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Daniel's blog
Summary
In this paper the author gives a new idea about the prototype design in comparison to other more commonly used methods for usability testing. The author here focuses on the making the right design instead of making the design right. In usability testing (UT) the participants usually generate more reactive comments and criticisms that reflective design suggestions or redesign proposals. The author here introduces a new technique called the user sketching.
The reflective methodology of the user sketching gives the idea of users sketching the design of the system after they are given ideas on the possible designs of the system. Here the author conducts the experiment by taking four groups of 12 people each group is shown with different prototypes of a house climate control system. There were three types of prototypes. 1) Circular prototype. 2) Tabular prototype. 3) Linear prototype. The last group is shown all three prototypes. When verbally asked for user feedback on the design the participants gave more comments than suggestions for all prototypes. The participants were then asked to draw the design of in their view would be the ideal interface of the system. A ‘Quick and Dirty’ analysis showed that the user designs were stereotyped to the designs they were showed earlier, but the important thing was that some users even came up with the new ideas which were not part of the prototypes they were shown earlier.
The author here classifies his subjects into three categories. 1) The Quiet Sketcher: The participant who highly rated the prototype and when asked about the change suggestions he said ‘No’ immediately. When asked to sketch to draw, he drew a design which included totally new features. 2) The Passive Sketcher: She also highly rated the prototype but when asked for changes couldn’t figure out what she would change. When asked to draw she discovered a totally new solution for representing intervals in the system. 3) The Overly Excited Sketcher: She was really excited to contribute to the study but had confused and mixed suggestions for the system. When asked to draw she drew a totally different interface which even changed the shape of the device.
Here the author illustrated the benefits of engaging users in a sketching activity as an extension to the conventional usability testing. The act of sketching proved to facilitate reflection and discovery better than the other methods used.
Discussion
The idea of the author here is good and does work out well because the participants are able convey to the designer the actual interface they are looking for. I think this method can work out well for the devices and systems which are existent today. The design features the participants gave in these experiments were not novel; instead they were taken from some other devices and artifacts around them.
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2 comments:
It's true that the reflective feedback given by the users were not necessarily novel ideas, but that's not always what you want as the designer/researcher. We really just want them to express what they actually feel, which they might not be able to do verbally (hence this paper). So users do just take elements from other areas, as you say, but if they're going to produce a novel idea, using sketch in such a manner is probably one of the better ways to extract that from them.
i accept with daniel. The exercise of user study and feedback would be more useful when users have prior experience in/usage of the type of products we are conducting study on.
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