Needs – Need finding
John C. Tang
August 30, 2007
NEEDS
DESIGN
EVALUATE
IMPLEMENT
Pop quiz!
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How do you pronounce my last name?
Where did I graduate from?
Anyone want to share what else they
found by Googling me?
Class admittance
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Everyone who submitted a course
petition last time is in!
If you haven’t submitted a petition, do
so today
Don’t worry about which discussion
section you registered for (but be
consistent)
Grading
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10% class participation
– Attendance plus contribution in discussion
section
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20% individual assignments
20% midterm
50% group final project
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Fair (not easy) grader
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Assignments
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Due at beginning of class
Hardcopy
– 2 copies (one original, one black & white
copy ok)
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At top of every assignment
– Name
– CS 160
– Date
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Today
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Share stories of noticing (un)design
Need finding
– Contextual Inquiry
– Variation: Contextual Interview
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Assignment
Please ask questions / add insights along
the way
Noticing (un)design
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What designs or un-designs did you
become aware of?
– What bugs you about it?
– How could it be improved?
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I hate opening these!
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Design process
NEEDS
DESIGN
EVALUATE
IMPLEMENT
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Modified from Preece, Rogers, and Sharp, Interaction Design
The Waterfall Model
of the Software Life-Cycle
Requirements
Specification
Architectural
Design
Detailed Design
Implementation and
Unit Testing
Integration and
Testing
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Operation and
Maintenance
Design process
NEEDS
DESIGN
EVALUATE
IMPLEMENT
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Modified from Preece, Rogers, and Sharp, Interaction Design
Needs and need-finding
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Identifying users needs
– Latent needs, root causes
– Not wants, symptoms, bugs
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Techniques for eliciting and
interpreting users’ needs
– Interviews
– Direct Observation
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Needs belong to people (not entities)
Avoiding three common
mistakes
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The first of hopefully many ways this
class helps you think differently
Building without a need
DESIGN
EVALUATE
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Usable vs. useful
IMPLEMENT
Usability vs. usefulness
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Usability – how easy user interfaces
are to use
Usefulness – whether the system can
be used to achieve some desired goal
Jakob Nielsen
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Trial and error innovation
DESIGN
NEEDS
EVALUATE
DESIGN
EVALUATE
EVALUATE
DESIGN
EVALUATE
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IMPLEMENT
IMPLEMENT
IMPLEMENT
Designing for “me”
NEEDS
DESIGN
EVALUATE
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IMPLEMENT
Identify needs to avoid
these mistakes
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Building without a need
Trial and error innovation
Designing for “me”
Tools for need-finding
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Market research/competitive analysis
– Identifying gaps in the current market
– Identifying gaps in competitors’ offerings
– Business perspective, customer (rather
than user) focus
– Team with business folks
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Interviewing prospective users
Direct observation
What’s an unfulfilled need
you have?
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Not wants
Not symptoms
Not solutions
Needs ~ verbs
Solutions ~ nouns
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What if I followed you
around for a day?
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I might discover that what you really
need is:
– Better way to manage your schedule
– More sleep
– To communicate with your family more
often!
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Asking vs. Observing
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Some of the best designs are unnoticeable
– Norman examples
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Some work-arounds become invisible
Observing helps you see what, but often
need to ask to understand why
Asking and observing are complementary
Immersion leads to direct observation and
better interviews
Collecting user data
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Mostly common sense!
– But only common sense after you’ve done
a few examples
– Presenting ideal, taking shortcuts for the
class
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Other useful resources
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Contextual_design
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Contextual Inquiry
“Field interviews are conducted with users in
their workplaces while they work, observing
and inquiring into the structure of the users’
own work practice. This ensures that the team
captures the real business practice and daily
activities of the people the system is to
support, not just the self-reported practice or
official policies.”
-- Holtzblatt, Wendell, & Wood
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Rapid Contextual Design, 2005
Contextual Inquiry
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Hybrid approach
– Involves direct observation
– Involves interviewing to elicit more details
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Subject vs. Participant?
