Would you rather have Sherlock Holmes or Miss Marple in your design-team?
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Monday, 16 February 09 - 03:41 AM (GMT) By Dennis Nordstrom in General |
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Is literature and user research all that different? Here is a short story about an early project I worked on, that shows how the two genres might be closer related than people give them credit for.
During a project I worked on in Denmark, before I moved on to the US and Australia, we struggled a bit with how we could interpret and translate our research-findings into design. We had a multitude of ethnographic-research data, consisting of interviews with respondents as well as participatory design sessions between respondents and design team. However, we were not sure how to interpret all this data into useful insights that would inform our design of relevant products.
After careful considerations we decided that since no obvious design-ideas came to mind, we needed to tell a different story by reframing our research towards design... One of the members of the design-team had a close friend of the family, who was a children's author. She had written over a dozen children books and was well educated within literature. We invited her to come join us for a day and help us with advice on how to reframe our research so as to tell a story directed towards design. She accepted our invitation and about a week later we all met at the corporate brainstorm-room.
We were four all in all and we sat around a round table with all our data as well as paper and pens within reach. The author listened carefully as we presented our design-project as well as our dilemma to her. Once she had gotten the initial introduction to our project, we moved on to present the research and the research-outcome to her. She still listened carefully, and the further we moved through our elaborate explanation of participants, workshops, and ethnographic interviews the deeper the wrinkles on the author's forehead got. Had we lost her? Was she confused by our data? Did she feel as if we were wasting her time? It was hard to say what thoughts went through her head, when the project manager had finished her explanation of our research.
There was a moment of silence in the room where three set of eyes were aimed at the author, and where the author's eyes were aimed at the ceiling. "Ok" she said. "How did you go about arriving at the data you have?" We showed her our affinity diagrams, snippets of our video analysis, user-quotes, card-sorting, and a bunch of other data that was arrived at through participatory design sessions and ethnographic interviews.
Then she said something that I have thought about in every project I have worked on ever since: "So if you looked at this with the eyes of Sherlock Holmes, perhaps you should just try looking at it through the eyes of Miss Marple?" Now, this needed some more explanation. "Well" She said. "Sherlock Holmes is the sort of investigator, who looks carefully at every clue he has through his magnifying glass. Miss Marple on the other hand just sits around the house knitting, and she is always is able to put the pieces of the puzzle together through her wit and her ability to overhear important conversations."
This one sentence was something that opened up a world of research and insights to me. Every time I start analysing research-data i try to choose the appropriate set of "investigation-eyes" inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie's Miss Marple. These two super-detectives are each in their own way able to find the core of the problem, and to put together several pieces of the puzzle until they find what they are looking for.
Sherlock Holmes will deduct with logic and a sharp eye for details, while Miss Marple are able to add snippets of information together in order to get the large picture.
Every researcher probably has their way of looking at things. However, whenever I feel stuck I look at it in terms of "Sherlock Holmes or Miss Marple". Sometimes small pieces of data confuses me, but then I apply the Miss Marple persona and it actually helps me focus on the big picture again. On the other hand when I have trouble grasping the big picture I apply the Sherlock Holmes persona, and view over the details one by one. Either way it is a process that I find important when it comes to analyzing research-data.
Perhaps the next time you have difficulty making sense of research results you should try to apply either Sherlock Holmes or Miss Marple personas?
Your participants are also human-beings
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Monday, 01 December 08 - 10:32 PM (GMT) By Dennis Nordstrom in General |
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For a while I have been wondering how to externalise some of the tacit principles of respect for participants, which I try to uphold when doing user-research.
I recently came across a post on the Boxes and Arrows board, where Dana Chisnell has explained some of these principles in a better way than I could have. Especially she brings the subject of "dissing your participants" to attention and gives 5 great signs for " when you are dissing your participants". I have listed these five headings below. Elaborate explanations to each of the headings can be found in the post by Dana Chisnell.
Five signs that you are dissing your participants.
1) They seem interchangeable to you.
2) You’re focused on the demographics or psychographics.
3) Participants are just a way to deliver data.
4) You don’t think about the effort it takes for a person to show up in your lab.
