Abstract
How can we choose among customer data collection
methods when limited staff and financial resources must be
spread across the whole development cycle? This tutorial
helps participants understand the tradeoffs, so they can
make effective choices among methods at different points
during product design and development. It focuses on early
user-centered intervention to gain cost-effective, reusable
end-user information
Keywords:
user-centered design, design methodologies,
product life cycle, product development cycle, user data
collection, customer data collection, usability,
documentation usability, documentation design, functional
specifications
BODY
Design decisions based on customer data "build usability
into" the design process. They help ensure that released
products are both useful and usable in actual work
environments. Applying user input throughout the design of
the whole product-including the user interface and
documentation-results in better functional specifications,
cost-effective development, and ultimately, more successful
products.
This tutorial presents a user-centered model of the product
design and development cycle. Then it probes deeply into
the phases of early investigation, product definition, and
initial design. For each of these phases, we discuss
appropriate research questions and data collection methods.
Then attendees participate in an interactive methods
practicum, using selected case histories as examples.
The methods this tutorial presents in depth include:
- Questionnaire-based surveys and telephone interviews
- Focus groups
- Customer interviews
- Field observations
- Usability testing
- Structured walkthroughs
The additional methods for which the tutorial provides
overviews (with strengths and weaknesses) include:
- Interviews of customer service/field support staff
- Reviews of company records
- Usability testing of predecessor products
- Contextual inquiry
- Video-based task analysis with stimulated recall
- Participant observation and iterative task modeling
- Expert review
- User advisory panels
However, rather than simply providing a methods toolkit,
this tutorial emphasizes the importance of making tradeoffs
throughout the user-centered design process to integrate
good design practice with budget and schedule realities. Its
dual focus on documentation, as well as the product
functionality, addresses the instructors' concerns that
documentation be designed as a key product element for
user support, rather than as a means of correcting product
design defects.
At the end of the tutorial, the instructors use examples from
the previous modules to suggest trade-offs, choices, and
issues in building an ongoing user-centered design program.
Approaches and tactics addressed include targeting
recommendations to different product versions, repeated
and longitudinal studies, creating databases of customer
data that support iterative design, refining user profiles
across product versions, and more.
The tutorial also addresses management communication
concerns raised by participants in our CHI ‘92 and CHI ‘94
tutorials, including justifications for collecting customer
data early in the design process, improving communication
between product development and usability teams, and
applying specific data to general conclusions about a
product family.
References
- The tutorial workbook will include an extensive (25-page)
bibliography of references and related readings, prepared by
Dr. Judith Ramey. The following list of recent books is
excerpted from the tutorial bibliography, which also
includes references to hundreds of articles.
- Dumas, Joseph S., and Janice C. Redish, A Practical Guide
to Usability Testing, Ablex Publishing Corp., 1993.
- Ericsson, K.A. and H.A. Simon, Protocol Analysis, MIT
Press, 1984.
- Hix, Deborah, and H. Rex Hartson, Developing User
Interfaces: Ensuring Usability Through Product and
Process, John Wiley and Sons, 1993.
- Mayhew, Deborah, Principles and Guidelines in Software
User Interface Design, Prentice Hall, 1992.
- Nielsen, Jakob, Usability Engineering, Academic Press,
Inc., 1993.
- Nielsen, Jakob, and Robert L. Mack, editors, Usability
Inspection Methods, John Wiley & Sons, 1994.
- Rubin, Jeffrey, Handbook of Usability Testing, John
Wiley & Sons, 1994.
- Wiklund, Michael E., editor, Usability in Practice: How
Companies Develop User-Friendly Products, AP
Professional (an imprint of Academic Press), 1994.
