IFD:Course Interaction Design: Difference between revisions

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 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.
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+===Conducting Interviews===
-===Research Questions===
-Many design projects start with an clear idea how the final design could look like and work. Often this is a good idea, though you don't know - and you can't be sure if you tackle existing problems. An example: you think it would be great if webpages would be visualized and indexed if you have them in your bookmarks.
-For doing research you need to find out what is it you are dealing with actually? In the above example this is:''You want to ease refinding webpages they previously liked. ''
-If you just have a problem in mind that you want to solve you have it easier.
-Make your mind what you want and need to find out. This is often:
-* What are the goals and motivations behind a certain behaviour that is connected to your idea
-* What are current problems with current solutions similar to what you have in mind.
-When you do qualitative research you need to do interviews - so see as well
-* Which user group you want to target
-Having made up your mind about that you can formulate what you want to do and can do research on this. Write down these things.
-:You find out that you should think about:<br>
-:* What people remember about webpages they prevoiusly used.
-:* How they organize files, webpages etc. now
-:* What in particular do they aim for when they try to refind previously accessed pages.
--->
-===conducting interviews===
 A very useful tool for doing research are interviews.
 They are best done early in the design process and will help you to find out for which user needs you design and what problems need to be solved. Interviews are not difficult to do, very versatile and you will get a lot of insight.
+====Recruit users====
+You want to interview potential users of your product, so you need to see who could use your product. Than you try to get these people to an interview.
+You can use a couple of ways to contact these potential users: Use your universities Mailing List, ask friends of friends. As you can do the interviews via skype as well, you can state that you search for interviewees on your twitter-page or blog. (Remember: you don't search for everybody, so state for which people you are looking for) State what you are going to do and what it is for. As a student you have probably no money you can offer as compensation.
-You want to '''interview potential users of your product''', so you need to see who could use your product. Than you try to get these people to an interview.
+====What we want to find out====
-You can use a couple of ways to contact these potential users: Use your universities Mailing List, ask friends of friends. As you can do the interviews via skype as well, you can state that you search for interviewees on your twitter-page or blog. (Remember: you don't search for everybody, so state for which people you are looking for) State what you are going to do and what it is for. As a student you have probably no money you can offer as compensation. So at least you should offer some coffee and cookies to your interviewees!
+Using interviews we want to find out about
+* User goals and motivations
-[[File:Notetaking_Flickr-CreditTo_kristin_wolff.jpg|200px|thumb|take notes during your interviews]]
+* What they do to at the moment to archive their goals and why
+* Which Problems exist currently in doing so
+====Mind the context====
+The interview should be done where the interaction happens. This gives you the possibility to observe the workflow and the user interacting with a current product that he uses currently to archive his goals. You can as well watch out which cues the environment provides e.g. how documents are organized on the table, what is on the stiuck notes at the monitor etc. In your quuestions you can refer to these thigs like "why do you..." or "how does... work?"
-Before you start brief tell again what the interviews are for. Some people may feel kind of "tested" on computer literacy or something like that. Tell them they don't need to worry and that hearing about problems will help you as much as anything else.
+====Interview Process====
+Before you start tell briefly again what the interviews are for. Some people may feel kind of "tested" on computer literacy or something like that. Tell them they don't need to worry and that hearing about problems will help you as much as anything else.
 The interview should be pleasant for the interviewee, so don't stretch it too long. Being a attentively and a good listener will help as well.
 The first steps are the most difficult but once the interviewee talks it usually runs smooth.So it is a good idea to start with some questions that are useful for you to know and have clear and simple answers like the profession, years of experience etc.
+During the interview you will take notes or record the audio (Ask for permission if you do the latter) So you will be able to review the interviews.
-With the interviews we want to find out about
+====Ask the right questions====
-* '''User goals and motivations'''
-* '''Current workflow and the problems that happen there'''
 As designers is that we love to focus on coming things. Here we need to look at the current situation and the way the user does things now in order to find out the goals behind actions and to discover existing problems because they reveal a lot about the way users think as well as good starting points for improvements.
-A good way to do find out about this is asking open questions and not direct ones. So the answers you should aiming for are not "yes" or "no" but e.g. the ones the user can tell you experiences or explains you something. Avoid a fixed set of questions - it will make your interviews fiddly and yourself less flexible. Often it will be useful to follow up something the user said. When you ask '''"why"''' a decision was made in a specific way or '''how''' something works you can reveal important facts about the user's way to act.
+A good way to do find out about this is asking open questions and not direct ones. So the answers you should aiming for are not "yes" or "no" but e.g. the ones the user can tell you experiences or explains you something. Often it will be useful to follow up something the user said. When you ask '''"why"''' a decision was made in a specific way or '''how''' something works you can reveal important facts about the user's way to act. Focusing on current goals and problems means as well that you  shouldn't make the user a designer. Users are very bad in telling what is good for them and what is bad. In this case you better do a test with a prototype.
 Here are some open Questions as an example
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 * What makes you do... before executing...?
 * What annoys you when you work on this?
-'''You shouldn't make the user a designer'''. Users are very bad in telling what is good for them and what is bad. In this case you better do a test with a prototype.
 When you do interviews there are some common problems that can occur.
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 #'''You want to know if something you have in mind would help the user'''<br>You: '''"Would it help you to have a green lever that does [whatsoever]?"'''<br>Here you make the user a designer. This is similar to the situation above. <br>Solution:Don't ask this question! In a latter section you will read about testing and prototyping such ideas. If you want to gather information on the specific feature in the interview nevertheless: gather informations about the user and his/her context that could reveal if the user needs the feature that you have in mind.
-During the interview you '''take notes or record the audio''' (Ask for permission if you do the latter) So you will be able to review the interviews.
-Take some time to do the review and gather all you notes or recordings. Read or listen through them. Remember, we want to find out about user goals and existing problems. Write what you consider as important down. Now you should get an overview by grouping the findings. Some will occur more often or add up to a kind of problem field.
+'''Write your findings down:'''Take some time to do the review and gather all you notes or recordings. Read or listen through them. Remember, we want to find out about user goals and existing problems. Write what you consider as important down. Now you should get an overview by grouping the findings. Some will occur more often or add up to a kind of problem field.
-After doing so you should try to '''put your key findings in a few short sentences.''' An example is: ''"The goals of our potential users to participate is to improve their CVs and to get known.''
+After doing so you should try to put your key findings in a few short sentences. An example is: ''"The goals of our potential users to participate in a design challenge is to improve their CVs and to get known.''
-'''Write down common problems''' as well so you know which traps to avoid and where new solutions are needed.
+Write down common problems as well so you know which traps to avoid and where new solutions are needed.
 These key findings will guide you when you create your designs, because you now know what you need to concentrate on.
 ====Ressources====
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 Having that in a clear and graspable form - best printed out and put visible in you project room helps you to realize your vision and to design a product suiting the users needs.
 ===Use what is already out there===