Interface Design Chapter 3: Needfinding

Interface Design - ITD34003

• Chapter 3 is about identifying needs and establishing requirements, also known as "Needfinding."
• The goals of this chapter are: understanding system requirements and user needs, and learning tools and instruments for needfinding.
• A human-centered design process exists with stages including Understanding User Needs, analysis techniques, design & prototyping, and implementing and deploying.
• Needfinding is the process of uncovering potential user needs.
• Needfinding questions include: what users need, what users want, who the users are, how users are currently doing things, the context in which users operate,and whether simply asking users is sufficient.

Know Your Users

• Understanding who uses the system is important to good design.
• Users can vary by demographics (age, experience, and technical background).
• Designers should not assume that they understand the users.
• It is crucial to talk to real users, not just industry experts.
• Techniques for identifying user needs include surveys, interviews, direct involvement (participatory design), observation, and imagining (personas).

Needfinding Methods

• Techniques adopted in needfinding and requirement analysis include: observation, ethnographic research, surveys, interviews, and focus groups.

Observation

• Observation is a valuable tool and can often reveal a lot about how users are operating, including their workflows.
• There are different types of observations, including controlled and naturalistic, with various strengths and weaknesses.
• Ethical considerations and considerations for user privacy are key to observations. Observations may impact behavior and therefore, disrupting their daily activities should be minimized.
• It is important to understand what and how to observe, and what can be learned from observation (e.g. practices and processes, and especially tacit knowledge).
• One should strive to understand the context of how people work.

Ethnographic Considerations

• Ethnographic observation is an important research technique.
• The technique focuses on immersing oneself in the users' environment to better understand their habits and behaviors.
• It aims to understand the necessary data to inform the design of the system.

Interviewing

• Interviewing is about asking questions and listening to the responses to learn about user needs and desires.
• Different types of interviews (i.e. structured and unstructured) exist.
• Qualitative and quantitative data can be collected via interviews.
• Open-ended questions that allow for more insight and understanding are often better than closed-ended questions.
• Structured questions are easier to process, while unstructured questions solicit more comments.
• Avoid leading questions as these might bias the results.

Survey Considerations

• Surveys are a fast and cost-effective method for gathering data from a variety of people.
• Results from surveys can be easily visualized and analyzed.
• Survey questions must be carefully constructed and include a clear purpose and expected timeframe.
• Surveys work best as a shallow look into a large group, but are inappropriate as a deep-dive into a niche.

Types of Questions

• Open-ended questions encourage more detailed answers.
• Closed-ended questions restrict responses to specific options. (e.g. 1 to 5 rating scale)
• Ordinal scales, likert scales or nominal scales can be used.

Data Collection

• Data from observations (both objective and subjective) and interviews are important.
• Data may include impressions, rankings, summary reports, workplace artifacts, anecdotal data, and critical incidents.

Measurement Scales

• There are different types including Nominal, Ordinal, Interval and Ratio.
• Different statistics can be used to represent the data collected. (e.g. Counting, frequency, mean, mode, median etc.)

Warning Points

• Avoid complex questions if simpler ones will suffice.
• Avoid using negative phrasing in questions, as these can lead to biased answers.
• Avoid biased questions that might bias the results.

Summary

• Gathering requirements is essential to a successful product.
• Multiple techniques and types of questions can be used to collect data on users.

This quiz focuses on Chapter 3 of Interface Design, which covers the essential process of identifying user needs and establishing requirements. Students will explore the human-centered design process and learn important techniques for effective needfinding to enhance system design. Understanding the context and demographics of users is emphasized.