THE METHODS WE WILL APPLY
● Scenarios
o We decided to use this technique as we already have some scenarios like emergency and non-emergency. It’d be very useful to elicit how the user would think in different scenarios and what they would need to achieve the goal. Moreover our users may not have much of a technical background so this technique would be suitable for applying.
● Storyboards
o We want to use this technique along with scenarios technique to demonstrate an overview of the system and its functionalities. We can receive and early stage design feedback from our stakeholders.
● Visual brainstorming/braindrawing
o This technique seems a good a one to be implemented in our projects. We don’t know all the features of our products and this is a new product not similar to other existing ones. So a brainstorming session can help us to generate new ideas about the features of our products.
● Competitor analysis
o Although we believe that our product is quite new for the market, we can search for the somehow related products in the market to gather possible new functionalities that we can add to our project.
● Card sorting
o We will be using this technique in order to have the user’s perspective when grouping and sorting our ideas from the brainstorming sessions and our findings from the competitor analysis.
THE METHODS WE WILL NOT APPLY
● Claims analysis
o We decided not to use this method as we haven’t decided yet all the design features of the system and we don’t have sufficient knowledge about the domain to make helpful claims.
● Focus group
o We don’t want to use this method as we don’t have the necessary experience about moderating a focus group discussion. And the technique’s success highly depends on this factor.
● Affinity diagramming
o This method is an alternative to Card Sorting. We think that Card Sorting would be more appropriate for us.
● Participatory workshops
o We do not prefer to use this method since it requires an intensive user involvement during the development process. Our product will not have any specific users so it would be very difficult to find users from very different backgrounds and persuade them to participate actively during the whole process.
● Success critical stakeholder identification
o We are not going to use this technique as we couldn’t find sufficient information about it to decide if we can apply it or not.
● Parallel design
o At this point, we do not consider using this method. Our team consists of only 3 people so we cannot create design groups. 3 people can come up with designs individually but we do not think this would be efficient compared to the time consumed.
● Future workshop
o We will not be using this technique as it requires an intensive preparation and support by trained moderators.
● Field study
o We cannot use this method as our scenarios about the usage of this product are not observable. For instance, we cannot observe people when they have an emergency situation.
● Ethnography
o This method requires a study of months to gather information about user behaviors. Not only we don’t have the time but also we don’t think it’d be useful for our product.
● Human factors analysis
o We will not use this technique because it involves usability testing in which the effectiveness with which the users complete tasks in their current environment is measured.
● Contextual inquiry
o We cannot use contextual inquiry because we don’t have a group of specific users for our project and so interviewing about users and their environment is irrelevant.
● Cultural probe
o Getting to know different cultures would need an extensive amount of time. Hence we will not use this method.
● Diary study
o We will not be using this technique because it involves having a group of users that can be observed while doing activities over a long period of time. We don’t have either a group of users with specific activities or a long period of time to use a technique.
● Photo study
o We are not going to use this method as we cannot ask our users to take photos when they get sick and so on.
● Personas
o we are not going to use this technique because we are already using similar techniques such as scenarios and storyboarding.
● Structured user role model
o We are not going to apply this technique as we couldn’t find sufficient information about this method neither enough to decide nor to apply.
● Operational model
o We think that the other methods we use will give us sufficient information in an operational context also. Hence we prefer not to apply this method.
● Hierarchical Task Analysis (HTA)
o We do not need to use this technique because the tasks and user goals are not that complex that we need to divide them into sub tasks to understand them better.
● Essential use cases
o We are not going to use this technique because we already know what the purpose of the project is.
● Task Sorting
o We are not going to use this technique as we couldn’t find sufficient information about it to decide if we can apply it or not.
