Designing for Humans

Size China Headforms & Data Now Available

I've been talking about SizeChina ever since I heard Roger Ball present at the 2007 IDSA conference.  Subsequently, his effort to create reference anthropometric data of Chinese heads and faces for product designers has won an  IDEA Gold award for research. The project made valuable discoveries regarding key differences between Asian and Caucasian head sizes and ratios, that have not been consistently accommodated in the design of eyewear, protective headgear, medical/dental products, etc.

Finally, the products from the SizeChina project are commercially available from Certiform.  These include a set of 10 representative solid headforms (pictured).  You can purchase the set for $20k or a single on for $2500.

The detailed data sets (3D scan files and measurements) are also available at various prices/package levels, ranging from a 12-person "light version" for $399 up to almost $15k for the complete data set of over 1500 scans.

Certiform has provided a sample file set in Excel format to give you a sense of the level of detail included: Download Landmarks_data_sample.  See the diagram below to interpret the data set, especially if you can't tell your tragion from your zygofrontale.

Contribute to Deconstructing Product Design

Here's some good news/bad news about a book I've been looking forward to for several months -

First the bad news:  Author William Lidwell has informed me that Deconstructing Product Design won't be available until the Fall of 2009.  For background, Lidwell is one of the authors of my favorite design reference book, Universal Principles of Design (see my review from a couple of years ago).  Like UPD, DPD will combine a smart balance of applied and conceptual design analysis in a highly visual and readable format.  More specifically, DPD will,

"explore the meaning of 'good design' as it pertains to consumer products. Deconstruction here is an exploration of the form, function, and usability of these products by way of emotional response, objective analysis, and subjective commentary."  

Unfortunately we'll have to wait another year for publication.

But now the good news:  Lidwell is asking design professionals and enthusiasts to contribute their input to the forthcoming book.  The 100 classic products that will be covered in the book, ranging from the Sony Walkman to Cabbage Patch Dolls, are presented on the Deconstructing Product Design web site.    You can provide your comments about any of these individual products:

"If you have actually used any of these products, know interesting or little known facts about them, or have a visceral response or personal perspective that you would like to share, write it up as a comment on this site. If we select your entry for inclusion in the print book, you will have a byline with your comment and you will be included in the contributor section."

I look forward to reading comments from DesigningforHumans readers on the site, and perhaps some published in the book as well.

Mythbusters - Design Research Edition

People Can’t Tell You What They Want – and nine other design research myths.

View SlideShare presentationor Uploadyour own. (tags: conferencepolaropposites)

Chris Rockwell's (Lextant) IDSA conference presentation on design research myths is available via SlideShare...and directly above.  There's no audio,but the slide text is largely self-explanatory.  This was one of the presentations that I regret missing since I wasn't at the conference, so I'm glad it has been made available. 

I particularly appreciate Rockwell challenging the now cliche notion that "people can't tell you what they want" (Myth #2), which has been used as a rallying cry for observational research over interviews and focus groups.  In fact both interviews and observations are effective and have their place when done appropriately (and in most cases, co-exist). 

Similarly, "Designers can't design until research is complete" (Myth #10) again brings the real-world perspective against theoretical ideals.  If anything, the mainstream emphasis on design research in recent years should have increased the cross-collaboration between research and design.

Lextant is also hosting a recurring conference call program on various topics.  Today it's on Design Hacks (registration required) and features Steve Portigal. 

"Designers' Version of the Scientific Method"

Lots of blog buzz around "design thinking" re: the New York Times article Designing is More than Packaging - see comments by Steve Portigal and Christoper Fahey to name a few. 

I agree with Fahey's observation that the NYTimes article "included by far the clearest summary of what design thinking is that I’ve ever read, including from all the design thinking leaders".  Then again, it sounds a hell of a lot like just plain old user-centered design to me:

"While definitions vary, design thinking usually involves a period of field research — usually close observation of people — to generate inspiration and a better understanding of what is needed, followed by open, nonjudgmental generation of ideas. After a brief analysis, a number of the more promising ideas are combined and expanded to go into “rapid prototyping,” which can vary from a simple drawing or text description to a three-dimensional mock-up. Feedback on the prototypes helps hone the ideas so that a select few can be used."

What I did find more interesting, was the sentence in the Times article that immediately followed that description:

"It’s the designers’ version of the scientific method,” explains Greg Galle, co-founder and managing partner of the C2 Group, a consulting firm based in Half Moon Bay, Calif. “It’s sloppy and messy and not nearly as disciplined as the scientist, but we do trial and error and we hypothesize and test and we see what we learn and then we go back and try again.”

