User, task, environment
- Who are the users, who are we designing for
- What’s the task? What is the design brief?
- What environment or environments will the product be used in or applied to
- Deep understanding and emphasize
- The process is iterative => led by the user and developed through user-centered evaluation
Iterative process (cycle)
- Research → user, task, environment, context studies, focus groups, user goals, competitors
- Concept → come up with ideas, concept models, usage scenarios, and paper prototypes
- Design → process flows, interactive prototypes, usability testing, functional specifications, product structure diagram
- Implementation → usability testing, expert evaluation, accessibility evaluation
- Launch → usability testing, expert evaluation, accessibility evaluation, focus groups, competitor comparison
- Goal: The final solution must address the whole user experience
→ fully emphasize the problem and find a solution that “solves” all parts of the problem, not just in us
Iterative process
Understanding what one is designing through creating it
→ design & development
Usability
= ease of use and learnability of the product
Usability experiences
- Usefulness → ease of understanding and learning
- Effectiveness → ease of use, quantitatively measured by speed of performance
- Learnability → how easy it is to understand and learn
- Attitude (likeability) → user’s perceptions, feelings, and opinions of the product
User group and activities
- Combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches
- Users → the client
- Activities
- Social & cultural context
Benefits of enhanced usability
- Product Acceptance → It does what it says it will do
- User Experience → Responses and perceptions of the users as they use the product
- Productivity → Allows the user to be efficient with their time and resources & easy to understand
- Decreased user error → reduced with simpler interfaces and controls
- Training and support needed → If a product has a more intuitive user interface & simpler controls there is less need for training and support
Characteristics of good user-product interfaces
- Good organization → Users must be able to intuitively and remember easily or else it becomes a memory burden
- Important characteristics to consider → simplicity, ease of use, intuitive logic, organization, low memory burden, visibility, feedback, affordance
Memory burden products
Poor organization causes this and it also leads to the user not using full functionality of product & focusing on a limited set
Feedback
= provision of information
- Product telling you it has achieved what you want or is doing it
- Related to receptors
- E.g. elevators → when you press a button it either makes a sound or lights up
Usability experiences
- usefulness
- likeability
- productivity
- effectiveness
Population stereotypes
Different cultural stereotypes → e.g. colour symbolizations, light buttons
Mapping
Relates to the correspondence between the layout of the control and their required action
- E.g. the layout of the controls on a cooker hob
Constraints
Limits the way that a product can be used
- E.g. inserting a USB in the wrong way
User population
- Population = the group expected to make use of or use an item/product
- User population = the range of users for the product
Classification of user
- Classified into groups depending on age, gender, and physical condition
- Physical conditions might include; children, elderly, blindness, hearing, reduced sense of feeling, Parkinson’s disease, partial paralysis, arthritis
- Users can also be classified into groups by their interests, habits, nuances, emotional responses to specific stimuli, etc.
Personae, Secondary personae, and Anti personae
- Personae = Primary people whose needs must be satisfied
- Secondary personae = Not the primary target audience (last people to buy your product) but still considered & needs must be met
- Anti personae = Those for whom the product is not designed
Why are personae created?
Understand the customer
Identify which group of customers needs to be valued
Improve the quality of products and services
Use case
- How the user will interact with the product and its functionality
- How can it be used in different ways for different functions
Scenario (user story)
- usually storyboards are used
- An imagined sequence of events in the daily life of a personae based on assumptions by researchers and designers
- How the personae will interact with the system
- Tells the designers; When users will interact with the system, why users will interact with the system, what users wish to achieve through interaction with the system
primary research
- collection and analysis of original info specifically for the product or market
- E.g. user trial, user research, field trials, product analysis, observation
Qualitative and quantitative research
= measuring sets of variables or quantities and their relationship to one another
- Qualitative = subjective material (words and images); concerned with how and why people behave
- Quantitative = objective data (numbers and logic) - measurable; concerned with the who, what, where, when
Field research
Are the products really that good? Who’s actualy buying the products?
- Best option is going to field and observing customers or people in retail store, etc.
- Field research is good when redesigning → customers might be frustrated with something & they can just go and see for themselves
- Disadvantage = the cost – very expensive
Method of extremes
= defining the range of a user population
- Samples are selected to define the extremes of the user populations
5th, 50th, 95th percentile → if you pick the right one 95% of people will be able to use the product
