Different techniques to empathize with the end-user of a software product

We will discuss the following topics and how to best use them:

  1. Empathy maps (overview)
  2. Empathy mapping and vision
  3. Thematic coding and analysis
  4. Write a design story
  5. User Research Techniques

EMPATHY MAPS

As UX professionals, it is our job to advocate on behalf of the user. However, in order to do it, not only must we deeply understand our users, but we must also help our colleagues understand them and prioritize their needs. Empathy maps, widely used throughout agile and design communities, are a powerful, fundamental tool for accomplishing both.

Definition: An empathy map is a collaborative visualization used to articulate what we know about a particular type of user. It externalizes knowledge about users in order to 1) create a shared understanding of user needs, and 2) aid in decision making.

This article is a guide to empathy mapping and its uses.

Format

Traditional empathy maps are split into 4 quadrants (Says, Thinks, Does, and Feels), with the user or persona in the middle. Empathy maps provide a glance into who a user is as a whole and are not chronological or sequential.

The Says quadrant contains what the user says out loud in an interview or some other usability study. Ideally, it contains verbatim and direct quotes from research.

  • “I am allegiant to Delta because I never have a bad experience.”
  • “I want something reliable.”
  • “I don’t understand what to do from here.”

The Thinks quadrant captures what the user is thinking throughout the experience. Ask yourself (from the qualitative research gathered): what occupies the user’s thoughts? What matters to the user? It is possible to have the same content in both Says and Thinks. However, pay special attention to what users think, but may not be willing to vocalize. Try to understand why they are reluctant to share — are they unsure, self-conscious, polite, or afraid to tell others something?

  • “This is really annoying.”
  • “Am I dumb for not understanding this?”

The Does quadrant encloses the actions the user takes. From the research, what does the user physically do? How does the user go about doing it?

  • Refreshes page several times.
  • Shops around to compare prices.

The Feels quadrant is the user’s emotional state, often represented as an adjective plus a short sentence for context. Ask yourself: what worries the user? What does the user get excited about? How does the user feel about the experience?

  • Impatient: pages load too slowly
  • Confused: too many contradictory prices
  • Worried: they are doing something wrong

Our users are complex humans. It is natural (and extremely beneficial) to see juxtaposition between quadrants. You will also encounter inconsistencies — for example, seemingly positive actions but negative quotes or emotions coming from the same user.  This is when empathy maps become treasure maps that can uncover nuggets of understanding about our user. It is our job as UX professionals to investigate the cause of the conflict and resolve it.

Some of these quadrants may seem ambiguous or overlapping — for example, it may be difficult to distinguish between Thinks and Feels. Do not focus too much on being precise: if an item may fit into multiple quadrants, just pick one. The 4 quadrants exist only to push our knowledge about users and to ensure we don’t leave out any important dimension. (If you don’t have anything to put into a certain quadrant, it’s a strong signal that you need more user research before proceeding in the design process.)

One User vs. Multiple-Users Empathy Maps

Empathy mapping can be driven by any method of qualitative research (and can be sketched even if research is lacking). They can help UX professionals understand what aspects of their user they know and where they would need to gather more user data.

Empathy maps can capture one particular user or can reflect an aggregation of multiple users:

  • One-user (individual) empathy maps are usually based on a user interview or a user’s log from a diary study.
  • Aggregated empathy maps represent a user segment, rather than one particular user. They are usually created by combining multiple individual empathy maps from users who exhibit similar behaviors and can be grouped into one segment. The aggregated empathy map synthesizes themes seen throughout that user group and can be a first step in the creation of personas. (However, empathy maps are not a replacement for personas. But they can be one way to visualize what we know about a persona in an organized, empathetic way.)
  • Aggregated empathy maps can also become ways to summarize other qualitative data like surveys and field studies. For example, an empathy map can be used to communicate a persona, instead of the traditional ‘business card’ approach. As more research is gathered about that persona, you can circle back to the empathy map and add new insights or remove those that have changed or been invalidated.

