I’ve noticed a trend in user interfaces i’ve reviewed recently that designers are moving away from the use of object > action towards using action > object.
For instance, someone told me that the new St George online banking asks you to choose what you want to do first then choose the bank account you want to do it to. I’m not convinced that this is the best way to organise sites. A case in point I was recently asked to integrate an action > object “knowledge management framework” into an information based site.
This request was difficult to cater for because what the framework asked for was that users come to the site with a problem in mind, but after choosing thier problem category they then had to define what process the problem belonged to. This seems sensible from a high level perspective, but what if you want to explore multiple problem categories across the same process? Well then you have to go back to the top of the tree and navigate from the new problem down through the process again.
The same with the new St George banking system, evidently if you want to make more than one payment from an account (e.g. paying your monthly bills) you choose pay bill and have to navigate which account to pay from again and again.
Damian suggests that this sort of logic is due to the use of user scenarios and not a lot of thinking on behalf of designers, I’m wondering if it is the emergence of a new interaction tradition.

Following on from the last topic, I wanted to talk about the role of a design researcher as an interpreter of customer needs.

While this is probably just a silly semantic argument I think it’s important to regard the process of transformation of our data and models into something that the company (our clients) can understand, as a process of interpretation. Interpreters interpret from gestures and verbal language (translators translate from documentary sources).

When we take the information, analyse it, and then interpret or transform it into something that makes sense to the business. We are effectively becoming the bridge between the customer and the business. This is one of the most valuable roles the design researcher plays. Effectively communicating the rich textured nuances of people’s real lives and their needs and wants is a tricky task.

Businesses on a whole like to see simplified models of behaviour, predictive models, the high level pictures about people.

Our research work tends to work at lower levels and interpreting up from empirical data through our theoretical filters we slowly abstract our learning’s so they are palatable for consumption in short five minute briefing presentations etc.

This process is both creative, inherently connectionist, by drawing on background knowledge and theory the creation of models and generalised rules of behaviour seem to emerge from the data.

The tricky balance is to try and ensure that the abstracted models of behaviour still contain the nuances of the individuals you have been researching. We use techniques such a personas, profiles, concept mapping, video presentations, photos, and diary excerpts to try and humanise the information as much as possible. But sometimes it just doesn’t feel as though we are doing justice to the depth of information we gather.

It would be interesting to know how other people seek to humanise their interpretation of data that comes out of their research.

P.S. You now don’t have to log in to make comments, but I am moderating so they may take a while to appear. It would be great to hear some opinions (there aren’t many readers so I expect not too many comments).

So I went to EPIC 2006 and I must say it was wonderful to be in a room with over 300 highly educated intelligent enthusiastic people. A couple of quick observations:

• Despite being used in business contexts for over 20 years it appears that “ethnography” is coming of age in business.
• This is a good thing.
• The proponents of ethnographic inquiry are divided on who should be allowed to “do ethnography”, with an interesting undercurrent of “the Other” after the keynote speaker talked about “pseudo-ethnographers”.
• This is a bad thing.

It reminds me of the whole situation of when you needed a PhD to run a focus group. My perspective is that ethnographic inquiry is one of a suite of tools from a range of disciplines that we can use to gather information from real people.

While listening to some of the debates and discussions rising and falling about me I drew this little diagram which represents what I see ethnography, ethnographic process or design research is at a tactical level. It’s a simple model and one that everyone understands and agrees with. As someone at the conference said, “it’s the things we come up with that seem obvious but remain unobserved that are often the most valuable insights we can bring”.

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Just a quick note to let everyone know i’m going to be travelling overseas for the next few weeks so the site is unlikely to get its usual Tuesday updates.
However, as i’m attending www.epic2006.com I should have some good information to share when I get back.

Making sense of a collection of information that comes out of your research can be a pretty tough slog sometimes. One of the more effective tools for organising concepts and terminology from informants is the process of concept mapping (or information mapping).

This is a relatively simple tool for organising and viewing how your informants see the world. It allows you to examine the complex relationships between your data, and to draw out important nodal points that are often worthy of more investigation.

Concept mapping starts with the process of breaking your data into discrete chunks. To do this, find the common objects and concepts referenced in discussions and interviews and write them on post-it notes (or use the cmap software –free but uses java).

Then using your whiteboard or another flat surface that you can draw on (windows work well) start drawing links between the different concepts. Each of the lines you draw should be labelled outlining how the first object links to the next.

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I am providing a PDF (2.4M) copy of the presentation and some refined presentation notes for the WebDirections presentation I gave last week.

The presentation provides a brief overview of Corporate Ethnography and how it can be used as a tool for innovation with particular reference to Web Design.

