Slides form 2012 covering - Getting the right insights at the right time, Research in a vacuum, Going leaner, Going Deeper, Socialising findings, Forensics over proof, Focus on impact, Focus on extremes and finally the experience design framework

1. Beyond
Usability
John Knight
23-12-12
Aalto University, School of Arts, Design
and Architecture
Framing research in a design context

2. The problem – Getting the right
insights at the right time
1. Research time/resource is often limited and gets squeezed
in favour of design and development
2. Totally new products and services do not have an existing
user cohort to survey – complex research domain
3. Requirements often emerge during development including
from UT of prototypes – up front research is seen as a risk
4. Stakeholders may have different expectations of what
research is needed – or if any is needed at all
5. Researchers can be drawn into pursuing a disconnected
agenda, with interests and vision which can be at odds
with other stakeholders

3. The problem – Research in a
vacuum
1. Research practitioners domain knowledge needs
manifesting into tangible design actions – not just reports
2. Insights are not a up-front single activity but are emergent
and continuous throughout design and development
3. As insights emerge new and unforeseen research
questions develop which if not investigated need capturing
4. Ideally design, research and development require and
provide insight and direction
5. Research needs to adapt methodologies to context and be
creative – and not be inflexible, prescriptive or exclusive
6. Involving other practitioners in research gets buy-in and
helps build domain knowledge

4. The problem – Research
methods
1. Many UCD research methods are fixed on the ‘walk-up
and use’ paradigm – unsuited to product & service
engagement
2. User research needs triangulating with market (e.g. trends)
and engagement insights (e.g. analytics) to be valid
3. As quality of experience improves and expectations rise
research needs to be able to fathom nuance & latent need
4. Conversely, there is a pragmatic need for research to
support design – ideas and strategy rather than proof
5. Problem definition and solutioneering are complimentary
and concurrent cognitive processes – research + design
thinking together

5. Prognosis – Going leaner
1. Research should be a key part in defining the overarching
vision
2. Research practitioners should use agile methods such as
‘the Wall’ to manifest insights and gaps in designerly ways
3. Use mixed methods – tailor research to project needs not
orthodoxy
4. Practitioners should be facilitators and subject matter
experts supporting and involving other disciplines not the
usability police
5. Research focus should be developing and validating
solutions but also identifying risks

6. Prognosis – Going deeper
1. Research should be triangulated with lifecycle insights
such as analytics
2. Research practitioners should work with their ‘big data’
colleagues to answer the why to their what
3. Methods that can extract insights into the nuances of
experience should be part of the practitioners toolkit e.g.
A/B testing, eyetracking etc
4. A holistic framework that factors in salient aspects of
engagement will help reposition user research and make it
even more relevant to today’s challenges

7. GOING STRATEGIC
DESIGN STRATEGY
(Knight and Jefsioutine, 2004
Experience is everything!
Iterative design
and testing
Agile DevDesign goals Design direction
Solution
Ideation
Co-design
Visual design
Visioning workshop
Contextual inquiry
Competitor analysis
Brief
Client need
Vision
REQUIREMENTS IMPLEMENTATION

8. Lifecycle
Analytics
Online user
studies
Lab studies
Strategy
Participatory
prototyping
Visioning
workshops
Contextual
Inquiry
Agile Dev
Interviews
& workshops
User testing
Co-design
LIFECYCLE RESEARCH METHODS
Experience is everything!

9. INSIGHTS FROM PRACTICE
Experience is everything!
THE FOLLOWING EXCERPTS ARE TAKEN FROM A CASE STUDY
DEVELOPING THE IDEAS HERETOFORE
Citation – Knight, J. (2008). Guerrilla HCI Revisited. In: Knight, J (Ed.).
Interfaces Magazine. Summer 2008. Issue 75, British HCI Group. ISSN
1351119X, pp 10 to 13. Available at:
http://www.bcs.org/upload/pdf/interfaces75.pdf

