Interesting post by Bruce Tognazzini about whether Apple’s software product design ethos is too simplistic.

Now (confession time) not being an Apple aficionado I can’t really pass comment, however his general points seem quite valid. One of the founding principles of Interaction Design is to create solutions that are eminently understandable by the novice, but grow as the user become more competent then expert.

So, we aim to make the initial state as simple and as closely aligned to the user’s mental model as possible. Simplicity does not mean lack of functionality (which I think could be the issue with Apple), it means a fast initial learning curve and consideration of the number of concepts a user needs to understand.

However, the product should have a built in path to higher proficiency, facilitating enhanced functionality, high speed interaction and minimal application feedback as the user requires it.

Tognazzini seems to be implying that Apple software products are well suited to ‘Leading the novice’ but fall short on ‘empowering the expert’ . Certainly, in the past, Apple have not really carried out much in the way of design research. Could this be at the heart of some of these issues?

Do any of you Apple users out there think Tog’s argument is justified?

Can focus groups be useful for design research? That is a question I hear a lot (be it in my own head or from actual other people).

A discussion along these lines has played out recently on the AnthroDesign mailing list. I’ve captured the gist of the discussion here. Bridget kicked off with:

…a client wants to conduct focus groups to get people’s reactions to different web sites and web functionality. There will be 8-10 people in the room and the web site projected with the moderator driving. Has anyone had experience conducting a group like this? Are there any tips into making this as successful a session as it can be? I’ve typically conducted usability sessions or concept testing one-on-one.What kind of tasks and questions have built into the discussion guide?

The very smart Steve Portigal replied with (emphasis added by me):

One thing that we find helps us when given these constraints is an individual workbook. We make ‘em with really big text and activities like a Likert scale etc. And at every point of evaluation, have people do the workbook FIRST independently and then discuss it. Then you have an artifact afterwards you can collect. We try to do exercises to help move people along to a meaningful place of evaluation from just “hey you are sitting in a room and here’s something new and do you like it?” to something closer to a realistic personal evaluation. We might try to get people to do something like “build” what they want instead of evaluating the thing we put in front of them. Or we might do an exercise – be it theatrical or other – to help move the group into a bit more relevant context (i.e., break into two groups and one group is the IT department and the other group is managers who then have to present to each other why this is or isn’t a good idea).

I will note that every time we come up with a really interesting and potentially most effective use of the format, it seems like we get shut down by our clients who have engaged us to use this format because they want something safe and familiar, methodologically, and if you spend five minutes building up a role play activity in order to get more context from their evaluation, that means there’s five minutes less to cram full of questions about something else that’s hard to answer in a focus group room.

Although I’ve not actually used this myself, I really like this technique. Preetham has a similar suggestion:

Want to echo Steve’s comment about workbooks where participants give individual feedback. They are extremely helpful to negate the effects of one or two outspoken individuals.

We have had very good success sending a homework workbook that makes people immerse themselves in the context of use. This also allows them to come into the session with a point of view; makes their feedback so much more valuable and actionable. The cost to make one and send it before hand is negligible when compared to output…

There’s a bit of research coming up where the USiT team might be able to employ this technique. Hopefully we can blog about it afterwards.

Care to share your own thoughts or experiences on this technique?

Update: some more useful stuff from AnthroDesign…from Christina:

…One thing I did that worked very well and was very simple was to have blind votes about each design, with each respondent quickly jotting down one MAIN reason for their vote (Repondents’ comments included, “clean design,” “no contact information,” “Not enough info” etc.). I then collected each vote and discussed with the group why they voted how they did (the votes for respondents were not revealed to other respondents).

This helped to not only get something solid for the client in terms of “yes/no” feedback, but also helped to mitigate for the hated “alpha respondent” influencing the meek during groups. It also served as a cross-check to compare the private vote against the public discussion, and allowed everyone to have an equal voice in this area…

Nancy suggests:

This is a situation where I promote the use of design games, to get the players to interact with artifacts and with one another. People are unlikely to tell you anything unexpected in a presentation format. Plus all the critiques of focus groups as a method are likely to be demonstrated, as you’ve obviously anticipated.

In a similar situation (e.g. getting feedback from existing customers to several candidates for a new visual symbol set), we gathered people for “focus groups” and provided each draft symbol set to a different small team, asking them to mark up a webpage with the symbols corresponding to the meaning distinctions intended. Then the small teams presented to one another and commented on what they preferred about their own solution versus another team’s solution (layout, text+symbol vs text alone, size, color, shape, etc.). We got some striking responses, including where a small team was not satisfied with the symbols we provided and they created distinctions on the spot to communicate the meanings we’d requested. Their solution matched one of the other candidate sets of symbols (though of course less polished) which provided additional support for that one. And the client stakeholders were in the room to watch and listen, as observers, during the event.

The Mycustomer site has an interesting summary article on what ethnography “is” from the viewpoint of a practitioner in the marketing industry. This interpretation is different to what most academics would consider “ethnography” to be, however it does illustrate how ethnographic techniques can be applied to understand complex behaviour. I was most intrigued that author only mentioned culture once and used the word cultural three times, which seems too few for the topic (but maybe that’s just my bias).

The article is immediately relevant to me because I’ve been working on trying to describe a model of how research we are conducting is stored, updated and gets fed allochthonously through analytics and smaller bits of research from around the business.

Chris Rockwell as published his presentation entitled People Can’t Tell You What They Want (and nine other design research myths) to slideshare. Here are the ten myths he discusses:

1. Design Research constrains true innovative thinking.
2. People Can’t Tell You What They Want.
3. We’re inventing something never seen before so research isn’t applicable.
4. Qualitative and quantitative research are opposites.
5. Ethnography is the best research technique.
6. Participatory design research is superior to ethnography.
7. Focus groups aren’t useful.
8. The research team owns customer insights.
9. Designers can’t design until the research is complete.
10. When the research is done, you know everything you need.

I found this very interesting, not only to confirm my own views on some of these points, but also because each point is tackled with simplicity and style. I wish I had had this presentation on hand when talking to a few clients in the past :)

Thanks to Rob Tannen for the tip.

In his Alertbox article entitled When to Use Which User Experience Research Methods, Christian Rohrer gives a good overview of various research methods and when to apply them.

The field of user experience, is blessed (or cursed) with a very wide range of research methods, ranging from tried-and-true methods such as lab-based usability studies to those that have been more recently developed, such as desirability studies (to measure aesthetic appeal).

You can’t use the full set of methods on every project, but most design teams benefit from combining insights from multiple research methods. The key question is what to do when. To better understand when to use which method, it is helpful to realize that they differ along 3 dimensions:

• Attitudinal vs. Behavioral
• Qualitative vs. Quantitative
• Context of Website or Product Use

The plotting of research methods according to these three dimensions is quite handy, as is his advice regarding combining multiple methods for any particular project.

Of particular interest is the “Context of Product Use” dimension. This dimension refers to whether or not you’re asking the participant to use the product in a certain way, as opposed to just observing how they might naturally use it. This can have a big impact on the method you would employ, and highly scripted approaches risk Asking Participants to “Pretend” in User Studies (which Jared Spool recently wrote about).

While this article should be quite useful in helping people to narrow down the most appropriate design research methods to use, it might not be enough. Inexperienced readers may still not be able to decide which method to use, even assessing all possible methods using these dimensions. What’s missing is the X factor regarding which factors are best for certain situations, but this probably comes down purely to experience and is a professional preference that develops over time (and would thus be difficult to capture in an article). All in all, a very useful article.

[Chris, if it's not on the blog, it's just not on :)]