5) You don’t consider that these people are your customers and this is part of their customer experience.
I find these particularly helpful, especially when it comes to stakeholders and explaining the purpose and the context of user-research to stakeholders. This is definitely a post that will go in my "Managing Stakeholders - Bible".
I can only recommend everyone here to read the full post, and use these principles as a way to remember that your participants are human-beings and deserves to be treated that way.
How to distinguish between wicked and tame problems
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Wednesday, 19 November 08 - 01:21 AM (GMT) By Dennis Nordstrom in General |
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On my blog-tours for the last couple of days, I have started to see a theme emerging within the UX industry. People are talking about design as problem-solving. Design as a way of identifying problems, and as a methodology for solving these. First, let me emphasise that I do not completely agree with that point of view. I believe that some design-projects will mostly resemble the process of solving problems, but not all design entails problems (Sometimes there just are no problems to solve, only context to enrich). But, that is not the focus of this article. the focus of this article is about that part of design, that do involve problems and problem-solving.
As I see it there a different ways of defining problems and thus different ways of approaching (solving) them for the purpose of design and I wanted to highlight that here. On my blog-tour I did not see anyone mentioning "wicked problems" within design, and in this article the distinction will therefore be made between Rittel's "wicked problems" and "tame problems".
The purpose of this article is thus, to make one aware of these distinctions and thereby to make it easier for designers to identify the right sort of problem upon encounter. This will enable designers to take a right approach towards the problem, which will prove to save their time and energy in the long run.
Let's start with a simple characteristics of "wicked problems" and "tame problems". According to Horst Rittel, "wicked problems" are problems that do not let themselves easily be identified. This can be because of conflicting definitions, because of conflicts between budget, time, and effort put into design, or just because it is a problem where there are no criteria for a solution. "Tame problems" on the other hand, are problems known from mathematics or puzzle solving, where a complete solution does exist. Each of these forms of problems require different approaches, and it is for "tame problems" that I have been reading a lot of blogs. I did not see a lot of mentioning of "wicked problems", which I believe happen more frequently within design. So, in the following I will go over what I believe are valuable approaches for "wicked and tame problems".
One of the blogs I found particulary helpful when it came to problem-solving of "tame problems" is a blog written by Luciano Passuello. It stated that Einstein was quoted to have said that if he had one hour to save the earth, he would spend 55 minutes to define the problem, and 5 minutes to solving it. I found this quote to be quite inspiring.
The idea here is of course that the solution to a problem lies within the definition of it. Therefore when designers and researchers encounter "tame" problems, it is in their interest to provide a decent definition of that problem before setting out to solve it. Often the solution of the problem can be found within the definition of the problem.
Passuello provided ten great guidelines for defining the problem, and thus making "tame problem-solving" easier. The ten guidelines are listed below by titles, and more comprehensive explanations can be found here.
The ten guidelines are:
1. Rephrase the Problem
2. Expose and Challenge Assumptions
3. Chunk Up
4. Chunk Down
6. Use Effective Language Constructs
7. Make It Engaging
8. Reverse the Problem
9. Gather Facts
10. Problem-Solve Your Problem Statement
However, when it comes to solving "wicked" problems these guidelines might not prove as useful. By the very nature of Rittel's definition of "wicked problems", these are not easy definable and since the majority of problems designers would meet are "wicked problems", an appropriate approach for those problem must follow.
When it comes to "wicked problems", I propose that designers take a direct opposite approach from solving "tame problems" and dive straight into designing. Since "wicked problems" often have conflicting characteristica and therefore are difficult to define, one might as well let the design guide the process of providing a solution. Thus, the design will work wonderfully as an actor of finding better alternatives, by simply trying to find solutions and through an iterative process change the prototype until it is good enough. Obviously, criteria for "good enough" needs to have been made clear in order to make that decision. That is where Simon's concept of "satisficing" might help.
Herbert Simon came up with the concept of "satisficing", which is a strategy of meeting adequate criteria for your design. "Satisficing" is thus a concept for the designer to reach consensus and a state of satisfaction about her or his design. "Satisficing" is especially applicable to "wicked problems" since these are not about true or false solutions, but about better or worse alternatives. "Satisficing" is a way for the designer not to search the universal answer, but to become satisfied with the outcome of the design-process, and to match that outcome with set criteria.
