Personas

Articles read for today:

"Child-Personas: Fact or Fiction?" by Alissa N. Antle and
"Personas: From Theory to Practices" by Chang, Lim, & Stolterman

The Origin of Personas

Alan Cooper "The Inmates are Running the Asylum"

• Personal Goal: "Develop a precise description of our user and what he wishes to accomplish"
• User is a resource, but won't know solutions!
• 'Make up pretend users and design for them"
• Failure = design for broad, abstract groups
• Success = design for a single (archetype) user

Personas: Definition

• Description of a specific, fictitious person
• Written in the form of a narrative
• Represents gathered info about a group of users with common characteristics (single users too quirky!)
• Usually given both a name and a face
• May contain personal information
• Family members, friends, occupations, possessions
• Makes the persona more 'real'
• Focuses on the goals, needs, and frustration of the persona when using the product being designed
• 3 to 7 personas usually created for a project
• Some advocate using one primary persona

Personas: Key Considerations

• "Pretend" but not "made up"
• Based on data with users
• interviews
• Ideally completed face to face
  
• Observations
• try to do this in the environment where program will be used
• ask for comments from users - "What frustrated you?"
  
• Presented as a story about a believable person
• Project team should refer to the persona by name
• Stop talking about abstract 'users'!
• Focused on enabling effective design decisions
• Should explicitly define the needs, goals, and frustrations of the persona
• Designers should be able to infer what features are needed and how they should be designed

Example:

James is 52 years old and works as a mechanic with an organization offering road service to customers when their car breaks down. He has worked in the job for the past 12 years and knows it well. Many of the younger mechanics ask James for advice when they meet up in the depot as he always knows the answer to tricky mechanical problems. James likes sharing his knowledge with the younger guys, as it makes him feel a valued part of the team. James works rolling day and night shifts and spends his shifts attending breakdowns and lockouts (when customers lock their keys in the car). About 20% of the jobs he attends are complex and he occasionally needs to refer to his standard issue manuals. James tries to avoid using the manuals in front of customers as he thinks it gives the impression he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

James has seen many changes over the years with the company and has tried his best to move with the times. James has been told that his van will soon be equipped with a new computer system that will allow him to access job information and records, in addition to browsing the company’s website. He wonders if he will be able to find out what’s going on in the company more easily, especially as customers’ seem to know more about the latest company news than he does when he turns up at a job. This can be embarrassing and has been a source of frustration for James throughout his time with the company. James wonders if he will be able to cope with the new computer system. He doesn’t mind asking his grandchildren for help when he wants to send an email to his brother overseas, but asking the guys at work for help is another story.

What are personas good for?

• Assisting communication
• Easier to talk about 'James' and his needs
• User is too abstract -> doesn't drive decisions
• Informs design decisions
• What does james need to do with the new system?
• How do you meet James' goals?
• How do you resolve James' frustrations?

If goals nor frustration is resolved, James will be angry and resentful and productivity will decrease.

• Supports design evaluation
• Where will you trip up James?
• Will he know what to do? How to interact with the system?
• Will he even use the system?

Personas: Drawbacks?

• Bad personas won't help you and can be misleading
  
• Some consider them too 'artsy' (developers tend to fight against it)
  
• User interviews can be costly
• Recruiting users
• Conducting interviews
• Transcribing protocols
• Time to analyze data, extract themes
• Some estimates: $47,000 for commercial apps

Creating Personas

• Interview potential users. Take good notes
• Identify key observations ("factoids")
• 10-12 per interviewee is typical
• Sort individuals into groups based on observations
• Expert vs novice users
• motivational vs apathetic
• like technology vs. uncomfortable with it
  
• Cluster key observations from multiple interviewees
• Look for patterns/themes
• what are their common needs
• do they have common lifestyle
• given the use of my system, key themes should relate to what the use of my system is
• (if visual learners doesn't apply to your system, that shouldn't be a commonality)
  
• Typically, 3-4 characteristics from each person are relevant to the group

Interview Data

• Look for common goals
• Look for common frustrations
• Look for common perspectives, approaches
• Technophile vs. Technophobe?