Why Use Empathy Maps

Empathy maps should be used throughout any UX process to establish common ground among team members and to understand and prioritize user needs. In user-centered design, empathy maps are best used from the very beginning of the design process.

Both the process of making an empathy map and the finished artifact have important benefits for the organization:

  • Capture who a user or persona is. The empathy-mapping process helps distill and categorize your knowledge of the user into one place. It can be used to:
  • Categorize and make sense of qualitative research (research notes, survey answers, user-interview transcripts)
  • Discover gaps in your current knowledge and identify the types of research needed to address it. A sparse empathy map indicates that more research needs to be done.
  • Create personas by aligning and grouping empathy maps covering individual users
  • Communicate a user or persona to others: An empathy map is a quick, digestible way to illustrate user attitudes and behaviors. Once created, it should act as a source of truth throughout a project and protect it from bias or unfounded assumptions.

Be sure to keep empathy maps ‘alive’ by revising and adjusting them as you do more research.

  • Collect data directly from the user. When empathy maps are filled in directly by users, they can act as a secondary data source and represent a starting point for a summary of the user session. Moreover, the interviewer may glean feelings and thoughts from the interviewee that otherwise would have remained hidden.

Process: How to Build an Empathy Map

Go through the following steps to create a valid and useful empathy map:

1. Define scope and goals

a.  What user or persona will you map? Will you map a persona or an individual user? Always start with a 1:1 mapping (1 user/persona per empathy map). This means that, if you have multiple personas, there should be an empathy map for each.

b.  Define your primary purpose for empathy mapping. Is it to align the team on your user? If so, be sure everyone is present during the empathy-mapping activity. Is it to analyze an interview transcript? If so, set a clear scope and timebox your effort to ensure you have time to map multiple user interviews.

2. Gather materials

Your purpose should dictate the medium you use to create an empathy map. If you will be working with an entire team, have a large whiteboard, sticky notes, and markers readily available. (The outcome will look somewhat like the illustration above.) If empathy mapping alone, create a system that works for you. The easier to share out with the rest of the team, the better.

3. Collect research

Gather the research you will be using to fuel your empathy map. Empathy mapping is a qualitative method, so you will need qualitative inputs: user interviews, field studies, diary studies, listening sessions, or qualitative surveys.

4. Individually generate sticky notes for each quadrant

Once you have research inputs, you can proceed to mapping as a team. In the beginning, everybody should read through the research individually. As each team member digests the data, they can fill out sticky notes that align to the four quadrants. Next, team members can add their notes to the map on the whiteboard.

5. Converge to cluster and synthesize

In this step, the team moves through the stickies on the board collaboratively and clusters similar notes that belong to the same quadrant. Name your clusters with themes that represent each group (for example, “validation from others” or “research”). Repeat themes in each quadrant if necessary. The activity of clustering facilitates discussion and alignment — the goal being to arrive at a shared understanding of your user by all team members.

Once your empathy map is clustered, you can begin to vocalize and align as a team on your findings. What outliers (or data points that did not fit in any cluster) are there? What themes were repeated in all the quadrants? What themes only exist in one quadrant? What gaps exist in our understanding?

6. Polish and plan

If you feel that you need more detail or you have unique needs, adapt the map by including additional quadrants (like Goals the example below) or by increasing specificity to existing quadrants. Depending on the purpose of your empathy map, polish and digitize the output accordingly. Be sure to include the user, any outstanding questions, the date and version number. Plan to circle back to the empathy map as more research is gathered or to guide UX decisions.

