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How to plan for your user interviews?

So you have set yourself some goals for your project (e.g. reduced air pollution on Gosforth highstreet, more people take up volunteering in Walker, etc) and developed some questions you like your project to answer to (e.g. Can air quality data, displayed at street level, encourage behaviour change in pedestrians are car drivers?)… and you have begun to map out stakeholders, and key activities those are involved in as relevant to your challenge… So what’s next?

For our projects, we do assume that nobody knows everything, knowledge is distributed. Somebody knows more about the local area, somebody may know aspects of technological interventions that might work, etc, etc. As suggested in the lecture, we approach our designs with the idea that the participants listed in our briefs are experts in their own lifes, and that their views in relation to our projects are interesting and important (see Halskov et al., 2015).

So one way to approach this is to say, given our goal, how might our user informants (listed on our brief) help us collect the insight required to develop better idea of the priorities, needs, expectations that they may place towards our projects. At this point, we are not yet so focused on specific solutions or approaches, we still keep an open mind and let the users we involve speak.

Preparing your interviews

So with your goals in mind (e.g. reduced air pollution on Gosforth highstreet, more people take up volunteering in Walker, etc), prepare your interviews around the following points.

  1. What might the person tell you about?: Who is the person you are speaking to and which organisation they belong to? Note down a few points: e.g. community organiser in Walker, likely interests in x, y, z.
  2. Do you prepare to bring some prompt materials? For example, you could bring a map of the area; flip chart paper and post-its are good to capture notes during the meeting.
  3. Decide who is going to ask questions?: If you meet, consider who is going to lead and ask the questions? Decide on who is going to take notes.
  4. What do you plan to cover and perhaps in which order?
    • Start with an introduction: Introduce your project and indicate what you wish individuals to discuss.
    • Invite your participant to introduce themselves: Why is he/she interested in the project and how does he/she relate to the, e.g., client & other users?
    • Given them the opportunity to express challenges relating to your project: What key concerns do they share / talk about?  
    • Consider taking notes into opportunities: The sprint book suggests how might we questions (e.g. how might we reduce car traffic on Gosforth highstreet).  
  5. Thank your participant for their time
  6. Sign the consent form: Bring with you a copy of the consent form template (on Blackboard shortly)

Example interview schedule

This morning, I am meeting with XXXX (Organisation B) and XXXX (from Newcastle City Council). The meeting will be to discuss the accessibility technology that we are working on with which accessibility concerns in public spaces will be automatically logged. Below is a brief plan for the interview.

Item What questions 
Introduction to us Thanks for inviting us, I am Sebastian (lecturer at the planning school) and this here is XXXX (PhD at the OpenLab, part of the school of computing). We have won some funding to develop and test a system to collate feedback from elderly wheel chair users. Our goal is to explore alternative measures of accessibility that compliment council’s work. We are therefore understand your interested in this project as well as how accessibility concerns are presently raised.
Discussion of XXXX’s work To start, please tell us a little more about your day-to-day work and what it involves.

Could you tell us how you presently assess the accessibility of spaces and any challenges?

Are there examples of ‘inaccessibility’ that are particularly difficult to identify?

And in which ways do you presently hear from or interact with mobile impaired and other disadvantaged groups?
Discussion of the organisation Could you briefly explain what your organisation does in the local area?

How does it interface with the council officers?
Next steps Thank you for your feedback.

After your interview

After your interview, share and review your notes, and write up some high-level interview notes. What was discussed? What challenges (pain points) does the participant face that the design project can or cannot address? What needs does your participant discuss that could be translated into requirements for your design concept?

Source: Halskov, K., & Hansen, N. B. (2015). The diversity of participatory design research practice at PDC 2002–2012. Journal of Human Computer Studies, 74(C), 81–92.

What makes a good design log entry?

On this module, we use an online reflective log to share stories, notes, ideas coming from the success and failures of our design practice (across teams). This post gives some guidance on how to evaluate your project activities through a series of blog entries.

Reflective writing helps your design projects in three ways (Zubizarreta, 2009). First, it enables you to document and evidence actions and activities. Second, it makes it easy to support feedback, mentoring, and collaboration. Finally, it helps to learn from success and failure, develop insight into why those occurred. Over time, it helps to make sense of complex issues. As you make entries over time, you capture observation through images and document notes, you’ll help revise your insight and reflection. So do review older posts and refer to those in newer entries for example by commenting on new insights gained.

Zubizarreta (2009, p. 46) mentions a number of aspects to consider for log entries:

Dimensions

  Comments

Reflective depth

Logs often focus on future improvements and change: to learn from an action, indicate what improvement is desirable and critically assess why and how! “What change was necessary?”, “What process did we use to facilitate change?”, “Why was the change desirable?”

Source of evidence

(1) “Information from self” (teams’ set goals, earlier reflective entries); (2) “Information from others” (reflection on feedback from peers, the tech advisor, lecturer etc); (3) “Products of learning” (a note, or summary of, an achievement produced; interviews, requirements gathered, for instance).

Evidence

(1) From field notes: images, videos; (2) From feedback: emails, classroom discussions; (3) From research: concept maps, references to published material

Consistency

Posts should be of sufficient length to make their point, so at last a substantial paragraph in length; and an indicative entry per week would be around 500 words at least. Referencing to theory, literature, activities is desirable (see point ‘evidence’).

As a general note, try to start each log entry with a brief introduction (to give a bit of context to the post as a whole). This will help the reader understand where you are coming from; and you may also discover that your posts connections to reflections from previous weeks.

An example of a good reflective log entry can be found here: https://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/digicivics-at-apl/2017/10/25/2-statements-of-community-consultation-meeting-with-the-stakeholders/

Sources for follow-up: Zubizarreta (2009). The Learning Portfolio. John Wiley & Sons

What is a story board?

Design processes can be messy and unstructured and that is particularly so in the fast-paced digital industries, where requirements, user expectations, technologies may turn over quickly. Good product design rests on the foundation of user-centred design, which means it always keeps sight of the users’ wishes, needs, demands. User-centred design is to design for the user. It is true that technological specifications may influence the design space, but in this module we are looking at designing bespoke interventions where this is not so much the case.

Story boards can be seen as part of the preparation work necessary before starting on any detailed designs or prototypes. Story boards are telling a story of how this digital product of yours will eventually be used. However, it also outlines a rational for why it would be used. Story boards depend on articulation of the use context, so where and why the practice you encourage is performed. Then, story boards detail a story of use. Here, a story is comprised of a sequence of events of use that coherently explain what practices happing when and in which order. Above all, stories assume the interactions in the story have a purpose for the user, a desired outcome without which the story would be incomplete.

Below is an excellent example from a student team on TCP2031 2016/17. Please note that the story board will develop alongside to your creative proposition and it may thus be updated, refined, polished, until you arrive at a final version.