Understanding Activities

1. Understanding Activities Interaction Design Lecture 6 Scenario-based Design

2. Learning Outcomes • After this unit you will be able to • Define activities using “FICS” analysis • Understand the different types of context, and their effects on an activity • Use scenarios to represent activities and evaluate your depth of understanding of those activities • This in turn contributes to the Module LO • 1. Understand the relationship between designer-centric and user-centric views of interaction and interaction design. • 2. Choose and apply appropriate techniques for representing and presenting design thinking and also for evaluating that thinking

3. Lecture Plan • Introduction • Analysis & Activities, FICS • Activity • Modelling • Break • Scenarios • Example PACT v Scenarios • Conclusions

4. Analysis - Design • Before any real design work can commence, it is essential to develop a clear and through understanding of the activities that are to be the focus of the design • It is also true to say that it is not possible to complete a thorough understanding until some design work has been completed

5. Activities • An activity is any purposeful behaviour undertaken by one of more people, mediated by some artefacts • Understanding activities leads to an understanding of the requirements for a re-designed system • Both current and future activities need to be understood

6. Analysing ActivitiesFICS Analysis • Achieving a designer-centric view of the system, to complement PACT’s user-centric view • Focus on • Functions and Events • Interactions and Usability • Content and Structure • Style and aesthetics • Always considering the context of the activity

7. Functions and Events • Looking at functions helps to establish the functional requirements • What must the system be able to do? • What are the functional constraints of a system? • Think about the whole human-computer system…who does what should come later • Events are actions that cause other things to happen

8. Interactions and Usability • Interaction concerns the ways in which information is exchanged between people and artefacts • Focusing on interactions will expose usability problems • Usability is concerned with • Ease of use and learning • Engendering positive attitudes in people • Flexibility and robustness

9. Content and Structure • Activities will involve some information content…sometimes a great deal of content • Good content is accurate, up-to-date, relevant and well-presented • Content has to be stored somewhere • Activities will include objects that structure the content

10. Style and Aesthetics • Focusing on the style and design of artefacts is also important • What is the overall ‘look and feel’ of the system? • What mood does the design engender? • What story does the design tell?

11. Context of the Activities • Consider the context in which the activity takes place • What is the organisational context? • What is the social context? • What are the physical characteristics under which the activity takes place? • Context as surrounding vs. context as gluing together

12. Class Activity - Understanding Activities • Do a FICS analysis for using a mobile phone to arrange to meet a friend • Functions and events • Interactions and usability • Content and structure • Style and aesthetics

13. Using a mobile phone to arrange to meet a friend • Functions and events • Find phone, switch on • Get signal indicator • Find number • Dial number • Number answered/engaged/no answer/message/can’t locate number • Exchange information about locations… Dozens of functions and possible events, any of which might be better implemented in new system?

14. Using a mobile phone to arrange to meet a friend • Interactions and usability • See no signal - move out of dead spot • View number – adjust angle to see clearly • Hear ringing – move to where you can hear (or speak) without problems • Look around to see “you’re on 56th and Wabasha” – street sign broken • Check watch for meeting time – synchronise? Dozens of interactions – how usable is current system for each one. How might usability change

15. Using a mobile phone to arrange to meet a friend • Content and structure • Friend’s name, phone number(s), addresses – how many old versions “You’ve got my parents’ phone number, haven’t you?” • Diary for appointments • List of venues from which neither of you are barred! Or where his ex doesn’t work… • Route information – road repairs, traffic jams, bus strikes, taxi costs What information is needed How is it organised? How does it change and when

16. Using a mobile phone to arrange to meet a friend • Style and aesthetics • “Wassap!!!” “I’m on the train” • People wouldn’t get mugged if they didn’t make the phones so desirable. • Modular covers (unlike named tattoos) • Frequently dialled numbers • “meet you where?!! I wouldn’t be seen dead there, but across the road…” Affects, and affected by, not just the immediate system but the context too?

17. Methods for Understanding Activities • It is important to employ methods that help the designer understand what others want - to distance designers from their prejudices • Basic methods • Working with people • Generating ideas (because people will not know what’s possible) • Modelling

18. Understanding Activities • Asking people using interviews, questionnaires, focus groups, etc. • Observing people using (semi) ethnographic methods • Generating ideas through envisionment, participatory and prototyping methods • Also, look at similar products or systems and at similar activities

19. Modelling • A model is …some more abstract representation of something • To generate new ideas, examine possibilities and prompt for questions. • For accurately expressing ideas to others. • To test ideas. • To make predictions.