For those interested in understanding more about true scientific methods, read here.

Design Research in the Harvard Business Review

 

Let me begin by admitting that I've unfairly avoided reading the Harvard Business Review (HBR).  I had an inaccurate perception that it was too academic - that is both too technical and too removed from real-world applications to be useful.  But I've recently actually read several articles as background research for an article that I was writing and I was impressed by the readability and the applicability of the content to design research.

The HBR has recently received exposure in the design world with Tim Brown's article on Design Thinking:

"In the past, design has most often occurred fairly far downstream in the development process and has focused on making new products aesthetically attractive or enhancing brand perception through smart, evocative advertising. Today, as innovation's terrain expands to encompass human-centered processes and services as well as products, companies are asking designers to create ideas rather than to simply dress them up. Brown, the CEO and president of the innovation and design firm IDEO, is a leading proponent of design thinking - a method of meeting people's needs and desires in a technologically feasible and strategically viable way."

But Brown's article was just one of a number of recent HBR articles that directly discuss design strategy and research.  And rather than going through years of back issues, you can purchase packaged sets of related articles [Caveat: some articles appear in multiple sets].  For example the Customer-Driven Innovation set contains three articles that cover topics including:

• Creating a job map "to discover what the customer is trying to get done at different at different points in executing a job and what must happen at each juncture in order fo the job to be carried out successfully."
• Methods for translating and prioritizing customer input into quantifiable opportunities

Another set, Make Sure All of your Products are Profitable includes an article on Defeating Feature Fatigue.  The authors discuss the balance between the number of features and usability in consumer decision making.  Recommendations include giving consumers decision aids, designing products that do one thing very well, and conducting prototype testing and product in-use research.  My favorite quote from the article - "You made your remote-control-adjustable, dual-firmness mattress, convertible bunk and trundle bet - now lie in it".

So what's the value of such articles to professional designers and design researchers?  On the one hand, some recommendations, like usability testing, are old-hat, but there are several examples of innovative tools and methods.  For example, the article Turn Customer Input Into Innovation provides an algorithm for prioritizing opportunities based on the gap between customer ratings of feature importance and current satisfaction.

More generally, the Harvard Business Review can provide support and credibility to research decisions and results to a business-focused audience,   It can also help design researchers stay focused on the outcomes of their results to business opportunities and profitability.

Lastly, consider the range of HBR articles, that while not written specific to research methods, can strengthen your professional capabilities.  Case in point, a recent interview with documentary filmmaker Errol Morris on Making Sense of Ambiguous Evidence:

"There is one objective reality, period." Getting to it requires keeping your mind open to all kinds of evidence- not just the parts that fit with your first impressions or developing opinions-and, often, far more investigation than one would think.

Fitbit - Tracking Physical Behavior

So here's my take on the "next big thing" in the little world of user research for product design.  Measurement of physical activity is typically tedious (e.g. time and motion studies), highly expensive, or inaccurate (participant self-reporting).  Despite these limitations, it has the potential to be very valuable in quantifying user behavior, such as level of exertion, or rest/motion periodicity in shifts.  For example, the ROI for a new system or product may depend on measuring before and after differences in user physical effort or movement.

I recently learned of the soon-to-be launched Fitbit, what one of my colleagues described as a "pedometer on steriods".  And it is marketed towards the health/fitness marktet.  But what makes its particularly useful to user research are its accuracy, battery life (claimed at 10+ days) and reporting features.  According to the Fitbit web site:

"The Fitbit Tracker contains a motion sensor like the ones found in the Nintendo Wii. The Tracker senses your motion in three dimensions and converts this into useful information about your daily activities. The Tracker measures the intensity and duration of your physical activities, calories burned, steps taken, distance traveled, how long it took you to fall asleep, the number of times you woke up throughout the night and how long you were actually asleep vs just lying in bed. You can wear the Tracker loosely in your pocket or clipped to your clothing, even bras."

Here's a screenshot of the tracking web interface...

 

 

Launch date is "late Dec- early Jan". Well if they're anything like LiveScribe, maybe March or June, but I'd love to be surprised

Casio Launches Lower-Cost High Speed Camera (EX-FH20)

Applying high-speed imagery to study user performance has been a topic that I have written about and presented on in recent weeks.  Earlier this year I purchased the Casio Exilim Pro EX-F1, and now Casio has announced a comparable, lower-cost mode, the
EX-FH20.

