User research

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Revision as of 19:23, 27 November 2018 by Clayton (talk | contribs) (→‎Resources)
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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?
  • 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