toc
- sketches vs prototyping -- doing wizard-of-oz-ing
- user testing -- understand, interact, work
- personas and scenarios -- representative fictitious perons
- mood board -- associative artefacts
- probes -- observe real life environment
summary
sketching is a way of ...
...
my thinking pen
...
having a conversation with his drawing
...
seeing-moving-seeing
this sketch was made by an architect. its not very clear what perspective was used nor you can see any outlines indicating this will be a building in the near future. it was drawn very fast and do not contain any details -the best way creating sketches.
i want to mention two important things by the way:
- he used a regular pencil (no biro)
- he didnt use checked (mm) paper but plain paper
- he drew
freehand (no ruler or other tools)
sketches have the following nature:
- easy and fast drawn
- cheap and many of them
- able to throw them away without repentance
- simple lines and clear gesture
- high abstraction level, without details
- ambiguous, unclear, inspiring
so, sketches are not limited to regular paper-pencil one, but do also include shoot photos or simple animations.
wizard-of-ozing is a term which describes a fake machine. as far as i can remember, the so called wizard of oz was a professor which just used a machine to make the people believe he is a big mysterious magician.
this way you can test (the interface/functionality of) your non-existing system with real users as it was written already. therefore you have to ability to redesign it in a very early state (even before implementing a single line) but simulating a state which will be reached months later.
it can be a big risk if the client does think of the sketch as a final preview of what he will get. sketches are note final documents, they are things you could throw away anytime because only the process drawing them was important (which should not take that much time).
of course the sketches at their own are not the main aim; creating them is the aim. sketches have not to be that good-looking, do not invest too much time in details or aesthetics.
another problem is the missing possibility to sketch interactions (activities distributed over a timeline). you have to use arrows and enumerations to explain them in a drawing and might not be that self-explanatory.
the picture below shows the final 3d model of the sketch above. as unclear the previous sketch looked like, you now can see similarities. first drawing a simpley sketch gave the architect the possibility to totally get free of all architectural dependend details and only focus on the design part.
sketches are not only byproducts of designing, they are an essential instrument of our way of thinking and learning. the close feedback-loop let us transfer thoughts to the real world via movements of the hand. some often used buzzphrases to explain this phenomenon are: "analysis through synthesis" and "doing for the sake of knowing".
both reading and drawing sketches are qualifications which separates designs from non-designers.
some sketches from my own can be found in the
sketches area. some of them are a few years old, a few of time are totally fresh -just have a look.
sketches and prototypes are very similar -but do not mix them up. the following table shows the main differences in single characterising words:
| sketch |
prototype |
| invitation |
visitation |
| indication |
description |
| exploration |
refinement |
| question |
answer |
| proposal |
feasibility test |
| provocation |
clarification |
| tentative |
specific |
| temporary | final |
if you want to test a prototype for a pda, why not use a simple block of wood?!
you can easily get a feeling how you will use this little computer -the usage can be simulated at very low costs. just tell the probant to hold the computer (the block) as it was portrait or landscape format.
user testing allows you to see how people are working with your application. the reason why you are writing software is because these people will/want to use your piece of software, so the end user is the most important part. to get some support analyzing gathered information through user testing use some
tobii.se soft-/hardware. this tool let you capture eye movement. just have a look at this
example movie.
as you can see they have followed one important rule: also record the user him/herself. if you do not like to postedit the videomaterial, just put a mirror next to the display and record both of them.
user testing can be described as working together with users with sketches/prototypes/mockups and ...
- with a certain sense (do some tasks)
- with the possibility to abort it
- with certainty for the user (preceding introduction)
- with spoken thinking (but do not answer user questions)
- with camera (and mirror)
- with postprocessing (answer questions, discussion)
there are three layers of user testing existing:
- understand -- what can you see, what could you do with it
- interact -- fill every field, enter date x into that one
- work -- withdraw amount y to your brother
personas are very usefull if you want to get an idea of how the user might use your application depending on his/her characteristic. its a kind of representative virtual person you describe very detailed (about a page): age, image, personality, job, tasks, hobbies, ...
if there is a decision to make and you are uncertain about how to do it best, jusk ask your persona (think of it and its characteristic) who will probably help you getting the right answer.
scenarios do help -with use of some personas- testing ideas/concepts/models and let you explore new possibilities of how to do it. they can be even used in presentations to explain something exemplary.
mood boards are a collection of various artefacts for a project. this
mental chaos consists of cut out pictures or buzzwords, technical documents, lines connecting these artefacts and even any stuff picked up somewhere which was the initial
idea setter.
for the sake of completeness i have to mention (cultural) probes. these are packages of recording instrumentals (camera, sound recorder, a simple pen, a map, et cetera) and a certain task to fulfil. with other words, the essence of cultural probes are "one way to access environments that are difficult to observe directly and also to capture more of this
felt life".
imho
until now i was only used to practice sketching as the primary design instrument -and sometimes prototypes if complexity gets too big. after the lecture i will do two things different by now: use a pencil and not use checkered paper. and as a remainder for the future: not the drawing itself (the endproduct, the piece of paper) is the aim, the act of doing it is the source of
design power.
i think user testing is something you naturally do if you write some piece of software. maybe not that bloated and equipped with a camera, but everytime you show a friend how proud you are about this certain feature and let him/her a try.
maybe i have done what many other developers also often do: concentrate on the technical side without considering the outside world (the "real" world), which not only includes persons working with the software. with the help of the other instruments you do have access to the surroundings of your project and can let this result flow into proceeding research.
