Do-Discover-Iterate: Wisdom and Insight from Professor Paul Casper

The idea for this post began almost 2 months ago as Paul Casper was preparing to begin his new vocation as a teacher. As someone who has enjoyed collaborating with him and learning from him as we've navigated the usability and user-centered design front,  I asked him, "What are your parting words to us Paul on usability?" 

Read Paul's 5 pieces of wisdom and insight here: http://pcasper.com/2011/10/21/do-discover-iterate/

The Site Visit Scheduling Saga

Over the last month, requests for site visit scheduling hit an all-time high.  (For those of you that are newer, site visits are one of the methods of customer discovery we began using this year to understand what our customers are trying to accomplish and what we need to create to help them meet those objectives. When we visit a customer in their own environment, we refer to this as a site visit.)

In addition to the requests for site visits, came also the need for project teams to stay up to date on which customers were being called when and what visits were actually confirmed.  It became clear really fast that we needed a tool.
 
So Connie, Linda, Sara and I got together and started with the standard UCD (User Centered Design) question:

What are our (internal) customers trying to do? OR

 What are the specific tasks they need to complete?

KEY TASKS team members needed to be able to complete: 

1. Check to see if there are any visits coming up
2. Check to see who else was going on a particular site visit and if there was availability
3. Check to see the focus of the site visits
4. Check the status of communication with sites being contacted for visits
5. Check to see how recently a particular site was contacted or visited in relation to any project
6. Sales Team also needed to be able to see what communication was happening with sites in their territory

 

KEY REQUIREMENTS the tool must meet to ensure team members can carry out their tasks:

1.    It needed to be easily accessed by EVERYONE on project teams

2.    It needed to be easily updated by ANY project team member

3.    It needed to be easily sorted however the user wishes to see the data (by project, data, site name, diocese)

4.    Must be able to see the Diocese that each site belongs to 

Now, with the above tasks and requirements we created the first iteration of the SITE VISIT SCHEDULER TOOL (an internal spreadsheet) where project teams and employees can go to see what is happening with site visits.

Keep in mind, in user-centered design, we DO—DISCOVER—ITERATE.  So, we created the tool, we’ll discover how it works and we’ll move on to the next iteration.

So, try those tasks (from above) & check the status of those visits!

(Check your e-mail for the tool link.)

Let's Be Honest: What's the ROI on UCD?

In whatever we do,  there a moments when we ask some really critical questions

So I thought I would pose one to us…..

What is the ROI of User-Centered Design?  

ROI is a good question to look at not just corporately, which John, Steve and the managers lead us in doing, but also how our individual work intersects with the user and how that can affect the much bigger picture of what we do.

I came across this video from Human Factors International that provides great food for thought, no matter what project you may be working on or what function's lense you may be viewing this through.  While the language they use is specific to software, this concept of ROI applies to software, hardware, print books, digital books, etc...so keep that in mind as you review.

p.s. At the end of the video, they tell you how you can get a free poster of what you just saw created on the screen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O94kYyzqvTc

Surprised By Discovery

One of my favorite books of all time is C.S. Lewis' Surprised by Joy. I read it for a paper in college but its storyline has stayed with me. I think the part of the story that has stayed with me is that Lewis--as the title suggests --was surprised by the joy.

Surprise is one of those emotions that always reminds me that I am human, that life is a mystery, and that no matter how much I try to understand something or might think I have a handle on it, there is always something more to discover and to understand.

I've just recently (as of 8 months ago) become a regular practitioner of user-centered design principles. I've probably used these principles now in the development of about 15 projects, but I am still surprised by discovery. I'm still surprised by the insight I glean through some of these simple processes; insights, which, are often those moments of "Why didn't we think of that?" or "Yikes! That seems like it would be common sense!"

But these moments have also reinforced for me the value of observing or shadowing customers, the importance of taking the time to sit with them as they walk through specific tasks so that I understand the process they are going through and the information they need in order to carry out each task.

Case Study: Giving Customers Access to the Online Learning Environment
I was sitting in my colleague, Candy's office one day in June as she and I continued our work connected with the creation of an administration site for our customer care & sales teams. This new site would be the interface that our teams would use to control customer access to our online learning environment.

Those of us working on the project had asked a number of the "users" about the tasks they would have to complete with the system we were creating for them. Now, we wanted to OBSERVE these customers in the process of trying to carry out those tasks.  Our purpose, at this stage, was to identify any additional tasks that might be involved or other specific requirements that might be needed in the design of the system that hadn’t yet been identified.

So, I asked Candy to walk me through an actual order with one of her customers and we talked about what she was doing, what information she was using, and what else she was expecting to see.

What stunned me is that immediately it became apparent that, in order to carry out the tasks she would be completing in the system, the interface would need to accommodate two additional pieces of information, two pieces of information that hadn't yet been discovered in the previous 5 people we had walked through processes with. It turned out she needed further identifying information of the book based on how her customers ordered-because her customers were a little bit different than other customers we served.

The first piece of information we were missing was some sort of "E" designation for each particular product so that (when she printed the document and matched it with the invoice) it would clearly show her customers that they were in fact purchasing an electronic version.

Item Number 1141       became       Item Number E1141

The second piece of information needed was the ISBN because her customers purchase by this number instead of the shorter item number as is the case with many of our customers.

I was so elated by this discovery I said to her, "Isn't this amazing" with excitement comparable to a kid on Christmas morning. Because she knows me, she smiled and responded, "Yeah, Heather, that's----great".

The extraordinary lesson in this example was realizing AGAIN that having a customer explain a path and observing them walking the path often yields different results.

I remember a few months ago I was chatting with a friend who plans the music at our church. She was explaining that she thought she had worked out all the music for the mass (who would lead particular songs, what instruments would play etc.) until, in rehearsal, when she actually tried to forge a path through it--she realized there were still pieces she needed to address. I kid you not--she even used those words "forging a path through it.....”.

What surprised me about that conversation was that she and I have never spoken about the work I am currently doing. I have never used that terminology around her, but out of the blue, she used that language. All I could think was---unbelievable ----this applies to music as well.

But, the truth is, this type of experience--of recalling steps one way and then seeing the steps differently while carrying out the same process--happens everywhere, everyday.  A great corporate example that I came across recently is from the company Argos. Argos sells "general merchandise for the home throughout the UK and the Republic of Ireland"  (http://www.argos.com/).

Listen as the design manager shares what they discovered when they enter into the discovery process with their customers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tG1VChFbIBs