In traditional science, “subjects” are
“subjected to” experiments and research
to help the researcher develop
understanding
 In direct observation-oriented design,
“participants” “participate” in helping the
researcher develop understanding
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Your relationship to the
subject
In a scientist/subject relationship:
 Scientist does controlled actions or
asks questions
 Subject responds in some way
 Scientist collects data, goes back
to their office, and analyzes the
data to understand the subject
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Your relationship to the
interviewee
In an interview relationship:
 Interviewer asks a question
 Interviewee responds immediately
 As soon as there is a pause, the
interviewer asks another question from
the list, repeat until done
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Great if you know what
questions to ask in advance.
Your relationship to the
master
In a master/apprentice relationship:
 Master is doing stuff
 Master explains what they’re doing to the
apprentice
 Apprentice asks clarification question, master
answers and continues doing,
repeat until apprentice can do it
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This relationship is at the heart
of contextual inquiry
Your relationship to the
participant
In a CI researcher/participant relationship:
 Participant is doing stuff
 Participant explains what they’re doing to
the researcher
 Researcher asks a clarification question,
the participant answers, keeps doing
 Researcher’s goal is to
develop understanding
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– of what the participant is doing
– in partnership with participant
Not quite a master/apprentice
relationship
Researcher’s goal is not to
learn to do the task
 Instead, goal is to learn how
the participant does the task,
to learn how to support it
 And to enlist the participant’s
active assistance in
understanding the task
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Partnership
In Contextual Inquiry, the researcher
and the participant are partners
 Participant knows their process
better than the researcher
 Researcher has the distance to see
patterns and important features in the
participant’s process and practice
 Researcher needs to partner with
participant for rich understanding
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Direct Observation
Observe participants engaged in the
desired activity
 In the typical context of that activity
 In a manner that allows you to partner
with them to elicit more rich details
about the process
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Participant Observation
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Doing the activity along with the
participant
First-hand experience
May require acquiring domain
knowledge
Actively engaged, and allows
questions along the way
May be harder to take notes
Passively observe
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Some activities don’t afford
involvement by the researcher
– Solitary
– Remote
– Time-shifted
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Less disruptive
May miss some details
May require follow-up to ask questions
Perhaps augmented via technology
Asking questions
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Confirming understanding
How do they feel about…
What is frustrating them about…
How they compare one thing with an
other
Why did they just do that? (but try to
phrase without “Why”)
Asking open-ended
questions
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Confirming understanding
– Did you just delete all your messages?
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How do they feel about…
– How do you like the organization and colors
of this interface?
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What is frustrating them about…
– It looks like you can’t do something, what
are you trying to do?
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How they compare one thing with an other
– What are the reasons you prefer searching
rather than foldering?
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Why did they just do that? (but try to phrase without “Why”)
– It looks like you just deleted 10 messages,
what was the reason for doing that?
Avoid asking about
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Predicting what they would do / like /
want
Imagining a hypothetical scenario
Whether they would like a certain
feature or product
Estimating how often they do things
Decide how you’re going
to record the inquiry
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Written notes
Audio record
Pictures
Video
Usage logs
An additional observer
Combination of methods
Privacy and informed consent (more later)
Good method only part of
the answer!
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Good participants
Good setting
Good timing
Flexibility
Good participants
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Screen participants you’re targeting
– List attributes you’re looking for
Wouldn’t go to a senior center to study
facebook
 Can learn from why people aren’t good
subjects
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Some people tell you what they think
you want to hear
Some people tell you more than you
want to hear!
Good settings
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In situ – Latin phrase for in the place
– Location and circumstances where they
will engage in the desired activity
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Relaxed, natural, no distractions
– Dissuade interruptions (cell phones)
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Avoid potential for social pressures
Largely driven by the activity
Good timing
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Avoiding hectic times
Sometimes can schedule during times
of high concentrations of activity
Respect the schedule
– State duration in advance
– Stick to it (unless they give permission)
– Honor scheduled appointments
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Flexibility
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Follow the participants where they
“lead”
– The participant who didn’t use it
– Then proceeded to explain why she didn’t
use it
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Not every participant will be useful
Contextual Inquiry
example
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Say you want to design an on-line
dating service
You want to improve the process of
finding dates
– It’s a social networking topic
– It’s a topic where people act very
differently than they say they act
– Hopefully fun (without offending anyone)
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Picking people to observe
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People who find dates very easily
(expert)
People who have a hard time finding
dates (problem child)
People who have never been on a date
before (novice)
People who said yes when you asked
them
– Availability is not a skill
Picking a place
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Senior Center?
