Tutorials

Once you have customer data, take the next step in customer-centered design by using the Contextual Design process. This tutorial teaches finding the design implications in customer data, visioning, storyboarding, creating a coherent system structure or analyzing a current product with a User Environment Design, and testing with paper prototypes.

PARTICIPANT KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE EXPECTED

This tutorial is aimed at participants who have a basic familiarity with field interviewing, and who now want to understand how customer data is used to drive redesign or changes to existing products or the invention of new products. Knowledge of Contextual Inquiry interviewing and work modeling is helpful, but not necessary. Participants are encouraged but not required to bring a laptop computer (with charged battery) to analyze an existing application during the workshop.

GOALS FOR THE SESSION:

People often feel reasonably comfortable with gathering field data and analyzing it, but then have difficulty making the leap to redesign or invention. Through lecture, discussion, hands-on exercises, and videotaped examples, this tutorial teaches the participants how to take customer data collected in contextual interviews or other field methods and move to a coherent design that supports the needs of the customer. Participants will learn how to find design implications in the data, create a high-level vision of the new product or redesign of the current product, storyboarding the details, developing a system structure with a User Environment Design, and testing the design with customers with paper prototypes. They'll also learn how to analyze an existing design or product with a reverse User Environment Design. They'll also find out how to scope or tailor the techniques to suit their design problem (small or big) and organizational realities.

The techniques taught can be used in a structured process, or as “guerilla” techniques to insert customer data into requirements and product designs whenever possible, leading to products that have usability taken into account as part of the front-end of the design. Participants in this tutorial will learn how to:

• See past individual differences to recognize common work patterns
• Use grounded brainstorming to base designs in reality
• Visioning a system response to the data that addresses customer needs
• Use storyboards to show users' new work practice with the system
• Building a User Environment Design that shows the structure of the system
• Using a reverse User Environment Design to analyze an existing product, design, or specification
• Check the initial design with users through paper prototypes
• Scale and tailor the process to fit a specific design problem and organizational realities

HOW THIS TUTORIAL WILL BE CONDUCTED

This tutorial uses a combination of lecture, discussion, video examples, and hands-on exercises. The participants will be team members in a hypothetical company where contextual interviews have been conducted, interpretations sessions completed, work models drawn, and the affinity diagram built. Their task will be to work with the data to understand the design implications, and then work in small teams to practice visioning a possible redesign. They will also learn how to storyboard their vision, extract a coherent system model from the storyboards, and be introduced to testing their initial design with customer in a co-design paper prototype interview. Participants will also take an existing application or product and practice using a reverse User Environment Design to analyze it.

Approximately one-third of the time in this tutorial is devoted to hands-on exercises with instructor feedback. The instructor is trained (and accustomed to) leading groups and providing feedback to a large number of workshop participants. The remainder of the time is split between lecture/discussion, demonstrations, and videotaped examples. With this mix the participants will have a model and experience they can take back to work and apply immediately.

TUTORIAL SCHEDULE WITH TIME ALLOCATION

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF TUTORIAL

8:30 – 8:45   Introduction (15 minutes)

• The instructor briefly introduces herself, the agenda for the tutorial, and the goals.
• We quickly find out about the backgrounds of the participants.

8:45 – 8:55   Introduction to Design Team Problem and Customer Data (10 minutes)

• We start by giving the participants the hypothetical company, project focus, and design problem they will be working with for the day.
• We introduce the Contextual Design process and the pieces of the process they will be using in the tutorial.
• We provide an overview to the customer data that has been gathered and analyzed to this point.

8:55 – 9:20   Walking the Affinity Diagram (includes hands-on practice) (25 minutes)

• To become oriented to the data, and learn how to effectively interact with and use an affinity diagram, the participants briefly hear about how the affinity was created.
• The participants learn how to walk the affinity to see the scope of the problem, common issues, and structure of the customers' work.
• The affinity will be taped to the wall, with one affinity for every 7-10 participants so everyone has a chance to see it.
• Participants do a wall walk, posting their design ideas.
• Participants learn how to use the affinity as a communication device in the organization.

9:20 – 10:00   Work Model Consolidation and Design Implications (includes hands-on practice) (40 minutes)

• We remind the participants of the five work models (flow, sequence, cultural, artifact, and physical) and briefly show examples of each.
• We discuss how consolidation collects data about individual customers to represent the whole market or organization, allowing us to see the structure.
• We explain the process for model consolidation and level of analysis for each type of model.
• The participants are led by the instructor in a practice exercise where they analyze a consolidated model for our design problem, learning that each model is a different view of the work and therefore gives rise to different design implications and design ideas.
• The participants work in small groups to generate design ideas and then share them with the entire group.