The EX-FH20 does not have "Pro" in its name, and does not reach the speeds of the EX-F1, but for studying human behavior, the newer model is probably more than adequate, and in fact excels over the EX-F1 in certain characteristics (e.g. higher resolution for stills, but not video, greater zoom, slightly more compact body).  Most importantly, it has an estimated list price ($599) that is $400 less than the Pro model ($999).  In either case, they are very similar, versatile cameras (still, HD video, high-speed video) that offer capabilities unavailable in any other cameras near their price range.

Here's a breakdown of some key performance difference between the two models - for more info, go to the Casio Web site:

The High Speed EXILIM EX-FH20

• 40 Frames Per Second Burst Mode
• High-Speed Movie Recording up to 1000 Frames Per Second
• 20x Optical Zoom
• High-Definition Movies 720p (1280 x 720 pixels)
  

The EXILIM Pro EX-F1

• 60 Frames Per Second Burst Mode
• High-Speed Movie Recording up to 1,200 Frames Per Second
• 12x Optical Zoom
• Full High-Definition Movies (1080i)

On a feature basis, I can't say I have buyer's remorse, although the price difference is pretty significant - but the early adopter really can't complain about price.

 

FieldCREW - A User Research Technology Concept

At this past weekend's Design Research Conference(DRC2008), I presented on the topic of user research technologies -  what's currently in use and some of the newer tools that can be applied to research (if you read this blog with any regularity then you know what I'm talking about). 

One of the key points I discussed is the lack of tools that are specifically and intentionally designed around the needs of user researchers with respect to data gathering, analysis and communication of findings.  To address that need, I've been working with the design team at Bresslergroup on creating a concept user research technology platform.  While still under creative development, I took the opportunity of the DRC to present our work in progress.

The field-based contextual research workstation, or FieldCREW, is primarily targeted at improving data collection efficiency, particularly when studying complex, multi-dimensional work situations such as surgery in an operating room or a construction crew.

FieldCREW brings together a number of "near-future" technologies to support user research in two contexts:

• When a researcher is working by him/herself and needs to play the role of both note-taker and videographer

• When a team of observers is working together and needs a way to synchronize their observations around multiple events

The Workstation consists of the tablet and several wireless data gathering components (see illustrations in the slideshow below).  The components include:

• Wireless, remotely controlled tracking video cameras for audio and video recording
• Handheld wireless taggers that allow each observer to tag key events of their choosing for later review - tagging is synched to a common timeline on the tablet
• Subvocalization sensor allows the researcher to silently dictate notes that are automatically transcribed to text and stored on the tablet

The tablet manages and receives data from these wireless components and provides features including:

• Video notation (i.e. telestrator) for annotation of events as they happen
• Speech-to-text translation of recorded audio (and subvocalizations)
• Access to stored and online project and research reference materials
• Built-in storage and recharging for wireless components
• Synchronization of all input sources (video, tagging, notes) for streamlined analysis

In a research scenario the lead researcher (or an associate) can manage the data from multiple observers and utilize tagging and annotation features to prioritize key observations, speeding up the analysis process.  Similarly, a single researcher, working alone, can do the work of a team by coordinating input from multiple sources.

And while FieldCREW has the capabilities to support complex field research situations, it can also be used by a single researcher conducted a one-on-one interview, much like a clipboard is used.

We'd appreciate your questions, comments and suggestions as we continue to develop this new platform for facilitating user research.

Design Research Conference Recap

[added Sept. 28th - for an "outsider" view of the the recent Design Research and IDSA conferences, read the Conference Crasher blog]

Rather than giving a play-by-play of DRC2008, I refer you to John Kolko's well-written review, which includes his detailed notes from all of the presentations.  While I didn't agree 100% with all of John's opinions (e.g. I'm not "equally as witty" as Don Norman), we both found the conference to be excellent.  John's analysis includes a comparison to the recent IDSA national conference, but I feel that's like comparing apples to oranges.  That is, a small, focused conference like DRC is always going to have an advantage over a large , multi-focused event like a national conference, and given the choice, I'd go for the smaller conference (a choice I made this year).

Some of the highlights of the DRC for me were:

• The workshop that John Kolko and Ashley Menger gave on "Design Synthesis".  Though it had to be rushed through, they provided valuable guidance and materials for diagramming and visualizing concepts and research findings - certainly an area that needs this kind of guidance.
• Liz Sander's presentation that provided a framework for the various types of research-led an design-led methods.  This actually built off of an article she wrote for Design Research Quarterly a couple of years ago.
• Luis Arnal's anecdotes on conducting research in Latin America - including do's and dont's for visiting Favelas(slums), an interesting cultural perspective.
• Don Norman talking about social design, which includes social aspects of systems (like waiting in line at a bank), as well as the "social" relationships between products (e.g. products that are designed well independently, but fail technically and/or aesthetically when put together).

