Bureaucrats, emailconfirmed
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* Your users goals (what they want to archive) | * Your users goals (what they want to archive) | ||
* Existing Problems | * Existing Problems | ||
* Solutions, Experiences and Problems others had in similar projects. | * Solutions, Experiences and Problems others had in similar projects.</br> | ||
not to underestimate is: </br> | |||
* Getting inspiration | |||
You may think that it is not necessary to do research as you are a clever person who knows already a good bunch of stuff about what you design for. Cognitve Psychologist and UX Professional Don Norman rightly says: "we tend to project our own rationalisations and beliefs onto the actions and beliefs of others". In other words:You think others are like you. But the interesting thing is: they are not the same. So you need to find out via research. | |||
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 ressources 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 ressources to solve these problems. | ||
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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. | ||
== | ==Interviews== | ||
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Reading the headline "research" you will have probably thought of numbers, statistics and large tests. The findings of research like this can be useful for us, but we will not conduct this kind of research: It is too elaborate and would just help to learn about existing things and not about ways to create new and innovative solutions. We research to understand users and get to know what their motivations are and what influences their behaviour. This kind of reasearch is called "qualitative research". | Reading the headline "research" you will have probably thought of numbers, statistics and large tests. The findings of research like this can be useful for us, but we will not conduct this kind of research: It is too elaborate and would just help to learn about existing things and not about ways to create new and innovative solutions. We research to understand users and get to know what their motivations are and what influences their behaviour. This kind of reasearch is called "qualitative research". | ||
There are many different techiques for doing qualitative research. In this guide I will concentrate on interviews for getting the findings you need. | There are many different techiques for doing qualitative research. In this guide I will concentrate on interviews for getting the findings you need. | ||
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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. | |||
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) | |||
As a student you have probably mo money you can offer as compensation. So at least you should offer some coffee and cookies to your interviewees! | |||
The important thig about the interview is that you *don't* ask specific and direct questions but open ones. So the answers you should aming for are not "yes" or "no" but e.g. the ones the user can tell you experiences or explaines you something. | |||
State clearly that you do an interview for doing research for an design project. | |||
==Conducting Interviews== | ==Conducting Interviews== | ||