Conclusion

As their name suggests, empathy maps simply help us build empathy with our end users. When based on real data and when combined with other mapping methods, they can:

  • Remove bias from our designs and align the team on a single, shared understanding of the user
  • Discover weaknesses in our research
  • Uncover user needs that the user themselves may not even be aware of
  • Understand what drives users’ behaviors
  • Guide us towards meaningful innovation

Another way to tackle it

As ux practitionars the stakeholders often depends on us to communicate who an end user is. Thats easier said than done. Now an empathy map is a collaborative visuallisation that depicts who an end user is both as a shared team and then to others. Now its benifits are two folds. We can use it to create that shared understanding so where are all thinking and refering to our users is in the same way. And we can also use it to make decisions.

Traditional empathy maps, pioneer by dave gray, are split into four quadrants. The first being what the user says. and this is the easiest one. These are the thing the user litraily says. The next is Thinks. Thinks is a little bit thougher because thinks are those internal thoughts So what is your user is thinking through out the specific tasks. Next is does. What is the user doing in order to get the job done. And last we have feels. Now the feels has the emotions that the user has when they are finishing the task. When are they frustrated. When are they excited. When are they feeling the most friction through out the process.

Empathy mapping can be done individually or in groups. The most benefit is when its done in a collaborative way amongst other people. I suggest this five step process to get started. The first step is define your scope and goals. Define who your user is and what tasks they are accomplishing. Second, go gather materials youre gonna use. Three, go and conduct research. Empathy mapping is a qualitative approach meaning you will need need qualitative methods. Things like interviews, and direct observations and contextual entry and even something like a diary study. You wanna bring that reaseach back and start empathy mapping as a group. Step 4. Diverge and generate after reading through the research. Step 5 Converge all of those postages. Cluster similar ideas together and name those themes.

So the outcome of this is a shared visualisation of who a user is that you can use on your own, with a team or distribute to a wider organisation to communicate who the end user is.


EMPATHY MAPPING AND VISION

After interviewing participants to understand their user needs captures some aspect of what they ‘say’, ‘think’, ‘feel’ or ‘do’. Later add these notes to the empathy map diagram that you created. As shown below.

Cluster and Converge

For each quadrant of the map, consider as a group whether some notes could be grouped together, or combined. Do they express the same idea in different ways?  Do they express different aspects of a related theme? Name the clusters. Identify areas where more research is needed – is there any data on the discussion board?

Patterns and Divergence

Are there some ideas that do not fit in? Are they related to other anomalies? Do you need an additional persona?

If certain kinds of information seems important to your project, you can add concepts to your map.

Snap and Share

Create an Overall Vision


THEMATIC CODING AND ANALYSIS

The objective of thematic coding is to interpret and synthesise qualitative data to generate insight, and agreement, and support design. To find a new perspective – a new framework for interpretation.

For starters, you will produce a thematic coding and then a thematic analysis will be done which illuminates the stories with a new, meaningful perspective.

Thematic Coding

Go through the collected interviews and diary entries that were collected for the empathy mapping. As individuals or team, find and read the stories once again. Put each idea seprately as notes, and wait for patterns and ‘themes’ in the subject matter to emerge.  Try not to impose conceptual frameworks upon situations – the situation should ‘speak for itself’ and not be ‘pigeon-holed’.  

This is a so-called ‘grounded’, or ‘bottom-up’ approach to analysis. You may find that a time-based theme emerges: i. Before meeting ii. In transit iii. At the meeting point or: i. Motivations ii. Events iii. Actions iv. Obstacles v. Communications vi. Outcomes or some themes of your own. As you read, colour-code the text and/or post-its according to the ‘emerging’ themes. i. Before meeting (blue) ii. In transit (green) iii.  At the meeting point (yellow).

Thematic Analysis

As you cluster, and read other stories and interviews, sub-divide and re-group the colour-coded ideas, to reflect your emerging analytical framework (high level concepts used to interpret a collection of stories).  

This framework may involve new, insightful concepts that you were not previously aware of as important. They reflect your discoveries. Some are very considerate and active communicators and some not.  

Some value punctuality, others do not mind waiting.  ‘Attitude to punctuality’ would be a discovery. List the ‘new, emerging concepts: Snap and share. Try to ask an open-ended questions that will elicit ‘more story’, rather than a closed question, that will obtain the detail you lack but now more. You never know what you might discover and it all helps to enable empathy.

