This is the first part of my fourth lecture at the HITLab, Canterbury University in New Zealand. As a design practitioner I am frequently getting a question from other practitioners, why would they do user research in the first place. Once I manage to convince them why it makes sense, the follow up question typically regards the issue of choosing the right people for that research. In this presentation I am trying to highlight two different approaches to user research, which I will describe in more detail in the next presentation.

1. user research:
trying to answer
the why and how
questions
aga szóstek(at)gmail.com

2. why doing user research
in the first place?

3. - users have different goals
than designers
- users do not care for design
success
- there is more than one user
per solution
- there is more than one
solution per problem

4. traditional user research
- formal
- informative
- answers
- precision
- understanding
- raw data
generative methods
- informal
- inspirational
- questions
- ambiguity
- empathy
- interpretation

5. user research:
an example
PhD
project:
Sebas1an
Denef
Promoters:
David
V.
Keyson
i
Reinhard
Oppermann

6. How do firemen deal with
dangerous situations
in the midst of the action?
How could their actions be supported
through interactive technologies?

7. OBSERVATIONS

8. TOOL
ANALYSIS

9. ROLE PLAYING

10. BUILDING
EMPATHY

15. using generative methods:
an example
Welcome Experience at a telecom provider
Aga Szóstek, Marcin Piotrowski, Joanna Kwiatkowska

16. first month with a telecom provider
provider
first
impressions
user
trial
period
uncertainty
building
relationship
gaining
trust
adjusting
offer
explaining
payment
upselling

17. partcipants
- 20 persons (50% M, 50% F)
- recruited at the door of the provider’s shop
- committed to buy a postpaid plan
- signing an agreement to participate

18. diary / blog study

19. love / hate letters

20. creative workshop

21. why and when
traditional user research?

22. - works great for the defined design space
- helps to objectify discovered phenomena
- supports task oriented design
- resolves interaction problems
- focuses in iterative measurement of progress
- enables comparison

23. why and when
generative methods?

24. - high complexity of the design issues (so
called: wicked problems)
- uncertainty what truly is the design
challenge
- need for flexibility to approach the
solution
- building empathy

25. who should participate?

26. snowball sampling:
when you want to find users who have similar
interests, jobs or lifestyle

27. extreme case sampling:
when you want to find users who are extreme
representatives of certain behaviours (e.g. firemen for a
decision-taking study

28. homogenous sampling:
when you want to find users who are very much
alike in a certain aspect

29. maximum variation sampling:
when you want to find users who are very different
with respect to a certain aspect

30. convenience sampling:
when you just want to find users
who are together for some reason (eg. a workshop)
and agree to participate in the study

31. opportunistic sampling:
when you just want to find
truly random users

33. references
Denef, S.; Keyson, D.; Oppermann, R. Rigid Structures, Independent
Units, Monitoring: Organizing Patterns in Frontline Firefighting. In
Proceedings of the 2011 SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in
Computing Systems, Austin, TX, USA, 5–10 May 2011; pp. 1949–
1958.
Pallot, Marc, et al. "Living lab research landscape: From user
centred design and user experience towards user cocreation." First
European Summer School'Living Labs'. 2010.