CS-E4900 - User-Centered Methods for Product and Service Design D, Lecture, 2.9.2024-4.12.2024
Topic outline
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Customer Scene Investigation (CSI) is a project where you put the theory of the course into practical use. You will be conducting a user study at a customer site that conforms to the theme and its requirements. This part of the course is done in teams of 4-5 persons.
What is it for?
This user study is a challenge to understand visitors at a certain place within a limited time by applying the user-centred design methods. You will try to understand why the visitors are in that space, what is the relation between the users and the space, does the space support the visitors in their current states, if so, how.
The main goal is to find and define the design space and its main problem(s). You are not expected to come up with improvement ideas or solutions to the problems you have explored. The aim is for you to deeply understand and identify the pain points or areas that could be improved in order to create (more) value to users.
The theme
The theme for the 2024 course was announced at Field study kick-off 30.09.2024:
#RethinkFreeTime
What will you do?
The assignment consists of three main parts:
- Field work: You will do a contextual study, including the methods of your choice (observations, interviews, questionnaires) of your customer site. We ask you to conduct at least 8 interviews (2 per person) and have 3 transcribed for the analysis. 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. This is where the workshops and deliverables come in, in the scope of the course.
- Communicating your results: This will be done in two ways. First, you will prepare a 3-minute presentation supported by your digital poster, 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") to the members of staff and later to the decision-makers at the customer scene you analyzed.
Where to start?
The below instructions may change after the theme and topics have been defined.- Start with choosing a topic that has not yet been reserved.
- Contact the location’s owner or management and tell them about your intentions. You might even need to pitch them about the scope of user study, why do you want to conduct it, what could be the potential outcome etc., before you have permission to conduct the user study.
- Reserve your Topic by posting it to the Scene Reservation forum (simple first-come, first-served principle). First check that there is NO previous reservation for the Topic, we do not want more than one team analyzing the same customer scene.
- Make sure you have the consent of the location’s owner (contact person) to conduct the user study.
- Go wild with your user study! Everyone in the team needs to participate in the field study. Don't become the freeloader! Take a group selfie of the team in customer premises or preferably together with a customer staff member (ask for consent to use it in your visuals).
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Show Me Your Data Forum
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User research & Qualitative analysis Forum
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Communicating Results Forum
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Customer journey and stakeholder maps Forum
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Final Pitch Examples Page
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Pitch Rehearsal Materials Forum
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Final Pitch Materials Forum