20. Modelling - Car Designer • Car designer…. ‘doodles’ some ideas, shows them to her colleagues • Settles on one and produces blueprint, gives it to model maker • Makes scale model put in a wind tunnel • Data from wind tunnel goes into computer model to predict aerodynamics Explores the problem space Explores the problem space and communicates Generates data for real world stakeholders

21. Representing Activities Using Scenarios • The designer’s understanding of activities has to be represented somehow so that it can be discussed and verified • By other designers • By the people undertaking the activities • Scenarios - short stories about the activity - are an effective way of doing this

22. Scenarios • …are concrete stories about people undertaking activities using technology in a context • It is important to capture the variation that is possible in people, contexts, technologies and the details of activities…. • … So a corpus of scenarios - covering typical examples of the generic activity - will be needed ….

23. Structuring Scenarios • Give the scenario a name, version number, author, etc, and the rationale for the scenario • Do a PACT analysis for the scenario • Number the paragraphs, include endnotes to record claims about the activity • These might be claims about current problems, or claims about future designs

24. Example - What Shall We Do Now? • Rationale • This scenario has been developed as part of the first prototype. It is intended to provide a rich description of a general context of use of the Home Information Centre (HIC). • The scenario is deliberately vague with respect to a number of features such as input and output media and modalities, how the content is provided, etc, in order to stimulate discussion about such things.

25. Example - PACT Analysis • People – A couple in their mid 30s, well-educated, relatively well-off, able-bodied • Activities – Using the HIC to select entertainment from the Edinburgh Arts festival • Context – Living area at home. Information searching only (no communication yet) • Technology – A ‘Home Information Centre’ envisaged as a multi-modal device, something of a cross between a personal computer and a television, stylish, internet-enabled.

26. Example Paragraph • Jan and Pat are a couple in their mid thirties. Pat is a university lecturer in Cultural Studies and Jan is an accounts manager at Standard Life insurance. They live in the Stockbridge area of Edinburgh, Scotland in a two-bedroom flat overlooking the river. It is 12.00 noon on August 15th. Jan and Pat are sitting in their large, airy kitchen/dining room. The remains of pizza and mixed salad mingles with a pile of newspapers on the kitchen table. Jan and Pat have recently returned from a holiday on the island of Zante and, apart from checking their e-mail, have not gone back to work. They decide that they would like to go to see one of the events that is happening as part of the Edinburgh Arts festival.

27. Example Continued - Using Endnotes • Jan activates the HIC1 and chooses ‘Edinburgh Festival2. The HIC connects to the different content providers who are registered as providing content about the festival 1. How the HIC is activated is not considered here. Different methods may lead to different versions of the scenario. 2. So, ‘Edinburgh Festival’ is a ‘thing’ in, or accessed by, the HIC. It could be some sort of plug-in provided by a third party content provider. For example, the Guardian Newspaper might provide a free CD-ROM for its readership, Jan and Pat may have downloaded the data from a Web site, the data may be physically resident on some remote machine, or on Pat and Jan’s computer

28. Using Endnotes (Continued) • The display shows five categories of information — Times of Events, Specific Artists, Specific Events, Specific Venues, Types of Events — a catalogue and a query facility3 3. Again the modality of these are not specified. The query facility could be spoken, typed on a remote keyboard or an on-screen keyboard, written by hand or take some other form such as a query agent. The catalogue facility could be represented in a number of different ways.

29. Making Claims From Scenarios • When writing, thinking about or using scenarios issues will arise about some design features. • Can be recorded as endnotes • Often there are trade-offs and a design feature may lead to positive outcomes or negative ones. • These should be listed alongside the feature

30. Making Claims, Example

31. Conclusions (1 of 3) • Undertaking an activity analysis involves a number of different views that can be remembered through the acronym FICS; • Functions and Events, • Interactions and Usability, • Content and Structure, • Style and Aesthetics.

32. Conclusions (2 of 3) • Methods for understanding activities fall into three main categories; • Methods for working with people • Methods for generating ideas • Modelling methods.

33. Conclusions (3 of 3) • Scenarios are concrete stories about the interactions between people, activities, contexts and technologies. • Scenarios offer an effective way of representing activities, enabling the designer to generate ideas, consider solutions and communicate with others