People in systems design

IMD07101: Introduction to Human Computer Interaction

Brian Davison 2009/10

With material from Kathy Buckner, Ian Smith and David Benyon

Agenda

• Ethics

• PACT framework

• Data collection techniques

• Contexts

• Activities

• Mental models

• PACT analysis

– Scenarios

– Personas

Ethics & codes of conduct

• Oxford English Dictionary definition of ethics: “moral

principles governing or influencing conduct”

• Practitioners are governed by codes of conduct. Eg – British Psychological Society

– ACM: Association for Computing Machinery

– British Computer Society

– Usability Professionals Association

Research involving more than minimal risk

requiring explicit ethical clearance

• Vulnerable groups – eg children, those with a learning disability, etc.

• Sensitive topics– eg sexual behaviour, their illegal or political behaviour, etc.

• Groups where permission of a gatekeeper is normally required for initial access to members– eg ethnic or cultural groups, native peoples, etc.

• Covert research– Carried out without participants‟ consent

• Access to records of personal or confidential information– eg genetic or other biological information, etc

• Psychological stress, anxiety or humiliation or pain• Intrusive interventions

– eg administration of drugs, vigorous physical exercise, etc.

Informed consent

• The nature of the study• What the participants be required to do• How long it will take• Risks and benefits• Voluntary participation and risk free withdrawal• Use of data• Confidentiality of data• Compensation/reward for participation• Results of study & contact details• Contact details of researcher

Use an Information Sheet and/or Consent Form

Legal frameworks

• Store personal data in accordance with Data Protection Act (1998)– Completely anonymised data used for research purposes „may‟ be

exempt

– Store data securely; use it only for the purpose for which it was gathered; destroy it when no longer needed

– Includes paper as well as computer records; includes data that can be processed by computer eg CCTV recordings

– Can‟t be transferred outside of EEA countries without consent of individuals

– Purpose of use must be identified when data is collected

What does this mean for HCI practitioners and

researchers• Show respect for people

– individual, cultural and role differences, including: age, disability, education, ethnicity, gender, language, national origin, race, religion, sexual orientation, marital or family status and socio-economic status.

• Obtain informed consent

• Ensure there is no undue pressure to participate and that there are no penalties for withdrawing from study

• Anonymise results

• Keep the data secure (in accordance with DPA)

Usability Professionals Association: Code of

Conduct

• Act in the best interest of everyone

• Be honest with everyone

• Do no harm and if possible provide benefits

• Act with integrity

• Avoid conflicts of interest

• Respect privacy, confidentiality, and anonymity

• Provide all resultant data

http://www.upassoc.org/

People & HCI (PACT)

From Benyon, Turner & Turner (2005), p 30

Requirements

analysis

Evaluation

Design

People

• Size, shape, reach…

• Cognitive characteristics

• What motivates, pleases and engages - affect

• Experience & expectations

• Language, culture…

• Not usually age or gender in themselves

The machine-centred view

People are Machines are

Vague Precise

Disorganised Orderly

Distractible Undistractible

Emotional Unemotional

Illogical Logical

The person-centred view

People are Machines are

Creative Dumb

Compliant Rigid

Attentive to change Insensitive to change

Resourceful Unimaginative

Able to make flexible

decisions based on context

Constrained to make

consistent decisions

System design example

• You work as a support engineer for an organisation which uses a

range of office software.

• You‟ve been asked to design an application for users to report

computer problems via a new online logging system.

• There is an old logging system but no-one uses it and so the support

desk is deluged with phone calls. How would you find out:

– the problems with using the current system

– how a new system could improve on this

Some possibilities

• What do users see as the difficulties with the existing reporting

system?

– Interviews, questionnaires

– Watch people using the system

– Ask support desk staff

• What basic skills do users have?

– Part of interviews, questionnaires

Some more possibilities

• How often would the system be used, typically?

– Interviews and questionnaires again

– Possibly observation in offices

– Quantitative data from helpdesk

• Different user groups?

• Main types of problems reported by phone?

Techniques for obtaining user & activity data

• Observation

• Questionnaire surveys

• Interviews

• Very early prototyping

• Many techniques recur in evaluation

Observation in practice

• Gets at what people really do, not what they think or tell you that they do

• Each person shadowed for a day

• Focus: information use

– Electronic, e.g. mobile phones and PDAs

– Traditional, e.g. newspapers and sticky notes

• Recorded through notes and video

– Unmet needs, inefficiencies and use of artefacts

• Users continued with a text and/or audio log

• Group interpretation session

• Observing people may change their behaviour

Gathering information about users: questionnaires

• need very careful design and piloting

• closed questions

– rating scale

– easy to analyse

• open-ended questions

– harder to analyse

– richer information

• can use statistical analysis

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

very

easy

very

difficult

Closed questions

• Is Dreamweaver easy to learn?

yes no

• Rating Scale

• how easy is it to use Dreamweaver?

