“User” is one of the most emblematic HCI concepts.

It is a powerful concept, so much that it has transcended its meaning, and it has a mythological or magical component.

For example, in a project meeting, someone can be argued “this interface element going to misunderstand by the users” and this may generate a religious debate. But this need not be so.

“User” in the abstract, has the same possibilities be that Jackalope.

But it is normal to find “User” in almost all fields of HCI.

“User” by itself and abstract mode does not add much, except the magic function to activate religious debates.

Because information comes from “user research“.
Losing sight of this aspect makes the occasion we find ourselves in situations in which project decisions are made without sufficient data or illogical mode.

The powerful card to win this game is not the “user” is the “User Research“.

Introduction.

Ethnography is the descriptive study of the habits and traditions of the people, providing the lifestyle of a human group in a specific period and context. It is based on the use of qualitative methodology, although in practice the main techniques include participant observation and interviews.

As a discipline, is part of anthropology theory.

This may seem to distant to interaction design but it is only a matter of semantics. If you replace “people” by “users” it seems reasonable to include ethnography in the methodological arsenal of interaction design

How to conduct ethnographic research.

To make a plan is to identify and fix ideas. It is to have had ideas.

Towards a new architecture, Le Corbusier

The user research is a process that gives greater strength to our design decisions. Helping to avoid wasting time arguing. You are doing science, not an exotic hobby or a detail within the project.
Ethnographic research is composed by a series of processes that can be shown in the following steps.

# 1 Steps before ethnographic analysis:

In this phase, you do preparations to conduct the investigation. If for example, your project involves the redesign of a web application, during the previous phase you should obtain information on the application functionality (eg what are the main features, if they are the same for all departments, etc.), use scenarios, (does everyone connect the same way, uses similar equipment, are there several ways to access the application, are there different scenarios?) the profile or profiles of the users (experience, percentage of use application in a day, most used features, can I combine profiles?), to know the history of the product (is it the company’s internal development or a development of third parties?. Are the users happy with the product?), to know the company culture and get the permissions. You must remember that people are working so you may find some difficulty in that regard. The High-tech firms may fail to fully understand the objectives of the field research, you should have plots ready.

# 2 Research:

At this stage you contact with the users and seek knowledge. You should set a timetable of interviews with different profiles. All this may sound very confusing for a technical manager, so one possible strategy is asking him/her to show you his/her routine. Another one could be asking the company to give you the training that is often applied to people who join the company. You can use various methods, such as an in-depth interview. This type of research is called Flexible Research because the parameters of research are not defined, a feature of ethnographic analysis

# 3 Analysis:

You already have a lot of information (in fact maybe too much), the transcripts of the interviews do not contribute in any data itself, and in your head it is increasingly clear what is wrong with the product. A good way to avoid researcher bias is encoding your data. For example, you can mapping of activities for the profiles, and contrast them with the project requirements and functional analysis.
If you can reduce the data to a process maps it will be much easier to align the objectives of the project for all stakeholders

# 4 Use your research:

How affects your data to the project? , How the data provide the certainty that the use of the product will be more successful in the future? How the company will do the managing change? The redesign improved dramatically affect into organization? We can take binding opinions on the desirability of defining according to a workflow process for all involved.

Conclusions.

Why do you do an ethnographic research? Because the main reason the projects fail is communication problems rather than development problems. Knowing the needs, desires and frustrations of those associated with the product may be useful for the success of your project.

Sometimes, the project development managers only have contact with those stakeholders, who speak on behalf of users, making decisions that have difficult consequences to quantify and predict.

Development teams can also take biased decisions based on their own choices and tastes. And this is reflected in the interface and affects the end user, generating anger and difficulty of use.

To avoid these situations you can make an ethnographic research

References.

IDEO method carts

A synthesis of ethnographic research

Some year ago, the people that worked developed an interface was called “interface designers”.

Years later this name was changed because it was
generalist for the new jobs, more specific. the name “Interface designer” included all people take part in interface from developer until graphic designer.

Arisen new names as:

• Interaction designers: people involved in the design of all the interactive aspects of a product, not just the graphic design of an interface.

• Usability engineers: people who focus on evaluating products, using usability methods and principles.

• Web designers: people who develop and create the visual design of websites such as layouts.

• Information architects: people who come up with ideas of how to plan and structure interactive products, especially websites.

• User-experience designers: people who do all the above but who may also carry out field studies to inform the design of products.

Sometime these names is used as synonyms, when it aren´t. This is a important problem for the profession, because:

Hinders the development of knowledge, penalizes salary range and it create professional profiles not specialist.

Summer arrives and with it a little free time. It is a good time in our recommended reading list for the holidays.

The first book is HERE COMES EVERYBODY (How Change Happens When People Come Together) by Clasy Shirky, about people and technology interact as both at the social level, as this affects relationships, the job and media. A lot of views is really useful.

The second book is STUMBLING ON HAPPINESS by Dan (iel) Gilbert a tour of how the human mind, emotions and decisions, with a very enjoyable and easy to read. Very interesting.