The conference schedule, pacing, location and materials were all thoughtfully chosen and effective.  Highly recommended for next year.  And for those who didn't make it this year, I'll let you know when the conference presentation videos are put online.  In the meantime, you can check out the growing number of photos tagged to the conference on Flickr (displayed above).

Product Design Focus at Human Factors Conference

Just a reminder, the annual meeting of the Human Factors & Ergonomics Society (otherwise known as the HFES conference) will happen in New York City this week.  See the PDTG Summer 08 Newsletter  for a summary of the relevant presentations and activities a the conference, including the User-Centered Product Design Award on Tuesday afternoon, and the combined IDSA-NYC/HFES get-together on Tuesday evening.

MVIP Cards for Sustainable Mobility

 

Creating specialized card decks seems to be a trendy way to support design brainstorming.  Earlier this year I discussed nForm's user experience trading cards, which like IDEO's Method Cards, provide inspiration or guidance for the user-centered design process.

This year, the Art Center College of Design won two IDEA awards for the Mobility Vision Integration Process.  This is a set of cards specifically designed to "support rapid future scenario development on the topic of sustainable mobility so that groups and individuals can quickly enter a dialog and brainstorm about possible outcomes, solutions and strategies".  I'm not entirely sure about the definition of "sustainable mobility", but it seems to be centered around developing mobile technology solutions (e.g. cell phones) in diverse contexts.

The site provides detailed instructions, but the basic concept seems to be to randomly select cards from a range of categories (e.g. customer, ecology, technology) that serve as requirements and constraints for driving brainstorming and concept generation exercises.

A printed deck of cards may be purchased, or even better (in terms of sustainability), a free online Flash version is available.

The Design (Researchers) Accord

I just wrote a posting for the new Bresslergreen blog on how design researchers can modify their practices and methods to support the environment, based on the guidelines provided by The Designers Accord.

IDSA/HFES Networking Event in NYC

For those attending the upcoming Human Factors & Ergonomics Society meeting in New York in a couple of weeks, or anyone in the NYC area who might be interested:

The IDSANYC – HFES Product Design Technical Group networking event has been set for the Garden of Ono restaurant/bar at the Gansevoort Hotel - http://www.hotelgansevoort.com/restaurants-bars-lounges/index.cfm. 

The hotel is located at 18 9^th avenue, at the corner of 13^th street.  It is easily accessible by subway—take the A/C/E to 14^th street, and walk one block west, and one block south.  The entrance is complete with a red carpet and is easy to find, as it’s the only opening in the wall.

Design Science has provided a generous sponsorship which will provide for hors d'oeuvres for the group.  Any contribution from PDTG would also be appreciated.  We will not have an assigned place to congregate, but we will put up a sign to mark our area.

Event details at a glance:

• Date: Tuesday September 23, 7:30 PM – after the PDTG business meeting at the conference

• Location: Garden of Ono, at the Gansevoort hotel: 18 9^th avenue, corner of 13^th street and 9^th avenue.  Just follow the red carpet in!  http://www.hotelgansevoort.com/maps-directions/index.cfm

• Food and drinks are a la carte, aside from hors d’oeuvres.

For more info, contact David Miller - dave@idsanyc.org

 

Morae 3 Launches

Techsmith has launched the new version of Morae  usability testing software. 

This version goes beyond the screen-based limitations of the preceding versions, by allowing research facilitator's to connect a digital video camera (versus just a web cam) and use two cameras simultaneously.  This allows, for example, for video capture of the a research participant's face with one camera at the same time the user's hands-on interactions with a product or concept are recorded with the second camera. 

Like previous versions, Morae 3 provides basic video editing and production features.  A very convenient tool if you don't need high-resolution output.

I wrote a preview article  after seeing a beta version demonstrated a few months ago, which covers some of the basic features, pros and cons..

Simplicity Continued...

The concept of "simplicity" in design continues to interest the design and business communities.  Don Norman furthers his discussion of the topic in the latest issue of Interactions, Simplicity is Not the Answer, and you can read a version of that article on Norman's web site.  I also published an article in Appliance Design magazine, Clarity & Complexity.