Bar?
Dorm dances / frat parties?
Student Union?
Perhaps best informed by your
participant
When’s a good time to
observe
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Finals week?
Spring break?
Weekend
How are you going to
observe
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Participant Observation
– Make it a double date
– Informed consent less of an issue
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Passively observe with follow-up
– But if Jim is successful, it might be hard
to follow-up with him for a while!
– How would you get informed consent?
Have Jim explain the situation
 Inform afterwards
 Limit data collected on others
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How are you going to
record it?
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Written notes? Could be awkward
Audio record? Maybe in just
momentary dictations
Pictures? Perhaps you could work a
few in as a double date with a
cameraphone
Video? That’s a (bad) reality TV show
This inquiry may rely heavily on your
own memory and reconstruction
Actually observing
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Picked the person,
Jim
Picked the place,
the Albatross Pub
Picked the time,
Labor Day weekend
How will you understand
how Jim gets a date?
The interviewer says…
Why not just ask Jim how he gets dates?
 But Jim might not entirely know…
 When he summarizes it for you,
– he might not remember vital details
– he might gloss over important difficulties
– he might forget time he met someone after an
embarrassing slip and fall in the bathroom
– he might be making it all up
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Indirect memories are filtered
The experimental
psychologist says…
Why not design a test for finding dates
under different conditions in a lab?
 But what if the lab task omits important
features of the actual real-world situation?
– Like the jerk also competing for a date?
– Or the range of candidates in the pub?
– Or the influence of alchohol?
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In a Contextual Inquiry…
If you’re studying dating behavior, go to
the local dating scene
 That way you’ll see what really happens,
and how people really make decisions.
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You’re at the pub with
Jim
First start with a conventional interview
 Introduce self, explain interview
procedure (consent, recording, how CIs
work)
 Ask Jim to summarize what goal he will
be working towards during the CI
 Don’t take too long on this
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Switch to observation
mode
Researcher should clearly and very
explicitly end the interview and invite
them to proceed with their activity
 Important, because if it’s not
completely clear, encounter may
devolve into a traditional interview (this
relationship is more familiar to people)
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OK…
Now have Jim go about his normal
tasks, exactly as he would if you weren’t
there: pretending to look at the menu,
scoping the place, trying to start
conversations, eating, drinking
 As he’s doing it, ask him to explain
whenever it’s not 100% obvious (or note
for later follow-up)
 And take lots of notes
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Context
Even in context, people will drift into
generalities and abstractions (even
fantasies)
 You can bring the user back to the
important (and often more true) details
by drawing their attention to concrete
objects or events
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Follow-up interview
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Best if prompted with concrete details
from activity
– Stories from written notes
– Pictures or clips from recordings
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Try to reconstruct how they were
feeling at the time
Retrospective CI
Sometimes want to study an activity that
occurs intermittently – or one you cannot
be physically present for
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– Ask what they’ve done in the past, not what
they would do in the future
– Invite them to bring artifacts, documents from
the past activity
– Repeatedly query them to probe about what
happened in between the steps they recall
Leverage data collection
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Sometimes you can leverage natural or
augmented data collection
 For example, to study web browsing
behavior, could review browsing history
 Or, to study mobility paths, could ask
them to wear an augmented cell phone
 Be careful to protect privacy and
confidentiality when you do something
like this!
Another perspective
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Variation on Contextual Inquiry that
leans more towards an interview
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(Thanks to Michael Barry for this model)
Stages of Contextual
Interview
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Introduction
Kickoff
Build Rapport
Grand Tour
Reflection
Wrap-Up
Stanford University, Hasso Plattner Institute of Design
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Introduction
Establish an interview partnership
 The informant may be confused as to
exactly what is happening
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– Be direct — “Why don’t we sit down
here?”, put them at ease
– Find a good place for the interview — if
possible arrange comfortable seating,
adequate lighting, and a low noise traffic location
Introduction (2)
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Describe your purpose
– “We’re going to explore how decisions get made
in the Emergency Room.”
