Research Methods for a Broad Understanding of End-User Needs

Research Methods for a Broad Understanding of End-User Needs

From the discussion above we can now draw some conclusions about how usability research might be extended to cover the fragmented nature of users and user groups:

  1. Longitudinal acceptability analysis—how domestication shifts an innovative product into the category of everyday consumer durables. We also need to investigate the user learning curve for a product or a prototype, as well as the “boredom curve,” or how soon the user will grasp the (intended or unintended) challenges of an explorative product.

  2. Contextual user needs studies—identifying material differences within the user population and uncovering incoherencies in action in arising from different usage contexts. Furthermore, contextual research is needed to understand the full range of situations in which users must be able to use the product in a satisfying or even enlightening way. Ethnography offers useful methods for investigating the in-depth needs of users in contexts, and for designing products to suit those contexts. The contextual inquiry method by Hugh Bayer and Karen Holtzblatt is a well documented method for these purposes.[13]

  3. Cultural research or ethnography—utilizing in-depth interviews to construct an account of possible user perspectives instead of forced either-or options. Culture does not mean just users’ language or the formal rules imposed on them by virtue of nationality, but also the values, habits, and thinking structures that organize their everyday activities.

All studies should be conducted with well-defined user segments. Researchers should not settle for investigating users and potential users

solely by means of lab tests or questionnaires, which prompt them to answer in predefined ways. People may have many “hidden” needs of which even they are not quite aware. In-depth interviews and contextual observations are thus routes to broad, qualitative understanding of end users and their overt and latent needs. However, if you do create a research method mix, its validity has to be evaluated regularly to make sure that new phenomena are being caught by its components. Change in the marketplace is quick, so designers have to be alert to pick up any relevant changes that new products and related communication practices bring in their wake. The constant interplay of the product and the user’s culture shapes both of them, and should be a standard part of defining user requirements.

[13]H. Beyer and K. Holtzblatt, Contextual Design: Defining Customer-Centered Systems. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann, 1998.



Mobile Usability(c) How Nokia Changed the Face of the Mobile Phone
Mobile Usability: How Nokia Changed the Face of the Mobile Phone
ISBN: 0071385142
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 142

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