What both articles have in common is addressing a misconception (either real or perceived) that users want simplicity - when in fact what they want is ease-of-use of complexity, or clarity (i.e. high functionality paired with high usability). 

Norman and I address this challenge from slightly different perspectives - while I focus on human factors aspects of "complexity management", Norman suggests design principles to address complexity:

"Good design can rescue us. How do we manage complexity? We use a number of simple design rules. For example, consider how three simple principles can transform an unruly cluster of confusing features into a structured, understandable experience: modularization, mapping, conceptual models."

September Issue of Interactions

 As usual, the September/October issue of Interactions contains many interesting articles and commentary, but there are two items of particular note to product design researchers (subscription required to access full articles):

• Gretchen Anderson of LUNAR discusses the the convergence of interaction design and industrial design in Let's Get Physical.  She includes a set of constraints to consider when pairing a UI with hardware such as size & placement, differentiation and iconic appearance, "controls will be like facial features that make the product instantly recognizable."
  
  
• I (Rob Tannen) have an article that covers some of the latest technologies that can be applied to field research in The Researcher-Tool Mismatch: Improving the fit between user researchers and technology.  The article takes a look at several tools, including video (high definition, high speed video) and audio technologies like the LiveScribe Pulse Pen, "For ethnographic observations, both conversations and environmental sounds can be unobtrusively recorded (in stereo) while taking notes. While the device does not provide the highest-resolution audio quality, it increases the working bandwidthand accuracy of the design researcher."

 

Photosynth: 3D Visualization of Digital Photos

Microsoft Live Labs has launched a public version of Photosynth, a Web tool that uses the overlapping information in a set of still photos taken in a space to create a 3D mapping between the images. I put together a quick collage of the product "museum" space in my office - the more pictures you take from different positions, the better. When viewing, use "f" for full screen and "ctrl" to toggle to the data points.

Potential applications to user research include modeling observed work environments when videotaping is not allowed or impractical.  There's also the possibility of using Photosynth to create 3D views of products or concepts, although it's better suited for large spaces than close ups.  But for one example, see this joystick and note how you can move around it from all sides.

Like IBM's Many Eyes for text and data visualization, all Photosynths currently created are publicly viewable.  Understandably the site has a high traffic load so prepare to be patient.

Comfort in Using Hand Tools

A recent dissertation out of Delft University (Netherlands), discusses Comfort in using hand tools: theory, design and evaluation.  You can download the document as a PDF (note - cover page is in Dutch, but document is written in English).

Kuijt-Evers covers the state of the art in measuring ergonomic comfort for non-powered hand tools and conducted empirical research to validate a set of qualitative comfort predictor for use in design and evaluation.

Here's the abstract:

Everyone uses hand tools in their daily life, like knife and fork. Moreover, many people use hand tools in their profession as well as during leisure time. It is important that they can work with hand tools that provide comfort. Until now, the avoidance of discomfort was emphasized during the design process of hand tools, like screwdrivers, hand saws and paint brushes. In the near future, the focus will shift towards providing comfort. However, some questions need to be answered to make this shift, like: What does the end-user mean with comfort in using hand tools? How can we translate this into hand tool design and the design process? How can we evaluate hand tools on comfort? These questions are answered in the current thesis.

Service Design: A Model for Green Product Design

While there's clearly a great deal of attention around "green design" these days, there's very little guidance on how to design such products (e.g. energy-saving, recyclable, super-efficient, etc.) from a user-centered perspective.  One could argue that there's nothing unique about such products that a typical user-centered design approach would not already accommodate.

But an interview with Terry Swack, which is making the blog rounds, emphasizes the importance of considering the uniqueness of positioning sustainable products:

"...most consumers still don't see the environment as a problem. Marketers have to help them not only to understand the problem, but to actually care about it. It's a matter of making it personally relevant and that their actions matter. But even the greenest consumers don't use sustainability as their primary decision criteria. The green product has to work as well or better than as the other, and be priced relatively the same. Then they'll look at the green attributes."

In other words, a sustainable product not only needs to provide comparable cost, functionality and ease-of-use, but also has the added imperative of effectively communicating its value above and beyond traditional product alternatives. 

How is one to accomplish that?  Since we're talking about attributes that go beyond the user's short-term engagement with the core functionality of the product - like its impact on the environment -  I believe it is most effective to take a service design, rather than a product design approach.  In service design we are not only interested in the ease-of-use around the product, but the user's holistic awareness and experience. 

