User research

Introductions

• Tiffany, OK Thanks
  • Works to understand the communities being served
  • When we reach out to communities solutions are sustainable
  • Works globally- Latin America, Africa, etc.
  • Working alongside a development team
• Clayton, Agaric
  • Doing user research for Drutopia and oftentimes on client projects for Agaric.
• Ben, SudoMesh, EFF
  • Packaging up tools for organizations
  • Works to resolve challenges of making esoteric technology usable
• Mark, Impact Justice
  • Uses participatory research methodologies - training youth on conducting their own research
  • Wants to know best ways to solicit feedback in the case management tool being built
• Maria José, Sulá Basú
  • Costa Rica
  • Stengthens local development and ownership of tech
  • Building a digital platform, wants it to be relevant to communities
• Georgia
  • Works to keep youth out of jail
  • Collecting data about cases, make it as easy to do as possible
  • Creating an online toolkit on how to start restorative diversion programs
• Suzi 350.org
  • Builds and maintains in-house tools, conducting user research as it's being built
  • How to phrase things in less technical, more meaningful ways?
  • How to solicit end user input?
• Claire, Pursuance
  • Pursuance is a project management and social networking tool for activists
    • Have begun creating personas
    • How much traditional UX practices in corporate tech can be applied, where do they need to be rethought?
• Peterson
  • Haiti, non-profit & side project
  • App to make homes more accessible
  • Doing interviews, but questions are still an issue
• Danny, [colab.coop Colab]
  • Leads user research in tech coop
  • Background in economic sociology

Methodologies

• Questions
  • Get as specific as possible
  • Use multiple choice to solicit structured feedback and make it easier to answer
  • use emojis as answer
• Surveys
  • How many respondents to get?
    • Varies, law of diminishing returns comes in at a certain point, ~50
• Interviews
• Usability Studies/Testing
• Personas/Community Profiles/Scenarios
  • An alternative to personas is a community profile
    • Relevant demographics/sociographics
    • Short stories/quotes
    • Challenges and trends
  • Example Community Profile: Journalists
    • Syria
    • Working for human rights defenders
• Focus Groups
• Customer development
• Prototyping
• Project Brief
  • Opportunity (dreamy)
  • Use Case (which people, where, doing what)
  • Design Guidelines (characteristics)
  • Performance metrics (how do we know it's successful)
  • What makes this product unique, what is its essence? Come up with 3-4 principles and stick to them.
• Convergence workshop - get a group of people together to review a flow chart

• Private sector interests in user research and user experience design
  • Interested in stable communities
  • Marginalized and edge cases are ignored
• People have to adapt to use the tool in the way it's designed

Question to ponder - How does focusing on the most subjugated groups affect the way we use these research methodologies?

Resources

• internews.org
  • Mapping Information Ecosystems to Support Resilience Frameworks
• witness.org
• OkThanks Resources
• Firefox Personas
• [Morethancode.cc Morethancode.cc] : Practitioners reimagine the landscape of technology for justice and equity
  • Interview Scripts
• Creative Commons Portraits (helpful for personas) [1] [2] [3], userstock.io
• consentful technology - designjustice.org