Predicting future users and identifying opportunities for IT product and service design

Based on studies of users’ behaviour patterns or demographic analysis, different types of user modelling and profiling provide an efficient way to identify and present users’ preferences and knowledge backgrounds and help practitioners develop design concepts and evaluate final products. However, in rapid design processes, most user modelling and user studies methodology have narrowed down their scopes to limited groups of target audiences and mainly focus on users’ interactions and requirements towards a particular product or a platform. In this research we reflect on the methodologies used in user studies in three design projects, to propose a research approach that can help researchers, designers and development teams identify both target audiences and potential users earlier in the design stage. Additional benefits of the approach are also discussed, e.g. extending product lines, identifying user motives and requirements, and supporting cross-platform systems and complex services.

[1]  Paul Dourish,et al.  On "Technomethodology": Foundational Relationships Between Ethnomethodology and System Design , 1998, Hum. Comput. Interact..

[2]  Alfred Kobsa,et al.  Personalised hypermedia presentation techniques for improving online customer relationships , 2001, The Knowledge Engineering Review.

[3]  Emile H. L. Aarts,et al.  The New Everyday: Views on Ambient Intelligence , 2003 .

[4]  G. Fitzpatrick.  The Locales Framework , 2003, The Springer International series on Computer Supported Cooperative Work.

[5]  Gerhard Fischer,et al.  Transcending the individual human mind—creating shared understanding through collaborative design , 2000, TCHI.

[6]  Christina Wasson.  Ethnography in the Field of Design , 2000 .

[7]  John Zeisel,et al.  Inquiry by Design: Tools for Environment-Behavior Research , 1981 .

[8]  Y. Engeström,et al.  Activity theory as a framework for analyzing and redesigning work. , 2000, Ergonomics.

[9]  Huiyang Li,et al.  Culture-Centered Design: Cultural Factors in Interface Usability and Usability Tests , 2007 .

[10]  H. Garfinkel.  Studies in Ethnomethodology , 1968 .

[11]  Mike Kuniavsky,et al.  Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner's Guide to User Research (Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive Technologies) (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive Technologies) , 2003 .

[12]  E. W. Gould,et al.  Crosscurrents: cultural dimensions and global Web user-interface design , 2000, INTR.

[13]  Chris Chapman,et al.  The Personas' New Clothes: Methodological and Practical Arguments against a Popular Method , 2006 .

[14]  Vijay Kumar,et al.  Faster, cheaper, deeper user research , 2010 .

[15]  Mark Notess,et al.  Customer-focused design data in a large, multi-site organization , 1999, CHI '99.

[16]  Anne P. Massey,et al.  Cultural differences in the online behavior of consumers , 2002, CACM.

[17]  Douglas Schuler,et al.  Participatory Design: Principles and Practices , 1993 .

[18]  Ko-Hsun Huang,et al.  Social Interaction Design in Cultural Context: A Case Study of a Traditional Social Activity , 2008 .

[19]  Brenda Laurel,et al.  Design Research: Methods and Perspectives , 2003 .

[20]  Gilbert Cockton,et al.  Modified contextual design as a field evaluation method , 2006, NordiCHI '06.

[21]  Robert J. Anderson,et al.  Representations and Requirements: The Value of Ethnography in System Design , 1994, Hum. Comput. Interact..

[22]  Josep Lluís de la Rosa i Esteva,et al.  A Taxonomy of Recommender Agents on the Internet , 2003, Artificial Intelligence Review.

[23]  Karen Holtzblatt,et al.  Contextual design: an emergent view of system design , 1990, CHI '90.

[24]  Ko-Hsun Huang,et al.  Clubs Forming on Crazyvote -The Blurred Social Boundary Between Online Communities and the Real World , 2009 .

[25]  William W. Gaver,et al.  Design: Cultural probes , 1999, INTR.

[26]  Tomasz Miaskiewicz,et al.  Personas and user-centered design: How can personas benefit product design processes? , 2011 .

[27]  Chris Chapman,et al.  Quantitative Evaluation of Personas as Information , 2008 .

[28]  Jorge Edwards,et al.  Persona Non Grata , 1973 .

[29]  Yvonne Rogers,et al.  Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction , 2002 .

[30]  Chris Rockwell.  Customer connection creates a winning product: building success with contextual techniques , 1999, INTR.