Reflecting on User Research Smoke and Mirrors

Objectivity is in the eye of the beholder

Having read the article by Christopher Farhey, a question arises in my mind - What exactly is objective methods? I believe that there is no such thing as true objectivity and everything, as objective as it seems, it's only in the eyes of the beholder.

Scientific methods are supposed to be used for a representation of our reality, but no matter how hard it tries to do so we need to realize that people functions in different realities and what seems objective to one may not seem to be so for another. Hence, the issue of misinterpretation of data.

Studies are all Subjective

Design methods need not depend on objective analysis. There is no such thing in the first place. I find it ironic that we talk about designs influencing people's emotions, attention and pleasure level, which are all subjective in nature, and link it to science to create a facade that such things can be measured objectively and that there are variables we can look at to make a design work.

Of course, certain amount of testing is still needed to make sure designers are not going the wrong direction. But whether there is a need to feint such methods as pretentiously as being objective should be examined.


Understanding Management View

Still, after all the critiques on the idea of objectivity, I guess we need to examine the mindset of the management - the ones who are taking the risk and sponsoring you with the money to complete your work. The fact is people do need confirmation and certainty especially when monetary issues are involved. This is pretty much linked to the idea of political tool mentioned by Farhey. The issue is management do need convincing and in a way, it eases the designing process as well.

I simply love the way the author puts it - It's like chicken soup. You don't need it But it's not bad either.

Phase 3 - Design and Looks

At this point of time... this may help:



The issue of first impression

It is said that first impression is formed in the first 50 milliseocond of laying your eyes on something. Hence, it seems relevant to place the first page of the three low-fidelity prototype to see its progression from totally not aesthetic to a (hopefully) more satisfying design:












Design 1 - Forgeting about design

The first design - or rather the lack of it - is due to our obsession with adding in the functionality to a project management website. As a result, the website has too many hierarchies, and even from the initial look of it, we know that it's not intuitive and pleasing.

However, we are just too concerned about the depth that we forgot about the main objective of having a pleasing design.

User testing and opinions from Mr. Reddy are being taken into account. It quickly makes us realize how far off we have become. In fact, we were wondering how come we were so far off when the latter two prototypes are what we have initially set out to do.

Fortunately for us, we still have time to make changes and simplify the overly complex site.


Design 2 - Less than five clicks initiative

For the second design, we decided to put an organizer calendar as the central theme for the whole platform with rotating icons at the bottom to serve as links to features. Hence, the depth is not as complicated as before, and users do not need many clicks to get to where they want.

This was again tested with users and this helped us in coming up with the third low-fi prototype.

Design 3 - Revamped for better functionality and aesthetics

In this design, the communications icon was separated into two - forum and announcements - for lower hierarchy of accessibility. The interface will be as graphical as possible to enhance user experience. An add task bar will also be included at the side. However, as commented by Mr. Reddy, we will need to seek a better link betweeen the task bar as well as the calendar. Also, how do we navigate users through the website such that they know that they are already in a project page.


Reflections - Back to a more comfortable position

Having got the design right again, we will do some more testing before proceeding onto the high-fi final product of this assignment. The process has been rather intense, and at times, stressful for us all. But hey.. we are going to get through this fine.

Phase 3 - Design

Previously...

With results from our previous study - survey and the kano analysis - we continue with other methods to get an idea of how users would like us to structure our website.


Card Sorting and Cluster Analysis

Card sorting is used by asking respondents to group features that they found similar together. Also, we also try to find out what short cut features would respondents want to see on the front page. However, apart from the categories obtained, test of trying to know what short cuts should be included on the first page proves less conclusive.

Information Architecture

With information generated with card sorting, we came to this tenuous process of getting the IA right. As a project management website, this is really where the main headache began...

At times, in fact, we got lost in trying to come up with a workable naviagtion system...



Reflection

Faces a major hurdle

I am sure Ed and Jay will agree with me that this stage proves to be the hardest in surging forward. We do not wish to rush things ahead with a messy hierarchy. However, at this point of time, we got a little wind up and obsessed with functionality rather than pleasure of usage.

This will be further elaborated when you see our first low-fi prototype.


Digressing a little

Sure, this is the point of time when most students got busy with their various assignments and deadlines. In a way, this also affects our ability to come together in coming up with better solutions. Nevertheless, we will be getting there :)

Phase 2 - Define

Defining our users




Coming into this project, we understand that people have different needs, and not everyone may belong to our target group. So just like a throng of people walking on the streets, how do we sieve out the users who have the need?

