In the BrandRepublic post ‘Forget Behavioural Economics, now it’s Ergopsychonomics’ Chris Arnold  makes a portmanteau of ergonomics and pyschology as a means to talk about the connection between the objects we use and how to think about them. Yet, one poster challenges Arnold: why can’t we just call this HCI?

Meanwhile, over at Fastcodesign, Tucker Veirmeister uses the word psychonomics to say the same thing. Still, as commenters point out, the word is hardly new as it’s been in use by psychologists since 1959.

I’d say the lesson to come out of this is that when it comes to making up words, with great power comes great responsibility. Last year we started hearing the word skeuomorphic a lot in regards to unnecessarily analogue iPad apps. However, the term is well established and hasn’t changed . On the other hand, Don Norman conflating JJ Gibson’s ‘perceived affordances’ with ‘affordances’ has caused confusion that he’s spent the following decades ironing out. And gamification is not the same as badgeification (as even the head of Zynga points out).

OK, we’re only at number 19 so far, there’s still a way to go. Still, what’s there so far suggests it’ll be an amazing series. As the site doesn’t make it easy to see all of the methods so far, here’s a list of what’s there to date:

1. Concept Interviews: Users write down statement to do with the use of a product, and rank them.
2. Brainwriting: generating ideas quickly by getting people to write them down rather than say them
3. Freelisting: a complement to brainstorming where people list examples in relation to a particular question.
4. Reverse Brainstorming: asking a question that generates problems or criticisms rather than solutions.
5. Metaphor Brainstorming: guiding brainstorming by framing with metaphors
6. Future Workshop: four phase futures technique (preparatory, critique, fantasy, and implementation phases)
7. Claims Analysis: looking at how changing an existing feature on a product will affect various user groups
8. Repeated Card Sorting: doing card sorting repeatedly in order to find out the underlying product characteristics.
9. Reverse Card Sorting: a variation of closed card sorting where you measure users’ cards sorts against a proposed solution.
10. Perspective Based Inspection: getting users to review a product from a specific perspective (e.g. disabled user, power user)
11. Bodystorming: Physical scenario modelling.
12. Teachback: Testing the robustness of a product’s mental model by having an expert teach a novice and the novice ‘teach it back’.
13. Consistency Inspection: Like QA, but for product consistency across a product experience.
14.  Yes, And: Taking from improv to further ideas.
15.  Misuse Scenarios: looking for situations for unintentional (accidental) and intentional (e.g. malicious) misuse.
16. Backcasting: a strategic method where you start from a desired future and work backwards.
17. The User Interface Race: challenging users to compete to complete tasks under time pressure
18. The User/Task Matrix: plotting task frequency against groups
19. Laddering Questions: the IDEO ’5 Whys’ and other methods

Each method comes with discussion of the strengths and weaknesses, as well as other resources. The list was started in January 2011, so we’ve probably got a while to go until we get the full list (6 months, eh?), but it’s certainly worth keeping an eye on. See full list on the Autodesk Designing User Experiences blog.

“To design is to have a ‘project’. Getting the design process moving is to expose and transform this ‘project’ in a conversation with those that it might eventually affect” (Buur, Binder, & Brandt, 2000).

In the early stages of design, rather than evaluate or validate specific user requirements or priorities, we are interested in exploring possibilities. As the opening quote suggests, we seek to engage with the various stakeholders the design project may eventually effect and gain an understanding of the unique design situation from their perspective. In Zimmerman et al.’s  (2004) framework for discovering and extracting knowledge during the design process, this is known as the Discovery phase of design. In this article we introduce Mobile Diaries as a field work method that can be utilised in the early stages of design to immerse into people’s everyday life.

This exploratory approach to self-reporting allows participants  to create and share a rich picture of their world, be they grandmothers, bankers, students, young parents or employees. In this article we describe Mobile Diaries, and provide examples of the kinds experiences they can enable.