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Outline the interview
– “We’re going to spend the day with you. We’ll be
watching how the organization works, and later
ask you and your staff some questions”.
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Let them know that their knowledge is
important
– "I've never been a waiter. It looks pretty hard to
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keep all your customers happy. Can you help me
understand how you do it”
Kickoff
Shift the focus to them by having them
introduce themselves and their lives
 At the end of your introduction, make a
clear transition over to them:
– “So maybe the best place to start is to have you
introduce yourselves and tell us a bit about the
band…”
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Clarify with lots of follow-up questions. This
section helps to get the respondent talking
and feeling at ease
Build Rapport
Most of your time will be spent making a
connection
 Informants may be defensive initially,
providing only short answers “Oh you
know...normal stuff. Just like everyone else.
No big deal”
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Be patient. Continue asking descriptive
questions to build their confidence and
trust.
Reassure the informant that they are doing
okay — “I don’t know...is this the kind of
thing you want to know?” Tell them
“Absolutely, exactly what we need”
Grand tour
Explore the details of their world both physical
and mental
Look for critical issues and disconnects
 This may be a walk around a bedroom,
factory, or device (e.g., mobile phone)
 There is incredible detail in the Grand Tour,
including things you would never think to
ask “Tell me about the picture in your
battery door”
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Ask your informant to act out interactions or
open up hidden areas
Reflection
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Take a break and review what you have
learned, then encourage personal insights
and discussions of why
 After you have spent a good deal of time
with the informant, they may be more able
to offer up personal insights, describe their
plans, dreams, passions, etc.
 It’s okay here to offer theories about the
informant for their evaluation or to ask the
informant to generate their own theories
Wrap-up
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Amazing things happen when the interview is
over
 At the end of the allotted time, thank them
and tell them how helpful they have been.
Ask them for any final thoughts, or if they
have any questions for you
 The notion that the interview is over often
jars loose a lot of comments, thoughts, and
insights. Keep the camera/tape recorder
rolling
Guidelines for Observation
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Cast aside your biases
Note contradictions between saying
and doing
Listen to personal stories
Watch for “work arounds”
Distinguish solutions vs. needs
Look beyond the obvious
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How many participants?
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Depends on what you’re doing
Statistical power needs ~50
Richer feedback more like ~12
Intuitive feel / diminishing returns
– When you start hearing similar themes
– When you stop learning new things
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We’ll be asking for specific numbers, but in
working world, you’ll need to decide based
on experience and constraints (time, $)
Appreciate your
participants!
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Some companies hire from temp
agencies, paid for usability study
Even token appreciation is helpful
– Lunch vouchers
– Company SWAG
– Early access to technology
– Social status
– What would work here at Berkeley?
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Supplementary methods
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After contextual inquiry
Better understanding enables forming
more focused questions
Adding more breadth
More time-efficient
Focus Groups
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Interviews in groups
Efficient way to collect opinions from
more than one person
Diversity can elicit further reactions
among participants
Sometimes can leverage natural social
groupings
Can be tricky to schedule
User surveys
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Once you have a better idea of
questions to ask
Can reach large numbers of people
Mail, telephone, web survey
– http://www.surveymonkey.com/
– http://info.zoomerang.com/
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We’ll talk more about this later
Assignment: Idea List
(Due Sept. 4)
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List of ideas where technology could
improve your life
– Initial focus on your needs
– Fixing something frustrating or a new idea
– Focus on social networking needs
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Coordinating with friends
Awareness of family members
Collaborating with classmates
…
Bullet list with short paragraph
Looking for volume of ideas!!!
Idea List example
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Redesign allergy medication packaging
– I’d like to redesign the packaging of my
allergy medication so I can easily take the
medication, also ensuring that it hasn’t
been tampered with, minimizing
wastefulness in packaging, and allowing
easy transport for when I travel.
Please turn in 2 copies
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Next time
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Rapid Viz reading (uploaded on web)
Idea List due
Sept. 4 meeting in Woz Lounge
I’ll have office hours 1:30-2:30 today
– 6th Floor alcove
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