As you learn to see/act/think/feel the world as other people do, do you want to change your vision for the future? Revisit your idea from yesterday, critically review it from the light of your new perspective, and change it if you need to.


WRITE A DESIGN STORY

Write a Design Story for the future. Pulling all the diary entries and empathy maps together, create a suitable story for guiding the overall design of an innovative app or services that utilises Personal Ubiquitous Computing. This story captures your vision of the future from the user’s point of view. You might create a .doc file for the story, or write free hand.

The story should be:

i) Grounded in actual data. Stories should relate to your diaries and empathy maps.

ii) Address fundamental needs and motivations. Be character-driven.

iii) Have widespread relevance and appeal. Does your story tap into themes that arise in various contexts?

iv) Concerns the frontiers of user behaviour. It concerns an early adopter, digital native, ‘trend setter’.

v) A clear point – describe the essence of the transformation of the character in one sentence, and the emotional tone in a couple of words

vi) Dramatic action –the story should comprise action (what is the character trying to do or achieve?), conflict (what barriers are in the character’s way? What questions linger beneath the surface?) and transformation (what is the big insight that resolves the action and conflict?)

vii) What details can you share about your character and their situation that will suggest the emotions that lie beneath.


USER RESEARCH TECHNIQUES

Data Gathering for Customer Insight

Also how to adapt to focus groups, diary keeping, interviews and questionnaires. Naturalistic observation in the  field. Co-ordination and situated action lecture.

Card sorting. Covered in persuasion/credibility and practical exercise. Observational grids/checklists, verbal protocols, data logs covered in  UxD (systems).

General Issues – user participation – ‘Pilots’ or ‘rehearsals’ for practice and fine tuning

Why Gather Data? Customer insight to identify new opportunities. Reasons for Qualitative User Research 1. Detect signals behaviour that suggests opportunities  for innovation might exist, unsatisfied need 2. Deep explanations: identify  motivations, experiences and contextual drivers.

Signals of opportunities for innovation: Examples. End-user adaptation and configuration  of technology – Using mobile phone screen as a torch • Now there is a Torch app – Write macros or batch commands • Now there are special export commands, or reformatting  features

Co-Evolution of Tasks and Artefacts-there is always an opportunity for insight users wish to behave in a certain way, to achieve certain work goals. A computer is developed to support these behaviours and goals. Users perceive  new ways of behaving, and new goals to achieve•a new computer is developed to support these new behaviours and goals and so on. Ux design enables evolution.

Focus Groups

A small group of users comment upon specific  aspects of actual or potential systems and their relations to it. A moderator sets  the agenda for discussion, and encourages appropriate contributions from all participants. May incorporate various  props (pin boards), devices, demonstrations, ‘presentations, tasks to create a shared context for the discussion  and enable expression. Used for qualitative insight,  user-led  issue  raising  and direction setting. Customer  feedback.  Joint design  of scenarios. Starting background  framework construction. Place, price, place, promotion i.e. Product Opportunities. Bad for: systematic  consideration  of well-structured alternatives,  all the details that set a product in it intended use.

Be personable • Ask questions• Have  sufficient domain knowledge  (what is important, what not?) • Stay focused • Avoid  behaving like a participant • Keep the activity moving • Keep the participants motivated/encouraged • No critiquing • Everyone should participate  (☛use “round robin”) • No one should dominate.

Suggestion  by moderator – remember participants want to please you “How would you describe using this?” (not “What’s difficult about this?”) Stick to what users know e.g. what is perceived as fun or pleasing  or popular. Judging  actual ease of use may be more difficult, because users do not remember everything they do, and may be too forgiving/too harsh. Moderate workload – talk and record, and document later, or have  a moderator and a not-taker. Moderation of emotionally  charged conversations.