A little background on self-reporting

In self-reporting, research participants are responsible for the data collection, allowing for the gathering of contextual data over-time and in situ, without the physical presence of researchers. Self-reporting can provide access into the private, personal and mobile aspects of people’s lives that are often difficult, or impossible, to access through traditional methods such as observation or interviews. The sustained personal reflection inherent in self-reporting makes available aspects that would otherwise remain tacit. So much of our lives are routinised and automatic, it is not until we are asked to document or consider certain activities that we are able to identify key junctures in our own understanding of a topic or a behaviour.

Self-reporting studies can take many different forms and the degree of formal structure is one of the things that differentiates approaches and determines the type of material collected. For example in the Electronic Sampling Method approach known as ESM (Larson & Csikszentmihalyi, 1983) or beeper studies, the participant is directed to systematically log specific things at specific times. In more open-ended approaches (such as cultural probes (Gaver, Dunne, & Pacenti, 1999) or visual diaries) data collection is only semi-structured around a particular topic. In this case participants are treated as active contributors and interpreters in the design process and select what, how and when to report. This encourages more playful and creative representations, important to an explorative and collaborative approach.

Over the last 10 years digital, online and mobile technologies have been incorporated into self-reporting methods in a range of ways (see end of article for some examples of other studies and platforms). These everyday tools can be easily integrated into people’s daily lives and support the generation of a range of different media forms such as video, images, text and audio.

Mobile Diaries

Mobile Diaries are a hybrid method that incorporate many of the creative and playful aspects of probes and emphasise the daily reflection of visual diaries. A range of different analog and digital technologies are used that allow participants to share and reflect on various dimensions of their day-to-day life.

A typical study

The exact design of the study (as always) is dependent on a number of factors such as:

• A definition of the problem space;
• The goals and objectives of the particular project;
• The theme of the study (e.g is it a personal project or focused on the workplace);
• Budget (how many people can we recruit and how, what kind of incentives might be required);
• The profile of the participants (e.g teenagers, adults or whole families); and
• Their current technology knowledge/competence and use (e.g how they might respond to the technology involved, how open are they to using new technologies).

Generally studies run from 1-3 weeks with between 1-10 participants. Topics explored depend on the study but could include, for example: sustainability in your everyday life; the role of mobile technologies in your life; or a ‘behind the scenes’ look at your job. Participants receive a ‘Mobile Diary Pack’ with various tools and instructions which direct the data collection around the particular design topic.

Mobile Diary Tools

A number of custom platforms have been developed to support online diaries, however, to date we have preferred to configure Mobile Diaries from existing platforms such as WordPress and Tumblr as this gives us greater flexibility over format, functionality and cost. Below we show the packs from a typical study (the list of available tools is growing and changing all the time, here we show typical ones we have used in the past).

During the study

Over the period of the study participants create collages, mind maps, videos and blog messages and send in mobile reports which appear on the blog. They also receive prompts, questions and reminders via the mobile phone and the blog.  The conversation is bi-directional: as we are receiving reports we are also responding with new questions or digging deeper into particular areas, and potentially redirecting the focus of the study as a result.

What do we see and learn?

The output of Mobile Diaries is a particularly provocative, experiential and sensorial insight into participant’s lives. As one of our clients described it “[we were able to] hear in people’s own words the challenges and learn about the context of sustainability in their day-to-day lives”. We share some examples below of the kinds of material generated and shared through this approach.

Life as it happens

Using their phone, participants capture images, text and audio and send this to the blog throughout the day. These reports give us a deeper appreciation of the activities that make up people’s daily lives and we are able to ‘see for ourselves’ actual examples and instances of things that might otherwise be anecdotal. Through these reports we can track events, locations, and a sense of participant’s emotions across the days and weeks. Over time, daily rhythms and habits emerge. The (near) real-time reporting increases the sense of immersion in people’s lives as we experience the activities ‘as they happen’ (Masten & Plowman, 2003).  This is complemented by more reflective accounts at the end of the day via the blog or with the video camera.

Personal Spaces and intimate stories

The use of video encourages in-depth descriptive accounts of events and surroundings from the participant’s perspective. The stills above are from one participant’s tour of their apartment building, which focused on areas relating to sustainability in the home. By giving participants video cameras and asking them to take us on a tour of their home we are able to explore and wander with the participant. This reveals some evocative spaces otherwise inaccessible to a design researcher; in addition to the explicit content being shared the video also conveys emotion and expression.

