Design thinking 1: foundations - UX100

Kirsten Schaefer
Checklist:
https://mylearningspace.wlu.ca/d2l/lms/checklist/viewchecklist.d2l?ou=452515&checklistId=4
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Reading week 2

Human-Centered designer
Embracing human-centered design means believing that all problems, even the seemingly
intractable ones like poverty, gender equality,
and clean water, are solvable

What is desirable for humans → what is technically feasible → make the solution financially
viable

● Creative confidence: The notion that you have big ideas, and that you have the
ability to act on them.
● Make it: You’re taking risk out of the process by making something simple first. And
you always learn lessons from it.
● Learn from failure: Don’t think of it as failure, think of it as designing experiments
through which you are going to learn.
● Empathy: In order to get new solutions, you have to get to know different people,
different scenarios, different places.
● Embrace ambiguity: We want to give ourselves the permission to explore lots of
different possibilities so that the right answer can reveal itself.
● Optimism: It’s the thing that drives you forward.
● Iterate: By iterating, we validate our ideas along the way because we’re hearing from
the people we’re actually designing for.

Reading week 4
(page 39-55 - Sofia)

Singel interviews

Interviews are an important part of human centered design. Not only to hear people in their
own words. You get so much more insight than what you can get behind a desk and the best
way to interview is in the person's own environment, where they live or work, then you can
learn so much more about the person, their mindset, behavior and lifestyle.

4 key elements of interviewing.

 - never be more than 3 on a single interview, you don't want to overwhelm the person.
Everyone should have a caler role, (the interviewer, the note-taker or the
photographer)

- Come prepared with questions. Ask broad in the beginning, about the person's life,
values and habits and then go into more specific questions.

- Write down exactly what the person says. Don't make assumptions about the meaning
on your own.

- Observe the persons, body language and surroundings and see what you can learn
from the context. Take pictures.

Group interviews

Steps

- Build your group. If you are trying to learn something specific, organize your group
so that you most likely get those answers. (for example, an all female group for
female matters and a mixed for something else)

- Have the interview on neutral ground. So all feel included no matter, gender, rece and
people of all ages.

- One person asking the questions!!

- Come prepared to engage the quieter members of the group. Maybe ask them a
question directly.

- Perfect way to identify who you want to go deeper with a co-creation session.

Expert interviews.

Talking to an expert can give you valuable perspective on a system-level view of your
project.

Setps

- Choose the right expert, determine what kind of expertise you need.

- Give the experts a preview of what kind of questions you have.

 - Choose experts with varying points of view, you don't want the same oppintion over
and over again.

- Ask smart, researched questions. Be prepared but also flexible.

- Record the interview with whatever tool you have.

Define your audience

- Write down the people or groups that are directly involved in or reached by your
project.

- Now ass people or groups who are peripherally relevant, or are associated with your
direct audience

- Think about what connections these people have with your topic. Who are the fans?
Who are the skeptics? Who do you most need on your side?

- Now arrange these into maps of the people involved in your challenge. Save it and
refer to it as you move through the inspiration phase.

Conversation Starters

Put a bunch of ideas in front of a person and seek to spark their reactions.

- Determine what you want the people you are designing for to react to.

- Come up with many ideas that could get the conversation started. (if you are
designing a sanitation system you might want conversation starters around toilets of
privacy) What is the toilet of the future, of the past, a super toilet, the president's
toilet?

- As the person you're designing for shares her take on your conversation starter, be
open to however she interprets the concept.

Extremes and Mainstreams

- Think about all the different people who might use your solution.
Extremes can fall on a number of spectrums and you’ll want variety.
Maybe you’ll want to talk to someone who lives alone and someone
who lives with a large extended family. Maybe you’ll want to talk to
both the elderly and children. Each will offer a take on your project
 that can spur new thinking

- ​When you talk to an extreme, ask them how they would use your solution. Ask them
if they use something similar now and how it does or does not suit their needs

- Select appropriate community contacts to help arrange meetings and individual

Interviews. Make sure you’re talking to men and women. You might even stumble
across an extreme user in another context and want to talk to them there.

- Be sensitive to certain extremes when you Interview them. They may often be left out
of discussions like these so make them feel welcome and let them know that their
voices are critical to your research.

Immersion

The Inspiration phase is dedicated to hearing the voices and understanding the lives of the
people you’re designing for. The best route to gaining that understanding is to talk to them in
person, where they live, work, and lead their lives. Once you’re in-context, there are lots of
ways to observe the people you’re designing for. Spend a day shadowing them, have them
walk you through how they make decisions, play fly on the wall and observe them as
they cook, socialize, visit the doctor—whatever is relevant to your challenge.

- As you Create a Project Plan, budget enough time and money to send team members
into the field to spend time with the people you’re designing for. Try to organize a
homestay if possible.

- Once you’re there, observe as much as you can. It’s crucial to record exactly what you
see and hear. It’s easy to interpret what’s in front of you before you’ve fully
understood it, so be sure you’re taking down concrete details and quotes alongside
your impressions.

