Structuring Phase
ysdn3006

PACT analysis
• used to scope a problem in a particular
domain (sphere of activity)
Requirements
activities in
People technologies
contexts
Opportunities

PACT analysis
• People have differing characteristics
• physical differences (eg. weight and
height, senses, disabilities)
• psychological (spatial ability, language,
attention and memory) = support
mental models
• usage differences (novice, advanced,
homogenous vs. heterogeneous

PACT analysis
• Activities need to be considered by the design
team
• purpose of the activity = important
• frequency (eg. everyday or once a year)
• cooperation (alone or with others)
• complexity (simple, complicated)
• safety critical (dangerous, errors)
• nature of content (amount of data)

PACT analysis
• Contexts are where activities occur
• physical context (eg. environment)
• social context (eg. privacy )
• organizational context (eg. within companies, organizations)

PACT analysis
• Technologies are used to perform functions
• input - people enter data, commands (eg. wiki postings)
• output - receive data (eg. video on YouTube)
• communication - between people and devices (cellphone)
• content - form and accuracy of data (eg.YSDN website)

Scoping a problem
with PACT
• Important to harmonize the PACT elements
in a particular domain
• Useful to understanding current situation
and look for opportunities
• This can be done by scoping out the variety
of Ps As Cs and Ts
• observing and talking to people - user study
to generate requirements

Requirements
• goal is to bring about something new in what
people do or might want to do
• are generated by conducting user research
• interviews
• observations
• by analyzing this data, designers get a better
sense of what the system will need to do

Start a PACT Analysis
• think about the communities in our public
spaces
• how are the communities defined ?
• contexts
• activities
• technologies
• What are some communities we have
identified in our public space research?