Ethnographic Interviews Getting to Know Your Users Today - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Ethnographic Interviews

Getting to Know Your Users

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Today

Stakeholders and Domain Experts Customers and Users Persona Hypothesis (User Hypothesis) Interviewing Techniques Interviewing Exercise

Stakeholders

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Stakeholders

Executives & Partners provide vision, business motivation, budget and timeline.

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Developers provide technical constraints. Customer support and sales people provide insight into customers and/or users. Designers provide brand consistency.

Their Goals

Executives & Partners want solutions and return on investment.

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Developers want technical challenges at their pace, clear guidance, and to avoid designers. Customer support and sales people want to avoid unhappy clients and meet their sales quota. Designers want to maintain brand and messaging so they can show it off in their portfolio.

Some psychological pitfalls to avoid. 6

Stakeholder Pitfalls

You may be talking to a person’s representative.

Self-monitoring

People tend to closely monitor themselves in order to ensure appropriate or desired public appearances.

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Employee’s may tow the company line.

Herd Mentality, Information Cascade

People observe the actions of others and then make the same choice that the others have made, independently of their own private information signals.

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Solution

Interview stakeholders separately when possible. Then resolve and unify the corporate vision to get internal buy-in.

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Executives tend to copy their competitors.

Availability heuristic

Estimating what is more likely by what is more available in memory, which is biased toward vivid, unusual, or emotionally charged examples.

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Mere-exposure effect

The tendency to express undue liking for things merely because of familiarity with them.

Challenge all assumptions.

“We have to have a mobile app and a website.” “It has to have the Bloystein feature.” “Why is that important?” “What will that accomplish?”

She says... You ask...

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Domain Experts

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Domain Experts

Complex regulations Specialized knowledge & vocabulary Best practices Problems and pains (they are or were users themselves) Insight into user roles

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Their focus on details and suggestions for design features are clues to users’ needs and goals. Ask, “How would that feature benefit the user?”

Domain experts are not designers.

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Your focus is NOT

• n this group.

This is where your focus usually is. Perpetual Intermediates Beginners Experts No one wants to be a beginner.

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Global Neighborhood Ambassadors

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Design Challenge

Global Neighborhood Ambassadors

People research a destination before they travel. They use online tools such as TripAdvisor, Lonely Planet, Wikitravel They also can connect to social networks to get advice from friends who have traveled there. Hypothesis: People would rather tap a local on the shoulder and ask that person “Where’s a good place to eat?”

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Stakeholder Interview

Preliminary product vision Perception of users Business goals Technology constraints Target market Domain expertise Specific data you need

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Customers & Users

Customers & Users

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Consumer Employees Kids Pets IT, Manager, Parent

User Customer

Customers

Their goals in purchasing the product Their frustrations with current solutions Their decision process for purchasing a product of the type you’re designing Their role in installation, maintenance, and management of the product

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Users

Their goals and tasks Problems and frustrations using existing products The domain knowledge they require to do their job(s) / achieve their goals Mental models of the way they work

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Consumer: User + Customer

Goals and tasks? Problems and frustrations using existing solutions? What domain knowledge do they require to achieve their goals? What mental models do they have?

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Some psychological pitfalls to avoid. 24

User Pitfalls

You may be talking to a person’s representative.

Self-monitoring

People tend to closely monitor themselves in order to ensure appropriate or desired public appearances.

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Users have a hard time assessing themselves and their situation.

Dunning–Kruger effect

An effect in which incompetent people fail to realize they are incompetent because they lack the skill to distinguish between competence and incompetence.

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metacognition metamemory metacomprehension The ability to know how well one is performing, when one is likely to be accurate in judgment, and when

• ne is likely to be in error.

Seinfeld, Season 8 Elaine is not the dancer she thinks she is.

You may be talking to a person’s representative.

Overconfidence effect

Excessive confidence in one's own answers to questions. For example, for certain types of questions, answers that people rate as "99% certain" turn out to be wrong 40% of the time.

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Worse-than-average effect

A tendency to believe ourselves to be worse than others at tasks which are difficult.

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Regardless of how pervasive the phenomenon is, it is clear from Dunning's and others' work that many Americans, at least sometimes and under some conditions, have a tendency to inflate their worth. It is interesting, therefore, to see the phenomenon's mirror

• pposite in another culture.

In research comparing North American and East Asian self- assessments, Heine of the University of British Columbia finds that East Asians tend to underestimate their abilities, with an aim toward improving the self and getting along with others. Full Article

A little thinking up front goes a long way in the interview process.

Persona Hypothesis

What types of people might use the product? How do their needs and goals differ? How do these differences affect their usage and behavior? What ranges of behaviors and environments need to be explored?