10:00 – 10:30   Break

10:45 – 11:00   Conclusion of Work Model Consolidation (15 minutes)

• After the break we finish analyzing the models and generating design ideas.

11:00 – 11:15   Introduction to Redesign (15 minutes)

• Participants are introduced to how to respond to the design implications from the consolidated data and the steps of the redesign process by:
• Identifying issues from the data, technology & tools, and hot ideas.
• Brainstorming a new work practice.
• Evaluating and developing a better alternative.
• Systematically laying out how the work will be done.

11:15 – 11:35   Grounded Brainstorm (20 minutes)

• Participants discover how to run an effective visioning session by learning:
• The purpose of visioning.
• How to redesign a work practice, not just a system.
• How to run a visioning session is run.
• The roles in a session.
• How to evaluate visions.
• A video clip of a visioning session is shown.

11:35 – 12:00   Grounded Brainstorm Hands-on Practice (25 minutes)

• Participants are broken into teams to practice visioning a solution to our design problem.

12:00 – 1:30   Lunch

1:30 – 2:00   Storyboarding (30 minutes)

• We explain how to drive down to the next level of design detail through storyboarding.
• We describe the steps of the storyboarding process and the role of the consolidated work models.
• We demonstrate storyboarding from a vision for our design problem by walking through a set of storyboard cells, explaining step-by-step how and why they were created and how they tie back to the vision and consolidated models.

2:00 – 2:15   Introduction to the User Environment Design (15 minutes)

• We explain the principles of the User Environment Design and the problem it addresses.
• We describe the metaphor of a floor plan and how it has been adapted to system design.
• We explain the formalism.
• We describe how the User Environment Design reveals structural flaws.
• We demonstrate how it is used to create a coherent release plan.

2 :15 – 2:30   The Reverse User Environment Design (15 minutes)

• We explain how a reverse User Environment can be used to analyze an existing product, a specification, or the competition. We demonstrate how to do a reverse User Environment Design.

2:30 – 3:00   Reverse User Environment Design Hands-on Practice (30 minutes)

• The participants work in pairs or small groups to practice creating a reverse User Environment Design for an existing application.
• We then show examples from existing products of how a basic reverse User Environment Design reveals problems.

3:00 – 3:30   Break

3:30 – 4:00   Creating a New User Environment Design (30 minutes)

• We explain the User Environment Design principles.
• We demonstrate how storyboards from our design problem vision are walked to extract the User Environment Design.
• As a group, we walk through a series of storyboard cells, showing how they explicitly and implicitly contain functions and focus areas and how to represent them in the User Environment Design for our sample project.
• We discuss how the User Environment Design becomes the basis for the requirements document and specification.

4:00 – 4:30   Testing the Design with Paper Prototypes (30 minutes)

• We introduce the idea that the User Environment Design is tested with customers through paper prototypes.
• We describe how to represent the User Environment Design in a paper prototype.
• We discuss the value of paper versus running or online prototypes.
• We explain how to conduct a prototype interview where the customer uses the paper prototype as thought it was live product, and how to be in a co-design relationship.
• We view video excerpts of a paper prototype interview.
• We discuss how to interpret the paper prototype interview and modify the User Environment Design.

4:30 – 5:00   Tailoring the Process to Your Organization and Design Problem (30 minutes)

• We cover how to scope the project, including when and how to only use portions of the process.
• We discuss how to select customers.
• We describe designing a process for success.

SPEAKER

Shelley Wood

Director, Consulting Services

InContext Enterprises

Shelley Wood brings more than 15 years of experience in high tech, leading teams in using customer data to design systems and components. Before joining InContext in 2000, Shelley held senior management positions in product management, product development, and business development at Thomson Corporation, a leading global e-information company serving the business and professional marketplace. While at Thomson she specialized in the content, design, presentation, and retrieval of legal, regulatory, and financial information delivered over proprietary systems, CD-ROM, and the web. She has also written and managed documentation and training for end users and sales forces. Shelley used Contextual Inquiry and Contextual Design on several projects at Thomson, ranging from minor product fixes to major releases to developing entire new business directions.

Shelley now coaches teams to use Contextual Design for their projects and products, as well as teaching Contextual Design in public and in-house workshops. She has worked with teams in a wide range of industries and applications, including medical devices, medical information, supply chain management, customer service management, K-12 school web-based communication platform, insurance, online learning, commercial real estate management, ERP systems, web-delivered information and customer support, and home appliances. Shelley has also participated on, and project managed for, InContext design teams that have designed deliverables for InContext clients. She is the product manager for CDTools, InContext's module-based application for supporting Contextual Design.