February 21st: User-Centered Rhetoric
and
Technological Determinism

Plan of Attack

Tonight we're going to do the following:

• Reading Quiz #3 on Moodle (available at 6:35)
• Planning for User Doc #2
• Webpage reading
• Midterm Preview
• Return IRA-Career Essays

User-Centered Technology Ch. 5

In order to keep things ordered better, I'm putting notes for Johnson's User-Centered Technology on a separate webpage. Let's head on over to there now.

Planning for User Doc #2

What instruments would work well for our next assignment? Hmm...search engines were good for the first User Doc, but we need to move beyond obvious Internet-based functions. One thing's for sure, though, we're going to have a much larger meta-analysis persona documents and more analysis on user testing. Also, we're going to try and see my goal of "inspiring" the user through to fruition. Does anyone have any documents that advocate or encourage users to explore the functions/functionality of instruments?

Although I've stressed and used computer-based examples overwhelmingly in our discussions, you are more than welcome to document other kinds of technology. Of course, we're going to do the usability testing in class, so your instrument would have to fit that constraint. However, I would consider out-of-class user testing if you documented it well.

Remember, you need to build on your skills throughout the semester (and from the previous semester, year, or what have you), so I want to see some sophistication. Let me show you what a student did a couple years ago...

User Doc #2

User Doc #3

Webpage "Reading"

Let's look at the following webpages and analyze their features. If we assume that webpages are supposed to be for the user, then we can assume that a user-centered design would be best (we can critique that assumption, too). Let's consider ease of navigation to be a top priority for an effective webpage.

• Resort #1
• Resort #2
• Resort #3

Class Group Work (time permitting)

I want you to turn to the person to your left and observe him or her doing the following:

• Find the web page for Vanderbilt University's nightly news footage repository.
• Type up a list of the news channels the repository holds.

Then, the person you observed should observe you do the following:

• Find out who won the Nobel prize in physics in 1909.
• Type up a list of the winners.

Planning for User Doc #2 User Testing

We'll have more in-depth meta-analysis persona document this time around. Unfortunately, we aren't getting live subjects...er...participants from outside class, but I know all of you will work hard to help your fellow classmates by being as objective as possible. The first change, though, will be that I want you all to come up with three personas for the instrument you'll document. I also want you to include the following:

• Describe the instrument

• Explain how the user will approach the set of instructions

• Plan how you will test your draft

  • Develop a pre-test briefing strategy: make a statement to tell each user (a script), ask questions about comfort level, and/or have them watch something (this last one works best for descriptive documents like natural or mechanical proceses).
  • Come up with five post-test questions that use a Likert scale and have a comments section
  • Set at least four goals and make sure they're measurable (operationalized)
    • User did all steps in XX minutes...
    • User completed the instructions in XX minutes...
    • User used the help menu less than XX times
      -or-
      User never had to look at the help menu or ask for help.
• Describe three Personas you had in mind when creating the document--these are Cooper personas and not the detailed ones for your Persona Research assignment
• Actually create the instructions

Have a rough draft of the above planning document (think of it as a memo if you'd like) to accompany your actual user document next week, which will be the steps the user will carry out to do something. Who has an idea of what they'd like to do?

Before We Go...

Keep up with the reading--Johnson, Ch. 5. We'll also talk about the midterm exam next week.

**Barnum, Carol M. (2002). Usability Testing and Research. New York: Longman.

..