Seminarium 1 - Shahad Shubbar

Vem har inte fått ett uppdrag att skapa, utveckla eller designa något för en användare. Den första uppgiften är alltid att man ska ha datainsamling och den enkla vägen är att skapa en enkät i google form eller genom att intervjua folk på stad. Om man vill ha en bra resultat och slutsats, måste man tänka på ett bättre sätt. Man måste ha några tydliga mål, pilotstudie, struktur och planers design. Det räcker inte ofta med att vandra runt med några frågor och be slumpmässiga människor. Man måste ha ett mål grupp med välformerade frågor. 

Det bästa sättet för ett uppdrag är att börja med ett gör en fältstudie. En fältstudie innebär i detta fall att vi väljer och provar en specifik rutt med en viss transport. För att få ett bra resultat måste vi till exempel ta tunnelbana från A till B ett par gånger för att samla in så mycket data som möjligt om resan. Vi kan också fundera över vad saknar områden som behöver förbättras. Genom att göra intervjuer, enkäter eller observationer kan vi samla mer data. Vi måste också ange vilka krav vi har för vår produkt. Det vill säga, hur produkten ska fungera. Ska den fungera som vägledning för resenärer/ turister? Det är också bra att tänka på mer specifika funktionskrav som vilka funktioner produkten ska innehålla. 

Som jag nämnde tidigare, det är viktig med ett målgrupp. För att underlätta arbete så är det viktig med att ta reda på användareegenskaper. Till exempel om man ska utforma en produkt för turister, pensionärer, barn m.m. När man har ett målgrupp kommer man att få ett bra resultat i slutändan. 

Seminar notes

Today, we discussed our assignment in relation to the chapters we read for this seminar. Our main discussions were around the unknowns - the product or service itself, as well as how to handle the interview objects. Here's our plan:

* Pilot study spread out over time:
- We need to see if there are any relevant variations over time. For instance, our target group may be more active close to the end of the week. We want to spread out our observations over a few days, with an initial loose check - every group member must have visited the location at least once before March 11th, and report the results on the blog. We will discuss our findings and observations, and perform the main interview session in full group on March 18th.
- We want to factor in how much we influence people by our methods (group size, question wording, disturbing the experience). Therefore, we'll try out the base questions we have on our pilot studies before making sure we all ask exactly the same questions.

These are the base questions we will start with:


* How often do you travel on this line?
* Where do you live?
* What is the purpose of your visit?
* Age interval? 0-25, 25-50, 50+
* How did you get a ticket?
* How did you find out about the journey
* Why did you choose this boat?
* What whas your experience like?

Seminar 1 reflections

I think the example with the underwater PC is a great example of the interaction design process. Many obvious problems – such as the fact that the PC is literally out of its element, are quite easy to predict and to solve. However, I don’t think that the bubble issue would come up early on in interviews or questionnaires, unless the product developers actively search for hidden problems that only reveal themselves in the right context, such as difficult working conditions or even emergencies. It’s very easy to get caught up in providing a service or a product to a group that hasn’t had access to one in the past, without putting enough thought into why it may be so in the first place. It’s not just about the idea that divers CAN use PCs too, it’s also about designing it in such a way that they WANT to.

I also recognized a lot about the distinction between low and high fidelity prototyping, and I think that it’s important that every prototype presentation or testing decision should be coupled to specific questions. Otherwise, you can lose clarity in defining the requirements, and human psychology or politics start to get bigger roles than they deserve in the process. In keeping this discussion from going out of hand, guidelines and standards are useful both for defining a good scope as well as staying within it.

Prototyping and field testing, as well as evaluation, even after shipping, are crucial in understanding the true requirements. This doesn’t need to be simple, as was proven with the wooden Palm Pilot mockup that Jeff Hawkin walked around with. I’m sure his findings lead to many improvements in making the Palm Pilot into something that people would want to carry around – both in terms of its dimensions but also in more abstract aspects, such as how others around you react to you when you’re staring into a small screen (or a wooden piece for that matter). Judging by how people are hypnotized by their phones today, I guess this wasn’t a very big hurdle to climb. It was probably even a selling point – the owners could enjoy curiosity and attention from others instead of being judged.