Therefore designers and researchers need to be aware of the concepts: "wicked problems", "tame problems", and "satisficing" in order to maximise their roles as professional problem-solvers. When it comes to "tame problems" I have outlined Passuello's ten guidelines, which I find very helpful. I can certainly recommend spending the majority of one's time defining the problem, when trying to solve a "tame problem". However, with "wicked problems" the criteria are not true or false but better or worse, therefore a complete solution will never be found. One of Jeff Conklin's defining characteristics of "wicked problems" states that these can never be fully defined until a solution has been found. So, with a limited timeframe in a project, there is no reason to spend time defining the problem, since a definition cannot be found until an alternative solution has been found. Instead it makes sense to dive straight into the design, and let the design guide the designer's "satisficing" process through user-testing and stakeholder meetings.
This is why I think that when it comes to designing, one of the first steps should be to be able to categorise the problem at hand either as a "tame problem" or as a "wicked problem". By doing this, the designer or the researcher guides the process and will thus be able to maximise his or her time and effort. Therefore, one of the first steps to good problem-solving is in terms of "wicked or tame" problem, and from this categorisation the problem-solving process becomes clearer.
My hope is that this blog will help making this catagorisation of problems clearer, as well as make it easier for people to see the following problem-solving process of defining a problem, or leave the definition and jump straight into designing, clearer.
Book review: "Thoughtful Interaction Design"
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Thursday, 06 November 08 - 12:17 AM (GMT) By Dennis Nordstrom in General |
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There are few books that I believe really are essential to the way I have shaped as a proffessional. One of these books are "Thoughtful Interaction Design" (2004) by Jonas Löwgren and Erik Stolterman, published by the MIT press.
Basically the book outlines practical but mind-provoking advice of how to move towards a thoughtful design-practice within the IT industry and IT academia. In taking this approach the book explains detailed fundamentals of design-research, design-philosophies, design-processes, and design-practice.
Therefore, I find that the book's largest quality lies within its holistic explanation of how IT-proffessionals with all kinds of disciplinary backgrounds, can get a better understanding of interaction design principles. It was a revelation for me, coming from a design-research background, to gain insight into some of the fundamental design-philosophical and design-practical issues attached to interaction design.
In the following I have quoted a few paragraphs that I found helped me towards this understanding of interaction design, and that outlines the book's general theme.
"...but it (design) is also a process of thought in the mind of the individual designer. When we focus on design as a thought process, we do this from the perspective of thoughtful design. This means that we will not take a prescriptive approach, but rather introduce certain aspects of design thinking that might seem strange and perhaps irrational. The idea that underlies this chapter is that to be good at design, you have to understand what seems to be the "nature" of design thinking. Of course, there no "natural" way to do design, but there are recurrent and common characteristics in the design process. The perspective of thoughtful design implies that the first prerequisite for change and development in design thinking is to have a deeper understanding of design as such. Armed with this kind of knowledge, it is possible to start "designing" your own way of design thinking." (Chapter1, pp: 21-22)"Thoughtful design has to be based on a realization and understanding of the fundamental aspects of the design process described in this chapter. A thoughtful designer knows that almost nothing is given or true when it comes to what and how to design. It is also obvious that the complexity of the process demands conceptual clarity from the designer. The thoughtful position is to view the whole situation as a design task: to design the design process." (Chapter 2, p: 41)
"As we said earlier, every designer needs her own approach to developing design ability. This is a design task in itself that has to be done in a thoughtful way. It is neither a simple choice of techniques nor a matter of acquiring the necessary information or knowledge, but rather a question of assuming responsibility for one's own proffessional mind. This is a very demanding process. To approach your own design ability as a design project takes effort, time, and energy. Conceptual tools such as the ones we have suggested - striving for a sense of quality, developing a language, practicing reflective thinking and retrosprective reflection - may facilitate the process." (Chapter 3, p: 61)