In another study focused on teenagers and their relationship to technology one participant gave us a tour of his shed, playing instruments as he told stories about the importance of this particular space to him.  These personal stories bring us closer to the participant’s world creating a sense of intimacy and proximity to the participants which is difficult to replicate in a one on one interview, discussion group or even during participant observations.

Inner thoughts and feelings, moments and metaphors

In addition to descriptions of external events and activities, Mobile Diary reports also capture emotions, feelings and inner thoughts. The examples above show emotional reactions and descriptions of personal feelings at particular moments in time. In some, the participant’s have used objects to serve as metaphors or symbols for representing emotions or ‘states’. This allows the participant to share inner thoughts and feelings that might have otherwise remained hidden. The open, honest and personal nature of these reports fosters empathy, often describing experiences we can relate to. That some are delivered in (near) real-time further increases the sense of connection; in that moment, we knew something of what the participant was thinking and feeling.

Action & Transformation

“Not only did it help us, the impact on participants and their way of thinking about sustainability was really interesting… the project really opened their eyes to their own patterns and behaviour and sparked some changes and definitely increased awareness” (feedback from client).

The process of self-reporting is an intervention designed to allow people to self-reflect and share aspects of their daily life; this process can also trigger participants to question their choices and everyday behaviours (Grinter & Eldridge, 2001).  The content of the Mobile Diary packs and the nature of the questions included can provoke new realisations and possibilities. For example, our self-reporting studies into sustainability in everyday life resulted in participants questioning personal behaviours and making changes in their lifestyles^[i]. For one participant, a discussion about sustainability with flatmates led to the installation of a composting unit in the household.

The interventionist nature of the method can be more intentionally activated through the inclusion of specific activities and questions within the packs. For example, in one study into sustainability we included sustainability challenges – new lifestyle habits -  that participants were asked to try and document throughout a week. These activities were particularly provocative at revealing emotional and infrastructural barriers to behaviour change.

And then…?

As the image below suggests, material generated from Mobile Diaries can be used in numerous ways. Mobile Diaries externalise aspects of people’s everyday lives through visual, tangible artefacts. These become shared resources that help us to understand current practices, provide a spring-board for ideation and allow us to envision how any future design might be taken up within the existing ecology of the participants life. For designers, the visual nature of the material allows for more active interpretation in ways not possible with written research reports.  For participants, the process of doing the Mobile Diaries means they are better equipped to reflect on and analyse their own practices, during follow up interviews and workshops (similar to primer tools), becoming active interpreters of the material and what it might mean for future designs.

The material generated through Mobile Diaries is not something to be reduced down into a traditional written report. The raw form of the material and the subjective picture it provides of the participants’ lives and world-view are essential to its immersive quality and its value for fostering empathy and connection with participants (Mattelmäki, 2005; Mattelmäki & Battarbee, 2002) ^[ii].

However, this does need to be balanced with normative business expectations of a ‘research outcome’, and the need to synthesise the data in a meaningful way for the client to then transmit to other stakeholders. Effective ways to share this tangible and personal material with those who were not directly involved is the subject of current research, e.g., (Sleeswijk Visser 2009). Our process includes the development of a multimedia ‘report’ that can support all the different formats of material generated. These reports introduce the participants through their own words and images, illuminate the themes that have emerged and identify some future possibilities to be considered. We have also found significant value in creating opportunities for co-interpretation of the material by clients and other designers, whilst this can be more time consuming, it is utlimately a more effective use of the material than simply ‘handing off the research’.

We have also found that the value of such methods is greater than their role as data collection activities. A personal connection is made with participants that can be of value well beyond the particular study. However, there is a tension between this and the day-to-day realities of client and agency practices and models which focus on deliverables and project phases, in between which there can be significant lags or breaks. There is still work to be done to articulate and communicate the value of such methods beyond their capacity to generate data ‘about people,’ and to embrace their ability to involve participants in a more ongoing and sustained way throughout the design process.

