Adam Little @ CIID

User research profiles and notes

After wrapping up our user testing last week, we had the enormous task of finding the best quotes and observations from all our notes, videos and photos. For each insightful quote or observation we collected (we collected a lot), we had to answer “what does it mean?” Once this helped us understand the value in our insight, we then had to ask “so what?” As a group this really helped us figure out what was interesting and if it was useful.

Trying to find the value from our insights

From the photo above, the insight was a quote that read:

“It would be romantic to meet someone at the library” - Eda, 19. Just moved to CPH.

What it means to us:

- Meeting people face to face is a richer experience

- The library has a special ‘romantic’ quality to it

So what…? (phrased as a how might we… question):

How might the library connect strangers with similar interests?

User research insights

As you can see, we had quite a few of these. But before we could move on, we had to narrow it down. So we did what any democratic group would do and we voted. We gave ourselves 5 red stickers each and voted for the how might we… statements we found most interesting.

The goal of this process was to create 3 well thought out design challenges that we could then create concepts for. In the end ours looked something like this these…

People coming to stay in Copenhagen all begin by following a very similar travel process. From researching their trip before they leave home to visiting the top tourist attractions. During this journey they use a large number of similar services and pass through many public spaces, however the library rarely plays a role in their experience. How can giving library services a presence outside of the library help newcomers become more acquainted with Copenhagen?

Many people who are new to an area seek the local library because its universal services make it reliable. The space makes them feel in touch with the community it serves. Internet access and other basic services are available for free. A special charm makes it a surprising place to meet strangers. At the same time, people visiting a new area greatly value the advice and knowledge of local people. How might we create a service that uses the library’s knowledge and visitors to help guests and new residents of Denmark feel like a local?

Many people visit a country to learn about it’s culture yet they have different tastes and interests, be it films they watch, literature they read, music they listen to or even food they relish. The library is a rich source of trusted material, but provides no access for visitors wishing to explore local culture that matches their interests. How might the library provide a service for visitors not from Scandinavia to explore cultural content within their area of personal interests?

User research at the Copenhagen airport

Some more user research for our service design/library project, but this time at the airport. One of the topics we are exploring right now is foreigners in Copenhagen and how the library might be able to assist them. What better place to find foreigners than the airport? Actually most the people we approached were either Danish or were on their way to neighboring Sweden. No matter, the Danish people gave us an opportunity to ask questions about other topics and for those going to Sweden we just had to re-frame the questions some.

Reviewing material back in the studio

We decided to video tape these conversations and to my surprise only one person objected to our request to do so. Approaching strangers, especially in such a busy place, has been extremely challenging, but I am finding the conversations are becoming easier as the concepts for this project begin to develop. And as Simona told us earlier in the day, we are not looking for “truth” because we are not ethnographers. What we are doing is design research which means we are only seeking inspiration.

Card sorting in the library's grassy room

Yesterday was one of the most challenging days this year. We didn’t have to code anything, we didn’t have to solder anything, but we had to speak with people! We are currently in the user research phase of our service design class where we are designing for libraries. Earlier in the year we had a week long course on user research during which we found ourselves in elderly homes trying to speak to people suffering from dementia. But strangely enough, talking to average people in the library and on the street seemed more challenging.

The challenge probably results from the fact that our project is so wide open right now.  Since we are still exploring, it is difficult to know what to ask people. This means our questions are not focused and we find ourselves having casual conversations. It is not always easy to keep those conversations going when you are approaching strangers.

Because our group was somewhat weary of this, we prepared two different activities to help spark more interesting conversations. Once we got the hang of this, our day became much easier.

A young girl's sketch of how she perceives the library

The first activity asked people to make quick sketches of how they perceive the library. The results were nice and provided a conversation starter, but we still felt like we were not learning anything new.

More card sorting

The second activity was much better because it helped guide a longer conversation about different topics, a lot of which went beyond the library. We gave the participants three place mats (book store, library, internet) and a bunch of small cards with keywords on them. We asked the each person to place keywords on the place mat it best described. We were less interested in the final layout of keywords than we were about asking them about their choices along the way. We also included blank cards and allowed them to write their own keywords.

Compiling the results back at school

These conversations were much more rich and much more natural. It might also be worth mentioning that it was Sid, Eilidh and I conducting these activities. This seemed to be the perfect amount of people (one lead, one photographer, and one note taker). Back at school we organized our notes and photos for each person we spoke with. Hopefully after another session or two of this kind of research, which we plan on doing outside of the library, we will be able to identify specific problem areas that will make for an interesting service design project.

Final concept presentation (photo by Tobias Toft)

On Friday each group presented their concepts and current prototypes to the class. We discussed the evolution of our scale and demonstrated the current prototype. The initial reaction was a lot of confusion. People saw our object as a balance for comparing two objects and not a scale used for measuring. People were also confused by the metaphor of weight and how this can be used to measure a product’s environmental impact. How can we clarify the metaphor of a scale? How can we better present the “weight” of a product in terms of environmental impact?

Studio party in honor of Ashwin's birthday

After the last group presented, we quickly got on with our Friday night.

Rissoto, Girl Scout cookies and a final meeting before Monday

Eilidh, Sid and I got together over the weekend to discuss the feedback from our presentation. We brainstormed ways we could move away from the scale metaphor, but with the course half way over, we decided it would be best to carry on.

Sid's 2D prototype demonstrating the mechanics of our scale

On Monday we moved away from the traditional balance and decided to use the form of a mechanical scale. Sid created this 2D prototype out of foam-core to demonstrate the mechanics of the arm.

