Browsing the previous content of Vodafone’s receiver, I ran across this old article by Adam Greenfield about persona that struck me as relevant for current discussions about the role of persona/use cases in design (in the context of video game design).

The main point of the article is that use cases, designed to capture the important aspects of various users’ interaction with an innovation are often “cooked and artificial with no realistic appreciation of people’s complex desires and contexts. This is often true and spectacular. if you ever participated in a discussion of personas, you’ve certainly noticed how sterile and utilitarian use case are described.

Some excerpts I found relevant:

“When considering the social practices around any new technology, the uses foreseen by designers, manufacturers and retailers - and, inevitably, featured in the advertising and marketing campaigns around these technologies - are so much less interesting than what people actually wind up doing with them. (…) I call the gaps between the assumptions and the reality “fault lines”: places where emergent patterns of use expose incorrect assumptions on the part of the designers, imperfect models of the target audience on the part of marketers, and social realities that might otherwise have remained latent.
(…)
there is good business sense in attending carefully to these fault lines, for along such lines is where the truly useful products and services wait to be born.
(…)
A basic problem with use cases, and the entire product development mindset in which they are embedded, is that they generally fail to anticipate the larger social context inside which all technology exists.
“

Why do I blog this? What is interesting here is that Adam is not suggesting to scenarios and use cases but simply to make them more realistic and human. Very often, the use case are so neutral and instrumental that they fail to capture the complexity of people’s ambivalent needs and desires. And of course, design needs to take this into account so that the innovation “become part of the everyday pattern of use for the majority of users”.

It would be relevant to understand why the situation if often like this, why use cases are sometimes futile and utilitarian, why people avoid to consider weird situations like the one described by Adam: “in the US, Cingular Wireless offers a service called “Escape-a-Date,” which provides its subscribers an emergency exit from bad dates“. Is it because it’s politically incorrect or worse is this because of wrong assumptions about what uses could be?

The problem with tools such as personas and use cases is less about the process itself, and rather about the type of behavior promoted (or forgotten) in them. Also read what Steve Portigal wrote about personas and how they patronize users.

Last year, during a project with Nokia and the EPFL Media and Design Lab, we “mapped” the structures of the “digital world” as represented in mobile devices (cell phones, iphones, ipods, portable consoles). The point was to graphically represent the information architecture so that we could understand how it evolves over time in different devices. Francesco Cara, design strategist at Nokia is talking about it in his LIFT08 presentation.

Anyhow, I was in charge of looking at mobile entertainment devices (such as the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP, among others) because one my research them is about the exploration of portable technologies to understand the implications in terms of mobility and new interactions. The underlying idea, consists in analysing the usage of the technologies to determine opportunities and constraints for design.

This type of quick graph is interesting at it represent different information architecture strategies (menus globally speaking) and to so in a quick glance how Nintendo simplifies interfaces with a limited depth unlike the PSP. This graph was a first step before other more evolved representations mostly focused on cell phones that I can’t show here (non disclosable yet).

Recently working on a project about gestural interfaces and the user experience of the Nintendo Wii, I had my share of discussions about sampling in user experience research and the role of exceptions. Quantitative researchers often drawn nice curves with cute statistical distributions with “means” and quantiles. The type of things I’ve done in my PhD research, measuring X and Z (satisfaction to a certain project, number of messages typed on a phone, number of time someone pressed a certain button, etc.). In the end, you get this sort of graph represented below with anonymized dots which eventually represents how normal humans did certain things.

In general, quant research (the sort I’ve done in the past yes) compares different “conditions”: you have two sorts of interfaces, each group of users test one of the interface and you compare the number of time a certain group did certain things on the interface they had. Say, the number of time they pressed on the button called “OK”. Applying different statistical techniques (like variance analysis is the distribution is normal in the statistical sense, checking variances and if you’re in trouble then you always employ “non-parametric tests”). This is robust no kidding, I don’t criticize that kind of method. However, what I am wondering about is when this sort of methodology is solely applied to design research.

And it leads me to the discussion I had the other day with a colleague about the importance of exceptions, dots which are not close to the means, the weird outliers, peeps who do not fall in the distribution like that weird circle on the upper right-hand corner on the boxplot below:

Depending on your mood, the research methodology and your colleagues’ attitude, there is a wide spectrum of reaction ranging from “WTF, that person screwing my distribution?” to “OK this is an extreme user, he/she is special, let’s have a look more closely”. And then, of course, because you’re a smarty pant and you ALSO have qualitative data you see what the person SAID or DID (or whatever other types of data sources you have). Then the real thing starts: who are the extreme users? how extreme are they? what makes them extreme? are there other data source which attest that they are “exceptions”. And obviously this leads you to the question the norm (the mean).

