April 04, 2006
10 Ideas for Helping New York Citizens Recycle
Powerpoint stack can be found here
Posted by mb2811 at 01:06 AM
March 27, 2006
Insights Presenstation
Posted by mb2811 at 07:08 PM
March 02, 2006
Recycling Notes
Two things i've recently learned:
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one thing: apparently they ship the cardboard box recycling to china for processing. if, once it arrives, it has any food on it, the company actually ships it back to nyc b/c it's actually cheaper than having them dispose of it!
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One of the really interesting things that we’ve discovered in our research is that the trash collection companies guard their routes as trade secrets, so no ridealongs for us. The mayor’s office is currently trying to help us to get a ridealong for just a few blocks, so that we can see how the carters operate. Will keep you posted.
Posted by mb2811 at 01:07 AM
February 27, 2006
UCD Diaries
http://homepages.nyu.edu/~mb2811/UCD_Diaries2.ppt
Posted by mb2811 at 11:04 PM
February 13, 2006
Research Plan & Shadowing Assignment
For this week, David and I put together our research plan and completed the shadowing assignment. Since it was difficult for us to shadow a recycling process, we decided to interview an individual about recycling and go through the motions as if they were throwing out their trash and recycling.
Links:
Research Plan
Liza and Matt Recycling
Posted by mb2811 at 06:46 PM
February 06, 2006
Observation Assignment
The writeup for my observation assignment: pdf Link
Posted by mb2811 at 07:49 PM
February 05, 2006
User Center Design Research Topic: Recycling
Recycling. It's a fundamental part of life in many parts of the world., But in the United States, recycling isn't as *important* as it should be or could be. Why is this? Is it inconvenient? Is there too much confusion about what can be recycled. Do recyclable materials take up too much space? Perhaps its one of these; perhaps its all of these. Our goal is to determine users' recycling habits — or lack thereof — and propose an improved system to enhance users' habits, and increase recycling.
Target users:
Urban dwellers (New York City, that is!), both single and married, young and old. The key here is to make it as easy and convenient as possible to recycle as much as possible.
Team members:
Mike Bukhin and David Shulman
Posted by mb2811 at 04:38 PM
January 30, 2006
MTA Subway Map
A user centered design analysis of the MTA subway map. Link to writeup.
Posted by mb2811 at 01:14 AM
January 29, 2006
Reaction/Notes: Spark Innovation Through Empathic Design
Dorothy Leonard and Jeffrey F. Rayport, 1997. "Spark Innovation Through Empathic Design," Harvard Business Review, volume 75, number 6 (November-December), pp. 102-113.
The Harvard Business Review article reiterates the importance of ethnography informing design but unlike the previous article this one was clearly for the business crowd. While the first reading got me interested in human factors, this second one completely turned me off. Dealing with the bottom line end of the design process is inevitable but I prefer to explore the more humanistic side.
Here ethnography+design is called emphatic design. The article points out that people often don't know what they want and they create workarounds for the failings of technology. In getting used to these workarounds they may not realize other possibilities. It is interesting to note that traditional marketing study methods are great for existing products but fail when a new technology isn't tied to an existing customer paradigm.
Posted by mb2811 at 10:57 PM
Reaction/Notes: Ethnographic Field Methods and Their Relation to Design
This article makes the case that combining ethnographic field methods during the design phase of new technologies allows for more thoughtful and usable products. From personal experience, I have seen time and money constraints cause firms to develop and design new technologies at a conceptual distance from their intended audience. Without end user feedback during the iterative design process, shoddy and poorly designed products emerge.
"Designers should be interested in human behavior in so far as it enables them to design artifacts better suited for the needs of the user." Designers usually have very little information about their intended users and end up imposing their own personal experiences and needs to inform the design process. Designers must also observe to everyone involved with a new technology, not just the population that has the most direct involvement.
The distinction is also made between the top down traditional approaches of market research and the bottom up, user centered approach of ethnography. Traditional marketing evaluation methods such as customer surveys, operability assessments (evaluating prototype usability), focus group and field visits/test make assumptions about the evaluated population and lack flexibility. The ethnographic approach puts an "emphasis on a natives' point of view, holism, and natural settings, provides a unique perspective to bring to bear on understand users' work activities."
Guiding Practices and Field Technologies of Ethnography
The documented suggested practices of ethnography have a loose structure. Different situations require different levels of involvement and different methods of documentation. Primarily, to be an ethnographer evaluating a population's needs is to be respectful and to know how to listen. Evaluations are done in everyday settings, not a laboratory. There is a demand for holism because behavior can only be understood in its context.
"To learn about the world you don't understand you must encounter it firsthand." By observing people firsthand, we can see how people actually behave versus how they think they may behave. An ethnographer takes a nonjudgmental stance and let's things transpire as they are, never coaxing or altering the course of events or the situation (cultural relativism).
Field technique considerations include observation (ideal versus manifest behavior, what people say versus what they do), perspective (observer participant versus participant observer, usually an ethnographer moves along the continuum), focus on observation (what to observe, when to observe, where to observe and when you've observed enough, this is usually when you are no longer surprised), focus levels (person focus, place focus, object focus, event focus), documentation type (notes, video, verbatim transcript versus observation) and interviewing/informal discussion (open ended, allowing the participant to shape the discussion).
There should also be a push to involve those studied in the development of the new technology. The study subjects should, in some way, be exposed to the research data as a sanity check.
Posted by mb2811 at 10:23 PM