Karen Holtzblatt

Building an Affinity Diagram

The affinity diagram essentially brings issues and insights across all customers together into a wall-sized, hierarchical diagram. In the interpretation sessions, the individual notes representing the users data are captured. These interpretation session notes are known as affinity notes and are used to build the affinity diagram. The affinity diagram organizes the individual interpretation session, or affinity notes into a wall-sized, hierarchical diagram; therefore, grouping the data into key issues under labels that reveal the customers needs. The affinity demonstrates the common issues, themes, and scope of the customer problems and needs all at one place. It is noted that the affinity acts as the voice of the customer and the issues it reveals become the basis for user requirements. The key concepts for an affinity diagram include: affinity note, blue labels, pink labels, and green labels. The affinity diagram is built from the bottom up, grouping individual notes that generally reveal key themes in that data.

Chapter 12 – Storyboarding

Publisher Summary nThis chapter illustrates the creation of the storyboards. Storyboards are like freeze-frame movies of the new work practice. The team draws step-by-step pictures of how people can work in their new world. Storyboards include manual steps, rough user interface components, system activity and automation, and documentation use. Storyboards generally act like high-level use cases. Storyboards are equivalent to future scenarios, to-be use cases in RUP, and the basis for user stories in the XP process. Storyboards essentially take the broad view of the vision, and work out in detail how one can accomplish specific tasks in the new design. It is important to figure out the details of how work can be done in the new system in order to ensure that there is no break in the users existing work practice. Thus, storyboards are guided by and checked against the consolidated sequences for tasks and intents that need to be supported.

Walking the Affinity and Consolidated Sequences

Walking the data refers to a process that enables each team member and stakeholder to interact with the data, become familiar with it, generate design ideas, and find holes in the data to drive additional data collection. This chapter illustrates the process of interacting with, or walking, the affinity diagram and consolidated sequences to arrive at a shared understanding of the issues the data reveals, relevant to the project. All Rapid CD projects can walk the data, but only focused rapid CD can have consolidated sequences. The key concepts described in the chapter include: data walk or wall walk, design ideas (DI), holes, and questions. It is noted that walking the affinity enables all the team members to immerse themselves in all the information collected about the users and to generate design ideas based on the data. The affinity essentially shows the scope of the users problems and issues organized into a coherent story.

The Contextual Inquiry Interview

This chapter explores how to run the contextual interview (CI), the types of information required, and how to approach users. This chapter also provides guidance on how to handle the various situations that can be faced while out there in the field. In order to design a product that meets customers real needs, designers must understand the customers and their work practice. The challenge of getting design data is being able to get a level of detail about work that is totally unconscious and implicit. CIs are one-on-one interviews conducted in the users workspace that focus on observations of ongoing work. Conducting a thorough contextual inquiry interview is more than observing and recording the users current tasks. The key concepts of a CI include context, partnership, interpretation, and focus. It is noted that if interviewing more than two people at a physical site, it is often useful to brief the users, management, and the sales team about the process to be followed while on the site.

Planning Your Rapid CD Project

Rapid contextual design presents strategies for getting user data into projects. Rapid CD design processes pull together the sets of techniques from contextual design in order to address the project problems. Several viable rapid CD design processes are available that helps in choosing what CD techniques to use for the project. These processes include lightning fast, lightning fast +, and focused rapid CD. It is noted that user data infused into a project is always better than no user data as the data gives a basis for design and for making informed decisions. This chapter essentially helps in planning a rapid CD project. It is observed that a clear plan is the most important variable for the success of a project. Rapid CD techniques can be used on any project to gather customer data. A well suited project is usually small and targets a few clearly defined job roles. This chapter also outlines several typical paths through the process that can support several variants of rapid CD projects.

Chapter 6 – Work Modeling

Publisher Summary nWork models provide a language for seeing work and often help reveal important distinctions. They provide a clear way of capturing complex qualitative data and help the team to visualize the work structure by representing it in physical diagrams. It is essentially a diagram that captures the structure of the users work or activity. The three main types of work models include: physical models, sequence models, and artifact models. Each work model focuses on one aspect of user practice, revealing its structure and distinctions. This gives the team an external, concrete form in order to record and communicate what they visualized on customer visits, and a way to manage complex qualitative data. Work models along with the affinity diagram provide the team a physical representation of the characteristics of the user population. Work modeling generally occurs during the interpretation session. This chapter describes the sequence, physical, and artifact model. It also gives examples of the affinity notes that are generated from each model, and provides tips for capturing these notes in the interpretation session. The key concepts discussed in this chapter include breakdowns, trigger, and the intent.

Paper Prototype Interviews

Paper prototype or mock-up interviews are two-on-one interviews conducted in the users workspace that focuses on observations of the user using the prototype to do their own work. The interviewer offers suggested design changes based on the users response, and together they change the prototype that better suit the works needs. Paper prototype interviews require two interviewers. One interviewer runs the interview, another takes notes. In the interview the notetaker is a silent observer and the primary interaction remains one-on-one between the interviewer and the user. This chapter explores how to run and interpret a paper prototype field interview. It covers the types of information required in an interview and how to approach users. It also covers how to conduct a mock-up interpretation session. The key concepts for paper prototype interviews include: context, partnership, interpretation, and focus. Paper prototype or mock-up interviews essentially help the designers understand why design elements work or fail, and also identify new function.

Contextual Interview Interpretation Session

Once an interview is completed, the next step is to share it with the rest of the team in an interpretation session. It is noted that contextual interviews produce large amounts of customer data, all of which must be shared among the core design team and potentially with other stakeholders such as user interface designers, engineers, documentation people, internal business users, and marketers. Contextual design involves the team in interactive sessions in order to review, analyze, and capture key issues revealed by the customer data. An interpretation session occurs within 48 hours after the field interview and is best conducted by a cross-functional team chartered with designing the system. No preparation of the data is necessary before the interpretation session if you interpret within 48 hours. This chapter defines the interpretation session and guides one through the meeting. It is a rule to plan the interpretation session for the same amount of time as the contextual interview. The key concepts for interpretation session include affinity notes, capture that, session role, design ideas, holes, and questions, rat hole, and insights.

Rapid CD and Other Methodologies

It is noted that the phases of rapid contextual design can be broken up into three fundamental parts—namely, requirements gathering, work or activity redesign, and user experience design. These phases effectively maps well to any corporate or agile methodology particularly for basic requirements gathering, including business case, product or system requirements gathering, and personas and user scenarios. Rapid CD can easily supplement the deliverables required for the business analysis and requirements phases of most corporate processes. Paper prototyping is widely accepted as a means of testing design ideas and refining them. However, it should be accomplished with real user cases and not the canned test scenarios of some usability testing. The core of rapid CD is getting customer data and its implications into the design process and into the minds of designer and developers. It provides the data that is needed to guide business decisions, prioritize requirements, and produce high quality user experience. It is noted that rapid CD can augment other methods also.

Planning Your Contextual Interviews

It is noted that the data is only as good as the people being interviewed. The goal is to get a good cross-section of the target user population even with a small number of participants. It is also important to get enough coverage of each type of participant. Rapid CD targets initial contextual interviews with four to twelve people. Increasing this population leads to increased time and the number of team members and helpers in order to complete the interviews according to schedule. This chapter explores how to choose the initial sample of people to interview in order to obtain the key characteristics and issues in the population. The key concepts for planning the contextual interviews include target users, job role, work group, and the job title. It is noted that the first criteria for choosing interviewees include who the people are and what they do. It is important to consider the work and social context as the best sample can be obtained by studying very different contexts rather than studying people from similar contexts.