UXPA2019 UX fundamentals for adapting science-based interfaces for non-technical audiences
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This presentation will discuss the challenges of adapting a water simulation interface, originally built to present technical information to experts, to new audiences that include high school students and rural populations of museum visitors. It will discuss the important verbal, visual, and interactive adaptation work required to convey accurate scientific data while building a meaningful user experience. It will also discuss some of the particular considerations (such as accuracy and amount of data) that need to be accommodated when scientific content is being made more accessible.
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UXPA2019 UX fundamentals for adapting science-based interfaces for non-technical audiences
- 1. UX fundamentals for adapting science-based interfaces for non-technical audiences UXPA 2019 Claire Lauer, PhD Associate Professor, Technical Communication and User Experience
- 2. What’s Ahead • Drought Simulator • Mindfulness • Challenges • Recommendations • Discussion
- 4. What is The Drought Simulator? • Expert model 2007 • Museum – America 2016 • Museum – Arizona 2018 • Classroom - 2018
- 11. Observation, think-aloud, interview February 2017 Tested iPad with 15 users in rural southeast May 2017-May 2018 Developed personas, redesigned interface, received grant for classroom version (still no money for design or testing)
- 14. Observation, think-aloud, interview October 2018 Observed and interacted with community college classroom October 2018 Tested 2 users at museum site (out of about 20) November 2018 Ditched video narrative and instructions. Developed instructions board. Tested iterations of the instructions board with 37 students December 2018 Released instructions board to next museum site February 2019 Tested iPad and instructions board with 18 seniors at rural library and 10 students on campus. Added pre-interview questions about water
- 15. “[the Drought Simulator] is a tool that we can put out there in the universe; it's user directed to help awaken citizens of simple concepts about water. We are hoping it's a learning experience and that it comes with some new understandings about where their water comes from and how it's being used.” Drought Simulator Scientist “It was very confusing. We just faked it. We basically guessed on what we were doing.” Community Member
- 16. Verdict: Simulator failed to engage users and encouraged mindlessness.
- 17. Mindlessness happens when visitors feel incompetent or helpless in the face of problems they’re asked to solve. (Giovanni Moscado)
- 18. during six interviews with pairs of senior users at the rural library where the UX team was hosting a usability session for the latest iteration of the Drought Simulator, participants used the words "confusing" or "confused" a total of 17 times Participants used the words "confusing" or "confused" a total of 17 times When asked "Do you feel like you learned anything from playing the game?" all users answered "No." Participants referred to experience as "cheating" because they turned the indicators from red to green but didn't know what it meant or why it mattered.
- 20. Logic: Data driven appeals to reason Briselli (2013) suggests that a reliance on appeals to reason is not always effective because "public understanding and attitudes do not develop solely in response to objective reasoning" (pg. 3)
- 21. Deficit: Top-down Singular Audience B Scientist ONE Message Audience A Audience C In fact, effective science communication is affected by the context and requires engagement with different audiences in different places at different times, taking account of what they want to know and already know, understand, and believe. (NASEM, 2017, pg. 3)
- 23. Transactional: ScientistsCitizens “The local knowledge of ordinary citizens and the abstract knowledge of technical experts interact synergistically to provide more complete analyses and more effective decisions” (Kinsella 89)
- 25. A mindful visitor… “Actively processes new information, creates new categories for information, and thinks about new ways to behave. Mindfulness is associated with more learning, better decision making, increased self-esteem, and feelings of control and enjoyment.” (Moscardo, 1999, p. 25)
- 26. Mindfulness model… Giovanni Moscado, 1999
- 27. Being mindful of these models and other challenges of working with scientists will lead to more mindful users
- 29. Challenge 1: Mindless about users • No training • No incentive • UX doesn’t advance science • Flawed process
- 30. UX Design Process Where scientists begin Wrap in communication techniques Deliver
- 31. Challenge 2: Premature fixation on mode of delivery • Well-established data and model • Academic articles already written • Resistant to change
- 32. Challenge 3: Privilege accuracy and complexity • Complexity over audience • Credibility at stake
- 33. Challenge 4: Mindless about funding • No need to include UX • Tarnished credibility • Unfamiliar with UX language
- 36. The stakes are different for science. Advocate for the user even more than on commercial projects.
- 37. Push back hard against data and complexity as the only way forward
- 38. Own your expertise. Present user data (from other projects) and use it early and often as a wake up call
- 39. Show UX as the science that it is.
- 40. Interview users to connect to their personal experiences and to tell a good story.
- 41. To promote mindfulness, UX professionals must help scientists consider audience’s values, assumptions, experiences, and perspectives
Editor's Notes
- Improved color and font, added concrete text, added action verbs, added video narrative scenario and instructions.
- UX specialists can rely heavily on the results of well-structured user testing to prove to even the most skeptical executives that changes need to be made to a system or interface. However, unlike a commercial product that typically relies on satisfied customers to make money, scientists typically have no incentive to make money from users, and thus no serious incentive to make their systems more usable. With regard to science, a user not being able to understand information is more easily seen as their own fault, and UX specialists should not expect scientists to have as much empathy for users as they should.
- Scientific research is often complex in nature, requiring significant background knowledge of methods, techniques, and familiarity with past research, and its results may only be understood by other researchers. Scientific research is typically disseminated to other scientists or specialists in the form of scholarly publications and presentations that are written at a more technical level than would be understood by lay audiences. Once findings have been disseminated in scholarly form; however, scientists may have difficulty translating their findings in a way that connects to a different audience altogether. They may engage in what--in design fields--is called premature fixation, where a scientist becomes resistant to change as the design--or in the case their finding and conclusions--take on a high level of complexity or detail. (Robertson, Walther, and Radcliffe, 2007).
- However, nowhere in the grant did the scientists suggest that they needed money for the design, user testing, or improvement of the system. All of this development work seemed to be taken for granted, perhaps because the system already existed in one form (the expert form), so translating it to another form (the classroom form or the museum form) was assumed to not require that much effort. It may have also been the case that the scientists felt that if they had included such funding requests in their proposal, they would be suggesting that their system wasn't perfect, and this would have compromised their ethos as scientists. If the system was seen as needing improvement as it was being translated into the classroom version, perhaps the scientists assumed they would not be awarded any funding at all. Or perhaps the scientists simply did not know the language to use to ask for and justify design and UX funding because they had never had to request such funding in the past.