Hello. In the last lecture we dived deep into
what field visits are and discussed the structure of the method.
This lecture is concerned with one of its phases,
preparation for the study.
The preparation includes selected research questions
that should be answered within this particular study,
preparedness in a certain way and choosing the way of recording the study.
That later will be discussed in a separate lecture of this week.
Field visits vary on how focused they are.
Recall the example with the app for tablets whose purpose is to help
shop assistants respond faster and
better to customer questions from the previous lecture.
Let's assume that you, as its designer,
went through the iterative design process and did
several usability tests before sending the app to test operation in stores.
Of course, you've eliminated all found interaction problems but you still have
some assumptions of what could go wrong in the real world context.
Plus, since you just released the app design changes made to
eliminate the problems found in the last usability test weren't validated empirically.
I think in this situation you will be interested in checking out
those assumptions and the reappearance of these problems in upcoming observations.
It's your focus. The observations with strong focus are called guided observations.
Of course, there is an opposite situation.
Imagine you design an app for accountants.
How much do you know about the work?
A preliminary study gave you some information but you still know very little.
In this case, you should go to the field open minded.
You don't know what matters and what doesn't.
You are there to learn.
Such kind of observations are called free observations.
Even if you start without a clear focus,
in the course of observations you will enter one.
Activities of people are extremely complex.
You just can't consume so much information.
You have to choose.
Having a focus means see more by fading out everything outside it.
Observations aimed at discovering interactions problems,
which we are talking about this week,
almost always lean towards the guided end of continuum.
But on what basis can you set focus for these observations?
The right answer is on the basis of your research questions.
As I said earlier,
select and research questions to be answered by this particular study,
is the first step of the preparation.
There are different sources of the questions,
depending on the phase of design process.
For example, imagine that you stand on the threshold of the next release.
As we discussed at the beginning of the second week,
you conduct a session of question generation with members of your core team,
interviews with stakeholders or both.
I bet that several questions gathered this
way will be concerned with formative evaluation.
They will help you to focus the observations.
Research questions may also come from other research methods
as is in the example with the app for shop assistance,
when they came from the last usability test.
Well for instance using mobile analytics you may find
something that requires further clarification using qualitative methods.
There can be another situation.
For example, you might work at an agency which was tasked by
some company to conduct field visits and evaluate the usability of its new product.
In this situation you should interview stakeholders too,
but also you should familiarize yourself with the product.
It makes sense, when learning products UI,
to conduct a lightweight experts review on the basis of knowledge you already have.
All things that raise doubts,
predicted usability problems and
inefficiencies will constitute the focus of the field visits.
Please don't try to uncover as many interaction problems as you
can and then use them as a checklist during the study sessions.
Select only those problems that you are sure will occur,
that is for which you have some evidence of factors of usage context.
For example, from existing user research reports.
You need to understand the following.
The focus guides your attention in the course of a session.
Too much focus will hurt the data gathering
because focusing on some word that is unlikely to occur,
you may miss details that matter.
Do you remember OsmAnd,
a navigation app that we examined in the previous week?
Let's assume that you are going to conduct observations of
drivers who use this app for turn by turn navigation.
After you have selected research questions you need to prepare notes in
a certain way to maintain the appropriate level of focus during the field visits.
It can be done using paper notes or any spreadsheet software.
You need to prepare notes in each paper of which will be
associated with a user task or its part.
For instance, get directions to a place with an unknown address.
The top part of each paper is filled by indications of
interaction problems that you discovered during
app's review and other things you are interested in.
Like in the example on this slide.
Each of such items should contain some space for notes relevant to it.
If the task is too complex or long,
you may divide it into several parts and prepare separate papers for each part.
Don't forget to leave free space underneath to
take notes about things you couldn't predict.
During this study, you may use a clipboard for these papers to be able to
turn them when a participant proceeds from one task to another.
I'd like to remind you that we will discuss different ways
of taking notes in one of the following lectures, in detail.
Field visits can include interview parts that
precedes and concludes the observation itself.
Interview questions are written in accordance with your research questions.
I won't dwell on this here.
The preparation phase takes place simultaneously with recruiting.
It isn't possible to employ guerrilla techniques to look for participants
for observations because observations take too much time.
It means that you have to find participants
first and then make appointments with the participants.
When you call them,
you should explain who you are,
where you got the contacts,
explain what is going to happen in detail,
explicitly define the place and duration of the meeting,
what they will need to bring and discuss a reward.
It shouldn't always be money.
For example, if the participants are users of your app
you may offer them some paid services for free as a reward.
After they have agreed to participate,
send them detailed instruction if they need to install something on their devices.
Send them reminders one day before the meeting and right before the meeting.
And please plan to spend time to look for additional participants in advance because some
of the participants with whom you made agreements
won't be able to make it for millions of different reasons.
That's all for now. In the next lecture we will discuss
the preparation specific to usability testing. Thank you for watching.