To some extent, that’s the story of why I slowly moved from quant research to a mix of descriptive quantitative and qualitative research in user experience projects. I started getting interested in the role of exceptions, especially with regards to their importance in design. Why exceptions are important in design? Perhaps because they might show peculiar behavior and routine which can announce futures norms or trends (and then inspire new products, features and services) but also to show that the notion of a “normal user” or “mean user” is difficult to grasp as diversity exist and is important. Surely a very relevant near future laboratory spin.

An interesting example of an extreme user was this deaf guy I saw the other day at the train station, walking and gesticulating in front of his video cell-phone. If you map the use of video-communication on cell-phone you get a very low usage of the feature in general but that guy would be an exception.

Having the Euro soccer cup in Switzerland (and Austria) is interesting as lots of people are cruising around on the streets. Hence, lots of interesting practices or signs of people’s practices occurs. Some excerpts from the last few days:

Paper notes at a street corner to give friends an update about the new whereabouts (it says “We’re at café pessoa, 30 meters ahead in Dassier [street]”:

The hospitality of some places however reach certain limits, as “tents are not umbrella” sign attest from the need to buy an umbrella when it rains instead of staying around:

The inherent contradictions of signs in a city not very well-accustomed to helps its tourists (Geneva):

BUT, a fruitful attempt to help soccer-fans takes the form of a pavement map; nicely employed in the picture below. The elegant map-on-the-ground solution is efficient for people who walk and ride bike, as it gives information in context and also allows congregation around the signs to find the stadium:

And, of course, when it comes to computer-based real-time street information, failure and glitches are never very far:

The presence of other cultures, and their intricate relationships with their host country. In this case it’s Spain and Switzerland: some only put their spanish flag but most of the flag we see are grouped with both a swiss and spanish flag (you can replace Spain with Portugal, Italy, Turkey and France in the sentence before):

Why do I blog this? what a nice context to observe cultural issues and whatever can be related to human behavior regarding mobility and techniques/technologies/organizational solutions for recurring problems.

In the CatchBob! project, the location-based game I used for my PhD research, players often reported the encounter with other persons puzzled by the presence of running people with TabletPCs. The general reaction of passers-by seemed to range between ignoring the game to asking players about how to participate in trials. However, the physical environment is an overlap of lots of activities carried out by different groups and individuals, which can be conflicting. In one trial, two players tried to visit one of the campus library and the janitor forbid them to enter the building carrying out the game TabletPCs. This kind of phenomenon unfortunately undermines the engagement of players in the game, turning the experience into something less fun to achieve.

This problem has been investigated by researchers, as shown by this warning quote from one of the deliverable from the European iPerg project entitled “Designing Pervasive Games“:

“Pervasive games introduce an important problem: when a game is expanded, the bystanders do not always have the means to distinguish game events from the non-game events. However, regardless of whether they know or don’t know about the game, they perhaps should have a choice pertaining the mode of attendance, i.e., they should be given chance to play, or ignore the game and appreciate it as an art artefact, or view it as a morastatement. Otherwise, the game is can lead to ethical and practical problems.
(…)
Whether unaware or aware of an ongoing game, bystanders have no intention or opportunity to participate in it or at least no opportunity to do so. Here, we probably find the most challenging effects of social expansion. Socially unexpanded games are typically completely insulated from bystanders: they are not affected by the game (even if aware of it) and they have no influence over the game.“

Why do i blog this? The presence of bystanders in some pervasive games or ARG is interesting as it shows how the notion of “user” in ubiquitous computing is flawed. Unlike face-to-face (so to say) interactions with a desktop computer, ubicomp/pervasive computing/internet of things can lead to situations where people experience non-intentional participation in services/events they did not want to be engaged in.

If pervasive games can take this into account and not affect people’ life, other ubicomp applications can be less careful about it. What am I thinking about? perhaps applications which tracks individuals and propose them services without any consent form the user (to be tracked or to receive services s/he does not want to receive).

Spotted in CDG airport yesterday in France, this Nintendo DS and its lovely book-like affordance which make the user taking the same posture as when perusing a book. The dual-display device offers an interesting affordance for book reading. And, researchers have found how such setting is relevant to improve the reading experience: it has indeed been found that users of dual-display ebook readers benefits from local navigation and applicability to multi-document interactions when using two displays.

Ears are an important part of our body and consumer electronics is often adapted to them through various process. But sometimes, the aging of technologies make them fall apart and people need to fix the device they have. When it comes to intimate products such as headphones, people look for easy-and-soft solution so that it’s still adapted to the ears.

