UCD15 Talk - Orla Hennessy & Melissa Riby-Williams - Understanding New Behaviours: Photo Ethnography for Experience Design
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
1 like•1,537 views
Technology creates subtle shifts in human behaviour all the time. Some of these shifts are so small that they go unobserved and unremarked: it’s just the stuff that we see and do every day. We rarely stop to consider what these changes actually mean. Focusing on these subtle shifts allows us to see the world from a fresh perspective and helps us understand underlying motivations and needs. Although this can often raise more questions than answers, it gives us a head start when we think about product or service experiences. In this session we will share our learning from a year-long photo ethnography project, to observe and document these new behaviours. We will discuss the imagery we captured from all over the world, highlighting five emerging themes. We will also discuss the impact this project had for our experience design practice.
Recommended
More Related Content
Viewers also liked
Viewers also liked (16)
More from UCD UK Ltd
More from UCD UK Ltd (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
UCD15 Talk - Orla Hennessy & Melissa Riby-Williams - Understanding New Behaviours: Photo Ethnography for Experience Design
- 1. UNDERSTANDING NEW BEHAVIOURS Photo ethnography for experience design
- 2. Orla Hennessy Senior UX Consultant, Foolproof Melissa Riby-Williams UX Consultant Foolproof
- 4. Human behaviour New technology New technologies impact on human behaviour
- 5. New technology Human behaviour There is often a tension between the two Tension
- 6. New technology Tension Human behaviour Actual use of technology is a joint construction
- 7. WHAT DID WE DO?
- 11. #2 SPONTANEITY
- 12. Saturday afternoon in a London pub
- 14. Sunny afternoon in Lincoln Park, Chicago
- 16. Capturing the moment at a concert, London
- 19. WHY SHOULD YOUR TEAM HUNT FOR NEW BEHAVIOURS?
- 20. Take a closer look Please share photos of the New Behaviours you see on Instagram #FoolproofUCD15
Editor's Notes
- Hello, thank you for coming to our short talk on New Behaviours today. This is a project we’ve been working on over the last year or so at Foolproof. We’re going to tell you a bit about it, why we did it and what we found. And we’re hopefully going to convince you of the benefits of doing a project like this with your own internal teams.
- But first, we should tell you who we are! Hello! I’m Orla Hennessy Hello, I’m Melissa Riby-Williams We’re consultants at Foolproof and like most of you here our job is to create great user experiences.
- We’re at a point where our relationship with technology is quite varied. Better: meeting needs: enabling productivity, social engagement, inspiring us to do things differently. It’s interesting to look at when and why this happens? Negative: behaviour, lifestyle and wellbeing. Still learning the etiquette and defining the social rules. Get in the way, too complicated, hard to learn or use. Abandon it or find workarounds. Pay attention here too, what can we learn?
- Innovation drives and enables new products and services. For many people, this story stops here. Technology impacts human behaviour, changing the way we behave, think or feel.
- Tension: Technology often comes first, without considering the user or context. Does not always service consumers’ rapidly changing needs. Mass adoption often lags far behind new product launch. So watching technology is not going to tell you what or how to design.
- So digital tech shapes behaviour. Close the loop and feed back in. We start with the user: Use new technologies in some novel ways. Look at the workarounds people come up with. Quite masterful and ingenious. Actual use of technology is a joint construction between designers and users.
- This project: moments in people’s lives that are ripe for innovation, to resolve this tension and think differently about the products and services we design. Research all over the world: opportunities to speak to people but we wanted to take a step back from the work we do and just observe. Core team but we got the whole company involved, friends and family too. Document any interactions with digital in the wild. Easiest way - photographs Professional –have a different way of looking at the world (better pictures!) To use their skill to create images that illustrate points or tell stories on their own, without our commentary. Photo gallery with a blend of grabbed moments and planned moments. Spark conversation – you may see one thing in an image and I may see another but that’s ok. The point is they force us to pay attention and ask questions about the things we see every day. It’s worth noting that every image in this deck is from that gallery.
- Melissa 5 themes Our interpretation – yours may differ Images are ambiguous – we cant know exactly what’s happening in all scenes but this project really made us think consumers might not identify themselves, but we would probably recognise. Overview themes as it’s a short talk more detailed information, check blog post series- Foolproof blog
- Look at these photos - what is the focus here? Are they achieving one or many goals? D&I is… Distribute our attention across multiple devices e.g. sequential and second screening (or when we are using devices in another environment). Why do we do this? To distract ourselves from boredom or immerse ourselves in something productive and more pressing regardless of location? We don’t know for sure but there’s probably a mixture. This made us think about how and where we now work. As designers we need to remember that users will no longer put up with long loading times or complex UIs. We want to continue doing tasks no matter where we are, Now every moment can be used for doing something.
