Towards a UX-focused Research Agenda: Building Participatory Cultures in Academic Contexts

Towards a UX-focused Research

Agenda: Building Participatory Cultures in Academic Contexts

Guiseppe GettoEast Carolina [email protected]

What I’ll Cover

What I mean by participatory culture

Towards a model for building a UX-focused academic research agenda

An example of fostering user participation in a UX project

Implications

Participatory Culture

User-Centered Design (UCD)

“To maximize the usability of a product, the user should be involved

from the product’s inception.” – Courage and Baxter

Design as requirements gathering followed by iteration

UCD paradigm does not go far enough towards including users

within actual design processes – Sharon 2012, Buley 2013,

Getto 2014

User Experience Design (UX) as contextual, participatory design

Persona (or archetypal user) development

Design process is built from “users’ own goals and measures” –

http://uxdesign.com

Participatory Culture, 2

Why participatory?

“Social systems––both online and offline––

continue to evolve. We have a huge

opportunity, as well as an enormous

responsibility, to be part of that evolution in

ways that can lead to more contextually aware

experiences for our participants” – Potts 2013

UX-focused Academic Research Agenda

Today’s technical communication problems

are subjective

are rarely solved permanently

involve multiple actors - Johnson-Eilola and Selber 2013

A good portion of these problems involve the digital

realm

Technical communicator as UX expert =

▪ someone helping to build social systems that continue to evolve

according to users’ own goals and measures – http://uxdesign.com

and Potts 2013

UX-focused Academic Research, 2

http://www.nccoastalatlas.org/





How I got involved with the NC Coastal Atlas project I showed up to meetings and started presenting

potential solutions▪ E.g.: “how can we get users more involved?”▪ Oh yeah, there’s this thing called persona development

▪ E.g.: “how is our design process?”▪ Oh, it’s pretty good, but you might want to consider…

I tried to be a good technical communicator in response to a situation that required UX

I worked my butt off studying up on UX best practices (ongoing)

Fostering user participation Design process behind the Atlas

(UCD)▪ Needs survey of Coastal Resource Managers▪ Comparative analysis of other state-based digital

atlases▪ Capturing grant funding and designing a prototype▪ Donna Kain as user advocate

(UX)▪ (I get involved) Project planning that involves UX▪ More robust and design-focused comparative analysis▪ Information architecture and interaction design

Business process modeling▪ User research/engagement Persona development

Fostering user participation, 2

User research/engagement persona development – Brooks and Quesenbery 2010, Sharon 2012 Formative usability – Chang and Williamson

2013▪ Having users interact with an early prototype to allow

more influence on the design process These early tests are also user interviews Interviews are coded to develop personas or

“archetypal users”▪ Assures design process is driven by “users’ own goals

and measures” – http://uxdesign.com

Fostering user participation, 3

First (proto-)persona for the NC Coastal Atlas The Coastal Researcher Story … Use case scenario▪ Uses the Atlas to see what other coastal researchers have studied and to make new maps for her own research projects, such as her project on…

Usability needs▪ Better access to data sources▪ A more intuitive legend

Future design hopes▪ Geo-tagged citations that lead to actual sources

Implications

Academics can (and should?) develop research agendas around UX We can provide validation of UX

methods from industry, plus develop some of our own

We can help contribute to development projects that happen within the academy, where UX experts are often scarce

We can help be user advocates and can thus help build participatory cultures with users