Focus Troupes (Intel)

20 people at tables seating  4-5, total 2hrs. Introduction for 6-10 min. Dramatic vignette demonstrates how the product might be used  in a familiar scenario. Structured conversation, opened by monologue – White hat – more information  and clarification – Green hat – possibility  comments – Black hat – negative  comments – Red hat – emotions  and feelings – Yellow hat – positive constructive – Blue hat – controls the process.

Variations

Use  the same  script but change  the attitude or emotion – explore range of situations – Have same  person play all the roles – to see how roles affect products and vice versa – Act out an everyday  situations  and add a constraints – see the difference when  a situation changes – Act out what goes on inside and outside  a product – the users’s mental model may not be accurate – An actor is the product  – how would you interact with it? – Use  a product , pass it on and think of another to reveal uses – Build on another’s story about using a product to reveal unexpected  scenarios  of use.

Issues

Group dynamics. Personality clashes, disagreements,  or status differences may suppress contributions from some participants, or exaggerate feelings. Counter the risk of “Group think” by :- separating ‘problem pairings’ e.g. the boss  and the subordinates - structuring and supporting  that structure e.g. you say  that you will involve everybody in the introduction talk, and then the session. Take turns, consider pros then cons.

Invitation of participants– How will this particular  mixture of individual get on?  What will  be the dynamic? E.g. Bike lifers, sports cyclist and parents – may have different perspectives on the topic, and exposure to alternatives may distance  participants in the focus group. Best one group per persona. E.g. Admins, nurses,  doctors and patients – all have different perspectives on the topic, but exposure  to alternatives may stimulate a longed for exchange and feedback about the implications  of one work role for another. Best mixed groups.

Diary Keeping

The user documents events, soon after they happen. Include images/video clips  from digital cameras/scanners to document actual objects and contexts of use. Good for :– recording events that are difficult to observe (rare, personal, mobile).  Exploring range and frequency  of tasks, work objects and contexts  of use. Bad for :– objective quantitative data; definitive specifications.

Big Issues – participants may not collect data completely/systematically and capture all relevant information. How to ensure full reporting – Format the diary: headings, tables, – Support/supervision: e.g. by telephone.  “How was diary keeping this week?”.  Review and complete the record – How much to tell participants about the hypothesis? Too much biases the response, too little and potentially relevant  information is not included – How soon after the event is the diary completed? As soon as possible. It depends upon how memorable the events are. Augment with other techniques: interviews, questionnaires.

Interviews

Good for eliciting qualitative descriptions  of tasks/work/context  of use. Follow-up/clarification. Disambiguating and contextualising observations. – purpose –what information  do you wish to obtain or confirm? – select interviewee  and type  of interview – focussed (explore issues raised by a topic) – structured

Questions

Exploratory – opening, and follow-ups. Vary one element, or re-start, with key  phrases. Ask for explanations? – Opener: “Last time to you met up with your friends and family, what happened? How well did you meet up?” – Follow-ups: “Do you always meet then/there?”  “Are there occasions when you meet up differently?” “Why was that the way it happened?” Was that an easy or difficult decision to make?” – “That’s great.  Can we talk about another occasion now? etc

Structured – a set sequence, with a logic 1. “When you meet your friends at the weekend, what is your attitude  towards being on-time?” 2. “What factors guide your expectations in relation to being on time?” 3. “When is it appropriate to reveal your current location to someone you are meeting?” 4. “When is it appropriate to not disclose  your current location to someone you are meeting?”

Variations – critical incidents –ask the interviewee to tell revealing stories – ‘M Poirot, please tell me about your most difficult case’. problem-solving–set interviewee a problem, and they tell you how they would solve it – ‘The chain is slipping off the cogs – what should i do?”

In context of a device, or a task, “probes” – pictures  of events, documents, pin boards of issues – Prototypes: walkthroughs (guided),  free tasks • Revisit each step or each component  they used. • “What did you make of that?” • “What did you expect to see?” • Prepare an ‘Interview Guide’ – Everything  you need to know and use to conduct this interview  (aims, participants, questions, props,  context, moderation  proceure).