In a service design analysisI conducted last year, I defined three key characteristics of a service experience:

• Guidance - Information delivered to service consumers to learn about the
  service, understand how to use and navigate the service, and to take
  away for reference.
• Comfort  - Transitioning to physical, emotional and cognitive ease and
  familiarity is necessary for services that take place in new contexts or
  locations.
• Sensation Excitement, surprise and other emotional factors can attract
  interest and maintain engagement over the duration of the service.

While these characteristics were used in the context of a multi-dimensional user experience (i.e. attendance at a design conference), they can also be applied to a user's experience with a sustainable product:

• Guidance - This refers to the educational component of the user experience.  Increasing the user's awareness of the relative value of a sustainable product, as well as it's appropriate usage, is (at least for the short-term). Implicit and explicit guidance needs to be factored into the design.
• Comfort  - On one level, users need to be convinced that the sustainable aspects of a product will not compromise their experience in terms of mental demand, physical comfort or other comfort-related factors.  At the other level, many users will feel a sense of satisfaction if they are sacrificing a degree of comfort in order to lessen environmental impact.  The design challenge is balancing those two types of comfort across different types of users, and even within an individual's range of experiences with the product.
• Sensation - Excitement can come in many forms, but perhaps none more tangible then the pairing of saving money while "saving the planet".  Many, but not all sustainable products can provide comparable functionality at a competitive or reduced cost. 

As with designing services, it's critical to mindfully combine these three characteristics.  One example is home power monitoring applications.   These interfaces provide explicit guidance via reporting energy usage for various appliances within the home, support comfort, quite literally, through effective temperature management, and deliver sensation through a combination of heightened user control and cost savings.

Upcoming Research Conference Programs

A number of upcoming conferences have released their programs to help you decide whether to go and what to see when you get there:

The IDSA National Conference - Polar Opposites (Sept 10-13, Arizona)  features a range of topics.  For the design research crowd there's: People Can't Tell You What They Want and Nine Other Design Research Myths
Chris Rockwell, IDSA, founder and president, Lextant.

The line-up for the Design Research Conference (Sept 19-20, Chicago) looks pretty much completed, although the order of speakers has yet to be determined.  Some of the workshops are already filled up.

The Human Factors & Ergonomics Society (Sept 22-26, New York) program is not easy to navigate (go figure). It's a very large conference so you can search by day or category, but there's no easy way to browse through all the sessions to see what's of interest.  You can search with Technical Groups - for example there's about a dozen or so presentations related to Product Design, ranging from "Sensory Quality Evaluation of Clothes Washing Machine Selector Knobs" to "The Boeing 787 Dreamliner --- A Case Study in Large-Scale Design Integration".

And last, but not least, EPIC 2008 (Oct 15-18, Copenhagen).  You'll need to click through each section to see the content offerings.

I'll be at the Design Research Conference and at least part of HFES, if anyone would like to meet-up and say hi.

An International Standard for Product Usability

I've got a bias against design standards based on my experiences working with organizations that have tried to set them before, rather than after designing a product.  Standards should be a way to document a proven approach, not a prescription for how to do something that hasn't been done yet.  On the other hand, process standards are useful a priori because they provide guidance on how to do something that you may have not done before.  And like design standards, process standards should be updated over time with experience.

With all that said, I am encouraged to see that the International Standards Organization (ISO) has published a set of standards and related process guidelines on "ease of operation for everyday products".  This refers primarily to consumer products.  Userfocus provides a useful, high-level explanation of the four part ISO standards:

"Part 1, 'Design requirements for context of use and user characteristics', provides a set of sensible design guidance for anyone who is developing consumer technology. It outlines a five-step process that the design team should follow...The remaining three parts of ISO 20282 (parts 2-4) propose test methods for measuring the usability of every day products. The three test methods are essentially the same and will be familiar to anyone who has observed a usability test."

In other words, the standards don't provide significant educational value to experienced usability practitioners, but may be useful for those getting started, or even those with some experience who are looking for guidelines on best practices.  Note that you can purchase the documents from the ISO site, but each of the four is over $100 US. 

The Userfocus article also stresses an important point about product usability testing - you need large samples to get reliable data in a variable population, but:

"remember that for most consumer products there is only one key goal: 'the most frequent and/or important user goal that the product is intended to support' as it says in the standard. This means that each participant will be asked to carry out just one or two tasks with the product, so the participant session time should be much shorter than with 'thinking aloud' testing. My estimate is that each participant could be briefed, tested and sent on his or her way in 20 minutes."