Observational Data

• How do users interact with existing technology?
• Do they take shortcuts?
• Frustrations? How quickly do they opt-out?
• Do they know how they use things? (people think they know and they really don't)

HCI Exercise #2 - Personas

• Due next week (Feb. 4)
• May work in teams
• May use Capstone project as application
• this is encouraged if it can work

Steps for Assignment/Exercise:

• Identify application/website
• Create & conduct 2+ interviews
• Analyze interviews
• Create persona
  

June 21, 2009

Class Discussion "Defining Usability and Models of Usability" Leventhal & Barnes

1. (Jennifer Hogle) According to Smith and Ragan (2005), the goal of instructional design is to create instruction that is "effective", "efficient", and "appealing". On page 27 of the Leventhal & Barnes chapter, usability is defined as, "the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use." What comparisons can be made between the usability and instructional design? How can understanding the process of instructional design help us in understanding usability?

o Usability can be incorporated with the ID process; they go hand in hand. You can design with usability in mind

o If you do bad instructional design, it’s not usable. If you do bad usability, you won’t have a good ID. If you create a ‘good’ ID, or a ‘good’ usability, then they will work hand in hand.

o Instructional Design is the umbrella for usability.

o Cognitive Load: germain (the difficulty that is related to the content); extraneous (stuff that isn’t related to the actual task or learning, but is required to get through to get to the task).

o Instructional design can help you think through what types of usability you will use and which onces you want to violate.

o Sometimes in Ed Tech you violate usability principles for good reasons.

2. (Joanna Gibb) Nielsen & Shackrel are similiar in that their definition of 'usability' is a sytem; is valid or usable if it is found useful. How many systems are usable, easy to learn, but have no use once they have been learned? How useful will the final project be once it's completed? Easy to access only, or worthwhile and applied once it's been presented?

o What is the purpose? It doesn’t matter how fabulous the program is, if there isn’t a purpose, it will remain to be unused

o Example of Portal: there is no user need, so no task match, which is violation of usability principles

o Participatory design – recruit a representative sample, design and prototype. This is done from the ground up. The person is participating in the design process.

o Ethnographic design – analyze what user would do and then create it. Designer will go observe social interaction amongst users, contexts of use, typical problems, what really goes on when this is used? Use gathered data to extract a design. It’s like studying users in their natural environment.

o Avoid situations in which a program lacks purpose. Do research prior to creating to ensure the need.

o Apple products and Google applications are example of features demonstrating having researched usability.

Toward a Multidisciplinary Science of Human-Computer Interaction - John M. Carroll

1. (Camille Cole) The very last sentence in this chapter says, "No single design can possible fit every situation." So why is it important to follow a model of usability?

o They are useful as a guideline; if questions are asked to begin with, it would save a lot of time in revamping.

THE GOLDEN RULE FOR HCI:
You are NOT your user! The more you learn, the more you know. Once you know something, you are no longer your user so it's very important to involve your users.


Usability for Ed Tech

• Not just whether system is used (cf., Eason)
• System Functions should include
• Outcome of use(!)
  
• are you getting something out of the use

• Task Characteristics should include
• Desirable difficulty

• Task match will need to include relevance to mental models/cognitive processes

Usability Engineering

• Works best early in design/development
• Before developing you HAVE to know what the task and process is!
  
• Good interface won’t solve all your problems
• better menus and cool graphics won't solve task matching
  
• HCI Usability Engineering builds on foundation of:
• Task
• User
• Context of use
  

Developing Useful Systems

• Slightly more than 30% of the code developed in application software development ever gets used as intended. 70% if it is used is icing on the cake (or if it's used as it's intended)
  
• Likely because developers do not understand what users need
  

–Hugh Beyer and Karen Holtzblatt, "Contextual Design: A Customer-Centric Approach to Systems Design," ACM Interactions, Sep+Oct, 1997, iv.5, p. 62.

Useful Systems Support Tasks

• Task ≠ User can use the system
• something the user can do that is specific
  
• Tasks:
• Specific
• Observable
• Will you know if you’ve successfully accomplished it? How will the user know it was successful?
  

• Reflects end-goal of a user session
• Relate to key aspects of system components
• What do you think are the key parts of the system?
• for email: who are you sending it to? What are you doing with the messages? the folders?
  
• What will be frequently used?
• for email: what is the most typical thing? send messages, manage messages
  

Airline Reservation via Web

www.southwest.com

Task:
Find a roundtrip flight for one person, from Salt Lake City, UT to Tampa Bay, FL, leaving Feb. 12 or 13 and returning Feb. 15 or 16, for under $300 (including tax).

• very specific, certain person is in mind, reflects an end goal, realistic task
  

Educational Digital Library

www.dlese.org

Task:
Find a QuickTime video animation appropriate for a middle school classroom that focuses on either the theory or mechanisms of plate tectonics.

• specific task, it's observable, reflects the goal of going to this website a lot, a pretty good task for either a test or a task analysis
  

What is a Task Analysis?

• Analysis of how a task is performed
• Detailed description of behaviors in interface

• Highly detailed
• Step-by-Step
• Procedural (ignore mental processes for now) step by step (what are the observable behavioral steps)

How is Task Analysis Useful?

