Bureaucrats, emailconfirmed
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In the beginning of your Project the main research activity will be doing user research and getting to know the goals and problems of your users. Later on you will probably solve more specific problems and use more books and online resources to solve these problems. | In the beginning of your Project the main research activity will be doing user research and getting to know the goals and problems of your users. Later on you will probably solve more specific problems and use more books and online resources to solve these problems. | ||
==Use what is already out there== | ==Use what is already out there== | ||
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You can search for papers by using [http://www.google.com/scholar google scholar] or the [http://portal.acm.org/dl.cfm ACM Library]. The search is free in both cases but just google scholar links sometimes directly to the papers while you need a membership for ACM. If your university has one, you are a lucky student! But even if you find a paper on ACM or google scholar links on a pricy database too you should give it a try and search specifically for that papers title. Often the researchers have published accessible versions on their webpages. | You can search for papers by using [http://www.google.com/scholar google scholar] or the [http://portal.acm.org/dl.cfm ACM Library]. The search is free in both cases but just google scholar links sometimes directly to the papers while you need a membership for ACM. If your university has one, you are a lucky student! But even if you find a paper on ACM or google scholar links on a pricy database too you should give it a try and search specifically for that papers title. Often the researchers have published accessible versions on their webpages. | ||
==User Goals== | |||
Talking about design you often hear things like that you should improve the x function because users are assumed to want y. This is common and it is common as well that these assumptions are wrong. And even if they are right you should know why the user wants to use a certain function. Nobody does anything just to execute a program on a computer to keep the machine busy! | |||
It is important to get to know what your users what to archive – what their goals are. Goals are not activities - like using a feature in your product. | |||
* "Finding that funny picture from the last holiday" is a goal the user might have, searching for it is not a goal the user has. If search would not be needed to find the picture she would not search! | |||
* Getting reputation in the scientific community e.g. by publishing a good research paper is a goal, but collecting references and similar research is not a goal. | |||
* Give friends a good impression of the place where you live is a goal. Hoovering the rooms is not. | |||
What the goals of your users are is best to find out using research methods like interviews. Goals are hard to guess. You may not even always aware of why exactly ''you'' do something - and it is even harder to tell what drives other people. Especially if you are new to a field you should use research but even people who think they are experts are often wrong about the users goals. Don't try to guess harder. You want to know. | |||
==Interviews== | ==Interviews== | ||
A very useful tool for doing research are interviews. They are not difficult to do, very versatile and you will get a lot of insight. | A very useful tool for doing research are interviews. They are not difficult to do, very versatile and you will get a lot of insight. | ||