Reflection Reading Assignment (4) | Due Thursday (9/15)
Cooper, A., Reimann, R., Cronin, D., Noessel, C. (2014). Understanding Users : Qualitative Research Chapter 2. In About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design, 4th Edition. Wiley. Submit your reflection as a comment below, or a concept map of the reading.
Tom Garncarz
9/14/2016 08:02:37 pm
Cooper’s explanation of the role of user research as a component of the design process is a great overview of the techniques and approaches available to designers to take full advantage of their users as an information resource. By framing user research in the broader context of qualitative research, then demonstrating how traditional/quantitative and qualitative research simultaneously feed into one another, Cooper gives great motivation for practicing the techniques mentioned throughout the design process. As someone with a predominately research-focused background, I’m always happy to see research given credit alongside design, so this is pretty exciting for me. However, I do wonder if the techniques and practices mentioned in the reading are canonical user research approaches, or more along the lines of suggestions motivated by Cooper and his co-authors’ experience in the field. That is to say, would other designers feel as similarly compelled by the research-heavy approach that Cooper proposes?
Cory
9/14/2016 10:31:09 pm
In About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design, Cooper opens by differentiating between qualitative and quantitative analysis. He says that, “Insight into these topics can’t easily be achieved through the numbers and graphs that come from quantitative studies such as market surveys. Rather, this kind of behavioral and organizational knowledge and best be gathered via qualitative research techniques.”
Lily Kim
9/14/2016 11:35:11 pm
The authors of this paper gave insightful information about how to approach research where design is human centered. Form follows function in good design. In this paper, the authors listed out the who's and whats of key questions and concepts to ask during design research.
Kevin DeLand
9/15/2016 05:40:57 am
I find the advice on no leading questions to be incredibly important, as it highlights a mistake researchers may fall into if they are not careful. For example, if the researcher picks up on cues that the user likes something, one way or another, instead of asking “You like X, don’t you?”, they should ask a more open-ended question like “How do you feel about X?”. They may not ask this question immediately, as they wait to accumulate more information. Another question to avoid is “would feature X help you?” Instead of suggesting one particular solution to their problem, the researcher should figure out the problem that that specific feature would solve, and ask them about that. The user may not be able to specifically gauge how they would use that feature. Two more questions are “Do you think you would use feature X if it were available?” and “Does X sound like a good idea to you?” Now in my opinion, there are two ways to view these questions. You either don’t want to ask them because (a) you don’t want to bias their preference towards one specific solution, or (b) users cannot accurately anticipate what they want. The Henry Ford quote comes to mind: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” If a user has never really used a feature before, letting them guess may not reflect how they would actually use it.
Annie Kim
9/15/2016 07:47:59 am
Cooper approaches design as an understanding of the needs of a product’s users and developers. In order to gain a solid understanding, it’s not only important to look into the quantitative data and studies, but also the qualitative data. It’s a common misconception for people to consider quantitative data as an objective source of research, because numbers and statistics are subject to interpretation. Qualitative research helps understand a product’s domain, context, and constraints in a way that quantitative research cannot. Users’ behavioral patterns are also much easier to identify given qualitative observations.
Natalya Buchwald
9/15/2016 07:59:49 am
In the second chapter of Cooper's About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design, he details the essentials of design research. Namely, Cooper outlines the differences between Qualitative and Quantitative data in design research. A brief summary of the benefits of qualitative methods include context of the domain and a common understanding of user concerns. Cooper argues that quantitative research should be the main focus of a designer. However, he does note that quantitative research is the way designers should direct their research. The strengths of quantitative measures include analytics and specifications. However, the statistical data obtained through quantitative methods "may simply raise more questions than it answers." Thus, Quantitative research should act as a tool for designers to create their proper quantitative research study. In Qualitative research, designers have a goal-directed objective. They utilize behavioral models created by personal studies. These models are argued to be the keys to developing eventual products and prototypes.
Lucy
9/15/2016 10:21:47 am
The figure 2-1 shows Marketing research and Analytics are derived from quantitative studies. I’m not quite sure about this when it comes to the real world practice. Studies that are qualitative in nature generate data about behaviors or attitudes based on observing them directly, whereas in quantitative studies, the data about the behavior or attitudes in question are gathered indirectly, through a measurement or an instrument such as a survey or analytical tool. In marketing research, especially the field study, the direct analysis usually plays a big role. For example, we have to directly observe how people use technology (or not) to meet their needs. This gives researchers the ability to ask questions, probe on behavior, or possibly even adjust the study protocol to better meet its objectives. Based on these observations, then quantitative methods can do the mathematical analysis. So I think it is has to be contextual to decide which method we are going to use or how to combine them to meet our objectives. Qualitative methods are much better suited for answering questions about why or how to fix a problem, whereas quantitative methods do a much better job answering how many and how much types of questions. Comments are closed.
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