Homer is the best

Homer was loud, obnoxious and very demanding. But from a UX designer POV, there's nothing he did wrong. I would surmise we are like him to various degrees. What goes wrong in the episode is when the engineers fail to show sympathy, effort to understand why Homer says what he says. But that's enough for now in regards to users describing their wants and designers understanding their needs.

User research for design borrows many tools from anthropology, ethnography, psychology and many other fields of expertise that involves learning about people. For this class we will focus on 3 methods.

1. Contextual interview
2. Talk/think aloud
3. Directed story telling

During any of these sessions, you should have a note pad to take notes, pens/markers etc. to write/sketch, and when appropriate a voice recorder/camera to take record/photos/video.

For the Exercise 2, you and your team will interview a minimum of 6 participants. You will use Directed Story Telling and ask, "When was the last time you took a video?"

After each interview, you should record one fact/observation on 1 post-it note and generate a pile of post-it notes per each participant you spoke with, while the interview experience is still fresh in your minds. Bring this to class with print outs of photos if you have any.

In class you will cluster the post-it notes and construct an affinity model/diagram to analyze your findings.

What to do with all these Post-It notes

From there, you can start seeing patterns, discover needs, etc. from your conversations with your participants.

I've included 3 PDF's for your reference of user research in the Google Drive folder.

As for your readings by Jef Raskin and Nicol McDonald under Widgets, they will be due Feb. 14. You have plenty of of time to procrastinate.  :)