Do just three random interviews based on the observations

**FIND THE ATTACHED FILE**

ASSIGNMENT

Introduction

Before you begin this assignment, thoroughly read the
Design Briefs
document. In it, you will find three design briefs: Change, Glance and Time. Base your observation for this assignment on one of these briefs. This brief will serve as a theme and benchmark for your work throughout the project sequence.

Assignment Description

You have two weeks for this assignment. Use week 1 to complete step 1. Use week 2 to complete step 2.

Step 1: Observe (do this individually in week 1)

Internships and apprenticeships are powerful methods of teaching and learning because we learn by watching and observing.  Watching how people do things is a great way to learn about their goals and values. This helps build design insight. At Stanford University, they call this concept “needfinding.” At Stanford, they believe that by studying the world around us, we can develop a better grasp of what people need, and then use these insights to create significant new products and services. This assignment is designed to help you train your eyes and ears to develop design ideas. Your goal is to uncover user needs, failures, and opportunities for improvement.

While your end goal as a team will be to design a web application, your observation may or may not include the user actually using an electronic device. If you are designing a web interface for a task that doesn’t yet exist on the computer, you will be observing users doing the task as they do it now. You will identify opportunities for the software to solve existing problems this way. On the other hand, if you are designing a product to improve an existing computer interaction (e.g., using email or organizing deadlines in a calendar), you will observe your user doing the task in situ, that is, using their computer to do the actual task in the actual environment.

If you have mobility limitations, you may conduct your observations and interviews over email, phone, Skype, and/or video chat.

1. Begin by coming up with a specific activity to observe. Read the three design briefs. Choose an activity that relates to one of those briefs. 

2. Select three individuals (friends/family) to observe. Choose people who are not similar to yourself in some way (for example, they are studying a different discipline, working a different type of job, have a different family situation). Your goal is to observe the successes, failures, and latent opportunities that occur when computers are used, not used, or could be used to support your chosen activity. Ask them to participate in this assignment and get permission from them. Be sure you coordinate with your participants to select a time that will be rich for observations. Tell the participants to perform the task as realistically as possible, while communicating to you as appropriate. Utilize the strategies we talked about in class to help you.

3. During the observation, in addition to taking notes, use digital photographs or sketches to document activities, but do not use a video camera. This is because your choice of moments to capture with a photograph or sketch is what is important, as it shows specific successes and failures. After the observations, spend 10 to 15 minutes interviewing your participants about the activity you observed. It should take you approximately two hours total to make all three observations if you have planned carefully. It will take longer if you haven’t! Remember, these photos and sketches are meant to document your actual observations, so using stock photos/art is considered plagiarism and is unacceptable. 

4. Write up a report on your three observations including the pictures and as detailed a narrative as you can for each observation. What did you observe? What did you learn? Share this with members of your team before your brainstorming meeting in week 2.

Step 2: Brainstorm needs/goals (do this as a group in week 2)

After you have sent your report to all members of your group, set up a meeting for early in week 2. 

Use this meeting to discuss each other’s observations and finally choose 1 problem (which came from one team member, replete with all three observations, narrative and pictures). 

You should now have a list of specific user needs: opportunities for design innovation that would enable computers to better support the activity you observed. Now engage in a brainstorming session. Brainstorming is a group activity and should be fun and your goal is to generate as many interesting ideas as possible. All ideas are good ones at this stage, and you should generate at least 15 of them.

You are not looking for solutions yet: focus on user needs and goals only. An example of a need might be “Sometimes, when Charmaine takes the Turnpike to work, it is very crowded and her commute to work takes 1.5 hours instead of 1 hour. Charmaine needs a way to plan what time to leave for work based on traffic on the Turnpike at that time.”

It is helpful to use to phrases “needs a way to” or “needs to be able to” as you list your user needs. 

Step 3: Find inspiration (do this as a group in week 2)

Your next step is to find inspiration for the solutions you will be brainstorming in your next assignment. Inspiration can come from existing applications, artifacts, products, or services that relate to your concept. You are best served to search the web here (potentially useful sites include Google, Google Scholar, the ACM Digital Library, TechCrunch, and Engadget!) Some things you find will be quite related, but it is important to interpret “related” broadly. The relationship could be very concrete or very abstract. It may be that a carrot-peeler or a measuring cup is your inspiration for an elegant and ergonomic software interface design. You may be inspired to improve upon an existing service or go in a completely different direction. Cast the net wide and find as much as you can. 

Inspirations that fit the earlier mentioned example need with Charmaine’s commute could be an observation of runners at the Bay to Breakers footrace or another form of commuting or a car that flies!  

Pick out your five favorite inspirations. For each one, give a brief explanation (1-2 sentences) of why you chose that design (What did you take away from it? What did you learn from it? In other words, why did it inspire you?)

Student Examples

An example of this assignment is included on Canvas. Please bear in mind that the assignment was slightly different than the one presented here. 

