Jisc Academic Networking

JISC ACADEMIC NETWORKING A User-Centered Design Methodology For a Social Networking Tool

OVERVIEW OF THE PRESENTATION
Introduction
Who we are
About the project in brief
Overview of the project
The project close-up
Preparation before starting with the project
Research phase
Design phase
Coding and implementation phase
Wrap-up
Feedback
Questions?
Feedback and comments

INTRODUCTION
WHO WE ARE
About JISC and CARET
People involved in the project
John Norman (Director) Harriet Truscott (Lead Researcher) Anne-Sophie De Baets (Researcher) Nicolaas Matthijs (UI Developer) Tjhien Liao (UI Designer) Laura James (Project manager) Oszkar Nagy (UI Designer)

INTRODUCTION
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Where did the idea come from & what is the aim?
“ Create a system for use within universities, which will make sharing and communication
about teaching, learning and research between academics, postgraduate and
undergraduate students at the universities more effective bringing the best features of
social networking to academic networking.”
End deliverable
Novelty of the project
Experimented with user-centred design would this work in Academic world?
Intensive research phase design phase with user-testing sessions
Flow Interactive
www.flowinteractive.com
Training us in their methods
How well do commercial techniques work in a university software development environment?

OVERVIEW OF THE PROJECT
Preparation before starting
Defining project planning
Defining research question
Research phase
Recruiting target audience
Gathering information: diary studies and interviews
Working with data: task goal analysis and affinity sorting
Working with data: behavioural axes
Working with data: use the analyzed data to create personas
Defining user and business requirements to start with design
Design phase
Using personas and requirements to create extreme designs of concepts
User recruitment and user testing sessions: using paper prototypes
Using user feedback to merge extreme concepts into 1 refined design
User recruitment and user testing sessions: using wire frames
Repeating process of user recruitment, user testing and concept refinement until project team
and target audience are happy
NEXT: We might do another round of design from scratch.
Coding and implementation phase
Implementing system in New CamTools / Sakai 3

THE PROJECT CLOSE-UP Preparation before starting
Defining the project planning
= Guideline; what steps come next?
Giving an answer to:
How long will the project take?
How many people involved? Their roles?
How do our plans fit within academic year? Are students available when we need them?
What’s the budget?
Defining a research question
= Guideline of what you are trying to find out during the phases. Our question: “How do students and academics communicate about their teaching, learning and research activities?”

THE PROJECT CLOSE-UP Research phase
RECRUITING THE TARGET AUDIENCE
AIM : Gathering information from people who are representatives of target audience.
What are their needs? diary studies and interviews
But first recruit them How?
Define criteria Spread of all the people
Define amount of participants More criteria = more people
Start looking for right participants: different ways
Running a survey
Find appropriate people in different sources
Find appropriate people through personal relationships
Reusing lists of participants
Picking the right and useful people
Contacting participants

A section in an online survey

GATHERING INFORMATION BY DOING DIARY STUDIES AND INTERVIEWS
Thoughts
AIM: gathering information What are their problems? What to design later?
BASIC PRINCIPLE : let them fulfill tasks
Doing the diary and interview
Capturing the information
Note taking
Task goal analysis or recording and analyzing afterwards
Diary before the interview Diary combined with interview questions Questionnaire

Documents used during interview Diary combined with interview questions Questionnaire : extra questions during interview

WORKING WITH THE DATA : TASK GOAL ANALYSIS
AIM: analyzing data from interview through linking it to categories
First phase in process of analyzing information
Close-up
Description of the process

Description of the process

WORKING WITH THE DATA : AFFINITY SORTING
So far : awful lot of data need to sort it
AIM : find patterns in the information, cluster similar behaviours
How?
Cut every single entry of every participant and put randomly on the wall
Find entries which are similar and cluster them
End up with lots of sorted clusters which present similar behaviours of people included in our research

A lot of sorted post-it notes …

WORKING WITH THE DATA: BEHAVIOURAL AXES
AIM: visually represent participants
Compared to each other
According to behaviours found during Task Goal analysis
Group in as few clusters as possible easier to work with
How?
Create grid with only behavioural axes poles on it
Write down every participant’s name on colour coded post-its
Put every name on the grid compared to each other and try to find patters

Behavioural axes with patterns

WORKING WITH THE DATA: USE ANALYZED DATA TO CREATE PERSONAS
A persona:
Represents needs of larger (the whole) group of users
Identifies user’s needs, motivations, expectations, goals
Brings the group of users to life presenting them as real people
Helps focusing during design phase
Can be a ‘Primary’ or ‘Secondary’ persona
How to present them as real people
The 3 personas we ended up with
made-up name made-up picture Goals based on all participants’ information

Primary persona: Isobel

Secondary persona 1: Peter

Secondary persona 2: Kate

DEFINING USER AND BUSINESS REQUIREMENTS TO START DESIGN PHASE
Bridge between research and design phase
How? Used goals of every persona to translate them into requirements
Example: Goal: “Discover what other people are working on.” Requirement: “The user needs to be notified about relevant people or content they wouldn’t otherwise know about.”