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Sample diagrams for mapping users. 30

Surprise Me! Planner Go cheap. Live it up. Interacts with Locals Stays with Group

Identifying variables to explore in the interviewing process. 31

Demographic Behavioral Environmental

• Variables…
• Variables…
• Variables…

Types of Questions - Cooper 32

Goal-oriented

Goals - What makes a good day? A bad day? Opportunity - What activities currently waste your time? Priorities - What is most important to you? Information - What helps you make decisions?

System-oriented

Function - What are the most common things you do with the product? Frequency - What parts of the product do you use most? Preference - What are your favorite aspects

• f the product? What drives you crazy?

Failure - How do you work around problems? Expertise - What shortcuts do you employ?

Attitude-oriented

Aspiration - What do you see yourself doing five years from now? Avoidance - What would you prefer not to do? What do you procrastinate on? Motivation - What do you enjoy most about your job (or lifestyle)? What do you always tackle first?

Workflow-oriented

Process - What did you do when you first came in today? And after that? Occurrence and recurrence - How often do you do this? What things do you do weekly

• r monthly, but not every day?

Exception - What constitutes a typical day? What would be an unusual event?

Title | Subtitle 33

Interview Tips

The interview environment should be natural and comfortable.

Keep it real.

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Prepare question types, not specific questions. Don’t allow third party observers. Use video and audio taping only if necessary. If possible, conduct interviews in the interviewee’s natural environment.

Goal

To be at work.

Task

To drive to work.

Some psychological pitfalls to avoid. 36

Interview Pitfalls

People will surprise you.

Stereotyping

Expecting a member of a group to have certain characteristics without having actual information about that individual.

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Solution

Keep an open mind and expect to be surprised.

Be careful of the nomenclature you use when creating frameworks.

Labeling

The self-identity and behavior of individuals may be determined or influenced by the terms used to describe or classify them.

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Solution

When creating frameworks, use labels that are respectful and encouraging.

Don’t ask questions like, “Would you use feature X?”

Confirmation bias

A tendency of people to favor information that confirms their beliefs or hypotheses.

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Solution

Don’t ask leading questions. Begin with open-ended questions. and only follow up with closed-ended questions to clarify initial responses.

“Listen” and “silent” are comprised of the same letters.

Conversational narcissism

People tend to steer the conversation away from others and toward themselves.

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Solution

Be an active listener. Show interest without injecting thoughts with your body language, facial expressions, and minimal encouragers.

Use active listening skills.

Use open body language and minimal encouragers. Ask for clarification. Summarize. Use open-ended questions to extract information. “How do you like to spend your vacations?” Use closed-ended questions to take control. “How many vacations do you take per year?”

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Develop a Mindset

Beginner’s Mind Block stereotypes and preconceptions Apprentice Model Interviewer = learner Interviewee = domain expert

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Interview Game Plan

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Interview Guide from IDEO

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Open Specific Warm up the participant with questions they are comfortable with. Go Broad Prompt bigger, even aspirational, thinking that they may not be accustomed to on a daily basis. Probe Deep Dig deeper on the challenge at hand and prompt with ‘what if’ scenarios.

Interview Guide for Consumer Product

Tell us about yourself, basic background Current behavior within the project’s domain (avoid technology) Goals More technology-specific discussion Additional goals Follow up on interesting points

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Design Exercise

Designer’s Goals

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Interview and observe Map user responses to attitudes, aptitudes, and behaviors Look for patterns among users Derive model users (personas) Interview and observe Share stories, extract insights Find themes Create frameworks Cooper Process IDEO Process

Types of Questions - Cooper 48

Goal-oriented

Goals - What makes a good day? A bad day? Opportunity - What activities currently waste your time? Priorities - What is most important to you? Information - What helps you make decisions?

System-oriented

Function - What are the most common things you do with the product? Frequency - What parts of the product do you use most? Preference - What are your favorite aspects

• f the product? What drives you crazy?

Failure - How do you work around problems? Expertise - What shortcuts do you employ?

Attitude-oriented

Aspiration - What do you see yourself doing five years from now? Avoidance - What would you prefer not to do? What do you procrastinate on? Motivation - What do you enjoy most about your job (or lifestyle)? What do you always tackle first?

Workflow-oriented

Process - What did you do when you first came in today? And after that? Occurrence and recurrence - How often do you do this? What things do you do weekly

• r monthly, but not every day?

Exception - What constitutes a typical day? What would be an unusual event?

For next week...

Modeling - User Types and Personas Reading, homework assignment Tutorial - Mapping behavior, cluster analysis Semester Project - Stakeholder and domain expert interviews

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