Assignment Video: Observing Users

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En provenance du cours de University of Minnesota

User Research and Design

227 notes

University of Minnesota

User Research and Design

227 notes

Cours 2 sur 5 dans Specialization User Interface Design

In this course you will learn and practice techniques of user research and early UI design exploration. First, you will learn and practice several techniques for user research, including in-person research and survey and log-analysis techniques. Then, you will learn to analyze and deliver user research in forms that support UI design, including personas, use cases, tasks, and scenarios. Finally, you will learn and practice ideation techniques that start from user research and broadly generate potential design ideas.

À partir de la leçon

User Research Methods — Part 2

Log Analysis4:51

Surveys and Questionnaires4:34

Assignment Video: Observing Users7:04

Rencontrer les enseignants

Loren Terveen
Professor
Computer Science and Engineering
Haiyi Zhu
Assistant Professor
Computer Science and Engineering
Lana Yarosh
Assistant Professor
Computer Science and Engineering
Dr. Brent Hecht
Assistant Professor
Computer Science and Engineering
Joseph A Konstan
Distinguished McKnight Professor and Distinguished University Teaching Professor
Computer Science and Engineering

Hello and welcome back.

We've been talking a lot about formative user research and

now it's your turn to try it out.

Today, I'll be talking to you about your assignment to observe two users.

So, here are the basic assignment components.

You'll be asked to observe two participants in a specific context and

we'll talk more about these contexts later.

You will write a two to three-page description of your user observations

including the following.

So, it should have some sort of an introduction, introducing your context.

It should describe the participants, the setting and

the recruitment strategy that you used to find these participants.

It should describe your methods, how you decided to take notes and

any of your interactions with your users.

Things like asking them followup questions or debriefing with them.

You should also provide a detailed description of data from each of your

two users.

What did you see?

What did they do?

And finally, a brief analysis of what you saw working well,

what was problematic in terms of what your users did and

possible opportunities for design in that particular context.

So I know that this is somewhat abstract and

it always helps to see an actual example.

So, I find it's always helpful to actually see an example of how this would work.

So, what you'll find in Coursera is one example of an assignment for

a context of trying to take out cash from an ATM machine.

So the assignment is a two page write-up of one user observation and

it also has the rubric that is going to be used to grade you, as well.

So take a look at the assignment, think about how you would grade it using

the rubric and then take a look at the grades that we gave it as well as

the comments on why we gave a particular grade.

This should give you a lot more understanding both about how to go about

doing your assignment and

about how to grade your peers when you get to that part of your work.

So there's four context that you can choose from and

make sure you just one context, and to observe two users in that context.

Don't pick two context and observe one user from each.

So, the four context you can choose from are getting a train or

public transport ticket from an automated display or kiosk.

Observing a driver, as they drive a car.

Observing somebody try to find a hypothetical mobile phone plan for

visitor and observing somebody use a point-of-sale checkout system.

So a little bit more detail about each one and

one of the reasons we actually give you so many contexts is because some of these

may be easier for you to access than others, depending on where you live.

And so, do pick one that is actually reasonable for you and

that you can get access to.

But if you live in a big city, especially kind of in western countries.

So US or Europe, you may have an opportunity to watch somebody purchase

a ticket for something like the subway, the metro, a train or a bus using and

automated machine similar to the one in this photo.

So we want you to actually get the user's permission to to observe them or

ask a friend to actually use the device while you observe them and

observe the interactions with it, as they purchase the ticket.

The second possible context is observing a driver in a car.

So again, we want you to get the person's permission and we don't want you

to be observing yourself while you're driving, because that's not safe.

You can't take notes while you're driving the car.

But as the person's driving, kind of note how they respond to distractions, what

kind of technology they use if any and how the find their way upon a particular trip.

Now, this could be somebody you know.

So for example, you could ask your sibling to drive the car while you observe them or

this could somebody that you kind of recruited on the spot.

So maybe if you are already taking a cab ride,

ask your cab driver if they're okay with you recording them.

Well, taking notes about them, not actually video recording them.

The third context is sort of a hypothetical situation.

So see if you can recruit a friend or a family member and

ask them to use whatever tools they would use if they had kind of this

hypothetical situation of a friend is visiting them.

They'd like to find a mobile plan for the next month while they stay in your country

and how would you actually find and recommend a plan and

compare maybe multiple plans to suggest to them.

So lots of people are probably not processed go to their browser,

mobile web browser and try to find the answer to this question.

Other people may try to do that on their phone,

other people may choose to ask somebody, but the point is just observe them

working their way through this hypothetical problem and

the last context you can choose is a point-of-sale checkout system.

So, many fast food restaurants use a computer to check people out.

Many stores, retail stores use,

some sort of a device to help purchase an item and then check a person out.

And again, here you would want to ask the permission of the person you're observing

to perhaps look over their shoulder while they're checking you out or

checking somebody else out.

But hopefully, you'll have access to somebody in your life that

can have you observe them as they're using this point of sales system.

So, those are the four context.

And as I said, we'd like you to pick one and observe two different users,

two different participants in that context.

Now as you're carrying out your assignment, so

you can review some of the videos that are relevant, but

you should remember that you should prepare your notes structure.

So, decide what kinds of things you're going to observe.

So for example, your notes for how somebody buys a ticket may be very

different from your notes on how somebody's using technology or

managing their distractions while they're driving in a car.

You should schedule and arrange access, if you need to.

So, do ask the participant's permission to actually be observed.

You should observe your two participants in the context while you're taking notes.

Now you don't have to only get all your data from looking at them,

you can also ask follow up questions or

perhaps debrief them after the observation that is up to you.

So some interview components may be included in your protocol, as well.

And lastly, write-up your observations.

Now if you have relevant lectures for you to review as you go through this process,

I think the most relevant would be the observations video.

So take a look at that,

if you don't quiet remember how to conduct an observation study.

If you are going to include some interview components in your study,

take a look at the interviews and focus groups video and

the designing a user research protocol maybe helpful.

It's kind of remember how to put it all together, how to get started with

the participant, how to debrief them, all those parts of it.

So hopefully, this is enough to get you started on the assignment.

There'll also be a write-up on Coursera that you can read through.

And if you're not sure where to start,

I would really just suggest looking through the example and

reading through the example we provide as a good place to get started.

Thank you and I hope you enjoy this assignment.

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