Interviewing Issues • as scripted (systematic)  and yet  also natural (situated, immersed,  uninhibited)

Questionnaires

Good for :– Frequency  of alternative  responses. Describing users/selecting  participants. Summarising  user experience. • Bad for: – Letting users speak for themselves.

Formulating  questions – ask for a single piece of information per question – be specific – be understandable. No jargon, avoid ambiguous phrases, include notes if necessary – avoid leading or biased questions – only ask for what the informant knows – do not ask hypothetical questions – include ‘null’ response options, rather than make assumptions. The answer option ‘none’ or ‘not applicable’ – consistent and intuitive layout. Data entry ‘slips’ or omissions can occur if responses are not aligned. ‘very convenient’ is a high number.

Agreement – Probe: A statement – Response: Agree, Disagree or Don’t Know. Rating scales – 5 or 7 point, single dimension/concept, units on scale  are of equal magnitude, neutral middle point–very somewhat neither interesting somewhat very – uninteresting uninteresting nor unintersting interesting interesting.

Standardized “benchmark” questionnaires are better for late, ‘summative’ evaluation. – SUS Standard Usability  Score – 10 ratings – SUMI Software Usability  Measurement  Inventory assesses  the perceived quality of use  of all kinds of software. Dimensions are independently varying and generally applicable: Global, Efficiency, Helpfulness, Affect, Control, Learnability. 50 questions many questions probe for rating of single dimension. Has been validated – gives  the same assessment as a panel of experts.

Formative questions elicit perceptions and preferences – If there is a limited set of possible  answers, list them. “When using your personal e-mail account at home, what kind of device do you use most frequently: mobile phone, tablet, laptop, desktop?” – Are response options mutually exclusive (radio buttons), or multiple  alternatives (check boxes).

Observation: Naturalistic Field (communication analysis/ ethnomethodology)

Listen to and watch users “in the wild” – a precise record of ‘speech’ and ‘movement’ of  – all vocalistions (not just words, but also grunts, pauses in speech) – all gestures (not just posture, but also focus of orientation in environment) –pronunciations (and dialects) – relative timing – emphasis (volume, intonation) – certainty - if the tape was inaudible, unclear or ambiguous – produce a transcript –describe the activities, sequence/parallism – Wait for patterns and regularities to emerge.

Good for – Revealing the motivations and meanings of actual behavior (power, status, relationship). Identifying the habitual structure (practices) of actualbehaviour. Issues – How can you ensure observations are not mis-interpreted? Become a user yourself – Observation may distort behaviour we think is ‘natural’.

Selection Quiz

Gather data to answer to following questions:

  1. How should information  be organised  on a shared workspace  for sales  and marketing personnel?
  2. What new features  might benefit  heavy users of an online auction site?
  3. What information  does a Registrar  need to forward  details  of a dead person onto the relevant  departments?.

    General Issues: Rehearsal • It is necessary  to try out your data gathering activity before  you collect any data :– to fine tune your materials  and procedures. Unless  you are using  a standard  technique,  it is almost  impossible to anticipate. All possible interpretations of questions and answers / behaviours. How long it takes to complete activities. Whether participants have enough information about the activity – the moderator’s performance must be correct and consistent. Timing and confidenceis are important.

General Issues: Verification. Check you understood – After the session,  summarise important information, and return it to participants for feedback –Participants  may feel responsible for providing you with information, especially  if they are ‘active members’ of your development team or ‘domain experts’.

Development Team Participation – User study is an opportunity  to raise awareness/interest/appreciation of importance  of user experience  issues in your own organisation – Invite ‘friendly’ ‘helpful’ developers to participate  as participants/designers  (co-design session), audience, experts (“how does this beta-version actually work?”), provide technical support.