Submit (Done by team leader by end of week 3)

· A write-up of the design brief your group observation falls under: Change, Glance or Time. Explain why.

· A captioned photograph or sketch from each person (at least 3 people) observed. The photo and caption should capture a particularly interesting moment/breakdown/work-around from the observation. (You should have a total of 3+ photos with corresponding captions for each).

· A narrative under each photograph explaining what your observed and what your learned in your observation.

· A list of needs/goals/tasks inspired by what was observed (at least 15). 

· Five existing inspirations that relate to your thinking. Give brief explanations of why you chose those designs.

· Proofread your work before submission. Remove all typos and grammar errors. Ensure your document looks professional. Keep it neat. 

Evaluation Criteria & Grading Rubric

Category

Unsatisfactory

Bare Minimum

Satisfactory Effort & Performance

Above & Beyond

Observations

0: No observations or completely irrelevant observations.

1: The group observed only one person and/or the group observed an activity unrelated to the brief.

3: The group observed only two people and/or the group observed an activity that would be better related to another brief.

5: The group observed three people in an activity clearly related to the brief. 

Quality of Observations

0: No observations or completely irrelevant observations. 

1: The group’s observations did not demonstrate a breakdown or a design opportunity that was relevant. 

3: The group’s observations somewhat demonstrated a breakdown or design opportunity, but they were only somewhat relevant, were communicated poorly, or left major questions unanswered.

5: The group’s observations clearly demonstrated a breakdown or design opportunity. The descriptions were well written, informative, and comprehensive. 

Photos/Sketches

0: The group did not submit photos and captions related to each described observation, or submitted photos that were clearly not taken as part of the actual observation (e.g. stock photos). 

1: No relevant photos/sketches submitted that demonstrate a breakdown or design opportunity. 

3: The group submitted two relevant photos/sketches that demonstrate a breakdown or design opportunity.

5: The group submitted three relevant photos/sketches that demonstrate a breakdown or design opportunity.

Ideas for User Needs

0: The group did not come up with ideas for user needs or gave an irrelevant answer.

1: The group came up with 1 – 7 ideas for user needs.

3: The group came up with 8 – 14 ideas for user needs. 

5: The group came up with 15+ ideas for user needs.

Quality of Ideas for User Needs

0: The group did not come up with ideas or gave an irrelevant answer. 

1: Most of the ideas the group came up with were irrelevant, repeated, or obvious (didn’t require observation).

3: Most of the group’s ideas were insightful; Only a few seemed irrelevant, repeated, or obvious. 

5: All of the ideas were insightful. Each idea could become the basis for a design project. 

Inspirations

0: The group did not come up with inspirations or gave an irrelevant answer.

1: The group found 1 – 2 inspirations.

3: The group found 3 – 4 inspirations. 

5: The group found 5+ inspirations.

Quality of Inspirations

0: The group did not come up with inspirations or gave an irrelevant answer.

1: The inspirations had no explanations.

3: The inspirations were obvious (didn’t require observation) and/or the explanations were vague and confusing (it would be hard to implement a solution based on them). 

5: Inspirations were diverse and had insightful explanations.

Part 1 – Interview/Observations

The design we chose to focus on was Change. The intention of our application is to help the user reach their goals of being on track with their reading assignments or just finishing a book in the book they started in general. Changing someone’s habits its always hard specially when sometimes the individual does not feel motivated to keep going. The most common barrier people have when it comes to not being able to finish the task of reading would be they lose interest or don’t know how to manage their time to finish it, so they tend to give up. 

Our need finding process is to observed three individuals that would help us determine what needs and goals we should archive or think about when creating this application. We would like to also determine how certain individuals would react to be implementing a rewards/badge system that would help them keep being motivated to finish the text they are reading and if making other widgets on the application such as having an option for music and notifications of reminders would help improve the task at hand for the users. Basically we would like to know what we can do to be able to track the users task and keep the at task with it set goal. 

Part 2 – Needs and Goals

1.  Book length tracker

· Set time frame for the book to be finish.

0.  Scanner

· Barcode capability 

· QR code capability

0.  Rewards system like achievements/badges

1.  Book chapter tracker

· Set the time frame to finish the book instead of pages by chapters

0.  Simple assortment of books 

1.  Simple access of materials

2.  Music interface

· Spotify 

· Pandora

· Apple Music

0.  Bookmark option

1.  Statistics

· Time spend reading 

· Books read

· achievement/badges unlocked 

0.   Popup notifications for daily reminders

1.   Dictionary option for the user to search of specific words

2.   Creation of a profile

· Sign in page to keep the user personal information and tracking 

0.   Organization of books

· Categories

· Name

· Author 

0.   Save progress and information in an offline database

1.   Options for people with different abilities

· Dictation 

0. Daily quotes from known authors

Part 3 – Inspiration and existing solutions

Apple Fitness

Fitbit 

Done

Motivate: Daily Motivation

Habitica: Gamified Task manager