I think the chapters do a very good job of showing that it’s the real world results that count, and that the interaction design requires an open mind and solid homework.  

Q:what can you do to keep an open mind when developing a product?

Notes for seminar 1

The content revolves around data gathering, data analysis and establishing requirements. This is  a process where establishing clear and concise requirements of a potential product design is the goal. The three different data gathering techniques presented were interviews, questionnaires and observation. Each being ideal under different circumstances. The idea of triangulation, collecting and comparing data by changing variables such as data collector, date, data provider, data gathering technique etc., was encouraged to avoid any inherent bias of the variables. The data gathering population, a predefined template representing a relevant group of people, was to be directly derived from the goal of the data gathering. Different goals equals different populations. Clarity and simplicity in communication with the participants is important when doing any type of data gathering. The ideal type of data recording depends on the situation. Generally though, it is important to be well prepared before performing a data gathering. This could be achieved by doing a pilot study beforehand.

Data analysis is the idea of identifying patterns in the collected data. It is initially done by separating quantitive and qualitiative data. The first being representable by numbers and the second by descriptions, pictures or parts of interviews. Already existing theories or a grounded theory, derived from patters and obvious correlations in the data, can be used to explain certain occurences in the data. A grounded theory can be particularly useful when encountering patterns which are not covered by any preexisting theories. However, it often requires an added amount of data gathering for confirmation purposes. One extremely important factor in data analyzing lies with the interpreter of the data. S/He should try to maintain an impartial mindset in which conclusions are drawn strictly from the data.
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Data gathering and analysis should provide a good foundation in designing a product. When these two parts are completed, one should be able to create a set of clear and concise requirements which pin down what the users need. Such requirements can be purely functional, what the product should be able to do, or non-functional, how the product should perform. If it is seemingly impossible to create straight forward formulations of requirements, more data gathering and analysis is surely required. My question for discussion is, how can we make use of a pilot study to ensure that our methods of data gathering are ideal?

Seminar 1 - Marcus

The seventh chapter of the literature talks about the three main techniques for data gathering, interviews, questionnaires and observation. The text brings up the different advantages of the three methods and how they should be conducted to output the best result. The three methods have different application areas depending on the kind of study. It also brings up the importance of not focusing on just one type of data gathering but try a combination to avoid biases.

Chapter eight discusses qualitative and quantitative data, what the differences are and how they can be used. Although quantitative data can be easier to analyze it is important that any conversions between the two are fair and appropriate for the current study. The design of the questions asked during a study can affect the results and more thought out questions can make the data easier to analyze.

Chapter ten discusses the period after chapter seven and eight, when all the data has been collected and analyzed we can proceed to create a set of requirements for our design. Since fixing error later in the development is a lot harder it is important to spend time creating a well-defined set of requirements. In software engineering there are mainly two different types of requirements, functional which states what the design is supposed to achieve and non-functional which states the constraints there are on the design. If the requirements aren’t clear enough additional data gathering could be performed to make them more comprehensible.

Question - Currently we're only using the interview technique for data collection, could we implement one of the other methods on our study for a better result?

Seminar 1 Notes

Data gathering and analysis, requirements, usability and user centered systems design (UCSD) are the main concepts in the literature for the first seminar. Data gathering methods considered are interviews, questionnaires and observations. These can be more or less structured, which means that they demand data in different degrees of precision. The choice of data gathering method depends on the object examined, available resources and the questions asked.
    Data analysis starts with separating quantitative and qualitative data. Basic methods include calculating means and variance for quantitative data and pattern identification and categorization of qualitative data.
    Requirements specification is an activity where a product's features and constraints are formally described. It is an important part of development because changes carried out at this stage are much more cheap than at later stages. Requirements are developed by describing the user at different levels of generality, from scenarios to use cases, and data gathering methods are used to back them up. A common starting point is the creation of personas which are fictional descriptions of potential users, their tasks, skills and personalities.
    UCSD can be seen as a development paradigm which places usability, end users and usability designers at the center of the development process. The importance of involving end users and usability designers through the whole development process from beginning to end and as co-creators is pointed out.
    Usability is described in ISO-9241-11 by very general terms and the most important issue is that the concept can only be defined in terms of context and goals. The standard also contains examples of how to measure usability and references to other standards that complement this one.
    A question I want to take up is whether and why there is a need for a usability requirements specification besides the requirements specification. My impression is that the two are different (I compare the recommendation from ISO-9241-11 with the passage that covers the Volere shell in the book.) Is the importance of usability best represented as a separate document or should it from the beginning be clearly included in the general requirements specification?

