER GROUPS

  • Can you identify distinct user groups?
    • Different expectations
    • Different requirements
  • How diverse are the memberf of your user groups?
  • Think about
    • University website?
    • Train timetable website?

USER CHARACTERISTICS

CULTURAL DIFFERENCES

  • Language (how many languages should be supported?)
  • Education (reading level)
  • Culture (colour preferences, image choices)
  • Profession (specialized vocabularies)
  • Attitudes towards computer systems
    • Technophobia amongst elderly users
    • Willingness to explore
    • Fragile self-confidence amongst children

GETTING INFORMATION

  • How can you learn the characteristics of your users?
    • Not managers. May think they know users but arent users.
    • Not developers. The worst. The know things about the system users may not know. Reason why Word now has a Ribbon
    • Users themselves, preferebly in their workplace, are a good source of information

WHAT THEY WANT TO DO

  • Analyse the users use cases
    • A use cas is defined by a distinct user goal - something the user wants to achieve
  • Understand the users perspectives
    • What the users really want and need.
    • Different types of users may have different desires and needs within one use case.

5 TYPES OF SHOPPER
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/ecommerce-shoppers/

  • PRODUCT FOCUSED
    • Know exactly waht they want
    • Already done homework
    • Often just replacing something
    • Want speed
  • BROWSERS
    • Leisure shoppers
    • Want to see whats new and popular
    • May be just looking but might get a sale later
  • RESEARCHERS
    • Gathering information
    • Purpose drivern, but might buy tomorrow or in 6 months
    • Like trustworthy and detailed sources of infromation
    • Like ability to make clear comparisons
  • BARGAIN HUNTERS
    • Want the best deal possible
    • want to see and select the price
    • want to see what the good deals are
  • ONE TIME SHOPPERS
    • No intention of returning
    • May be unfamiliar with the types of products
    • Want product descriptions that help determine what matches their needs
    • Don't want to register

DEVELOPING PERSONAS

TYPES OF PERSONAS

  • Stories about people
  • Develop multiple personas
  • Not real people but synthesised from real user characteristics
    • should not be idealized
    • bring them to life with name, characteristics, goals, personal background
  • Consider whether your personas rare really representative of your real users? Target users and typical users often not the same
  • Focus on what is the relationship between
    • what the user knows, and knows how to do, and
    • what the user needs to know to do the task
  • Different approached to developing personas
    • Goal directed personas
      • Focus on users work goals
    • Role-based personas
      • Focus on users roles in organization
    • Engaging personas
      • Vivid and realistic description to evoke empathy
    • Fiction-based personas
      • Aim is to used personas as discussion-starters
    • Hat-based personas
      • Role WRT the system: trigger and goals for interactions

SUCCESSFUL USAGE

  • Personasl need to be created for a clear purpose
    • What part of the designing is it supposed to impace?
  • Need buy-in from people who are supposed to use them
    • Feel ownership
    • Need to be involved in creating them

ASSUMED UNDERSTANDING
ABOUT TASK DOMAIN

EXISTING KNOWLEDGE

PROVIDING SUPPORT

USER KNOWLEDGE
REQUIREMENTS

  • Do you need to support users with diffent degrees of domain understanding?
    • What if the users have less domain understanding than you expect?
  • What if the users have more domain understanding than you expect?
    • Can you meet their needs?
    • Can you signal the system is inappropriate for them?
    • Can you do this without affecting the user experience for everyone else?

USER GROUP KNOWLEDGE

CATAGORIZATION

  • NOVICE
    • Faces a frightening unknown; timid, nerous, in no mood to explore your goodies.
  • ADVANCED BEGINNER
    • Less fear: knows basics; still impatient at having to learn how to do tasks.
  • COMPETENT PERFORMER
    • Can diagnose simple pproblems and can perform a complex series of tasks
  • EXPERT
    • Small group. Can diagnose complex problems. Has a sophisticated nental model of the application. Not typical user
  • How much knowledge do you assume the user group has about computers in general?
    • Can you assume familiarity with graphical user interfaces (GUI)? If not, dont expect the user to know what a combo box is or how to use it
    • Can you assume familiarity with using the internet? If so, you can assume familiarity with conventions and common facilities, and with using GUIs
      • Elderly....
      • Poor countries...
  • How much knowledge do you assume the user has about the task that the system supports?
    • Determines how much support the interface provide the user
    • Determines the terminolofg used

SYMANTIC KNOWLEDGE

SYNTATIC COMPUTER KNOWLEDGE
Do they need systematic (computer) knowledge?


  • knowledge of low-level operations and procedures required to achieve a particular state
    • key bindings - e.g. Control Z = end of file in DOS
    • command line switches - e.g. ls -al in UNIX
    • commands - e.g. Alt F S to save a file in windows applications

SYMANTIC TASK KNOWLEDGE

  • About concepts or entities associated with the task to be performed - e.g. parts of a car design in CAD or data requirements in statistics
  • NOVICE USERS
    • no syntatic knowledge, little semantic knowledge
    • may have little task knoledge
      *may have anxieties about computer use
  • KNOWLEDGEABLE INTERMITTENT USERS
    • can maintain semantic knowledge of task and computer concepts
    • requirements for consistency of structures in interaction so that user inferences are supported
    • good help facilities and documentation are required
  • FREQUENT USERS
    • well trained in semantic and syntactic aspects
    • rapid response time
    • brief feedback
    • abbreviated command sequences
    • accelerators to move through dialogue sequences
  • SPECIAL CATAGORIES
    • Disabled users
    • Children
  • About concepts or entities associated with the computer system e.g. organisation of file system, access rights to files
  • BASELINE USER
    • Minimum level of domain knowledge
    • Minimum level of computer competence

USER EXPERTISE

  • Consistent research findings:
    • User knowledge of features stagnates at low level
    • Users learn a few core features quickly, then stop
    • Users very resistant to putting effort into learning features, unless they need them now
    • Don't go looking for interesting functionality
    • Often have no idea what the program can really do
      http://www.nngroup.com/articles/stagnating-expertise/

SUMMARY OF DESIGN IMPLICATIONS

DESIGN FOR DISCOVERY

FINDABILITY

Design in findability: enables users to spot and recognize controls for features

TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE

  • FREQUENT USERS doing repetative tasks, what matters is SPEED
  • Dont design for occassional novices
  • Learning time is small part of career as frequent user
  • Special techniques (such as GOMS) for predicting time skilled users take to carry out tasks
  • Add learning support to speed-optimised interface

THE THIRD USER

  • PURCHASERS
    • Care about usability
    • Can't easily judge it
    • Easily seduced by illusion of simplicity
      • Visually simple, suggests interaction is simple
      • Hides complexity of interaction
      • NOT route to good usability
  • DEALER MODE (Bruce Tognazzini - Apple 1970s)
    • Slick simple-looking design impresses purchasers
    • Visually simple features hiding complexity

Designing in discovery enables users to see what the application can do

  • Frequency of use: amount of skill building that takes place and knowledge user is epected to retain
  • Discretion to use the system: impact of poor usability
  • Knowledge of the task which the system will support: level of support at interface provided for on how to complete tasks
  • Knowledge of computers: level of guidance provided
  • Experience of other similar systems: user expectations and use of familiar interface conventions
  • Physical differences: assumptions made about presentation of text and use of other modalities
  • Cultural differences: attitude towards computers; level of help and guidance, and way in which system is introduced to users
  • Existing skills (keyboard, mouse): choice of interaction style to use to exploit existing skills