anne fairbrother
Experience Design / InnovationArchive for DISCOVER
Surfacing knowledge and assumptions
What:
Interviews with key stakeholders using structured questions designed to bring to the surface assumptions and understanding of underlying issues.
Why:
Everyone makes decisions based on how they understand and perceive the world. At the start of large projects it is important to understand the various viewpoints of key stakeholders. A good design process should challenge stakeholders to go beyond their current assumptions, ambitions and knowledge.
When:
At the start of the project.
How:
As our own assumptions are often hidden from ourselves interviewers need to ask the right kinds of questions designed to bring to the surface:
Knowledge and understanding
What is the central issue/challenge?
What knowledge is missing?
Mental maps and assumptions about the wider world
What are their assumptions and concerns about the future?
Point of departure
In what context does the company/service currently operate?
What contradictions and tensions exist?
What are the current strengths, weaknesses and vulnerability?
Example:
Interviews can highlight organisational blind-spots. What is not said is sometimes the most important thing to notice. In interviews for the BBC Kids ID project, paedophiles were unmentioned by interviewees despite being seen to be the biggest threat to children on-line. As a result the team consulted charities and trusts working with paedophiles and their victims.
A huge assumption had been made internally that the main threat to children comes form adults. Interviews with Childline revealed that a substantial threat comes from other children - both sexual abuse and bullying.
Stakeholder interviews also revealed that people who make policies to safeguard children seldom consult children directly.
picture of now
What:
A ‘picture of now’ describes the context in which an issue, a service or an organisation exists. It describes Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal and Environmental factors. (PESTLE)
Why:
New products and services do not exist in a vacuum. The issues surrounding a problem are much bigger than we often imagine. Before designing future services or scenarios it is important to have an accurate picture of the present.
Maps are only useful when the user knows where they are.
When:
The picture of now research should be carried out in the discovery phase - early in the project development cycle. It can be referred to and used throughout.
How:
A picture of now is formed by collecting data that represents best current knowledge in each area of research (PESTLE). This may be past and current (but not predictive) trends research from reliable sources and expert interviews. The key is to understanding factors that underlie the trend, this can help you decide if the trend is likely to continue and how it affects your issue. Systems thinking is useful for uncovering these dynamics.
Example:
Before developing scenarios for the future of interactive TV we needed to have a detailed picture of the current state of play and the forces that would drive future change and have most impact.
I led a team of researchers who investigated:
Audience behaviour
Industry (technologies and policy)
Society
The Economy
Deeper trends (change over a longer period with potentially radical implications)
To bring this data to life we created a street scene to house our key facts. Different zones corresponded to key themes emerging out of the research.
In workshops we explored which trends were most surprising to our clients and which would have most impact on the sector.
contextual interviews
What:
Involves observing and probing end-user behaviour in a real world setting. This could be a home, an workplace or any place in which a service or product is Interviews combinine loosely structured interviews and observations.
Why:
To gain an understanding which goes beyond simple interactions and offers insight into the context of use and environmental factors.
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Movement maps
Movement maps track the locations and movements of several people over a period of time within a specific environment.
Since media is now present all around us and increasingly consumed outside the home context awareness is key to creating the right kind of services.
Because many people live localised lives with set routines, it is important to understand the place sand journeys that are important in their lives.
Example: This map shows an the area within a thirty minute walk of a teenage characters home - we highlighted the most significant places, people and journeys in her daily life
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Relationship maps
Relationship maps: visualise the social networks that exist within a group. This can help articulate how new services could support or be integrated into these connections.
How: Relationship maps are best based on evidence coming from interviews within a community of users or a family/friend network.
For our future scenarios project we created a social networks map for our teenage character. This illustrated both face-to face and virtual interactions of out teenage character, including the interactions of her various on-line personae.
For Participate we created global friendship maps of the participants in our focus groups. These illustrated cross generational differences and geographical trends.