Mobile Diaries are a playful, immersive experience for the design team that allow us to discover something of the messy intricacies of participant’s daily life, valuable for both inspiring and grounding the design process as well as engaging directly with stakeholders. We’d love to connect with other designers employing similar approaches.

Acknowledgments

Big thanks to Chris Gaul for images & Will Evans for feedback and comments. Thanks also to Dr Toni Robertson and the @IDHuPLab at UTS, Digital Eskimo, Zumio, our clients & participants N.B Examples come from specific studies in which permission was granted for publication for the purposes of research. Our approach has been heavily informed by the ongoing research into generative methods inspired by Cultural Probes (Gaver, et al., 1999) and the work of Liz Sanders (www.maketools.com) as well as other research into self-reporting studies such as (Hulkko, Mattelmäki, Virtanen, & Keinonen, 2004; Masten & Plowman, 2003; Palen & Salzman, 2002).

References

Buur, J., Binder, T., & Brandt, E. (2000). Taking Video Beyond ‘Hard Data’ in User Centred Design. Participatory Design Conference PDC2000, New York, NY, USA.
Gaver, B., Dunne, T., & Pacenti, E. (1999). Design: Cultural Probes. Interactions, 21-29.
Grinter, R., & Eldridge, M. (2001). y do tngrs luv 2 txt msg. ECSCW, Amsterdam.
Hulkko, S., Mattelmäki, T., Virtanen, K., & Keinonen, T. (2004). Mobile Probes. NordiCHI 04, Tampere, Finland.
Larson, R., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1983). The Experience Sampling Method. In H. Reis (Ed.), Naturalistic approaches to studying social interaction: New Directions for Methodology of Social and Behavioral Science: Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.
Masten, D., & Plowman, T. (2003). Digital Ethnography: The next wave in understanding the consumer experience. Design Management Journal, 14(2), 75-81.
Mattelmäki, T. (2005). Applying probes – from inspirational notes to collaborative insights. CoDesign, 1(2), 83-102.
Mattelmäki, T., & Battarbee, K. (2002). Empathy Probes Paper presented at the PDC 2002, Malmö, Sweden.
Palen, L., & Salzman, M. (2002). Voice-mail diary studies for naturalistic data capture under mobile conditions.  CSCW, Louisiana, USA.
Sleeswijk Visser, F. (2009). Bringing the everyday life of people into design (PhD Thesis), Technische Universiteit Delft, Delft.
Zimmerman, J., Forlizzi, J., & Evenson, S. (2004)  “Taxonomy for Extracting Design Knowledge from Research Conducted During Design Cases.” Futureground 04, Melbourne, Australia.

Additional examples of other remote self-reporting techniques & studies & mobile/online tools

Digital Ethnography (pdf)

Digital Diaries

Digital Cultural Probes

Sticky Research (Video Diaries)

Revelation

7daysinmylife.com

[i] There is no way for us to tell how permanent these changes were, we can only be sure that particular practices were bought to people’s attention, and steps towards change were made.
[ii] The original Cultural Probes (Gaver 1999) were not designed to gather specific information, but rather to be a source of inspiration and empathy. Rather than being codified, transformed or translated into a report, probe material was designed to stand on its own as a rich visual resource for designers.

Normally we review books full of design pattern or interaction logic, but this time we’re going more abstract: problem solving. As designers we face complex challenges and have to make loads of decisions, will Problem Solving 101 make this easier? Hopefully.

About the book

Problem Solving 101 was written as a guide to teach Japanese schoolchildren critical thinking skills. After that it quickly gained popularity among adults. In the book Watanabe uses simple and funny examples to learn the reader how to approach a problem. He uses three cases to educate the reader:

• A band called The Mushroom Lovers don’t seem to gain a larger audience. How will they solve this?
• John the Octopus wants to become a famous CG animator and needs to save money for a computer.
• Kiwi is a soccer talent who wants to become a star. Which soccer school should she choose?

