Is the user stupid?

It's the user, stupid

User-Centered Design & Prototyping

Is the user stupid?

It's the user, stupid

User-Centered Design & Prototyping

Phases of UCD

Redesign the reading experience

Empathize

Interview 1

• What, why, how, where
• Pre-/post-experience

Empathize

Interview 2

• Emotional
• Surprising
• Interesting

Analyze

Data immersion

• Common themes
• Surprises
• Esssence

Needs vs Solutions

• Jane needs a car (bad)
• Jane needs a way to get around quickly (good)
• Jane needs to be at her son's birthday party (better)
• Jane wants to build a loving relationship with her son (great insight, but can be more focused)

Synthesize

Problem definition

Ideate

Sketch crazy ideas

Feedback

Share ideas

• Don't sell ideas
• Learn, not validate
• Pay attention to reactions

Iterate

Reflect & generate a solution

• Modify existing idea, or
• Combine aspects of different ideas, or
• Something new

Prototype

Build

• Interactive
• 3D
• Can be experienced

Prototype

Forms

• 3D models
• Paper prototype
• Storyboard
• Role-playing
• Wizard of Oz

Feedback

Experience prototype

• Don't sell prototype
• Assume what you built was wrong
• Pay attention to reactions

Feedback

Demo

Reflect

What's different

• Engaging in a real person
• Unfinished work

Why UCD

To satisfy the cat

The User

Users

Understand

• Who are the users?
• What is important to them?
• What is the baseline?

How to Understand

• Have beginner's mindset
• Select users to engage
• Immerse, imitate
• Go beyond what people say

Create

• Analyze
• Synthesize
• Ideate
• Prototype
• Test
• Iterate

Deliver

• Evaluate
  • Desirable
  • Feasible
  • Viable
• Deploy
• Monitor
• Iterate

Prototyping

Ideas -> World

Prototyping

Goals

• Understand
• Explore
• Inspire
• Communicate
• Validate

Prototyping

Benefits

• Fail fast and cheap
• Divide and conquer different aspects
• Resolve ambiguities
• Engage stakeholders

Prototyping

Plan

• Goals and questions
• Scope: what to focus or not worry about
• Fidelity: low vs high detail
• Form: materials, environment
• Hypothesis of behaviour

Prototyping

Mindset

• Build to think
• Don't commit too early
• Create something to react to, not just a scaled version
• Let users experience more than one prototype
• Iterate*

*Iteration is an indicator of design success and engineering experience. [Adams, R. 2002. Understanding design iteration. In Proceedings of Common Ground International Conference, London, Design Research Society.]

Prototyping

Sharing

• Don't overexplain
• Don't correct
• Suitable context
• Get users to think aloud
• Get help to record observations

Prototyping

Analysis

• Patterns
• Grouping of themes
• Tensions, surprises
• Visualizations

From UCD to HCD

Human-centered design considers other humans

• Clients
• Distribution
• Partners...

Learn more: IDEO HCD Toolkit, dschool Design Thinking Bootcamp

UCD and Innovation

The Landscape

UCD and Innovation

Designer as facilitator

• Coaxing revolutionary ideas can be very hard
• Variable abilities in ideating and imagining
• Humans don't mean what they say, don't know what they need, are unaware of what they believe in
• Experts may be needed to envision radical tech

What can I do?

• Observe user testing sessions
• Find out how your work relates to real users
• Less hunch- and lemming-driven, more data-driven
• Fight for time to experiment
• For ****'s sake, iterate

Takeaways

Design is not about pretty things

Takeaways

Design is not about sleek and cool products

Takeaways

Design is a messy process in the journey to a solution

Takeaways

Get out of the office

Because your users are not there

Credits

Images (in order of appearance)

• liz west, "Manuscript", https://www.flickr.com/photos/calliope/306564541, CC Attribution 2.0, with modifications to lighten image;
• Roland O'Daniel, "blueberry's storyboard 2", https://www.flickr.com/photos/rlodan01/5321531740, CC Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0, with modifications to lighten image;
• Pixabay, https://pixabay.com/en/man-user-profile-person-icon-42934/, CC0 Public Domain;
• Luc Legay, "My Social network", https://www.flickr.com/photos/luc/1824234195, CC Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0, with modifications to darken image;
• Pieter Kuiper, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lightblue_empty_grid.svg, Public Domain;
• IDEO, Human Centered Design Toolkit 2nd Edition, Page 135, CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0;
• Pixabay, https://pixabay.com/en/flowers-floral-design-flora-color-98164/, CC0 Public Domain;
• Nest, "Nest Learning Thermostat showing Celsius", https://www.flickr.com/photos/nest/6286566200, CC Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0;
• Luise von Mecklenburg-Strelitz, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Luise_Kritzelzeichnung.jpg, Public Domain;
• Phil Whitehouse, "New office", https://www.flickr.com/photos/philliecasablanca/3344142642, CC Attribution 2.0;
• Pixabay, https://pixabay.com/en/japan-tokyo-shibuya-japanese-217882/, CC0 Public Domain;

Worksheet from d.school, CC Attribution-NonCommercial, with modifications to challenge and timings.