Stealing parts from a digital scale

With two weeks left, it is time to begin the electronics. It is often cheaper to buy a consumer product and take it apart than it is buying a single component from an electronics distributor. In this case be bought a digital scale from Ikea so that we could use the load cell sensor.

Sid and Eilidh's 3D prototype demonstrating the mechanics

Finally we made a 3D model of the scale to better understand the mechanics, size, where to hide the electronics, motor, etc…

Photo by Jefe Chapin

I originally posted this on a blog for PEPY - a grassroots NGO in Cambodia that I spent 2 months working for.

I wrote a post a few weeks ago about a blog by a group of Dutch Industrial Design students documenting their work on a portable, solar powered lamp for use in rural Cambodia. As a design student and a former PEPY volunteer (which I mentioned here), I got a lot of pleasure from looking back at their notes. Besides working in partnership with a Khmer solar energy company, the students were able to conduct user research directly with Cambodia’s rural residents. It was great seeing them conduct interviews in people’s homes and ride their motorbike through pitch black villages.

Now I have another blog I would like to share and since this one is just beginning, I am looking forward to following it’s development. It is  Wandering Jefe by Jefe Chapin, an IDEO designer who is taking a three month sabbatical (or a “walkabout” as he refers to it) in Cambodia to work on a low cost latrine with International Development Enterprises (IDE). IDEO is an international design consultancy that we follow very closely at the school I attend. Several of our instructors have worked for IDEO and the company’s founder, Bill Mogridge, is credited with coining the term interaction design — my field of study.

IDE on the other hand is an international nonprofit that helps farmers in countries throughout Africa, Southern Asia and Southeast Asia. Unlike many international nonprofits, IDE says they are not interested in giving handouts but creating “profitable enterprises and value chains that deliver sustainable social and economic benefits to the rural poor.” Sounds similar to the stuff I heard at PEPY and I am especially reminded of our visit with Micky Sampson at RDIC. In Cambodia IDE have done this by developing products and services to improve agricultural productions and water sanitation.

According to Jefe’s blog, IDEO and IDE first got together to create the Human Centered Design Toolkit.  This toolkit is a guide for applying IDEO’s successful method of design to developing world contexts. The toolkit can be download for free here. Here is an excerpt from it:

It contains the elements to Human-Centered Design, a process used for decades to create new solutions for multi-national corporations. This process has created ideas such as the HeartStart defibrillator, Cleanwell natural antibacterial products, and the Blood Donor System for the Red Cross—innovations that have enhanced the lives of millions of people.

Now Human-Centered Design can help you enhance the lives of smallholder farmers. This process has been specially-adapted for organizations like yours that work with farmers in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Human-Centered Design (HCD) will help you hear the needs of smallholder farmers in new ways, create innovative solutions to meet these needs, and deliver solutions with financial sustainability in mind.

Jefe’s project, which he promises to document on his blog, will apply IDEO’s human-centered design process to IDE’s work in the field of water sanitation in the form of a low-cost latrine for use in rural settings. Jefe summarizes the problem in this way:

Cambodians are relatively poor. A five-person family at the national poverty level earns about 900USD per year, and rural Cambodians cite cost as the number one reason that they don’t invest in effective latrines. A lot of NGOs are working in Cambodia trying to assist the poor, and a number of these NGOs have historically given away latrines. They tend to build what is, in fact, quite a nice latrine (including an offset tank, pour-flush pan and solid walls and roof: I’ll explain latrine options in a later posting. . .) that costs about 150USD to build. This has caused two problems. First, this latrine is now seen as the ‘ideal’, and people don’t want to build anything lesser. Yet they can’t save up enough money to build it. So, the second problem . . . they wait and see if an NGO will just build them a latrine. Yet, the NGOs can only reach a very small segment of the population so very few get built (of the latrines existing in Cambodia, only 17% of them are provided by NGOS. . . the rest are purchased by the users).

More background information about the problems of sanitation, the need for affordable and desirable latrines and how they propose to do this are already on Jefe’s blog. I hope that he continues to update it with photos, videos, observations and notes in the same way that the Dutch students did. And given that Jefe is an experienced designer from IDEO, it should be a great read. I wish him luck!

http://www.wanderingjefe.blogspot.com/

PhotoCaring mockup

As context for the Graphical User Interfaces course, we used the elderly home insights we discovered in our User Research course for developing concepts for the GUI final project. Why elderly homes? As the course syllabus explains:

Creating a concept with an application specific GUI for an eldercare context with multiple user groups (patients, doctors, nurses and visitors) with their respective information needs represents an interesting basis for the students to create highly tailored and relevant interfaces for a demanding target group. The students will have to develop, design and prototype tools and experiences that have impact and show empathy towards the different user groups needs and contexts.

After a lengthy and intensive concept development process and user testing at the elderly home, Jacob, Ash and I presented PhotoCaring for our final presentation.

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Presenting our insights to the class

Earlier in the week we visited two elderly homes in Copenhagen to find “user insights relevant to improving the lives of elderly people.” After countless hours of exhausting data analysis, each group was asked to present “the 3-6 most important insights of relevance for designing and improving the interface between residents and care takers in old people’s home.” We had to organize all our notes, stories, observations, quotes, photos, etc…, identify patterns and refine these broad topics into specific needs.

We started our presentation by discussing the context (homes we visited, people we talked to) and the process of our groups study and analysis. Then we presented four specific needs and supported them with quotes and photos. We discussed opportunities to address these needs, problems and issues obstructing them and ultimate goals that solving these needs might achieve.

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