rethinking user research for social web

Rethinking User Research for the Social Web

Dana Chisnell @danachisdana@usabilityworks.net #rethinking

1

Shelly2

3

The state of the art is a generation oldTime for a new generation of user research methods.

Usability testing isn’t telling us what we need to know for designing for social

4

We don’t know how to find out about things we don’t know about

5

People don’t live in the world doing one task with one device out of context

6

7http://www.pangaro.com/CUNY2008/index.html

8http://www.pangaro.com/CUNY2008/index.html

Methods and measures were probably always imperfect.

But they used to be enough.

No more.

9

10

Everything is different now.But not different. All this has happened before.

The nature of being online is socialIt always has been.

11http://www.flickr.com/photos/holeymoon/

Scale is a game changerCaution: large sample sizes

12http://www.flickr.com/photos/daguerreotyped/

Tasks aren’t what you thinkActivities = goals that emerge and change

13http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremybrooks/

Satisfaction is correlated with task completionInstead: control, engagement

14http://www.flickr.com/photos/litebriteneonstudio/

Users continuously design your UI in real timeWorkarounds = hacks

Etiquette and norms

15http://www.flickr.com/photos/juleshabib/

Social is about context.

And relationships.

16

Methods are not robust for understanding context and relationships.

17

Decision sciencesAnthropology

Psychologies

Behavioral economics

Psychobiology

Social neuroscience

Communication sciences

Sociolinguistics

Organizational behavior

Sociology

Social networks

18

Cultivate polymaths

The most successful user research methods for SxD combine field and testing techniques

19

Methods

Reviewing online profiles, connections in groups in interviews

Stories of how you met

Multi-user sessions with people who have strong and weak ties

Video diaries with retrospective review

Experience sampling with SMS

20

recruiting, prep, session, analysis

21

Takes more time

Takes strong research designrather than templated, commodity usability testing

22

Takes deep thinkingabout questions to answer, and what

the evidence will be that you have answers

23

Takes study of cohesiveness dynamics

collaboration, connections, networks, relationships

24

Where are you with planning?What we asked answered a business question

25

Who do you ask when you don’t know?Should have asked about context and relationships

26

Would have told usWho is part of planning and deciding

Who is trusted

Why these people are important

Why they are trusted

How planning happens

27

To build a model that supports life

28

Rethinking user researchWe’re not getting the answers we need.

Experimenting is limited because we’re pressured to go to market.

We’re looking for things we know about, using old fashioned tools.

29

We’re missing things we don’t know about.

30

31

It’s time to rethink user research for

the new (old) social web

32

Dana Chisnelldana@usabilityworks.nettwitter: @danachiswww.usabilityworks.com415.519.1148