Assignments > P2. Project Research

Due on Sun, 02/14 11:59PM.

Part 1: Create a Research Plan

• Monday, in class

As a team, please answer the following questions in advance of your research (bullets are fine).

1. What are some of the core assumptions you’re making regarding how your idea might address your problem of interest?
2. How can you validate these assumptions by talking to people (i.e. potential users)?
3. How can you find / recruit the people you want to talk to / observe?
4. Is an interview or a task-oriented contextual inquiry most appropriate. It may be good to do both)?
   • If you are doing a contextual inquiry, what task do you want them to complete?
   • If you are doing an interview, what questions will you ask (you’ll need to design an interview guide)?
5. How can you gain the most insight from your research? The goal here is to go for variety (the most different users you can imagine that are still part of your target group). So how will you ensure that you’re getting enough diversity in your sample?

Part 2: Carry Out Your Plan

Each member of your team should interview and/or observe one person. This can be difficult during COVID, so you’ll have to be a bit creative here. Some general guidelines for conducting interviews / contextual inquiries:

1. For any work with research participants:

1. Tell the research participant the purpose and goals for interviewing them (as part of a class, to better understand the problem space and needs, etc.).
2. Make sure to tell them that you are not testing them or judging them – just doing some basic fact-finding.

Additionally…

2.a. For contextual inquiries:

1. Ask them to perform a task related to your problem statement. For example, you might have someone use a competitor’s app or service.
   • Try to avoid asking people questions while they are engaged in the activity. Save your questions for afterwards.
   • You can, however, ask/remind people to talk aloud while they are performing the task to gain insight into their thought process.
2. As they are performing the task, you should be taking notes. Some things you might attend to:
   • Note anything that seemed particularly difficult or inefficient (pain points)
   • Note things that seemed to be particularly enjoyable or fun for the user
   • Note anything that was confusing or caused the user to hesitate
   • Note mistakes or false assumption that the user made
   • Note any time the user says something like, “I’m not good with technology” or “I never understand these things” or “I must be stupid”
   • Note anything else that was surprising or unexpected.

3. Ask them to reflect on the task that they just performed. Here you should refer back to your notes and ask them to explain their experience in greater detail. Focus on the things that were surprising to you or seemed difficult for the user.

4. Ask them about other things that might inform your design. What obstacles haven’t been addressed by existing tools? What constraints of daily life do they face that might shape their user experience?

2.b. For traditional interviews:

1. Come prepared with an interview guide with around 5-10 questions that try to get at what you want to learn, for instance:
   • What obstacles haven’t been addressed by existing tools?
   • What constraints of daily life do they face that might be relevant to the problem space?
2. Take notes.
3. Ask follow-up questions as needed.

Part 3: Write It Up

Section 1. Describe your research approach

What kinds of things did you hope to learn from your research, and why did you take the approach that you did? This includes describing (a) how you recruited research subjects, (b) the task(s) you observed people doing (if you did a contextual inquiry), and/or (c) the questions you asked (if you did an interview).

Section 2. Write up your interview and observation notes

Each team member should write a brief summary of their contextual inquiry / observation session in a way that other people in your team will find helpful. Incorporate each summary into the write-up.

Section 3. Analysis

Write a paragraph or two, across the interview write-ups (from section 2), that pulls out and summarizes some key themes. What did you learn from your team’s collective research, and how do these learnings inform the design of your project? Some things you may include here:

• What are the user needs?
• What was surprising or unexpected?
• What are current obstacles, challenges, and limitations that your interviewees regularly experience (in relation to your project idea)?
• What opportunities for innovation did you uncover?

Section 4. Create some profiles (personas) of your target users

Taking into account the users you interviewed and the users you imagine might use your proposed system, create 3-6 personas – profiles of hypothetical future users who you intend to support. For each persona, include the following details:

• Photo or Avatar
• Their life story: including name, age, occupation, hobbies, where they grew up, what they do on weekends, etc.
• A description of their needs, aspirations, dilemmas, etc. (as they relate to your proposed system)

Section 5. Create some task scenarios

Come up with 4-8 task scenarios that are relevant to the interactions your system intends to support. These can include current scenarios as well as ones you hope to support in your future design. One paragraph for each scenario should be enough. Some things to keep in mind:

• Each scenario should incorporate one of your personas. In other words, you need to make it clear which user (i.e. persona) your scenario pertains to.
• Each scenario should communicate the user’s goal, and the steps they need to accomplish to reach that goal, but should not explain how they would do it in your app. Do not talk about the solution yet – you will shift into solution mode next week.

Section 6. Re-state your project idea

Revise your project’s elevator pitch (2-3 sentences). Be sure to clearly state the goal of your project.

What to Submit

Submit your report (from part 3) as any kind of document (Word, PDF, Google Docs, etc). Make sure your team name, team members, and section are at the top of your submission.