Notes for Seminar 1 - War

Chapter 7:

This chapter is about data gathering, where this chapter describes different methods on how to collect data for establishing requirements for our project. The book mentioned some important methods for collecting data, the methods whore interviews, questionnaires and observation. Every method have it’s pro and cons so you should choose a method that will help you to achieve your goal with that study. These methods above that the book mentioned have I personally some experience in during previous project I have used these kind of method. The book also mentioned a technique called Triangulation, which actually was the first time I heard about that technique. I think that the group could benefit from that triangulation because triangulation is a technique of data gathering meaning that data is drawn from different sources at different times but the book also mentioned that the validation through this technique could be a bit difficult to achieve.

Chapter 8:

When all the data have been collected by the different methods and techniques described in chapter 7, we will now analyze all the data. The data that can be received are two different types qualitative and quantitative data gathering. The difference between qualitative and quantitative data gathering is that qualitative data is more in depth question. When you ask question that request the person to reflect. During the analyze of the qualitative data we must search for recurring patterns. Quantitative data is data that can be translated to statistic data where we have short question that can later be summarized in average or percentage.

Chapter 10:

When the data is collected and analyzed then hopefully you know what the users need and one can establishing requirements a product will need to fulfil. We then have two different types of requirements that are functional- and non-functional requirements. Where functional is related to what the product should do and non-functional relates to what type of software the product should be able on. During the development of the product we should capture user characteristics, determine personas (typical user), predict scenarios and the use cases (user-system interaction). I personally think that during establishing requirements these things are very important factors that can help us enhance our product because otherwise there is chance that our final product doesn’t end up felling our main goal with this project.

Question:

Could we be able to use triangulation during the data gathering? 

Reading seminar 1 - Notes

The main points discussed in the required literature centre around the process of gathering and analyzing data in an as effective and structured manner as possible. We are taught how to plan and conduct different kinds of investigations such as interviews, questionnaires, field observations etc. It is shown how to analyze their specific pros and cons in time required, possible sources of error, their different results in data and later how to execute these as scientifically as possible in order to obtain both quantitative and qualitative data relevant to the original studies. The processing and assessment of this data should then be conducted just as during the previous step and with further precautions towards assumptions, bias and other factors which might tilt the results in favour of something not originally represented in the data. Some useful ways of presenting data(personas, user cases, etc.) are then discussed and weighted for their pros and cons. A more concrete article regarding the practice of "User centred system design" (UCSD) highlights some of the previously discussed concepts and also shows clear examples of some of the possible pitfalls when applying these. Overall I recognized most of the concepts discussed from previous knowledge and therefore enjoyed reading about the specific reasoning behind the techniques rather than just accepting them as truth as I’ve previously had to do. A question I would like to discuss at the upcoming seminar would be why group interviews are recommended at all even though we have a flood of studies showing how peoples perception drastically can be altered when subjected to peer pressure?

Progress report from first excercise

• We've chosen the Slussen-Allmänna gränd ferry as our route. 
• Our target group is mainly visitors/tourists, essentially first-time travellers on this route. Depending on the results from the study, we may divide the target group further based on factors such as age, city/country of residence, ticket type, families or other, etc.
•  We set up the amazing blog and also set up a group on Slack for internal communication. We'll use their services for document sharing through Google Drive. 
• We discussed the questions to ask the target group.

First blog post

Hello Wurrlld