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User-Diaries
What:
End-users are given materials and a structure to record daily activities, events, and experiences in relation to a specific subject. Unlike other ethnographic methods diary studies allow users to self report in the form of a journal.
Why:
User diaries can give deep insight into people’s lives, particularly patterns of behaviour over time. These findings are documented and may be used to help develop personas or bring scenarios to life.
A narrative written by users and illustrated with their own photos can tell a convincing story to stakeholders.
When: User diaries are most useful at the ‘understanding‘ phase of a project and should feed in to concept development.
How: users are given a diary and asked to keep a written record of their impressions, circumstances and activities related to the relevant aspects of their daily lives.
The diary can be kept over a week or sometimes longer. A follow-up interview should be conducted at some point after the briefing session. This helps ensure that participants are actively engaged, and are collecting the required information.
Single use-cameras can be an effective way to get users-to record significant incidents or environments. Annotated photo diaries can be as simple as pictures of a users mantlepiece, desk or the contents of their fridge, but still provide valuable insights into daily life, attitude and habits.
At the end of the specified period, the diaries are collected and analysed.
A de-briefing session allows further exploration and validation of the information gathered by the participants..
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guerrilla ethnography
What:
Guerrilla ethnography is a method for rapidly observing and recording people and patterns of behaviour simultaneously and from multiple perspectives. Teams split into a number of undercover cells, each focussed different types of behaviour, actions or events. It is a highly collaborative activity.
Why:
Large amounts of data can be gathered in a short time - in a few hours to a day. The richness of the data comes from having cells in various locations each focussed on specific details rather than trying to record everything.
When:
It is especially useful when time is limited but there are plenty of people available to be observers. It’s best suited to situations when multiple observers can blend in to a scene and there is lot’s of activity to observe. Commuters at a station, visitor flow through a museum, interactions and activity in a public square etc..
How: Teams are split into pairs - one person will use a discreet camera phone and the other take observational notes. Each pair observes and collects specific information - activities, gestures, emotions, movement. Combined the data should offer a holistic and detailed picture of an environment or event.
Example: Mobility in Delhi
Participants divided into 10 pairs each journeying to Old Delhi Railway station by different routes and by different modes of transport - from cycle rickshaw, taxi, to local trains. What were the particular experiences of each service? Time, comfort, safety, ease of use, cost. Who used each service, who was excluded and why?
Issues:
There are both practical and ethical issues due to the covert nature of data collection. Mobile phones allow discreet data collection, whilst traditional cameras make the process visible but probably affect results.
Taking photos in public without permission (e.g in a railway station) has legal implications for organisations carrying out the research. Data ownership and publishing need to be thoughtfully considered.
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Cultural Probes
What:
Cultural probes are a series of provocative tasks designed to elicit revealing and inspirational information from people about their lives, interests, obsessions and aspirations. Details of their domestic routines; the sounds around their homes; the dreams they had at night.
Why:
As a method probes represent multiple, easy-to-use and interesting tasks which make the job of collecting data more engaging. As an approach, they advocate the use of open, ambiguous, and even surreal tasks as a way of undermining the assumptions both of participants and researchers.
Cultural probes are one way to access environments that are difficult to observe directly and also to capture more of what people actually feel, rather than do. Good experience design depends upon understanding the real needs and desires of end users. What is really important to them and what just mundane?
Used as inspiration the results of probes can also be used as a catalyst for the development of design proposals.
When:
Cultural probes are valuable when you need a deep insight into people’s lives with minimal influence on their actions, or when the process or event you are researching takes place intermittently or over a long period - for example a patient recovering from surgery.
How:
Participants are briefed and then given probe packs with items such as a disposable camera, a diary, scrapbook and specimen bottle linked to a series of tasks. The participants carry out the various task over a period of a few days or weeks and then return the pack.
The items in the pack depend on the circumstances, but are all designed to stimulate thought as well as capture experiences.
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