Fortunately for us, we have the users in mind right at the beginning of designing process, and has very earlier on know that meeting the needs of students - specifically NUS students - is what we want to do.


Personas...

We come up with personas of anti, novice and advanced users to understand them better. While we acknowledged that there are people who accept this technology fast, there are still people who will be as stubborn as mules in their adoption...





Users specifications and requirements

While some requirement of users can be obtained from the preliminary study, we want to futher narrow down the scope by conducting another survey based on the Kano Model.

We came up with an exhaustive list of items to be included in the system before posting the questions to 26 respondents.

Personally, I find this test very interesting as for every positive question posted, you have to post a counter-question in understanding how much people can live without it. Rating of the scale is also unconventional - instead of a symmetrical scale of very unsatisfied, unsatisified, neutral, satisfied and vey satisifed - the scale ranges from i like it this way, i expect it this way, i m neutral, i can tolerate it this way and i dislike it this way.

Hence, while a person can answer I like it if the system has photosharing, and states that I expect that the system usually do not have photosharing. This feature can be classified as an excitement attribute to the website.

Going along this line... we are able to obtain a lot of interesting information as to what will need to be inside the system and taking out what is not necessary.


REFLECTION

Interesting to conduct

This process proves enjoyable for the team as it seems to gear us a step closer to the design of the end product. Also, the final product becomes less abstract here with studies conducted in understanding users' specifications.

Results are subjective, but so what?

Guess the results cannot be objective in that sense that we have already generated a set of features. Also, testing on 26 respondents will not be what you call as "scientific" from a statistical sense. Still, we believe that the results are meaningful in steering us to a correct direction.

Of course, the article by Christopher Fahey helps too in addressing this issue of make-believe objectivity.

Phase 1 - Discover

Brainstorming for ideas...

The initial stage of brainstorming proves to be the hardest, especially when we are in a dire need of a tipping point.

Our team - Ed, Jay and I - took great pain in generating workable ideas. Most of which circulate around the idea that it should be practically implementable - like an online portal.

Here are the final two that we presented to Mr. Reddy in class.

Planning an itinerary for your free & easy travel?




This seems like a good idea initially. We come up with this idea because of the lack of travelling websites that deal specifically in generating out itineraries for young travellers. As I've friends who endear wikitravel as the travelling bible in planning their routes around a continent like Europe, we simply felt that the idea was implementable.

Of course, later on, Jay suggested limiting the scope to merely Singapore first for the ease of implementation.

However, when presenting this idea, the issue of need arises - is there really a need for such thing? Can target users identify with our concept? Anyway, we scrap this idea in the end because of all the hurdles we are facing.

In need of a virtual place to manage your projects?



With IVLE community revamped to something completely unusable for projects, and other online methods insufficient to meet our needs, we come to the conclusion that THIS is what we want to do for our final project.

Who are we?

We took the name of an online software developer ZOHO since they already have an existing range of softwares targeted at making online project management easier. We felt that in assuming this role, we are better positioned as someone who has the expertise to make such a software a success if it is in demand among the student population.


What we did?

We conducted a preliminary survey on 31 students and collected qualitative information from five respondents to get a general idea of whether there is a need for a new project management portal.

Questions are designed to test the current project management behavior, attitude and perception of NUS students. From then on, we make inferences on the needs of NUS students.


SO... really... is there a need?

From our results, we have proved that more than 90% of users do use online platforms for project management and feel the current methods inadequate in meeting their needs.

This is really the gist of our research as well as the data we need to further our efforts in understanding the users.


Reflection

Keeping our focus - Not the product first, need first, please.

Before the process of brainstorming, we have basically started off with a wrong approach - instead of thinking about the issue of need from a user's perspective, we are geared towards thinking as marketers who seek to market an already conceptualized product to the people without really understanding what is needed in a product by users. Hence, we discard our initial idea, and starts a new thought process of imaginingg ourselves as users, and as students about what we will want. This helps us alot.

Seriously, we have no idea what product will turn out... now

Going through this thought process makes me realize that unlike other courses that I have taken, I did not already have an envisioned end-product in mind. At times, it is like treading on unfamiliar ground, and could turn scary.

But as we got deeper into the issue of need, and realized what users really want, I got more interested in finding answers from users and coming up with ways to "outsmart" them by providing them with not only something that meet their needs, but exceed their needs.