The third book is MODULAR WEB DESIGN by Nathan Curtis, if you think that something can be improved in the way of working your team, this is your reading. The book is about how to perform prototyping and documentation in an efficient manner within a development team. The typical book that I always think that we need to write.

Enjoy your summer time and your readings.

The design technique of persona is useful in the design of successful products. This tool lets you align the needs and expectations of the product of all those involved in development. They are involved both the coreteam of product, also stakeholders and hippos. In addition to using characters prevents deviations of the goals of product design.

Because, the persona´s technical should be mandatory in all development.
Although, sometimes you can find difficulties to personas be accepted.

The difficulties may come from the nature of the persona because they are abstractions, although based on real data, but do not represent an real users with name and a surname, but the persona have it. (For more information about the technique see Persona y scenarios. A methodology introduction (SP))

This feature makes that sometimes arise opinions about the appropriateness of the use of persona, and there are doubts about its pragmatism over the use of real users, which may seem more logical in principle, but as we shall see below that it is less efficient .

The personas are part of the tactic of development, while potential customers are a strategic element of the product.

The main idea is that the persona do not represent a particular user as such, but are composed of many of the personas of potential users. To these characteristics we call “variables”.
The personas are abstractions, but are based on data.
Do not you have to invent, there is a preliminary analysis and investigation. Otherwise you will not do.

We should not confuse “everybody can use it” in terms of usability with “everybody want use it” in marketing terms. Sometimes the discussions about the appropriateness of the use of personas is thinking about how to influence marketing. And that is also wrong.

There may be a relationship between personas and real users, but is not a direct relationship between personas and users or customers, but the personas are related by the users through the product variables.

A persona is composed of variables, a more variable´s personas it reasonable to assume that there will be a smaller number of real users that fit the character. This is one of the reasons why the characters are used. Greatly simplify the process by allowing us to work with multiple variables at once. It also keeps the user selection and recruitment, which can be extremely complex for some variables.

This relationship is representative of one of the factors that you can not establish a direct relationship. Since more detailed level of the least number of personas that fit real people in them.
This also explains why the convenience of designing the product for the principal persona.
Could almost say that when a persona is well developed, should not allow us to identify a specific individual, but should remind us of many traits.

Therefore one might think that knowing the variables, we could save the job of developing personas. But on the design variables in a ungroup the persona were difficult to establish use cases, which diminishes the efficiency process. The human we are better able to establish empathic relationships when we reach the place of another “person” (though it is imaginary) that when we do it directly from the variables.

Let’s see this implemented in a classic example of characters taken from the Paper,Personas, Participatory Design and Product Development:An Infrastructure for Engagement of Grudin and Pruitt.

This paper defines a persona with a high degree of detail. For example “Patrick” is defined in 21 different variables, if the possibility of a potential user has an attribute that is either is 50%, about 21 variables as a result gives us a 0.000047% of real people who fit as Patrick has defined, which for a population like the U.S. at 2009 is 146 real people.

This is calculated as follows:

(0.5) ^21 *100%= 0.000047%

(306,711,000*0.000047)/100= 146

Now, if we define to allow team Patrick and establish a relationship with him that the product is designed with “Patrick in the mind” design decisions will be more constant and consistent throughout the process, that if link to a list of variables that can be interpreted differently by different teams of agents.
It also seems easier and cheaper to find people that use “user type” meeting with the desired characteristics, and implications in the design process.

Conclusion

• The personas are a design tool that allows the goals of the product remain constant, making products more consistent. This is the purpose of the technique, and you should not forgotten .
• You can not expect to link users with the personas in a linear fashion, why not have the same kind, the comparisons should be set on variables where necessary. Here is where I believe that this error of Chapman and Milham, who in his paper “The Personas´ New Clothes:Methodological and Practical Arguments against a Popular Method” with an argument based on the calculations outlined above indicate that the technique is wrong because personas can not connect with real users.
• And if you replace the potential users (customers) by characters is a mistake, that the target will see significantly reduced to dangerous levels and lack of business sense.
• Recently the technique has been tested on the personas design of a product that reduces discovering the shortcomings identified through usability heuristic analysis between 2 and 4 times less when using the technique of characters.

References:

• WAI Site UCD User Personas
• Nice Research on Persona Effectiveness
• Personas template in Visio

The technique of personas, identifying the reasons for use, expectations and success of a design. It is a very useful tool, that helps us think needs a single person and not a group, although the character represents a whole is significant and needs, making products more efficient.
The use of “personas” is included in the methodology of user-centred design (UCD), and if you are using in your designs help define a more efficient structure, functionality and navigation. It will also be useful to discuss aspects of design and product promotion.

The technique of “persons” works better if integrated into a research strategy, as an ethnographic analysis, a focus group or market research, as this technique is not a single method. So before you start make sure you have enough information to define your “personas”.

And if you want to start using it already, here you can download this template for personas. (341kb zip).

The template is in Visio format and consists of a template for the document stencil of the elements and a collection of photos 50’sy some style today, all editable to suit your needs. And the legendary macro copy page, so your job easier.

Click on the image for enlarge.

References:

• Introduction to the methodology of personas