10 Ways to Think Like a Design Researcher

Ed Boyden is a professor at the MIT Media Lab, and he seems to spend a lot of time thinking about... thinking.  I learned about his blog when he recently published a notable post on the untapped value of using the brainpower of students to solve real world problems, rather than hypothetical example problems.  I highly recommend you read it, but that's not really the point of what I am focusing on here.

What I am focusing on relates to a post from last year titled How To Think - Managing brain resources in the age of complexity.  In brief, it discusses ten rules for how to organize information, and you should read it before continuing here so you'll know what I'm talking about.

I was struck by a couple of things in Boyden's article.  First, who has the time and motivation to "document everything obsessively"?  It seemed like his rules were unrealistic and time-consuming.  The second thing that struck me was that while some of these rules are impractical for living by, they make a lot of sense in the context of conducting user research, most notably:

• Synthesize new ideas constantly - I think this one is self-explanatory
• Learn how to learn (rapidly) - This one too
• Work backward from your goal - Design research should focus on producing actionable results to inform design.  Keeping this in-mind will make the research analysis process more efficient
• Make contingency maps - We call them task flows
• Write up best-practices protocols - We call this task analysis
• Compose conversation summaries - We call this interviewing

In fact, this list might be read like a series of guidelines for conducting design research.

Boyden provides some technical recommendations for documenting conversations as well (Interesting...and certainly obsessive.):

"I often use plenty of color annotation to highlight salient points. At the end of the conversation, I digitally photograph the piece of paper so that I capture the entire flow of the conversation and the thoughts that emerged. The person I've conversed with usually gets to keep the original piece of paper, and the digital photograph is uploaded to my computer for keyword tagging and archiving. This way I can call up all the images, sketches, ideas, references, and action items from a brief note that I took during a five-minute meeting at a coffee shop years ago--at a touch, on my laptop."

 

IDEA Winners in Design Resarch

2008 was a landmark year for the design research category of the International Design Excellence Awards, with a research project winning "best in show".   

SizeChina, the ergonomic data research project focusing on Asian populations won a Gold for the research category and is sharing best in show honors with the Apple iPhone.  SizeChina "assembled data from a representative cross section of people from mainland China to create the first-ever digital database of Chinese head and face shapes. Now, designers hoping to reach the two billion people in the Southeast Asian market will be able to create products that genuinely fit the needs of this audience."

I covered SizeChina last year after attending Roger Ball's presentation at the 2007 IDSA conference.

Coincidentally, the Silver winner (pictured) in the research category also has a Chinese connection - How the torch of 2008 Beijing Olympic Games came into being.  According to the site "this project's approach infused a sleek and modern design with symbols of both Chinese culture and the spirit of the Olympic Games", although it's not apparent what research was done to support this.

Bronze award winners included three medical-related projects, a field where user research is typically a critical component.  This year, the IDEA site not only lists the award winners, but all of the finalists, which range from color trends to condom dispensing projects.

You can also read more coverage of the awards at Businessweek, and learn about my experience as an IDEA juror this year (although not in the Research category).

Wall Street Journal Special Section on Product Design

I'm a few weeks late in reporting on this, but the WSJ had a very relevant section in the Monday, June 23rd edition, that you can access online.   Form and Function contains a series of case studies on recent product designs, ranging from golf clubs, to blue jeans, to power tools and even a Buick.

What each of these min-articles has in common is a focus on the role of user research, human factors and usability in the success (and sometime failures) of products. 

One of the more interesting examples discusses the MK Diamond portable masonry saw (pictured here).  It's a clear demonstration of what happens when you don't design for your users appropriately, and then learn from your mistakes.  And while I could argue the finer points of the described design research (e.g. risks of relying on focus groups for identifying requirements, using product designers as representative users, etc.), let's be happy with this sort of message getting across to a mainstream audience:

"The completed product, released in 2003, was an immediate hit, selling 3,120 units in its first year. But through customer feedback, the company began learning about design flaws in the BX3.

For example, the design assumed that most masons would operate the pull-down handle that brings the saw into cutting position with their right hand. It turns out, though, that masons typically grip the material they're cutting with their right hand and pull the handle with their left. That made the handle somewhat awkward for many users.

The company also realized there had been a critical flaw in its design process: It had conducted focus groups with contractors and suppliers who would buy the saw, but not the masons who would actually use it."

"After four years, MK Diamond decided to redesign the saw, and invited masons to its focus groups...designers became familiar with the BX3 by mimicking its everyday use -- carrying it around, transporting it in a pickup truck and cutting cement blocks. All that was videotaped and photographed, and the designers examined the images to help them find ways to make the saw easier to use.