While the last two examples are great to read and learn problem solving, it’s mainly the first case I want to write about. In the field of interaction design there are often situations where you have to make decisions. Problems arise where you, as a designer, have to decide how to approach it in order to solve it. The case of The Mushroom Lovers provides some interesting examples in how you should approach this.
Without describing the entire case (and thus copying the book) I want to show you some of the examples in the book:

Logic tree

A logic tree helps you break a problem down into categories without leaving anything out. You group similar items under the same branch. It will help you “identify all the potential root causes of a problem and generate a wide variety of solutions.” This is a great tool when you have a certain question and need to investigate the possible outcomes. When forcing yourself to make certain nothing is left out, you also force yourself to approach different options. A great and simple way to make sure you don’t go for the first (and most obvious) solution.

Yes/no tree

A logic tree can be transformed in a yes/no tree. This form of tree helps you find the root cause of a problem or decide how to solve a problem. By creating the tree you are forced to structure and make a complete overview. At the end of the tree you’ll find the different causes/reasons why the problem could have arisen. From here on you can start investigating which of the reasons is the real root cause.

Problem-solving design plan

After you found the possible causes you have to find the root cause. In order to do this you’ll have to research which of the causes is the most important one. You could directly jump into research, but that’ll probably cause more problems than help you. So first: setup a problem-solving design plan. In this plan you’ll setup a hypothesis and rationale in order to focus your research. This is a very good approach since it will give you focus during the research, enabling you to ask the right questions in order to tackle the problem. Out of this also follows a good way to do the research.

After the research you can map the results on the yes/no tree and see where the root cause lies. And than it’s up to you to solve it.

Conclusion

Problem Solving 101 is a book which you can read in a single evening. It’s very clearly written and in it’s core focused on children, but don’t let this put you off…. When you are dealing with challenges and have to solve problems, take your time to read this book. It gives some very simple but effective tips and methods.

Book details
Problem Solving 101: A Simple Book for Smart People
author: Ken Watanabe
publisher: Portfolio
details: 111 pages, hardcover

Deconstruction is one of the most frequently used and fundamental analysis techniques in our toolkit. It is used as both a preparatory technique to get research data ready for use in other ways; and a powerful technique in its own right as a method of isolating, exposing, and testing assumptions deeply embedded in our mental models.

One example of deconstruction is turning an interview transcript into a series of separate comments or answers to questions. Deconstruction is often used simply to prepare data for other analytic processes such as manipulation or summarization, or even abstraction.

Note: this article builds on the first part of the series: Deconstructing Analysis Techniques published in February.

Examples of Deconstruction

• Chemical analysis – mass spectrometry: a technique for determining the elemental makeup of a substance or molecule.
• Philosophy/literary criticism: a technique of isolating and testing ideas contained within a work of philosophy or literature
• Systems analysis: identifying root causes through the identification of individual system ‘actors’ and their interactions
• Quality control: unit testing functional components of an application, requires first identifying those components (typically by recourse to the specification)
• User interviews: identifying individual concepts or ideas
• Card-sorting: working with card-pairs
• Task analysis: breaking down complex activities into individual tasks and their components.

There are a wide range of examples of the way in which deconstruction occurs, but our aim is always to reach a definite ‘atomic’ state (where the atom is defined by our research objectives). It should be noted that there are typically more things going on than merely breaking down the data. In the case of chemical analysis, level of elements or compounds are measured; in the case of a stakeholder or user interview, the individual words, phrases or ideas may be tallied, grouped, manipulated or otherwise worked with to form some new insight.

Deconstruction can – and often is – built into the design of the research. We see this in online card-sorting, for example, where data is stored from the outset as card-pairs. Survey results are another example of data where pre-deconstruction is built into the research.

Why, though, this urge to break data down into smaller and smaller pieces?

Smaller, more granular data provides for greater flexibility in the other analysis techniques we need to undertake. By separating ideas or objects out into their own data elements we can have greater control over how elements are treated and positioned with respect to other elements.

For example, splitting a Name element into separate First Name and Surname elements allows us to treat these two components independently, and ask a broader range of questions – such as: “What are the most common first names?”

Smaller, more granular data provides for greater flexibility in the other analysis techniques we need to undertake.

It requires extra effort to break data down and then to store it in more granular form. It also takes effort to request and record extra data during the research process itself. So, whatever level of data granularity we use should be for specific reasons, and to address specific research questions.

