{"id":388,"date":"2014-09-18T20:15:24","date_gmt":"2014-09-18T20:15:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.neovita.com\/thoughts\/?p=388"},"modified":"2016-01-17T06:45:03","modified_gmt":"2016-01-17T06:45:03","slug":"4-ways-i-meet-users-part-3-guided-explorations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oninteractions.com\/thoughts\/4-ways-i-meet-users-part-3-guided-explorations\/","title":{"rendered":"Guided explorations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>In a guided exploration I let a person immerse themselves in a system. I ask them to accomplish tasks that touch on points in the artefact that we want to validate. During the hour-long session I can find a lot of pain points in the artefact I help design.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>So far in this series I&#8217;ve discussed <a title=\"4 ways I meet \u201cusers\u201d part 2: Interviews\" href=\"https:\/\/www.oninteractions.com\/thoughts\/4-ways-i-meet-users-part-2-interviews\/\">interviews<\/a> and <a title=\"4 ways I meet \u201cusers\u201d part 1: Quick usability tests\" href=\"https:\/\/www.oninteractions.com\/thoughts\/4-ways-i-meet-users-part-1-quick-usability-tests\/\">quick usability tests<\/a>. Interviews are long, often a full hour, while the quick tests are over in five minutes. My &#8220;guided explorations&#8221; are 30-60 minutes long sessions where I guide persons through scenarios in a system.<\/p>\n<p>By having the person interact with the artefact for a quite long time I can validate full use cases and can see things such as when the person gets bored with the system or when they struggle to accomplish a task that require multiple steps or decisions. Questions that can be answered include &#8220;Which problems exist that hinder a person who want to find, configure and purchase Widget X?&#8221; and &#8220;Does our interface seem to feel fluid or is it jagged?&#8221;<\/p>\n<h2>Preparations and Setup<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>I always start by defining what we want to understand and which parts of the artefact will be investigated.<\/li>\n<li>I then create scenarios that touch on the areas we want to investigate and see to it that we have prototypes or production systems that include those parts. In the scenarios I include an entry point and an exit. Entry might be a Google search, exit is most often shortly after achieving the task that the scenario is based on.<\/li>\n<li>I find that guided explorations work best when only one researcher sit with the &#8220;user&#8221;. Having two researchers in the room can make the person too aware of their actions.<\/li>\n<li>Invitation and location selection is as for <a title=\"4 ways I meet \u201cusers\u201d part 2: Interviews\" href=\"https:\/\/www.oninteractions.com\/thoughts\/4-ways-i-meet-users-part-2-interviews\/\">Interviews<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>I often ask the invitee to bring their own hardware or the device category we are investigating. Using ones own tablet or phone feels less scary than using a borrowed device.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Procedure<\/h2>\n<ol>\n<li>I introduce myself, explain the task and discuss documentation as for <a title=\"4 ways I meet \u201cusers\u201d part 2: Interviews\" href=\"https:\/\/www.oninteractions.com\/thoughts\/4-ways-i-meet-users-part-2-interviews\/\">Interviews<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>I ask the person to &#8220;talk out loud&#8221; during the session and explain that this can feel quite weird in the beginning.<\/li>\n<li>I then introduce the first scenario\/task and get the person to the initial state\/screen.<\/li>\n<li>I ask questions such as &#8220;You clicked on the link and ended up on this page. Was that what you expected?&#8221; if the person is not conveying the information I am interested in by &#8220;talking out loud&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li>The person often have question regarding if they have made correct interpretations and acted as we want them to. I try to deflect these questions by either giving an ambiguous answer or writing down the question and telling the person that I will answer it after the session. Deflecting is extra important for questions that involve the parts of the artefact that we are investigating.<\/li>\n<li>After each scenario\/task I answer any questions that are asked and that are appropriate to answer and then introduce the next part. A break for coffee and a cinnamon bun is also included (obviously!).<\/li>\n<li>After all scenarios are done I answer any remaining questions, thank the person for helping and we part ways.<\/li>\n<li>I write a short report and adjust my scenarios based on the methodological challenges that arose during the session.<\/li>\n<li>When all sessions are done, usually 4 or 5 in total, I report the results and give recommendations.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h2>Building trust<\/h2>\n<p>Guided explorations are not as private as Interviews but they can be very intimate. I and the person are in a room for up to an hour and we talk almost the whole time. I also ask the person to act in a system or prototype that we know have flaws and in which the &#8220;user&#8221; will thus fail from time to time. Therefore all recommendations for building trust during <a title=\"4 ways I meet \u201cusers\u201d part 2: Interviews\" href=\"https:\/\/www.oninteractions.com\/thoughts\/4-ways-i-meet-users-part-2-interviews\/\">Interviews<\/a> also hold for Guided explorations. In addition I try to have the person use their own device during the session.<\/p>\n<p>During the session the &#8220;user&#8221; will get confused and uncertain from time to time. When I notice that this happens I often deliberately blame myself or the system. After all: the system is broken if the person can not accomplish what we want them to accomplish.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tomorrow: <a title=\"4 ways I meet \u201cusers\u201d, part 4: Long-distance relationships\" href=\"https:\/\/www.oninteractions.com\/thoughts\/4-ways-i-meet-users-part-4-long-distance-relationships\/\">Long-distance relationships.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a guided exploration I let a person immerse themselves in a system. I ask them to accomplish tasks that touch on points in the artefact that we want to validate. During the hour-long session I can find a lot of pain points in the artefact I help design.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":389,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,19,9,12],"tags":[],"series":[26],"class_list":["post-388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inclusion","category-interaction-design","category-process","category-prototypes","series-4-ways-i-meet-users"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.oninteractions.com\/thoughts\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/4-ways-of-participatory-design-guided-exploration.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oninteractions.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oninteractions.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oninteractions.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oninteractions.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oninteractions.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.oninteractions.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":659,"href":"https:\/\/www.oninteractions.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions\/659"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oninteractions.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oninteractions.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oninteractions.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oninteractions.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oninteractions.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}