Assignments
Essay
Study the given
materials. Also search for and study one additional research paper (conference
or journal) on user research within the last 5 years, and explain how it
relates to the other materials. Based on all the articles, write an essay presenting
the basic concepts and the methods, also analysing the applicability, and pros
and cons of the methods. Going through the articles one by one makes a poor
essay, so think of a good way to structure your essay. One possibility is to consider the feasibility of the methods in relation to your own field study previous projects (sorry, did not mean to use the same term as is our next step in this course).
The essay should be 8 - 10 pages + cover page and references with decent
sized font (eg. Times 12p) and margins (2,54-4,5cm). Return your essay to
MyCourses for peer-reviewing. The cover page, title or file name nor the contents must not reveal your identity so the peer-review will remain double blind.
Customer Scene Investigation (CSI)
The Customer Scene Investigation (CSI) is a project where you put the theory of the course into practical use. You will provide improvement suggestions for a customer service located in the capital region.
The assignment consists of three parts:
- Field work. You will do a contextual study of your customer site. This phase includes field work and documenting the results of your field work.
- Analyzing your field work results. This phase is about sense-making and understanding what your field work results mean as well as identifying aspects of the analyzed customer service that would benefit from improvements.
- Communicating your results. This will be done in two ways. First you will prepare a 3 minute presentation where you present the data you have gathered and your initial assumptions on how you intend to move forward (this is done in the session "Show me your data"). The second phase is delivering the analysed results as a presentation ("pitch") first to members of staff or decision makers at the customer you analyzed. You will also do the same presentation in class (Final presentation).
Practical guidelines:
- The work will be done in teams of 3-4 persons (depending on final number of students participating in the project work). The teams will be pre-assigned by course staff among those students that have handed in their essay on time. The essay dead-line is October 17 and the teams will be assigned on October 17.
- The team finds and reserves a customer. To reserve a customer, add a note to the CSI - Scene Reservation discussion board. The reservation is done based on a simple first-come, first-served principle.First check that there is NO previous reservation for the same customer, we do not want more than AT MOST one team analyzing the same case company.
- Before you start your field work, you need to check with the manager/staff of the customer that it is OK for you to do the analysis. You should also ask who would be the good person to communicate the results to.
- Conduct the field study. Everyone in the team needs to participate in the field study. Take a group selfie of the team in customer premises or preferably together with a customer staff member.
- Minimum scope of field work:
- Interviews with at least 6 customers and/or customer staff members at the location.
- Notes on user/customer experience based on trying out the service yourselves and observing other people actually using the service
- Notes on context of use meaning the physical layout, facilities, signage, etc.
- Compile
and document your field work, eg. transcribe interviews (at least 3
interviews should be transcribed), include photographs and videos,
structure your own observations etc. The deadline for the compiled data
is 31.10 so you have about 10 days time to complete this
phase. Notice: The full transcription of the interviews do not have to done on DL.
- Upload the data as a 1-2 page "PDF poster" into MyCourses, discussion board CSI - Show Me Your Data. The title of your post should include your group number.
- Using your material you will do an in-depth analysis of the results with an emphasis on identifying problems or improvement opportunities that you have found. You do not need to provide designs/proposals for the actual improvements.
- Create a presentation (max 3 minutes) about your findings and what improvement opportunities you found and what would be the value of/reason for doing those improvements. Note: you do not need to have proposals for how to fix the issues.
- Visit the place that you analysed/the person who would be interested in hearing the results and deliver the presentation to him/her/them. This should preferably happen before the final presentation/pitch, so you can benefit from any feedback you get from the customer manager/staff.
- Upload your presentation to MyCourses, discussion board CSI - Pitching Materials.
- Pitch your findings in class at the Final pitching session.
For this assignment please post your data categorization/classification as an affinity diagram or a mind map.
Besides a graph or picture of your work, also write a short summary naming/describing your classification and the strategy you used to reach it.
No need to explain every item/postit, but the main dimensions of you CSI findings.
Please post the above deliverable to this forum by Mon 21.11. 9:00 (or so).
Define your user groups in profiles (most of you have 3-6 primary user groups)
Create personas (3-4 for the primary user groups)
Define and visualize your users’ main tasks (pick a user group, or a persona, and model their purchase/visit activity, this may also be useful next week with the customer journeys)
Write a reflective or projective scenario (one narrative is enough, as long as it's good)
Describe problems in the current system, and/or
- Envision behavior in the improved system
Define your stakeholder map
- Minimum level : List stakeholders and describe what type of relationship the stakeholder has to your shop
Customer journey for bricks&mortar store
- Analyze and evaluate the customer experience at the various touch points
Bonus: Omni channel analysis of online and bricks and mortar store
- The final pitches will start in Monday 12.12.2016 at 14:15 sharp.
The final pitches will be video recorded for grading purposes and there may be extra persons in the audience.
Pitching order courtesy of randomizer.org is:
11, 3, 6, 2, 14, 12, 8, 5, 10, 4, 7, 1, 13, 9
Each team has 3 minutes (by Håkan's clock) after which the pitch will be cut out.
Place your pitching materials in your group's own topic (include your number) for smooth transitions.Good luck to all teams, based on last week's rehearsal, we can expect to hear excellent pitches.