It cites a case study for the Australian FOX Sports website and explains how we went through the process of using ethnographic information to help inform and innovate the design of the site.

Thanks for all of those who attended, if anyone has any follow up questions i’m happy to chat about anything. I hope this version of the presenation helps some of you who missed a grreat night.

For anyone wanting to get some more information on corporate ethnography I’d recommend the following books as a good starting point:

Mariampolski, Hy “Ethnography for Marketers” 2006, Sage Publications
This book provides a good overview of typical corporate ethnographic approaches, with an emphasis on Rapid Assessment Processes and is easy to understand.

Spradley, James “The ethnographic interview” 1979, Wadswoth
This is a classic text on ethnographic interviewing techniques

Emerson,R, Fretz, R, Shaw,L “Writing ethnographic fieldnotes” 1995, Chicago Guides
A slightly long winded guide on how to write, interpret and create knowledge through your field notes and scribbling

Kellehear, A “The unobtrusive researcher”, 1993, Allen and Unwin
A good Aussie overview of how to do effective observational research.

More esoteric (theory bound) books

Pelto, P, Pelto, G “Anthropological research, the structure of inquiry” 1978, Cambridge university press

LeCompte, M, Schensul, J “Designing and conducting ethnographic research”, 1999, Altamira Press

In a shameless plug i’m just letting everyone know i’m going to be presenting a little talk in the lead up to the webdirections conference this year.

If you want to come along and have a chat to me, find out what i’ve been up to or how I see corporate ethnography fitting with web design and customer experience please feel free to come along.
http://www.webdirections.org/2006/08/08/aug-31-event/

I believe there is free finger food too!

Details
What: Web Directions presents Emily Boyd of RTM and Stephen Cox of Intuity
When: 6.00pm for 6.30pm Thursday August 31 2006
Where: Hotel CBD, Jam Bar, Level 4, 52 King Street, Sydney
Cost: Free, but please RSVP info@webdirections.org

Another method for capturing emotional associations is the use of a pick a picture, or comic conversations to elicit personal recollections and to stimulate discussion.

With a pick a picture technique you create a set of pictures that are indirectly related to emotions that you are interested in learning about. (see CCS a great Australian company who have been using this sort of technique for years)

By asking the participant to link a concept such as “security” to a picture (say a piggy bank) you can start to discuss and access the meanings and emotions tied up with the concept. By using, in this case, visual metaphors you can get people to tell stories about what it is they are feeling and why they feel a certain way about a topic. By getting people to pick more than one picture to explain a concept you can then explore the differences between the pictures.

E.g. if they pick a piggy bank and a security guard to represent “security”, you would ask them how these two pictures were similar or different.

In the case above you might find that there are two different ideas around security, “physical security” and “personal financial security”. Depending on what you were studying these findings might lead to more discussion on how people want to feel when they visit a bank etc.

Another way of using a visual tool to gain an understanding of situations is to use a comic conversation. Usually, we take a photograph with two or more people in it and paste comic thought bubbles or speech bubbles over the peoples heads. We then get informants to relate to us what they think the people are saying or discussing.

Using this technique we can access informants understanding or perception of what they feel at different points in a process.

For example when researching work for a land developer we provided informants with a series of comic conversations from the initial meeting with a real estate agent, through to meeting with builders and finally the handing over of the keys.

At each of the points the actors in the images were thinking or saying different things, as we explored each of the images with informants we found that they used the images to relate back to their emotions.

For example: when the real-estate agent is handing over the keys to them

“she is thinking, I’m so happy for them, they have got the home they dreamed of and I helped them get it.”

“She is also a little relieved that she is done with us because we were so demanding of her in regards to getting everything perfect.”

As you can see from the emphasised words the sorts of information derived from this sort of exercise directly tap into how people feel and how they want to feel about situations, as well as offering insights into features that might help improve the customers experience.

I have often talked about the emotional needs of customers as being important – but what do I mean by emotional needs and how do we go about capturing them?

“what are your emotional needs for product X?” is not your typical focus group question (or perhaps it is),but it isn’t likely to ever net you any usable or useful results.

Getting to understand what the emotional impacts of a product or service are, draws on a range of skills from psychology, sociology, anthropology and a range of different interviewing techniques and probes to understand the emotional relationship a customer has with your company or brand.

There are a range of interesting different dimensions to the emotional relationship that can be investigated with customers. In the next few entries I’m going to be outlining these dimensions and some of the methods we use at intuity to elicit this sort of information from customers.

The first emotional relationship we can look at is “emotional associations”. When investigating emotional associations you are attempting to uncover how a person feels about a particular brand or experience.

One effective means of getting to this sort of information is Metaphor and story telling.
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