- A great Immersion technique is to shadow a person you’re designing for a day. Ask
them all about their lives, how they make decisions, watch them socialize, work, and
relax.

- If you’ve got a shorter window for Immersion, you can still learn a lot by following
someone for a few hours. Pay close attention to the person’s surroundings. You can
learn a lot from them.

Analogous Inspiration

Analogous settings can help you isolate elements of an experience, interaction, or product,
and then apply them to whatever design challenge you’re working on.
 - On a large sheet of paper, list the distinct activities, behaviors, and emotions you’re
looking to research.

- Next to each one, write down a setting or situation where you might observe this
activity, behavior, or emotion. For example, if the activity is “use a device at the same
time every day,” parallel situations might be how people use alarm clocks.

- Have the team vote on the site visits that they would like to observe for inspiration
and arrange for an observation visit.

- When you make your visit, pay close attention to what it is you want to understand,
but remain open to all kinds of other inspiration.

(page 57-73)

Card Sort - p. 57
To identify what's most important to the people you are designing for you can give them a
deck of cards with a single word or image and ask them to rank the cards in order of
importance for them. You can make the cards in many different ways. For example, one
group was working on a solar energy project in India and used animals in their deck and
asked “What animal does this solar light represent to you?”.

Steps:
1. Make the card deck. Make sure they are easy to understand.
2. Mix concrete ideas with more abstract ones.
3. Give the cards to the person you're designing for
4. You could also ask the person to rank them as if she was an old person, poor, rish
etc.

Peers Observing Peers - p. 60

Get a glimpse into the community you’re designing for by seeing how they document their
own lives.

By talking about the project with the people you are helping can empower them to do some
research themselves and report back to you. When you do research about a sensitive
subject it will also give you more information if you invite them in as partners.

1. Determine how you want to learn. Through pictures, interviews, collage, card sorts
etc.
2. Provide the person you’re designing for with the right tools. A camera, notebook ec.
and take her through the process.
3. Offer support through the process and make sure she knows there are no right and
wrong answers, you only want honest opinions and thoughts.
4. Collect the materials, but also interview her about the process. surprises? changed
opinions?
Collage - p. 61
Having the people you’re designing for make and explain a collage can help you understand
their values and thought process.

To get the people you're designing for to do things, like a collage, is a good way to
understand what they value. When you then let them talk about their collage, new needs or
unexpected thoughts can appear. For example, one team was asked to help with the
pámrketing strategy of health insurance in Nigeria. They asked a group of 25 people to build
collages about “community health”. They thought they would see pictures of doctors and
clinics, but instead most of them were drawn to pictures of fruit, exercise, families etc. and
the explanation was that health goes far beyond having access to modern medicine.

1. Make sure you have supplies for a collage with you when meeting the people you are
designing for.
2. Give them a prompt for the collage. E.g. how they think about their family or about
their dream job.
3. Ask them to talk about the collage. You can also use the Collage as a springboard to
further conversation or to explore new areas in your research.

Guided tour - p. 64
Taking a Guided Tour through the home or workplace of the person you’re designing
for can reveal their habits and values.

1. Arrange a tour with someone you’re designing for in their home or workspace.
Cultural or gender dynamics may come into play, so be sensitive to those
issues.
2. Be two team members. One to ask questions and one to take notes. Pay
close attention to everything you see.
3. Take photos if you have permission.
4. Ask alot of questions. Why does she do that? Any special place to do this?
How is it organized and why?

Draw it - p. 65
Spur deeper and different kinds of conversations by picking up a pen and paper and
drawing.

To have a pen and paper available during an interview is a great way to learn from the one
you are designing for, whether it's you or them holding the pen. It could be a quick sketch, a
timeline or a graph to easier understand each other.

1. Make sure you have a pen and paper handy when talking to these people.
2. When asking someone to draw, make sure to give them a clear idea about what you
want.
3. Make them feel less intimidated by drawing an example first.
4. Drawings can be used as a conversation starter.
In-context research - p. 66
The best way to really build empathy with the people you’re designing
for is to immerse yourself in their worlds. But in-context immersion means far more than
attending class with the people you’re designing for. It means fully understanding and
experiencing the circumstances of their lives, both physical and digital.

Resource flow - p. 67
By organizing and visualizing how a person or family spends money, you’ll see how it comes
in, goes out, and opportunities for more efficiency in the system.

This is an exercise you can use during an interview by making them list or draw the assets
that come into their household and how those assets are spent. Assets may not always be
money. Obligatory giving, charity, and care for family members might not seem like a
payment, but should be considered.

1. See if any of the people you’re Interviewing want to draw. If so, let them. If not, you
can do it as well.
2. List or draw everything that brings money into the house. Remember that assets may
not always be currency.
3. Now list or draw everything that takes money out of the household.
4. Start asking questions. What can they not live without? What is there never enough
money for?
5. A nice additional step is to map these inputs and outputs on a calendar. You might
find that money comes in all at once but has to be paid out bit by bit. Or that though
you’re not talking to a farmer, her income may be tied to an agricultural cycle.

