EBoard 06: Continuing to work with humans
This class will be recorded! Its use will be limited to members
of the class. Please do not share with others.
Approximate overview
- Preliminaries
- Class design discussion
- Working with users (including a break)
- Investigation 3 collaboration time
Administrative stuff
General Notes
- Happy Monday! It snowed!
- Sam: Don’t forget to turn on the captions!
- Don’t forget that Mai is available to serve as a resource on investigations.
Upcoming Activities
- Mando Memorial Lecture tomorrow: Roundtable at noon; Reading at 7pm.
- CS Extras Thursday at 5pm: Rosario Robinson on Open Source
- CS Table Monday at Noon
Work for Friday’s class
Q&A
Do all three subjects need to mention the tasks we use?
No. As long as you think the tasks are common to the work.
Are there particular parts where we should be including sketches, diagrams, photos, etc.?
No. Anywhere you consider appropriate.
Are our grades up?
No.
Will they be available at some point?
Yes. Soonish. Email.
Class design debrief
The structure of classes is always a design question. The design of
online accelerated classes is especially challenging, particularly when
it’s a new topic for the instructor. So it’s time for a design debrief
slash discussion. Here are some characteristics we might consider.
Workload
- Goal: “Enough work that I feel like I’m learning, but not too much.”
- Components:
- Readings
- Reading journals
- Tasks
- Investigations
- Questions: How is the workload? What kinds of work are more/less
successful? What adjustments should I make?
Primary in-class components
- Fridays as demo/debrief days.
- Use of TPS/TGS as a primary strategy.
- Assorted mini-lectures.
- Anti-component: Assumption that we don’t need to discuss every reading;
you’ve learned from reading and reflecting.
- Etc.
- Questions: How is the balance? Do you need more in-class time on
readings? How should we gather info from TPS (or do we need to)?
Do you want more in-class time to work with your investigation group?
What adjustments should I/we make?
Finding out what’s due
- Teams channels (sometimes posted a bit late)
- Links from the daily eboards.
- Links from the schedule (not always there)
- Email (not used any more)
- Question: Can you find what’s due easily enough?
UD in class
- Eboards
- Distracting Otter.ai transcriptions
- Class recordings
- Question: What else would support you?
Group roles (assign when starting):
- Leader
- Scribe / Rapporteur
- Encourager
- Others … (Oooh! A good question for the conversation.)
- Question: What other roles should people play in group discussions?
Reports: What do you want me to know?
- Workload is a bit much, particularly with Friday. Investigation +
reading plus task. (Needs to be less.)
- Option one: Simplify investigations
- Option two: Cut readings and tasks
- Also: More time in class for investigations. Fixed?
- More time for investigation 3 would be good. Fixed.
- Think and Pair covers most of the material, so it’s not clear that
we need a share. The “Comment on Teams” worked well as a use of
class time.
- Question: Can you post non-hidden channels?
- Yes, but there’s a limit.
- Scheduling is a bother over Zoom (or whatever).
- Maybe fewer subjects.
- Maybe design things for which class members can be subjects +
class time for subject testing.
- In-class discussions of the readings would be nice. (Not sure what
to cut.) [+1]
- Can we invite an alum to come in and give us a lecture? (Sam will
try to fit that in.)
- Please put links to the assignments or tasks on the course Web site.
And send us reminders! (E.g., email or announcements channel)
- Please give us feedback!
- Time on Mondays for investigation group. (20-30 minutes)
Other group roles
- It’s organic; trust the nature of the group.
- Timekeeper; remind us that Sam gave us limited time.
Thinking about users
- When should you involve users in your design?
- What information should you gather from users at each phase?
- How should you gather that information?
- What should you do with that information?
When to involve users
- Design is supposed to be iterative, so the only good answer is “all
the time”
- At the beginning, to gather requirements/tasks.
- After specifying the first set of requirements/tasks, to review those
tasks.
- After ideate, to see whether your ideations seem reasonable.
- After prototyping, to experiment with prototypes
- After implementing, to ensure implementation works well.
- And more. (Remember that all of this cycles.)
Example system: A Learning Management System (LMS) better than
blackboard.
- Goals.
- Respond appropriately to questions on the discussion board
so that I can impress my professor and get a good participation
score.
- Participate in discussions so that I can better engage with
the course content.
- Needs.
- Up-to-date access to the content of the discussion boards.
- Accessibility needs.
- Stories. These help us begin to understand the goals and needs.
- I had a class on Blackboard in which the class was held on the
discussion board. I found myself frustrated that I could not
see what others were writing while I was writing.
- I used the Blackboard App on my phone to keep track of all
that stuff: The assignments I have due, my current grades,
announcements from the course. The app would also give me
notifications, e.g., “Rebelsky just posted another assignment.”
These days, I need to use the Web app, which doesn’t give me
notifications.
- Personas: Desires. Expectations. Characteristics. The kinds of
people who will use our system with some detail about them.
- Personas can be very different and affect what we do with
systems and how we interact with them.
- Context. Environment in which they are doing things.
- Tasks they are trying to achieve.
- Big picture ideas.
- Feedback
- Explicit: Comments from them about the product.
- Implicit: The state that they’re in. (E.g., do they achieve flow
from our product). (Emotional state.)
- Some is conceptual, some is numeric. “How long does it take
them to accomplish this task?”
- Observe users in their natural state.
- Open-ended
- Retrospective questions (often aided by video)
- “How would you do this task?”
- Ask them to do it.
- Might not give enough explanation.
- Might not tell you what is happening in their mind.
- Can interfere with processing.
- Ask them to explain the steps they would go through.
- People might mislead (intentionally or accidentally)
- Do you ask questions while you are watching them?
- Observe quietly? Doesn’t interrupt them. Q’s disrupt observation
process.
- Ask question: Helps reveal feelings, underlying context; people
explain things better at the time; gives you a better understanding.
- Try doing the things you will be working with.
- Informational interviews
- Ask them for stories.
- Individual/group
- Lewis chapter: “What do you want to do with this system?” Open-ended
questions.
- Present and then ask for feedback. Good way to check yourself.
- Surveys
- Technology (eye trackers, timers, screen recorders, …)
Investigation 3 Group Chat
- Twenty minutes now.
- Twenty-thirty on Friday.