"As we indicated in chapter 3, the development of a sense of quality and a language for articulating user-oriented qualities is a core element of interaction design ability. It is essential for designers to know what their products are and what they mean. The meaning of a product is never straightforward and unambigious; it can never be obtained by the use of some objective scale of measurement. Of course, there are qualities that most people recognize and in some cases, there are even majority views on how they can and should be measured. In interaction design, such qualities typically include technical performance and structural features. However, most product qualities of interest to a designer are not that visible or easy to isolate. How do you measure usability and flexibility in a useful and practical way? How about the economical viability and ecological sustainability of a product? Even harder and less noticed are qualities such as social appropriateness, ethical justifiability, and aesthetic adequacy. Of course, researchers and designers have attempted to create means of measuring these and other qualities. In many camps, the ability to measure all relevant product qualities is seen as desirable. The intention is mainly to facilitate the design and deployment process; it can be safely stated, however, that there are no commonly agreed upon approaches for handling the more difficult aspects of digital artifact qualities." (Chapter 5, p: 101)
"Every design field has its own history and future. The existing and future practice is, of course, deeply influenced by earlier practices, ideas, and values, There is always an intellectual tradition manifested in present practice that changes in resonance with a surrounding culture. In the case of interaction design, the intellectual heritage is most clearly present in the form of paradigms and ideas dominating the disciplines related to the shaping of digital artifacts, such as information systems, software engineering, and human-computer interaction." (Chapter 6, p: 141)
"We end up with the same basic idea again: managing technological development means being prepared. Curiosity together with critical thinking can keep you reasonably far along on the stream of development. When an interaction designer encounters new technology in a design sitation, she is not paralyzed, instead, she confidently approaches new technology by looking for its core, principles, benefits, and shortcomings. Bring prepared also means placing technological ideas in relation to the development of society and culture, and more general philosophical considerations. Even the most groundbreaking technology may be unthinkable given a certain order of culture or society. Technology always depends on its context." (Chapter 6, p: 164)
"It is perfectly possible that this book seems diverse and incoherent so far. A conceivable question at this point might be "Ok, but what is the best way of doing interaction design?" Our purpose has been to compose a book that supports committed readers in their own thinking and their own attempts to become confident designers. Part of that purpose is, unfortunately, the inability to give a simple answer to the question about the best way of doing interaction design. What we can do in this final chapter is merely to tie the threads together in a more concise and coherent picture of the tools we offer for thoughtful design." (Chapther 7, p: 165)
"We have emphasized the importance and responsibility of interaction design. To handle this responsibility, our recommendation to interaction designers is to be prepared: prepared to act in a design process, encounter new design situations, learn and develop as designer, and understand historical developments and future technological trajectories. This is a complex and ongoing strategy, and it is made even more complex by the nature of the design material at our disposal. We have seen many examples of design processes becoming more or less paralyzed when designers realize the full scope of the design situation and respond by trying to collect more and more information: more fieldwork, research, analysis of competing products, and so on.
What is needed to deal with the complexities of design, however, is not necessarily more information, but rather a bit more conceptual clarity form the designer. A thoughtful designer, equipped with appropriate tools for reasoning, will be more able to sort out what is important, make necessary judgment calls, distinguish true needs for more information from better-safe-than-sorry approaches, and identify fruitful directions in the exploration of possible futures that is called design. The ideas we have presented in this book are intended to serve as such tools for reasoning. The responsibility of using these tools skillfully will always rest on the designer." (Chapter 7, p: 171)
In the above quoted sections, I have focused on highlighting the general sections and have therefore not brought the specific sections about methods and methodologies to attention. The book features a lot of methods and explains the context of their use, which I do find useful. However, I do not see the book as a compilation of methods but more as an inspiring book that encourages different and more critical ways of thinking about interaction design.
So to me this book has taught me to look more holistically on interaction design, and to fill out some of the gaps of knowledge and awareness that I had about my field. In other words, I am more aware of being a thoughtful interaction designer now through this book, than I was before.
Therefore, I strongly recommend this book as an eye-opener to different thoughtful ways of interaction design practice.
Based on the holisticness and the mind-provoking qualities of this book I have rated it 5 out of 6.
