Download - Towards a UX-focused Research Agenda: Building Participatory Cultures in Academic Contexts
Towards a UX-focused Research
Agenda: Building Participatory Cultures in Academic Contexts
Guiseppe GettoEast Carolina [email protected]
What I’ll Cover
What I mean by participatory culture
Towards a model for building a UX-focused academic research agenda
An example of fostering user participation in a UX project
Implications
Participatory Culture
User-Centered Design (UCD)
“To maximize the usability of a product, the user should be involved
from the product’s inception.” – Courage and Baxter
Design as requirements gathering followed by iteration
UCD paradigm does not go far enough towards including users
within actual design processes – Sharon 2012, Buley 2013,
Getto 2014
User Experience Design (UX) as contextual, participatory design
Persona (or archetypal user) development
Design process is built from “users’ own goals and measures” –
http://uxdesign.com
Participatory Culture, 2
Why participatory?
“Social systems––both online and offline––
continue to evolve. We have a huge
opportunity, as well as an enormous
responsibility, to be part of that evolution in
ways that can lead to more contextually aware
experiences for our participants” – Potts 2013
UX-focused Academic Research Agenda
Today’s technical communication problems
are subjective
are rarely solved permanently
involve multiple actors - Johnson-Eilola and Selber 2013
A good portion of these problems involve the digital
realm
Technical communicator as UX expert =
▪ someone helping to build social systems that continue to evolve
according to users’ own goals and measures – http://uxdesign.com
and Potts 2013
UX-focused Academic Research, 2
http://www.nccoastalatlas.org/
UX-focused Academic Research, 3
UX-focused Academic Research, 4
UX-focused Academic Research, 5
UX-focused Academic Research, 6
How I got involved with the NC Coastal Atlas project I showed up to meetings and started presenting
potential solutions▪ E.g.: “how can we get users more involved?”▪ Oh yeah, there’s this thing called persona development
▪ E.g.: “how is our design process?”▪ Oh, it’s pretty good, but you might want to consider…
I tried to be a good technical communicator in response to a situation that required UX
I worked my butt off studying up on UX best practices (ongoing)
Fostering user participation Design process behind the Atlas
(UCD)▪ Needs survey of Coastal Resource Managers▪ Comparative analysis of other state-based digital
atlases▪ Capturing grant funding and designing a prototype▪ Donna Kain as user advocate
(UX)▪ (I get involved) Project planning that involves UX▪ More robust and design-focused comparative analysis▪ Information architecture and interaction design
Business process modeling▪ User research/engagement Persona development
Fostering user participation, 2
User research/engagement persona development – Brooks and Quesenbery 2010, Sharon 2012 Formative usability – Chang and Williamson
2013▪ Having users interact with an early prototype to allow
more influence on the design process These early tests are also user interviews Interviews are coded to develop personas or
“archetypal users”▪ Assures design process is driven by “users’ own goals
and measures” – http://uxdesign.com
Fostering user participation, 3
First (proto-)persona for the NC Coastal Atlas The Coastal Researcher Story … Use case scenario▪ Uses the Atlas to see what other coastal researchers have studied and to make new maps for her own research projects, such as her project on…
Usability needs▪ Better access to data sources▪ A more intuitive legend
Future design hopes▪ Geo-tagged citations that lead to actual sources
Implications
Academics can (and should?) develop research agendas around UX We can provide validation of UX
methods from industry, plus develop some of our own
We can help contribute to development projects that happen within the academy, where UX experts are often scarce
We can help be user advocates and can thus help build participatory cultures with users