General Issues: How many participants? To discover ‘most’ of the problems, 3-5 of each type.  To be certain, around 10 of each type. But how many kinds of user, task and context of use does your problem concern?

Tools for Remote Data Gathering

Faster information, from actual users. Mural.ly – collaborative multimedia pin board. Ethn.io – pop-up recruitment form• Survey Monkey – remote  survey. Skype, Google groups – video-conferencing, screen  share. Heyday/Saga – life logging/journaling apps. Jive – community manager and forum (discussion areas, polls, blogs, file share, image share).

Sentiment Analysis: Computational Focus Groups?

Tweet streams – Free-form responses embedded within everyday social contexts, and associated with real events and information. Count positive or negative adjectives – Adjust to the context of the individuals : e.g. Tweeting frequency, use of adjectives, E.g. New iPhone released –why did people buy it, how did they find it initially, how does their reaction change over the coming  months.

Card Sorting

Collect actual items, or label cards with item name. Ask participant to group items according to rules. Either, the designer provides a rule for the participant to follow, or ask the participant to sort the cards and then elicit the rule the participant was following. Various sequences of grouping together, sub-dividing, re-grouping etc. Good for: distinguishing categories and concepts, identifying similarities and differences. See persuasion and information architecture lectures.

Controlled Lab. (Grids/Checklists)

Select user, task and context–representative, typical, critical, unusual, problematic–gather data–ask user to perform a task, and observe. Get video-or audio-recording, – analyze data–during/after (1hr of video takes 10 hrs to analyse) – Good for :– State usability problems, exactly and show them to others, justify design goals, discover actual frequencies. Obtaining quantitative data.

Sensors

Wire-up users to collect heart Rate, and galvanic skin response – physiological indicators of psychological states, such as stress, workload. Eye-trackers monitor participant’s gaze. Popular in web-sites – how much attention exactly  do certain features attract?

Verbal Protocol

Ask user to perform selected task scenarios, and to talk aloud as they go and tell you what they are thinking – may be hard work for users - two tasks, and making reasons for actions explicit is not natural for everybody – designer prompts the user to keep talking, and guides the user through task as required. “What are you doing now?” “What’s happening now?” “What do you think this is about?” “What did you think was going happen?” Good for :– Stating and explaining user interface design issues.

If too noisy, intrusive or difficult protocols may be taken retrospectively with the user watching a video recording of themselves.

Data-Logging

Time stamp  of interactive event and/or object properties obtained by changing  code in application. Scope: all vs. selected user interface events (a limitation) Output: text file, hidden field, spreadsheet. Increasingly easy with analytics  for web sites – Cut and paste javascript ‘snippet’ into web html • Good for: quantitative data. Objective record of events.

Website Analytics

Google  Analytics. Clicks per page. Click per target action. Click streams/funnels–Exit points. (show ‘in page analytics’ view). Inspectlet.com (as you,  level  2).

Selection Quiz

Gather data to answer to following questions

  1. Does the context of use effect user experience of clam-shell  and ear-piece  style  mobile phones?
  2. How do city  traders  collaborate  in the buying and selling  financial  products?
  3. Is GIMP difficult  to learn, and if so, then what features are most difficult,  and why are they difficult?

Quality of data gathered is only as good as quality of participant selection, planning, preparation and execution. What do I really want to learn about exactly How else could I obtain the information I need? Which approach is best? What questions should I ask? Seek thoughtful coherence and consistency, rather than perfection – participative prototyping may compensate for many inaccuracies.

Empirical Inputs for Products of Analysis, Design and Evaluation

Focus groups, diary keeping, card sorting, interviews, observation – naturalistic field – structured lab. Verbal protocols. Data logs. Questionnaires. User journeys. User descriptions. Tables of usability reqts. Task scenarios. Task decompositions. Object models. Design sketches. Paper prototypes. Implementations. Evaluation reports. By selecting, adapting and sequencing techniques, you decide which data gathering event helps you create which product.


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