JUDGEMENT: 5/6
How Researchers should learn from Mentalists
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Wednesday, 29 October 08 - 11:30 PM (GMT) By Dennis Nordstrom in General |
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Having watched the show "The Mentalist" for a while now I have picked up on one of my old interests, namely the power of suggestion and NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming). Mentalists are usually stage-performers who consciously use NLP and suggestion as tools to create the illusion of having psychic powers. Thus they will often illustrate powers such as mind-reading or talking to audience members' dead relatives.
My question in regards to suggestion and NLP is however: Is it possible to unconsciously suggest ideas in to research-subjects' mind, and if so how do we as researchers minimise the risk of doing this? Well, I believe that we need to learn a bit from mentalists, and become aware of our own being and that we need to learn the basics of suggestion.
In this article, I particularly want to focus on evaluative research and how researchers sometimes suggest their opinions on to respondents' opinions of prototypes. As an example I would like you to imagine a scenario where the researcher enters a house of a middle-class family, in order to conduct an interview on the father of the family, who is a 34-year-old business-manager. The researcher represents a large software-company and has brought a few software and hardware prototypes with him. The purpose of the interview for the researcher is to test prototypes, as well as to relate these with the everyday of the family father. The researcher conducted the preliminary research that led to the design of the prototype, and has therefore a positive opinion about the prototypes. The respondent is paid a substantial amount for his time, and is asked to evaluate the prototype as objectively as possible. Besides that the respondent has a desire to do well in the research, so that he will be asked to be a part of other research-projects in the future.
The researcher asks about the design-areas that the design team were unsure of, in order to gain an idea of whether or not the prototype will be relevant for the respondent. In the end of the interview, the researcher asks the respondent whether he has anything to add whereto the respondent says: "No, I think it is a great idea. When can I see this on the market?"
Does the above scenario sound familiar? I have experienced a few incidents quite familiar to that scenario. So my question in regards to the scenario is: Do we as researchers sometimes, without knowing it, subject the respondents to suggestion and are there ways for us to get an idea of whether the respondent is actually telling us what he truly thinks?
I have thought of a few things that I would like to try in order to minimise the risk of suggestion and tainted research results. These ideas have all derived more or less in the idea of suggestion between researcher and respondent. A list of these ideas and a brief description for each of them follows.
1) Include "bad ideas" in the prototype
2) Become aware of voice, intonation, syntax, and body language when talking to respondents
3) Give the respondents a "Rorschach inkblot test" of prototypes
4) Learn the basics of "reading lies" as a way of evaluating respondents' answers and opinions
2) Since suggestion is caused through body language, facial expressions, intonation of voice, and the way we phrase or paraphrase sentences researchers need to be aware of how we sound and we need to be aware of exactly what we say when we say it. Whether respondents use similar vocabularies as we did or whether they mimic our facial expressions are clues to be aware of. If they did, they might on a sub-conscious level have been exposed to suggestion and thus their evaluation of a prototype will be tainted. On the other hand if they are true to their own vocabularies, their own facial expressions etc. it is likely that their opinions and views of the prototypes were candid and honest.
3) Also, I got this idea of taking facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice completely out of the equation and simply have a Rorscharch-prototype test where the respondents, similarly to the psychological inkblot test, are asked to quickly call out their association when showed a prototype.
4) Finally, I believe that there is a lot we can learn from mentalists when it comes to the skill of "reading lies". I recall having seen the British mentalist Derren Brown outperform a lie-detector in an episode of his show. If this is a skill that can be taught, I believe that it will be of great value to researchers evaluating a product. Researchers should be able to, just as good poker players, to recognise whether a respondent is providing answers they believe we want to hear, or whether they truly think what they say.
Human nonverbal communication is a powerful thing, and when doing evaluative research it should not be disregarded. Anthropologists are trained in Reflexivity and learn to judge their own role in a research setting, and I feel compelled to say that this article is about the Reflexivity of human-relations.
Therefore, I believe that we can learn a lot from the "mentalism" disciplin. Of course we would learn the basics with the intention of avoiding suggestion, rather than invoking it.
On the next given chance I will try out my 4 above mentioned research-experiments, and I promise I will follow up here with the reflections of those experiments as soon as they are ready.
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