THE PROJECT CLOSE-UP Design phase
USING PERSONAS & REQUIREMENTS TO CREATE EXTREME DESIGNS OF
CONCEPTS
AIM : End up with extreme preliminary designs of concepts
How?
Brainstorm about requirements and personas
Initial thoughts
Matching related thoughts
End up with more than 10 but picked 3 most important and useful ones.
Each linked to a persona
Extreme thoughts
Fleshed out so we got real ideas to start designing with
Advantages of this step :
Extreme ideas: designers can be more creative
Every persona’s needs will be answered in a design

Initial brainstorm thoughts : The 3 extremes we picked Concept 1: ‘Get up, Go outside!’ Concept 2: ‘The board game vs. Ballroom dancing’ Concept 3: ‘The Switchboard’

Fleshing out those 3 ideas: Getting ideas to start designing with Concept 1: ‘Get up, Go outside!’ with some extra thoughts Concept 3: ‘The switchboard’ with some extra thoughts Concept 2: ‘The board game vs.. ballroom dancing’ with some extra thoughts

IT’S TIME TO SEE WHAT USERS THINK : USER RECRUITMENT
AIM : Find relevant people to see whether our designs really are answers to their needs.
DIFFERENT : Now specifically focusing on 3 personas
How recruiting? Same ways as before:
Define criteria Spread of 3 personas
Define amount of participants
Running a survey : questions to find out personas

IT’S TIME TO SEE WHAT USERS THINK : USER TESTING SESSIONS USING
PAPER PROTOTYPES
Why paper prototypes:
We want to keep it looking unfinished at this stage
We want to get more hones feedback
The 3 concepts we ended up with
3 different kinds of prototypes; 1 for each persona
Each concept contains several pages
Way of doing user testing sessions
2 rooms, one-way mirror
Observe and analyze at high level

Concept 1: ‘Get up and go outside’

Concept 2: ‘Board game’

Concept 3: ‘The switchboard’

An example of an user testing session

USING FEEDBACK TO MERGE EXTREME CONCEPTS INTO 1 REFINED DESIGN
Before: 3 extreme designs; 1 for each persona
AIM : end up with 1 design instead of 3
So: merge 3 designs into 1

IT’S TIME TO SEE WHAT USERS THINK : USER RECRUITMENT
AIM : Find relevant people to see whether our designs really are answers to their needs.
DIFFERENT : Instead of concentrating on personas, more on different kinds find out how merged system works for everyone
How recruiting? Same ways as before:
Define criteria Spread of 3 personas
Define amount of participants
Running a survey

IT’S TIME TO SEE WHAT USERS THINK : USER TESTING SESSIONS USING
WIRE FRAMES
Why wire frames:
Clickable wire frames on laptop
More realistic feeling
Allowed to criticize detail more at this stage
The design we ended up with
1 design, containing the information of the 3 concepts 3 personas as well
Way of doing user testing sessions
2 rooms, one-way mirror
Observe and analyze at high level
Screen recordings

The merged design : wire frame

PROCESS OF USER RECRUITMENT, USER TESTING, REFINEMENT UNTIL
PROJECT TEAM AND TARGET AUDIENCE ARE HAPPY
Done so far :
Came up with 3 extreme designs of concepts
Tested them
Merged into 1 design
Tested again
Found out how to refine this as well
This process could go on until project team & target audience are happy
Future :
We’re planning to have further design rounds

THE PROJECT CLOSE-UP Coding and implementation
IMPLEMENTING SYSTEM IN NEW SAKAI-BASED CAMTOOLS
Within some time : putting decided designs into code
Have a look how to implement in new Sakai-based CamTools
At same moment : Building basic networking into new Sakai-based CamTools
(piloting autumn this year)

THE PROJECT CLOSE-UP Wrap-up
We enjoyed learning about user-centric design . We felt this was a useful way to connect with real users and design for them. We hope to try similar methods again on future projects .
It’s a never ending process: We’re still learning about how to do user research and user-centric design.
We’re looking forward to seeing our academic networking concepts realized in the future.

CONTACT US
WANT TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT IT?
Websites :
http://www.caret.cam.ac.uk
http://academic-networking.blogspot.com
People :
Laura James (project manager): [email_address]
Anne-Sophie De Baets (researcher): [email_address]

FEEDBACK Questions?

Thank you!

Jisc Academic Networking

by AnneSophieDeBaets on Jul 22, 2009

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Jisc Academic Networking — Presentation Transcript