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
- 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?
- Pursuance is a project management and social networking tool for activists
- 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
- How many respondents to get?
- 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
- An alternative to personas is a community profile
- 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
- witness.org
- [okthanks.com resources](https://okthanks.com/resources/)
- Firefox Personas
- [Morethancode.cc Morethancode.cc] : Practitioners reimagine the landscape of technology for justice and equity
- Creative Commons Portraits (helpful for personas) [1] [2] [3], userstock.io
- consentful technology - designjustice.org