Case Study: Vroom - p. 71

A Human-Centered Take on Early Childhood Development.

Advances in neuroscience and child development confirms that positive engagement

with their parents and caregivers during the first five years of their lives is very important for
Children’s readiness for kindergarten (and life beyond). This is the most active period for
brain development. With help from IDEO.org, the organization Bezos Family Foundation
wanted to activate the engagement with the parents. Is there a way to communicate brain
science directly to parents in ways that positively influence behavior, and raises the value of
all forms of positive interaction with babies and toddlers?

Inspiration
They visited low-income communities to conduct interviews with parents and to observe
existing programs aimed at improving child development outcomes. They learned that many
of the parents they met had very tough upbringings, and therefore did not feel that they had
the right knowledge or tools to engage with their children. Interviews with children
development experts and pediatricians lead to the finding that parents who feel
uncomfortable reading out loud also may easily refrain from all forms of engagement.

Ideation
The researchers then collected their material and started to look for patterns. The team
came to some core principles that still guide Vroom today, ideas like “speak in the voice of
their peers,” “withhold judgment,” and “all parents want to be good parents.” They then
invited mothers to the office to review mood boards, listen to sample voices, and provide
feedback on which character they’d trust for advice on child-rearing. From this feedback
period, the team discovered that most parents, though they weren’t drawn to an academic
approach to engaging their children, were very interested in the science behind behavior and
brain development.

Implementation
A strong, well-defined creative brief that could be handed to an advertising agency and used
as the foundation for a major campaign was created. They came up with provocations and
prompts for people to play with their kids as well as an advertising strategy that included
guerrilla interventions displayed in laundromats instead of on big billboards.

The outcome
The IDEO.org team developed a large-scale messaging campaign celebrating everyday
moments as learning opportunities and taking advantage of the many chances to engage
with a child strengthens the foundation of that child’s brain development. The Bezos Family
Foundation launched Vroom that advocates for the time parents do have and using it in
different ways to help build their kids’ brains.

Reading week 5

User Need Statements: The ‘Define’ Stage in Design Thinking

User need statements (problem statement, point-of-view statement) :

an actionable problem statement used to summarize who a particular user is, the user’s
need, and why the need is important to that user. It defines what you want to solve before
you move on to generating potential solutions, in order to 1) condense your perspective on
the problem, and 2) provide a metric for success to be used throughout the design thinking
process.

Traditional need statements have 3 components: 1) a user, 2) a need, and 3) a goal.

The user should correspond to a specific persona or real end-user segment you’ve done
research on.

The need should be real, should belong to users, should not be made up by the team, and
should not be phrased as a solution.

The insight, or goal, is the result of meeting that need. It should be rooted in empathy. Look
beyond the obvious.
 As Rebecca Sinclair, of Airbnb, reminds us “you are the designer. Your job is to be a deep,
empathetic listener and to imagine ways to solve their problem. Take responsibility to create
something better than the customer could have imagined. They are the inspiration, but you
are the creator.”

Practice this by continuing to ask yourself why:

- What does the user care about?

- Why is this important to the user?
- What emotion is driving the user’s behavior?
- What does the user stand to gain?

Contextual Inquiry: Inspire Design by Observing and Interviewing Users

in Their Context

Contextual inquiry is a type of ethnographic field study that involves in-depth observation
and interviews of a small sample of users to gain a robust understanding of work practices
and behaviors.

● Context: The research takes place in the users’ natural environment as they conduct
their activities the way they normally would. The context could be in their home,
office, or somewhere else entirely.
● Inquiry: The researcher watches the user as she performs her task and asks for
information to understand how and why users do what they do.
Why use Contextual Inquiry?
When doing surveys or interviews, people attempt to summarize their processes, but
important details like reasoning, motivation, and underlying mental models are left out of this
summary. However, users can easily talk about what they are doing and why when they are
doing it. For this reason, contextual inquiry can provide richer and more relevant information
about how users complete processes than self-reported or lab-based research methods do.

When Is Contextual Inquiry Not Useful?

Contextual inquiry is designed to help us understand the in-depth thought processes of
users and the underlying structure of their activities. For this reason, it’s not especially useful
for targeted design tasks such as redesigning an ecommerce product page or testing a
newsletter signup form on a website. These types of interfaces are fairly straightforward.

This method is similar to direct observation, except direct observation is with minimal
interference in the user’s process. It could be a better field-research method with ex. a
doctor that you can't disturb, and then follow up with clarification questions at another time.

Four grounding principles:

1. Context. The researcher should observe in the natural environment.

2. Partnership. The user and researcher are partners in the process of understanding
the work. Both parties should be free to direct the conversation toward what needs to
be considered.
3. Interpretation. The researcher should develop a comprehensive and shared
interpretation for all important aspects of the work, aided by feedback from the user.
4. Focus. The researcher should understand the purpose of the research project and
what information should be sought. This understanding guides the observation and
the interviews during sessions.