Read: Buxton, PP 102-152 - this week
P2: User Research, (due this week)
P3: Personas & Scenarios, (due next week)
Read Truong 2006 (posted) & Buxton, PP 152-173 (next week)
I’ll be giving grades back for assignments this week. How do you
want them delivered?
Sketching discussion & Critique
Read: Buxton, PP 102-152 - next week
P2: User Research, (due next week)
A1 - Look, Learn,Ask,Try - Due 9/21
Understanding users, their activities, the contexts in which their tasks are carried out, and their experiences and attitudes is crucial to designing good products and technologies. However, there is no one single way to understand users. Each situation is different, each user group is different, and each project is different. In addition, resources such as time and budget may also play a role in determining which methods to use for understanding users.
Typically, designers use a variety of methods to understand users, and almost always use more than one method for any given project. Using multiple methods to help understand users is called triangulation. The designers at IDEO have come up with a set of 51 different methods across four different areas that they use to understand users. These areas are:
• Ask them how to help • Look at what they do • Learn from the facts you gather • Try it yourself To help designers remember all of these ideas, they created a set of Method Cards, modeled after a deck of playing cards (with the four method areas each being a “suit”). Thus, users can scan through the deck of cards for ideas on which methods might be useful in any given situation.
What to do?
Familiarize yourself with IDEOʼs 51 method cards. Each card lists what to do, why to do it, and an example of when it was useful for IDEO. Think about how the 51 methods could be applied to a design problem. Thinking hypothetically, choose at least 1 method from each of the four categories that would beappropriate in each the following design situations.
1.Designing a new communication system for air traffic controllers 2.Designing an educational math software program for kids in Grades 1-5 3.Designing a system for long-distance bicyclists to find restaurants and
amenities 4.Re-designing a retirement account system that is friendly to seniors For each of the above design situations, list the four (or more) methods you would choose to help understand the potential users and the design problem. For each method you list, write a short paragraph about why you think that given method would work in this situation. Write an additional paragraph stating any methods from the 51 Method Cards would not work in this situation. Your assignment should be approximately 1 page of text for each of the 4 design scenarios above, for a total of 4 pages of size 11 Times New Roman w/ 1” margins.
What to turn in?
Your written document in .doc or .docx format, uploaded to the class folder.
Required Reading: Interaction Design
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-S