Open questions

• What was the easiest part of learning Dreamweaver? Write your

answer in the box below.

Interviews

• Opportunistic information gathering vs. demands on interviewer

• Varying degrees of structure

– Structured

• interviewer can explain the questions (unlike written questionnaire)

• but interviewee is limited to pre-set replies

– Semi-structured

• Tell me about your typical day

• Tell me three good things about…

• …and three bad things

• What if you had three wishes to make the system better?

• What has gone wrong with the system recently? How did you cope?

• What else should we have asked about?

• Planning is essential

Extensions of interviews

• Using prototypes as part of the interview

• Getting users to talk as they work

– avoids people having to remember how they do things

– some things are easier to demonstrate than explain

• Focus groups

– can help to get people talking

– but also can inhibit comments

Artefact investigation & collection

• Artefacts - in HCI jargon, things used, processed or created in an

activity

• Artefacts illustrate aspects such as

– what data must be processed

– how it is currently organised

– what‟s important

– what instructions are needed

– many more subtle aspects of activities

Artefacts and the clues they provide

• Medical notes - instant clues as to the length of the patient‟s history, how many different doctors have been involved, whether last consultant in a hurry…

• Post-it notes with instructions stuck to machines and PCs -what‟s difficult to understand or remember

More examples

• Design engineers working together across different sites

– engineer‟s „day book‟

– blueprints of the design

• Benefit claims processing system

– copies of blank and completed claim forms

– standard letters sent to claimants

– inter-office memos

– public information leaflet about the benefit

Getting the data collected for you...

• Records of

– help requests

– bug reports

– change requests

• Automatic usage logging

• User diaries of system use

Techniques summary

• interviews

• questionnaires

• observation

• artefact collection

• End product: Documented system requirements

ENVISIONMENT AND EARLY PROTOTYPING

• usage logs

• helpdesk logs

• bug reports

• change requests

10 minute break

Different contexts of use

• Activities always take place in some context

• „Context‟ sometimes means things that surround an

activity and sometimes what glues an activity together

• Physical environment is one sort of context

– ATM or ticket machine versus computer at home

• Social context is important

– Help from others, acceptability of certain designs

• Organisational context

– Power structure, changes in life style, de-skilling, etc.

Private places: home

Semi public spaces: offices

Public places: cafes

Public places: libraries

Semi public spaces: schools

Public spaces: shopping malls

Public spaces: pubs

Characteristics of different activities

• Temporal aspects

– To do with timing, frequency etc.

• Co-operation and Complexity

– Working with others or not

• Safety critical

– What problems happen if something goes wrong?

• Content

– What information and media are we dealing with?

Designing a ticket machine

• Waverley station is introducing a new system of automatic barriers. Now everyone will have to buy a ticket before they travel. Write down the characteristics of this activity– Regular/infrequent?

– Peaks and troughs

– Interruptible?

– Response time

– Co-operation?

– Vague/well-defined?

– Safety critical?

– Errors?

– Data requirements

– Media

Different technologies

• Hardware and software to consider

• Input– How to enter data and commands into the system. Suitability of

medium for different contexts/activities

• Output– Characteristics of displays - „streamy‟ media versus „chunky‟

media. Characteristics of the content. Also feedback is important

• Communication– Between person and technology. Bandwidth, speed.

communication between devices

• Content– Functional systems versus systems more focused on content

Ticket Machine

• So, taking into consideration the contexts of use, the activities and the

people. What technology will you design for the new ticket machines?

• Consider

– Input

– Output

– Communication

– Content

Ticket Machine ideas

• Input - need to specify destination, need to provide payment, need to specify ticket type– Press button (depending how many stations). Have touch screen

(gets greasy). Pay by mobile phone?

• Output - need to specify options, need to provide a ticket, need to say when complete.– Ticket could be electronic or paper. Printing facility needed. Options

as buttons, or menu items? Need to provide change?

• Communication - must be simple. Could be Bluetooth. Probably button presses are easiest

• Content - need to specify stations, but it could have lots of local information. Help with travel planning?

Mental models

• Also known as conceptual models…

• …mental models describe the ways in which we think about things -about how we conceptualize things.

• a key aspect of the design of technologies is to provide people with a clear model,

• … so that they will develop a clear mental model

• … but of course that depends on what they know already, their background, experiences, etc. etc.

Ticket machine mental model

Where?

When?

Price?

