As Yogi Berra said, you can observe a lot just by watching. Watching how people do things is a great way to learn their goals and values, and come up with design insight. We call this needfinding. This assignment helps you train your eyes and ears to come up with design ideas. Your goal is to uncover user needs, breakdowns, clever hacks, and opportunities for improvement.
You will ultimately be designing a web-based service or application, you don't need to restrict your observation to people using computers and the Web. If you're designing for an activity that people don't currently use computers for--or where non-digital tools have benefits--then observe people doing the task as they do it now. Observing the strengths and weaknesses of analog tools can inspire ideas for the digital world. Where people are using software, remember to observe and interview people in situ -- using their computer, their software, in their environment, doing their activities. Context matters. If you have mobility limitations, perform your observations and interviews over email, phone, Skype, and/or video chat. If for whatever reason you're interested in activities that are tough to observe -- maybe because they're infrequent -- you can augment your interviews with diary studies.
Make a list of types of people you might interview and situations you might observe to come up with design insights. Think about different types of everyday users, marginalized users, and extreme users. Also think about other stakeholders in the ecosystem. Think about the characteristics of these users.
For example, this IDEO design team was asked to redesign the grocery shopping cart. Their interviewees included not just everyday users, but also extreme users like professional shoppers and other stakeholders like store managers. Often, lead users or extreme users have come up with better solutions and creative tricks. Interviewing and observing marginalized users not only helps us create more inclusive designs, it also often highlights issues that everyone has to varying degrees.
Select three individuals to observe and interview. Choose people who are not similar to yourself in some way (for example, they are studying different discipline, working a different type of job, have a different family situation). ** Your goal is to observe the successes, breakdowns, and latent opportunities that occur when computers are used, not used, or could be used to support your chosen activity. Ask them to participate in this assignment and get permission from them. Be sure you coordinate with your participants to select a time that will be rich for observations.
Tell the participants to perform the task as realistically as possible, while communicating to you as appropriate. Utilize the strategies we talked about in lecture to help you. During the observation, in addition to taking notes, use digital photographs or sketches to document activities, but do not use a video camera. This is because your choice of moments to capture with a photograph or sketch is what is important, as it shows specific successes and breakdowns.
After the observations, spend 10 to 15 minutes interviewing your participants about the activity you observed. It should take you approximately two hours total to make all three observations if you have planned carefully. It will take longer if you haven’t!
Remember, these photos and sketches are meant to document your actual observations:
After observing people, go over your findings and use them to brainstorm a list specific user needs: opportunities for design innovation that would enable computers to better support the activity you observed. Once again, go for volume when you brainstorm and include as many people as you want to help you. Brainstorming is a group activity and should be fun! You are free to brainstorm with anyone around you to generate as many interesting ideas as possible.
All ideas are good ones at this stage, and you should generate at least 15 of them: go for volume.
You are not looking for solutions yet: focus on user needs and goals only. An example of a need might be "Sometimes, when Scott takes the Caltrain home, there is no room for his bike and he has to wait for the next one. Scott needs a way to plan what train to take based on how much room is available in the bike car".
It is helpful to use to phrases "needs a way to" or "needs to be able to" as you list your user needs.
by Mike Davison, Community TA and UX Project Manager
Needfinding is probably the most important part of any UX Designer's arsenal. Without it, your design team could spend months designing a solution that completely misses the point. You will be surprised at how much you can learn, especially when you vary the audience.
Take the smartphone In all likelihood, you will have seen an elderly person press the screen harder and more slowly when it does not respond as they had expected. Needfinding research has suggested that this relates to 50s, 60s and 70s technology - the technology this age group are familiar with...this technology often does yield a different result if you press harder.
Why is this useful? Well perhaps we could develop interfaces that took into account the pressure the user applies, and not just where they apply it? How could we make the interface itself easier for the elderly user? Needfinding is a very powerful way to generate ideas.
Here are three student examples from last year. Keep in mind that the assignment was slightly different last year.
| Category | Nope | Weak | Proficient | Mastery |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Observation Quantity 3 points |
No observations or completely irrelevant observations. | The student observed only one person and/or the student observed an activity unrelated to the studio theme. | The student observed only two people and/or the student observed an activity minimally related to the studio theme. | The student observed three people in an activity clearly related to the studio theme. |
| Observation Quality 3 points |
No observations or completely irrelevant observations. | The student's observations did not demonstrate a breakdown or a design opportunity that was relevant. | The student's observations somewhat demonstrated a breakdown or design opportunity, but they were only somewhat relevant, were communicated poorly, or left major questions unanswered. | The student's observations clearly demonstrated a breakdown or design opportunity. The descriptions were well written, informative, and comprehensive. Example |
| Photos/Sketches 3 points |
The student did not submit photos/sketches and captions related to each described observation, or submitted photos/sketches that were clearly not taken as part of the actual observation (e.g. stock photos). | The student submitted no relevant photos/sketches submitted that demonstrate a breakdown or design opportunity. | The student submitted two relevant photos/sketches that demonstrate a breakdown or design opportunity. | The student submitted three relevant photos/sketches that demonstrate a breakdown or design opportunity. |
| Ideation Quantity 3 points |
The student did not come up with ideas for user needs or gave an irrelevant answer. | The student came up with 1 - 7 ideas for user needs. | The student came up with 8 - 14 ideas for user needs. | The student came up with 15+ ideas for user needs. |
| Ideation Quality 3 points |
The student did not come up with ideas or gave an irrelevant answers. | Most of the ideas the student came up with were irrelevant, repeated, or obvious (didn't require observation). | Most of the student's ideas were insightful; Only a few seemed irrelevant, repeated, or obvious. | All of the ideas were insightful. Each idea could become the basis for a design project. More than just features, the goals were articulated as user needs. Example |
Outside the Box 1 point. Up to 5% of submissions. | Wonderfully creative choice of observation setting, insights, and/or ideas. | |||
Yes, your assignments for the rest of the quarter have to relate to your studio theme. Two reasons for this: designing for a brief is how the real world works, and you will benefit much more in your studio when multiple teams work on related projects.
Yes. Each person will need to submit their own assignment, on an activity related to their studio theme.
You'll need to generate 15 ideas for three individuals. This list of needs is based on the three user interviews you conduct.
Finding and interviewing people in this way can be daunting at first, but it is necessary in avoiding assumptions and in getting data about real people that exist in the world. As such, learning to recruit users to interview is a key goal of this assignment, as it will be important in the real world and research. You are free to come up with whichever methods or incentives for recruiting, but we suggest that you reach out to your friend group or other students in your studio to participate in your interviews.
In general, you should be observing three people performing the same activity. This can sometimes vary, depending on if your three participants are performing three different but thematically related activities.
See the example assignments to give you an idea of the appropriate scope of the activity.