Cotton and the mandatory duct-tape can be of good help here as shown by this headset found during a home visit for a field study few days ago. A fix that will not age, gentle anyway. Again an interesting example of people’s creativity in repairing their own gear.

If there’s a population that is often overlooked (or dismissed) by urban designers or urban technology engineers, it’s definitely the homeless. A CHI 2008 paper by Le Dantec and Edwards entitled “Designs on Dignity: Perceptions of Technology Among the Homeless” deals with this topic, trying to understand how technology — from cell phones to bus passes—affects their daily lives. Such a qualitative study allows them to challenge reseachers’ assumptions about people’s relationship with technology and discuss possible opportunities to develop services.

Using Photo-Elicitation Interview, the researchers identified different unique needs homeless had and characterized perceptions of technology among them. Some excerpts from the results:

“Staying Connected: The first theme was the importance of staying connected to family members and friends during spells of homelessness. (…) Many of the participants came from places other than their current urban home and keeping in touch over distance was something they worried about.

Synchronous v. Asynchronous Connections All of the participants had voice-mail accounts through local organizations. These accounts were meant to provide a stable number of contact and aid in job searches and managing appointments or other personal business. (…) The difficulty for a number of participants was in accessing their voicemail, leading to a decidedly asynchronous style of communication when using the telephone.

Mobile Telephony The preferred way to maintain a stable connection to family and friends for many of the participants in the study was through a cell phone. (…) cell phones were not without problems (…) the ongoing cost, the need for access to power to recharge the phones, and the inevitability of theft when living in and out of shelters.of his extended friends he would tell about being homeless.

Identity Management: For participants in our study, different forms of identity management came out through their use of technology and social institutions. (…) Identity management took both technology- and non-technology-focused forms. For example, on the non-technologic side, identity management appeared in how participants
managed their physical appearance

Access to Information, Social Networks: The social network was the primary mechanism participants in this study used to navigate the world around them.

The Digital Divide: Participants varied widely in the use of information technology, effectively resulting in an internal “digital divide” within the homeless community.

Health and Medication

Getting Around: Moving around the city was an imperative for our participants.“

As the authors say, although these needs can suggest opportunities for designed solutions, they find it more relevant to consider the broader implications for urban computing:

The social dynamics that are playfully exposed through urban computing ideas could be more thoughtfully considered in their relation to the less-priviledged participants of the urban environment. Appropriate technologies need to consider more than the usability or psychological appropriateness of an interaction. We need to put careful thought into the social impact technologies have for non-users as well as users. In using technology to redefine boundaries, we have an opportunity to do so inclusively, bringing the periphery into sharper focuses, inviting in the disenfranchised and the under-served. “

Why do I blog this? This kind of research help to figure out alternative vision of current urban computing ideas as it allows to adopt another lens concerning people’s relationship with technology and the city. All the issues described in the paper are extremely important to consider the situation in a more holistic way (and certainly not only as a quest for ” design opportunities”).

In addition, I also find interesting the way some concrete problems are considered here. For instance, the article describes how some homeless people make communication decisions based on their ability to predict cost using pre-paid cellular service. The problem of these phones is that purchased minutes expire after as little as 30 days and phone numbers that become inactive can be reclaimed by the service providers after 90 days (which is difficult for people with irregular incomes). What is interesting here is the notion that the problem is not necessarily about the technology itself but rather the whole model of its deployment (business model). This is a good example of a technosocial situation in which the whole ecosystem should be taken into account if a technology is to be adopted. Of course, in this case, this kind of limit in pre-paid phone contracts is generally aimed at getting rid of this sort of population…

Cell phone booster/repeater solution seems to be a trendy path lately, as shown by this NYT article which presents devices such as femtocell to extend mobile phone service coverage indoors, especially where access would otherwise be limited or unavailable.

What I find interesting here is less the technology than the reasons why these solutions are brought forward (or at least the one mentioned/promoted by companies designing these solutions). Excerpt from the article:

““Because more and more people are not taking landline telephones anymore, adding a signal booster is becoming much more popular,” said Richard Holtz, president of Infinisys in Daytona Beach, Fla. His firm plans the placement of cellular boosters in high-rise buildings, dorms and offices.

“People are expecting perfect coverage everywhere,” Mr. Holtz said, pointing out that being indoors or outdoors can make a big difference in call quality.
(…)
Many things get in the way of wireless signals. Trees and intervening buildings can degrade the signal from the cell tower, while brick walls and wallboard supports can block them completely. Sometimes many obstacles will conspire to create a “dead zone” of dropped and missed calls.
(…)
Of course, boosters require you to shell out your own money to improve a service you are already paying for. Pestering your carrier to upgrade its network is a cheaper — but slower — approach.”