One conclusion was that the saw folded in a way that required a mason to extend his arm outward while carrying it, causing shoulder strain. Tweaking the design, so the user could hold the folded saw closer to his leg, would make it seem lighter and reduce the strain"

BMW Redesigns i-Drive

In recent years the BMW i-Drive system has become the poster child for bad usability in interfaces (e.g. Don Norman's criticisms) - a conveniently-named foil to the positive user experience of the iPod.  But CNET now reports that a new version of the i-Drive (pictured) is in the works.  As a past user of the i-Drive, the new design seems to be addressing some of the key problems I experienced, with dedicated buttons for accessing each of the primary modes, and a single-axis rotary control apparently replacing key functions that previously relied on a multi-directional joystick.

Video - An Ethnography and Interviewing Primer

A couple of IIT graduate students (Gabriel Biller & Kristy Scovel) have put together an entertaining video primer on field interview techniques.  You'll appreciate it if you've ever done street intercept interviews.  The video runs about 30 minutes.  I think this pairs well with Sam Ladner's (non-video) design research primer. 

Getting People to Talk: An Ethnography & Interviewing Primer

5 Guidelines for Ergonomic Observation

In my work in medical product ergonomics (as well as other areas of product design), I frequently encounter product teams who are applying field observation in their product development processes.  This is great, but much of the time, the teams lack the skills for conducting effective observations.  Actually, not so much the lack of skills, but a lack of structure to guide what to observe and how to document observations.  This lack of structure typically results in two types of patterns of observation notes:

1. Write everything - In this case observers write down every event in an ultimately futile effort to document the entire task flow, procedure, etc. This is the professional version of those students from high school who write down everything the teacher writes, even if they don't know what it means. I always loved it when the teacher would write something on the blackboard and then quickly erase it, leaving these human Xerox machines bewildered.
2. Write what's interesting- The more common approach is to document events or ideas that are out of the ordinary or unusual as they contribute above and beyond the observer's current knowledge base. This is certainly a more manageable approach, but is highly variable due individual observer's thresholds for what is "interesting".

How do you overcome these note-taking habits?  When I provide training on "Minimally Invasive User Research", I emphasize a team-based approach where multiple observers take on distinct, but overlapping roles.  For example, one observer may track high-level task flows while another focuses on the detail interactions between a user and a medical instrument.  But even when attention is focused to a particular set of user interactions, one can fall back in the write everything/write what's interesting habit.

An effective way to break away from those observational note-taking traps is to use guidelines.  Guidelines fall between having no structure and an overly-constrained template, by giving a set of elements to pay attention to, but the flexibility to document them as the observer sees fit. 

For example, in the case of observing a medical instrument interaction, I created the guideline of FoRCePS.  Forceps are a common medical instrument, making the term a memorable acronym for medical product designers.  The acronym represents five ergonomic areas to consider during observations, and is a loosely-based expansion of Stephen Pheasant's cardinal rules of anthropometrics.   The guidelines are:

• Feedback - Identify where the user's access to sensory feedback (e.g. visual, tactile) is compromised
• Reach - Identify situations where the user's major limbs (arms, legs) and minor limbs (fingers) must over-extend in order to carry-out a task
• Clearance - Identify situations where the user's major limbs (arms, legs) and minor limbs (fingers) must function within a limited space, such as finger holes or a handle
• Posture - Identify situations where the user's overall body posture is deviated from neutral position, as well as deviations at key joints (e.g. shoulder, wrist)
• Strength - Identify situations where the user must apply excessive or prolonged force for movement or stability, relative to their strength capabilities

Observers are encouraged to consider each of these guidelines individually for both macro and mico ergonomic issues, but also to understand how they interact with each other. For example, if there is limited visual access, compromising feedback, then a user may change his or her body and limb postures to accommodatean improved field-of-view, but in doing so, increase the extent of reach and reduce the effective  transfer strength.  I recommend watching a brief segment of a medical procedure (or other task where ergonomic compromises are common) to practice paying attention to these 5 issues.

So even with a set of five key principles, there's a lot to pay attention to during live observations and in follow-up video review.  Fortunately, FoRCePS and similar mental "tools" give an observer guidance and provide a consistent way to track issues that can be shared with other observers who are focusing on different aspects of the observed task.

Design Research and Sustainable Design

Mark Vanderbeeken (Core77) reports on the Changing the Change conference, which focused "on the role and potential of design research in the transition towards sustainability".  Design research can mean a lot of things, and in fact there were 138