10. CASE STUDY – SOCIALISING FINDINGS
Experience is everything!
“I tried to socialise my findings as they emerged simply by sticking the notes I made
onto whiteboards (The Wall) and changing them, chucking them and adding to them.
The wall became not just my own working knowledge of the emerging solutions and
problems but also communicated it in real time to the team I was working for. At one
level the wall was my daily progress report, and later on I used the same wall to map
all of the content and functions from the research stage and developed a number of
alternative approaches to delivering it. Rather than building up libraries of use cases
and UI specifications, I just collected hunches and potential solutions such as:
Q “Everyone wants to own the homepage” A “The homepage is strictly and impartially
managed and balances messages and tools” ”

11. CASE STUDY – FORENSICS OVER PROOF
Experience is everything!
“I would call my approach something like a “forensic” one rather
than an ad hoc one. In either case, the situation meant that I was
less interested in measurement and getting proof than I would be
in more purely “usability” focused projects. Instead of proof, I
concentrated on gaining insights, reflecting these back to
stakeholders and rooting out problems, often proceeding on
hunches, and grabbed at any old anecdotal piece of evidence,
sometimes coming from just one person.”

12. CASE STUDY – FOCUS ON IMPACT
Experience is everything!
“Rather than trying to document every function and user requirement
I decided to take just a few “critical scenarios” and exaggerate their
impact, and I also tried to think of ways that I could really deliver
these functions optimally. This was important for driving design, but
also for communicating the real user needs of the application rather
than the perceptions of what was needed. So for each persona I
developed a single critical scenario of use. Of course I did not ignore
other users and use cases but these were intentionally sidelined,
although I had done some sanity checking that these other needs
and functions were unlikely to break the proposed design solution as
in some way or other they were subsets of the main scenarios for
each persona.”

13. CASE STUDY – FOCUS ON EXTREMITY
Experience is everything!
“Rather than trying to model every user, or even show the average
one, I took the most extreme ends of the user profile based on the
contextual interviews I had carried out. In order to calibrate this
extreme, I also took someone in the middle for good measure and
so I developed profiles for three “archetypal users” . Did I create
fully blown personas for these people? Did I visualise them at all?
Did I validate them or specify what they ate for breakfast? Err…
No, actually I built up a personal knowledge of these people and
would think “what would the motor pool woman think about
this?” .”

14. THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS
THE FOLLOWING EXCERPTS ARE TAKEN FROM A BOOK CHAPTER
DEVELOPING THE IDEAS HERETOFORE
Citation – Knight, J. (2012). The Experience Design Framework: Supporting
Design Thinking in the Service Domain. In: (Miettinen,S and Valtonen, A [Eds],
Service Design with Theory, University of Lapland Press.

15. DISTRIBUTED DESIGN
“Design is more accurately
a distributed process
involving many individuals
and factors rather than the
orchestrated outcome of
a single discipline.”

16. MANIFESTING IDEAS
“Designers are conduits for
transforming insight into
tangible solutions and so
have a critical role in
manifesting understanding of
the problem; however
shallow or deep the
supporting research.”

17. FRAMING 1
“Without frames of reference
shared understanding of
different perspectives and
empathy with divergent views is
difficult as individuals frame the
external world through their
own personal prism of
experience.”

18. FRAMING 2
“Helping designers break from their
own constructs and frame
problems and solutions as others
conceive and experience them
may help them to understand their
audience and therefore design
better services; with or without
supporting research.”

19. A COMMON FRAMESET FOR
DESIGN AND RESEARCH

20. COMMON FRAMESET
PRACTICE
FRAME
BOUNDARY
FRAME
SOLUTION
FRAME
TIME
FRAME

21. Practice Frame
Agents
Attitudes
Activities and Actions
Artefacts
Axioms

22. Boundary Frame
Scope boundaries
Use cases
Context of use description

23. Solution Frame
Product long-list
Epic Backlog
Future Stories

24. Time Frame
Product/Service Tweaks
Minimum Living Product/Service
Minimum Sustainable Product/Service
Product/Service Futures

25. Kiitos
john.knight@aalto.fi