Why do I blog this? I’d be curious to know more about the real expectations of people but the seamless coverage might be a need. In our field studies, it’s generally the case that people ASSUME wireless coverage (or perfect positioning through LBS) but then realize there are some discrepancies. It’s then interesting to see both human and technical solutions to this problem. Technical solutions are boosters and repeaters described in this article whereas human solutions are behavioral adjustments (like sending an SMS instead of calling when you only have 2 bars on the signal reception display).

“Everyday Engineering: What Engineers See” is a nice little booklet by Andrew Burroughs from IDEO. A bit in the same vein of “Thoughtless Acts?: Observations on Intuitive Design” by Jane Fulton Suri, is about all these small things and details that I sometimes blog about: observations about the world, the complexity of assemblage, failures, cracks, misuses, etc. All these small details matter as they tell us about “the thought process behind designed things”.

Compared to Thoughtless Acts, that book is more about the way to see the world in the engineer’s eyes but it’s definitely of interest for anyone interested in design or user experience research.

In addition, this collection of pictures is an invitation to be more “inquisitive” about our environments. As I sometimes try to do with picture I annotate here, the point is rather to ask questions concerning why things are like this or that. And as the author says, it allows to become “better observers”:

“Perhaps we discover a point of failure that is completely counterintuitive, as when corrosion aggressively attacks the most protected part of a steel beam. And we can also see success, when things do go as planned and the end product proves to be a match for everything that is thrown at it. Regardless of whether we find inspiration or not, we owe it to ourselves and those around us to become better observers. Our environment is brimming over with information that can help us with our basic ability to navigate a course. The better we are able to refine our actions and our thoughts based on seeing what has gone before, the fewer mistakes we will make“

An interesting sidebar from an old issue of game developer (november 2007) called “usability research commandment” by Randy Pagulayan (Microsoft Game Studio user reasearch) deal with the relationship between user experience researchers and designers. Some excerpt that I find interesting and relevant beyond the game field:

“Be flexible, it is our job to try an account for as many sources of bias and influence when we run usability tests and collect data, but sometimes the ideal is simply not practical.
(…)
Users have opinions, but designers make the call. During your research and testing, users will always have opinions on things they do or don’t like. Your job isn’t to adhere to user whims - your job is to identify areas where user behavior is not consistent with the design’s vision. What you do from there will be context dependent.
(…)
Most developers aren’t interested in the classic “it depends” answer to something [very academic]. They also aren’t interested in inferential statistics, hypothesis testing, or the number of users you need for a valid test. When asked to do something or answer a question, do your research and testing, and give it your best shot. Don’t be afraid to have an informed opinion, even if your research wasn’t suitable for a scientific peer-reviewed journal.“

Why do I blog this? All of this rings a bell with my current practice. There’s even more to be quoted here but it’s certainly that last bit which caught my attention. Working with designers for a while, I certainly shared that sort of feeling about what sort of material I needed to bring to the table to help them. However, it does not mean that the result should be overstated. As Pagulayan says, “What you do from there will be context dependent”. Also see how Jan says about this notion of informed opinion and the risk of overstating:

“So why should anyone give your research the time of day? How to build credibility? For starters recognise and communicate the limits of (mostly qualitative) design research. We start out with opinions, and all things by the end of study we move onto having informed opinions or on rare occasions very informed opinions. Overstating the value of the research makes you a bullshitter.“

The need to put a “bell” arrow sticker to indicate the button position.

Seen in Amsterdam last fall, beyond tandems.
What I like here is that there is a potential to have this sort of device circling around a certain path, taking and letting people along the way, each of the participant giving a contribution to the movement. In the case above, it’s not really like that, it’s simply a “beer bike” A curious form of mobility anyway

Seen last week in Geneva, next to temporary constructions for immigrants.
What can we see here in this interesting “point of contact”
- almost all have the same orientation (= same channels? same cultural group of viewer?)
- they are grounded, do not at their regular position on the roof (= left here in a a hurry? not possible to climb to the roof)
- they are very close to the sidewalk where people pass by (low number of people passing here anyway)

Random street encounter tonight in Geneva:

A manual for a flat-screen LCD television, obviously tossed out in a trash. Made me think about the value of manuals from technological devices. It can also be a manual on one the 3 languages (+english) of Switzerland. We have often get 3 of 4 manuals for each technological good that we buy.