• Specify problems/gaps in process
• Highlight unnecessary or inconsistent steps
• Specifies procedural aspects of key tasks
• Requires concrete analysis of user actions

Example:
Brushing Teeth: Task Analysis

•Pick up the tooth brush
•Wet the brush
•Take the cap off the toothpaste tube
•Put toothpaste on the brush
•Replace the toothpaste cap
•Put toothpaste back in drawer/cupboard
•Brush the outside of the bottom row of teeth (3 sec per tooth?)
•Brush the outside of the top row of teeth
•Brush the chewing surface of the top row of teeth
•Brush the chewing surface of the bottom row of teeth
•Brush the inside surface of the bottom row of teeth
•Brush the inside surface of the top row of teeth
•Brush tongue
•Spit
•Rinse the brush
•Replace the brush in the holder
•Locate drinking cup
•Grasp cup
•Fill cup with water
•Take a sip of water
•Swish water in mouth, rinsing teeth
•Spit
•Replace cup on counter
•Wipe mouth on sleeve or towel

A very detailed analysis, broken down to the absurd (think of when I wrote down the changing the tire scenario)

For next week:
•DUE:

• HCI Exercise: Task & Task Analysis Exercise
• choose an educational technolgy
• choose a task for it (the technology is up to me: a software or a website)
• It can be found under Assignments on WebCT
• write a task and then do a task analysis
• think about where it's difficult to not let the mental processes take over, just have it be procedural. Where do the mental processes need to take over, but it has to be procedural.
• should have educational relevance.
• such as a power point presentation?
  

Read:

• 2 articles on personas

Post:

• 2 questions per article on WebCT discussion area

Due by 12 noon on day of class

Capstone Class 1.15.09

Tonight is the first class for the Capstone project (Thursday). Possible book to purchase: Cognitive Effects of Multimedia Learning

Important things to remember and to know:

ARCS - Motivation Theory - John Keller

Attention

• Perceptual Arousal
• Inquiry Arousal
• Variability

Relevance

• Familiarity
• Goal Orientation
• Motive Matching

Confidence

• Expectancy for Success
• Challenge Setting
• Attribution Molding

Satisfaction

• Natural Consequences
• Positive Consequences
• Equity

The Nine Events of Instruction - Robert Gagne

1. Gain the attention of the learner/audience
2. Inform the learner of the objectives
3. Stimulate the learner's recall of prior learning
4. Present stimulus material
5. Provide guidance for the learner
6. Elicit performance by the learner with the material
7. Provide feedback to the learner on their performance
8. Assess the performance of the learner
9. Enhance learner's ability to retain their learning and to transfer it to other situations

Visual Design - C.R.A.P - Robin Williams

Contrast - The concept of keeping elements of a page which look visually similar apart. Likewise, keeping elements that appear different together. This is mainly to make it easy to view and to to help the visual attraction of the page.

Repetition - The idea of continuing and repeating certain visual elements of a page. The goal is add to the organizational strength and sense of unity in a site as a whole, as well as separate pages.

Alignment - "Nothing should be placed on the page arbitrarily". Every element needs to be aligned on a page for a reason, whether it is to guide the eyes in a certain direction, or give a good sophisticated look.

Proximity - The concept of keeping elements which relate to each other close to each other. This helps the organizational feel of a page and makes it easier to browse.

Notes (from Funaki):

Human Computer Interaction EdPs6440

Very First Class of Spring Semester (last semester of the program!)

This class the focus for the Capstone is: what type of methods used to develop the design, how the project is evaluated and what will I do with the feedback-it's the PROCESS of the design.
Objectives for class:

• Define human-computer interaction
• Define usability and its relation to HCI
• Identify important considerations for educational technology

I will become well-versed in HCI methods. There are several ways to apply this class to my capstone project.
-Will build a design and revise the interface designs
-Will know the stages for the various types of techniques.

Class will start with discussion from readings from the previous week. Will need to post two thoughtful discussions online for class before noon the day of class.


Course Work:
expected to be prepared, have read the assigned materials, and be ready to participate in classroom discussion, “hands-on” experiences, and peer collaboration to help you develop a deep understanding of human-computer interaction principles and methods. For assigned readings, you’ll be asked to post discussion questions on the class wiki. You must submit at least 2 good questions on each assigned reading for credit. You will practice HCI techniques in a series of exercises assigned in class, to be started in class and completed outside of class. These assigned exercises must be handed in at the beginning of the class in which they are due. As noted below, you may redo any assignment up to one week after it has been returned to you. You also will be allowed to drop one HCI exercise (e.g., 5 of the 6 exercises will count toward your grade).

