DH110-22F-MahamKhawar

Assignment 03

Step 1 Specify the research goal & requirements

• What is the main activity your project would support for the users?
  • The main activity this project would support would be connecting users with sustainability projects in their local area so they can help out with a cause they support.
• What is the basic need/goal involved for that activity? (reference)
  • This activity fills the need for wanting to develop the community for the user. It also feels the need of satisfaction from volunteering or giving back to their community. Users are able to feel a sense of an accomplishment and overlal positive feelings from doing meaningful work.
• What is(are) the traditional/current solution(s) to satisfy the needs?
  • Traditional solutions include community centers within the user’s local area. This can range from govenmental centers, university clubs, religious centers, and more.
  • Another traditional solution includes social media groups which connect people among a common interest. For example, Facebook groups within local communities which share resources and connect people to get sustainable projects done.
• What is(are) the limitation(s) that possibly would be improved?
  • Limitations of community centers include a lack of resources or experts who are deeply familiar with sustainability causes. Additionally, users might not be connected to a religious group or university in their area which might connect them with projects related to volunteerism.
  • Limitations within social media groups, such as Facebook, are that these groups only restricts users to members of the platform. So if a user does not have a Facebook or is not active on their account, then they won’t have access to these groups. There are also limitations to privacy. If a user wants to explore resources within a group they are agreeing to share their name and profile with members of the group, no matter how big or small.

Step 2 Target users

• What are the characteristics of users? (ex. demographics, preference, expertise, mainstream vs. extreme)
  • Demographics: Young Adults aged 25-35
  • Preferences: Users who are passionate about sustainaibility/ the environment. Users who have time in their schedule to volunteer for projects
  • Expertise: Users would not require any level of expertise
• In which context (where, why, under which conditions) would the users do that activity?
  • Users could search for sustainable activities/ programs to be a part of from anywhere, whether it be at home or outside as long as they have their device handy.
  • Users might want to find resources for sustainability anywhere. For example, a user who cares about sustainability might resort to a google search when looking up what type of bin to throw their trash away while outside. Being able to open up an app dedicated to sustainability that offers quick solutions to these questions rather than endless scrolling would be beneficial to the user.
• What would the users usually do in order to complete that activity?
  • The goal would be for users to be able to find social sustainable projects to be a part of and how to sign up for these programs. The website wouldn’t necessarily track if users actually ended up volunteering for a program/ at a site, but would be used as more of a space to find resources and ways to get involved.

Step 3 Pick an qualitative research method

Methods:

• I decided to use the method of an individual interview that would include overt observation of the participant performing their tasks.

Step 4 Plan the details

• Link to Contextual Inquiry Guide
• I will collect notes via video recording, similar to how I did in the pilot testing. Zoom, the recording platform I will use, will be able to both record the interviewee’s face and their control of the screen.

Step 5 Conduct the research

Contextual Inquiry Guide Transcription

Link to video recording IMPORTANT NOTE: The Zoom video cut out due to wifi issues but the user searched “Sustainability Community” and clicked the site that I am studying, which happened to be the first site that popped up. My questions were prepared for any website that the user would’ve clicked on. I understand the rubric said not to lead them to the site, but in my case they selected it to explore for resources and community involvement. This also affected the first ten minutes of the transcript, where it may be around 10-15 seconds ahead.

Interesting quotes and insights and insights from the interview:

• How the user finds groups, 8:12
  • “Usually it’s by word of mouth and if i’m going through like a group which is into sustainability. A lot of people there are passionate about like different sectors of sustainability. so they’ll always be talking about like other activities that they’re part of, and that’s kind of how like I learned about it.”
• Users thoughts bout sustainability sites in general, 9:06
  • One thing is I think there’s a lot of times like i’ll find a source for sustainability, and they’ll give me a lot of like information but they won’t list their sources or they will list their site site a lot of the information that they’re claiming to have, or a lot of times like you’ll find websites for sustainability that were built in like the nineties, and they’re really outdated and hard to use.
• Want for cleaner design, 29:33
  • “I like easy to use tabs up top where I can like easily access local like local things. I can do resources. I can access just like, maybe like an email list. And just like have it very clearly laid out in what the nice like clean ui or design would be nice.”

Step 6 Organize/Documentation

Reflection: I enjoyed the contextual inquiry as I was able to get a lot of insight from someone who is actively passionate about sustainability. There was less of a formal feeling in comparison to the usability test, and I felt that I got a lot of feedback regarding not only issues about the site but what someone who is interested in sustainability would like to see in general. Additionally, I was able to relate the tasks to be more general version of the usability tasks, which I feel is more aligned to what the user would think in the moment. For example, the user would think “I want to look at how I can get involved in the community” rather than “I am trying to see how to use the searchbar to find community outreach programs in my local area”. Looking back, there are some things I could’ve improved on. This includes knowing how much I can help/when to interject when a user is stuck trying to navigate a task. I also think I look tired in my interview, which is something I should be more cognizant of in the future so the participant doesn’t think I’m bored or uninterested in the feedback their providing. Another part of the interview which was frustrating was the wifi cutting out, resulting in part of the task not being recorded, specifically the part wher the user looks at different online resources to choose from when searching sustainability sites. Overall, I found it to be a very rewarding experience.