- I think we can all relate to this image. Which of these is getting this persons attention – the tv or the ipad? What does it mean for both tasks? Are they still enjoying their TV program? And are they getting their task on the iPad done?
- How much do we need to plan these days? Gone are the days where we put a date in the diary and stick to it. Now we make plans and break plans which might not be seen as socially acceptable to everyone -but I think we can all see many benefits to how technology has allowed us to be more spontaneous. With our devices we can now: fix bad plans e.g. London transport, partially plan: plan some parts but do the rest as and when Or even leave planning until the very moment, we go out with no set journey or pre-planned agenda This is one new behaviour which has had an huge impact on my life and what I do. Services I use have to be useful for me at any times and different contexts. Trip Advisor, for instance, is equally useful for me when planning a trip six months in advance as it is when I am looking for somewhere to eat in a strange city that evening.
- Look at this guy? What is he doing? This photo captures the typical know-it-all friend, proving his point with the aid of his smartphone. Now we can Google anything; find the answer to real-world problems, fuel discussions, check the weather, or compare transport options. Our smartphones have enabled us to be more impulsive; to truly live in the moment, the here and now. We no longer plan, and have become dependent on our devices to get us through our daily lives.
- Connection and detachment This theme is all about connecting people (strangers or friends and family) in the digital world and in the physical world: From mass social movements fuelled by Twitter to finding a love match Tinder or Hapn But what does it mean for those around us. Are we together or apart? What that means for us and our relationships has and is changing. We’re still learning the etiquette of this technology and people are having difficulty harmonizing real and virtual presence.
- To me, this is one of the most interesting themes. There is a very strong and well aired point of view that the people in this photo aren’t connected. Glass walls - who can communicate with each other but choose not to. Physical time and space, ‘existing’ and engaging in their own virtual worlds. But are we too quick to judge. Maybe he is just trying to find out where their bus leave from, or he’s possibly looking up something to share with her? The truth is we don’t know. But we have to suspend judgment and consider all scenarios.
- How many people here have checked in at the event today? Why? Are our motivations narcissistic or can they be altruistic? Ourselves look good? Event look popular? Organisers successful? Leave a mark? Moved from sharing to crafting. We’re thinking more carefully: either to limit our Digital Footprint or to curate an online identity. Grandparents: scrapbooks, photo albums and physical keepsakes, it seems that much of this content will now be retained online. Create tools and services: reflect and make sense of our lives over time? What will we share with our children’s children?
- Present day. At a concert, or even at a wedding, you see 100s of people holding up their phones like digital periscopes. Capture moments as they happen. Impact does on our actual experiences? Is the act of enjoying the concert secondary to the act of capturing the data?
- Digital tools to extend our human abilities: senses, knowledge intuition. Outsource brainpower – photos or screenshots to remind us of things. That’s actually me in this giant carpark in Seoul, South Korea, jetlagged and using the only tool I had to remember where my car was parked! To train ourselves to learn new skills – mindfulness, language apps; To measure ourselves - tracking runs, steps, sleep patterns.
- This brings me nicely to this photo. I was thinking about it the other day actually. I was reading that the smartphone has taken an hour off the average sleep time for a British adult – yet this guy is using it to track his sleep! Is it the most appropriate medium? Probably not. But I think that this is where the advent of tech like wearables is coming into play. Designers should now not only be considering the ways in which we will send, receive and understand information, but how technology can live in harmony with us, our physiology, the everyday clothes and objects we use. Truly extending (and not compromising) the senses.
- Melissa So those are our 5 themes. We hope you found it interesting and reminded you too of the ambiguity of these every day behaviours. On their own they may be commonplace but if you have enough it can spark conversation and really make us think about services we evaluate and create as consultants and designers. If you want more info on our posts you can google ‘FP NB’ and see our blog posts. We hope we’ve also made you think about doing a project like this in your own teams. It doesn’t have to be NB. Hobby projects like this remind us why we do what we do. You can do it by yourself but it’s much more fun in a team! It brought our team together and let us explore things we are interested in an a non-client project sense which allowed us freedom, flexibility and time. It’s really been about developing our eyes and senses, suspending judgement and asking ourselves questions about what we are seeing, it also reminded us to look a little closer and see that things are not always what they seem. It gave us the chance to work with some cool tech.
- This brings us to our installation in the hall which we used to extend our project. We have set up an Instagram printer which automatically prints your photos from IG using this hashtag. So why not have a look at what interactions people are having with digital during the conference or even check your phones and see where you’ve captured NB and come to our stall, have a chat and get a polaroid to take away with you. Thank you!