Major Course Assignments:
-A workable plan about the HCI methods that you will be used in order to inform the design and the evaluation of your Capstone project

Final Project Report
This assignment will consist of a formal report about the design and the evaluation work that you completed for your Capstone project. You will be expected to demonstrate the impact of the HCI methods that you employed on the design and revision of your Capstone project. The content of this report will form the basis for your final presentation

Final Presentation
This assignment will be a 15 minute presentation (with an additional 5 minutes for questions) on the design and development of your Capstone project. Your presentation should communicate the HCI methods that you use, detailing their impact on the initial design of your project. You should also explain how you used HCI methods to evaluate your project and how your findings informed revisions to your project.

At the end of the course, you should be able to:
1. Identify cognitively-based techniques that can be used to analyze learners’ needs and processes when designing and evaluating instructional environments
2. Develop and test prototypes and mock-ups of user interface designs
3. Strategically deploy accepted methodologies in human-computer interaction to evaluate users’ experiences when interacting with educational technology

Questions for today's lecture:

What is human-computer interaction?

A discipline concerned with the design, evaluation, and implementation of interactive computing systems for human use and with the study of the major phenomena surrounding them (Hewett et al., 1992) (CHI is computer human interaction, but it's now called Human Computer Intereaction)

• Interaction with the system
• Experience-how the interaction is going; frustrating?
• Figuring out what human action needs to be imposed on program to produce desired results
• Goal for using the system; what's the intenet

The idea of human-computer interaction has evolved over time and is great, yet people and systems aren't always up with the evolving.

What is usability?

Usability is typically the goal human-computer interaction methods. (e.g, Leventhal& Barnes, 2008)

•Technology is usable if:
–Appropriate for the target users
–Allows users to accomplish their goals
•Usability ≠ User Friendly - argument in the field of does it mean the same thing. Usability would be a system that you get something out of; User Friendly could just be pretty but not get anything out of it

• Part of the whole HC interaction (the 'how did I get here?')
• Does it do what you want it to do?
• the user has mental models of the world around them and what they know; if the interface /structure matches the users goals, references, it's a lot easier to use (Blackboard, a pain, vs. Agilix, which has only two clicks)
• Motivation: huge part of education, but hard to measure. Within educational tech it's more important to anticipate WHAT will motivate students.
  

HCI & Educational Technology

• Usability not necessarily end-goal
• Goals may be educator’s (not student’s-student's just want to get through it quickly)
• Learning processes? - the student has no idea about but the educator wants to scaffold them and imbed into the technology
  
• Learning outcomes? - may or may not match the students objectives or current understandings
  

• Learner Characteristics Complicate Usability
• Prior Knowledge - difference between a 2nd grader and a high schooler (users vary in their level of knowledge)
  
• Personalized technology - automatically assess and fitting needs (like primal branding)
  

Desirable Difficulty

• Learning can be triggered by impasses (VanLehn1991; 1995)
• when the learner gets to a point of not understanding, the next learning event is the most powerful of the sequence as they've gotten to a point where they have to really make sense of what they have learned so far to get past that impasse. Do you figure out the content, do you udnerstand it in order to move on.

• The “Assistance Dilemma” (Koedinger& Aleven, 2007)
• Key problem for interactive educational technology.
• When to let students struggle, when to provide support
• when do I interfere and provide help to the student
  
• How much struggle is productive may be personal
• (at what level of frustration do I step in with different levels of help; mine and the students)
• KNOW MY USER AND KNOW MY EDUCATIONAL GOALS TO HELP SOLVE THIS PROBLEM
  

Prior Knowledge

• Expertise Reversal (Kalyugaet al., 2003)

• Depending on the expertise of the learner, what types of multi-media are optimal for learning?
• Experts: Visual representations
• Novices: Need plenty of textual instruction
  

• Expert knowledge structures (e.g., Chi et al, 1981)

• Experts have conceptual knowledge organization
• when they get incoming information, they really know what it is and where it goes
• novices lack this
• Integrate incoming information
  

• Self-Regulated Learners
• Hypermedia requires self-regulation (e.g., Azevedoet al, 2004)
• Does learner know what they want to do?
• Does learner have a cognitive system in place that will allow them to meet goals independently?

Personalization

• Increases HCI & usability demands
• Problems are exacerbated by the differing levels of prior knowledge, technology present, student motivation, facilities, etc.
  
• Intelligent tutors
  
• Immediate feedback
• Custom selection of content
• Customized hints and help messages

• Automated knowledge analysis
• Recommend materials
• Provide customized prompts

HCI & Ed Tech: What Doesn't Change

• Importance of:
• Task
• Users
• Scenarios of use
• Useful methods for analysis
• Cognitive Walkthroughs
• Heuristic Analyses
• Learner interviews & tests
  

IT WOULD BE GOOD TO LEARN SOME PROGRAMMING TO HELP PROGRAMMERS WITH YOUR VISION WHEN I GET IN THE FIELD