Deconstruction represents a powerful analytic technique in its own right. By isolating concepts and ideas, and exposing them to scrutiny on their own, deconstruction highlights the existence of untested assumptions and ‘sacred cows’.

In this sense, deconstruction is often used to analyze problems or situations to which we need to formulate a response. This use of deconstruction allows us to test the reality of perceived constraints: by isolating each constraint to the design, and looking at the conditions under which they may hold true, new possibilities can open up that may otherwise not have been possible or feasible.

Dangers in Deconstruction

There are dangers in deconstruction that are worth mentioning here. At the end of the day our work should lead to something substantively new. This can be difficult if we lose sight of the macro-level problem in pursuit of an understanding of the data in finer and finer detail.

Secondly, in studying the fine detail of our data we can miss seeing the patterns in our data that help drive insights and accelerate the transition to design concepts. At the same time, some patterns only become visible or apparent when we reach a level of granularity appropriate for the data.

Deconstruction can also generate noise in our data which obscures our sense-making abilities. This noise may be the result of data overload – simply having too much information to allow for processing; or it may be that small-scale, natural random variations are masking higher-level trends or patterns. In these cases, the use of summation and aggregation techniques might be an appropriate contrast to the deconstruction technique.

Deconstruction in practice

Deconstruction can often be used in very close association with other analytic techniques. For example, we may break data down into more granular form to facilitate manipulation of that data as a means of inspection or ‘eye-balling’.

In the same vein, we may manipulate or transform our data to allow us to zero in on a particular characteristic – deconstruction in the critique sense of the term.

It may help at this point to look at some examples to help illustrate the different uses of deconstruction as an analytic technique:

User Interviews
A typical interview scenario involves asking participants a series of questions (usually open-ended; sometimes based around topics rather than using a strict question set) and recording the responses. Recording may be through the use of written notes, audio recording, video taping, interviewer/observer notes; and may include a combination of the above.

To begin drawing connections and identifying themes between interviews we need to break down – or deconstruct – the interviews to the level of individual ideas or concepts, feelings, thoughts etc. The medium we use to record each of these ‘objects’ is not important: a spreadsheet might be used just as effectively as Post-It notes or index cards.

Once the data is in this more granular form we can carry out further analysis on the interviews. We may, for example, want to look at the prevalence of positive versus negative feedback.

Note, however, that the need for deconstruction is entirely dependent on the questions we are trying to answer through our research. For example, if our intent was to formulate an impression of the overall level of satisfaction for each interview subject, the deconstruction would be an entirely unnecessary task.

Diagnosing Causes
When faced with a failure in a complex system – such as the inability of users to complete a multi-step process, or the appearance of a previously unplanned-for edge case – it is typically quite difficult to diagnose the cause of the failure (in the absence of error handling designed specifically with this in mind). In order to identify the root cause of the failure we undertake a deconstruction exercise to help isolate the components of the systems.

Designing a Car: Highlighting untested assumptions
If we were to begin designing a car we might begin with a brain-storming session and list out all of the components or features that are needed. That list might include items such as “wheels”, “engine”, “fuel”, “doors”, “seats” and a whole range of others. We can now look at each of these features and ask why it’s there, and what it says about our notion of the solution.

For example, ‘fuel’ presupposes a form of combustion engine which, increasingly, may not be relevant. More importantly, ‘fuel’ highlights a range of assumptions – mostly tacit – derived from our mental model of the object ‘car’.

Once these assumptions are exposed we can begin to question their validity in the context of the problem – instead of pre-defining a solution in the statement of the problem. Such questioning, enabled through deconstruction, opens up a broader perspective on the design of a solution.

Conclusion

Deconstruction serves a dual role in our analysis work: as both a preparatory technique to get research data ready for use in other ways; and a method of isolating, exposing, and testing assumptions deeply embedded in our mental models.

The technique is not without its drawbacks: more granular data requires effort to gather and record, store, and analyze. It can also generate ‘noise’ in the data, which can obscure instead of illuminate.

Understanding the role of deconstruction in analysis can help us to better target it’s application to the solution of specific research questions.

Photos by s1mone (card sorting), andercismo (magnifying glass), smiling da vinci (interview)