Pay

Technology

Creating a mental model

Designer

… has some idea

about how it works…

the „designer‟s model‟

Person using it has to

work out how it works

from interacting with the

system image to develop

the user‟s mental model

The system image

Mental models

• Fill in the details that people don‟t tell you

– I had a steak the other day… standard „scripts‟

• Are incomplete in that they don‟t include all the details

– You could never know exactly what the designer knew

• Can be „run‟ in that you use them in reasoning or remembering

– e.g. how many windows are there in your house/flat?

PACT Analysis

• Undertaking a PACT analysis is a useful starting point for design…

• Useful for both analysis and design

• Understanding the current situation

• Seeing where possible improvements can be made

• Envisioning future situations

• To do a PACT analysis, scope the variety of the P‟s, A‟s, C‟s and T‟s in the particular domain

Doing a PACT analysis

• How to identify the range of PACT elements in a domain?

• Brainstorming

– A group of you get together and talk through ideas and possibilities

– Do not dismiss ideas at first - anything goes! Do not put other people‟s ideas down

– After you have a set of possibilities go through and weed out the more ridiculous ones

• Envisioning ideas

– Draw pictures, sketches, cartoons, cut out pictures from magazines and stick them on a board, etc.

• Work with relevant people

– Workshops, interviews, observations

• Write up as scenarios

Scenarios

• Scenarios are stories about people undertaking activities using technologies in contexts

• Develop conceptual scenarios that cover the main activities that the the technology has to support

• Develop concrete versions of these for specific designs of the technology

• For example - a conceptual scenario might say „Pete logs onto the computer

• And a concrete version might be „Pete clicks on the „log on‟ icon‟

Personas

• A Persona is a profile of an archetypical person in the domain

• Personas are synthesized from knowledge of real people in the domain

• Personas need to have goals - describe what they are trying to achieve

• Like scenarios, conceptual personas are abstract types - students, lecturers, etc.

• For design it is best to develop a few concrete personas who have hard characteristics such as age, interests, a name, etc.

• Try to bring the character alive - perhaps include a picture or two

Example Persona

• William is 70 yrs old retired bank manager. He is quite conversant with computers and latest technology and often uses them for e-mail and other uses. He has lived alone with his pet dog 'Tommie' for 4 years after his wife died of cancer. He had a good salary and owns many electronic gadgets and appliances. He is a good cook and normally cooks himself, although he orders take-aways occasionally. He is a Manchester United fan and likes to keep himself updated about the news in sports and politics. He is good natured and likes to watch comedy serials and chat with people. Recently he was diagnosed with diabetes and so has to visit his doctor regularly for checkups. Also he has to take precautions in his diet and take medicines on time. He loves his dog and look after it himself. He also keeps his garden green and tidy (which is also a hobby). He wants to enjoy his life and pursue his interests in his old age, but due to mental and physical degradation, he faces problems tackling everything himself and at times feels lonely and rather helpless.

Persona + Context setting

– Jan and Pat are a couple in their mid thirties. Pat is a university lecturer in Cultural Studies and Jan is an accounts manager at Standard Life insurance.

– They live in the Stockbridge area of Edinburgh, Scotland in a two-bedroom flat overlooking the river. It is 12.00 noon on August 15th. Jan and Pat are sitting in their large, airy kitchen/dining room. The remains of pizza and mixed salad mingles with a pile of newspapers on the kitchen table.

– Jan and Pat have recently returned from a holiday on the island of Zante and, apart from checking their e-mail, have not gone back to work. They decide that they would like to go to see one of the events that is happening as part of the Edinburgh Arts festival.

PACT analysis example - A system for controlling access to laboratories at a university

• People

– students, lecturers, technicians, people in wheel chairs, visitors, other „stakeholders‟ e,g, cleaning staff, security

• Activities

– get security clearance; one step; well-defined; no co-operation; not safety-critical

• Contexts

– indoors, people carrying books, etc. Socially - alone or in crowd. Political issues?

• Technologies

– suitable for a small amount of data entered quickly. Very simple to use. Clear output that clearance is successful

PACT summary

• People demonstrate a wide range of knowledge, abilities and other

characteristics. Their mental models of things are critical

• Activities have different characteristics which affect how we design to

support them

• Contexts of use affect the suitability of different designs

• Technologies provide many opportunities for doing things differently

• Activities and the contexts in which they happen set requirements for

the technologies which in turn provide new opportunities

• Doing a PACT analysis is a good way of understanding a situation;

scope the Ps, As, Cs and Ts looking at the variety of each.

What’s next?

• Tutorial: Using PACT in the design process

• Practical: Prototyping with Powerpoint

– Use techniques – eg storyboards, PACT, scenarios, personas

• Next week:

– Bring your prototype to the tutorial on USB device

– Bring one laptop per group if possible

• Look in WebCT for details of the activities this week

• Check ahead to see what‟s coming up