This is the third lecture about contextmapping given for the experience design master class at HITLab, Canterbury University in New Zealand. Contextmapping is an important exercise in the early design phase when the designer needs to confront his / her assumptions with the real world the users live in. It is a great preparation for user research.
Text of Context mapping
context mapping: guring out what you know and dont know of your users aga szstek(at)gmail.com
to design genuine experiences the designer needs to build empathy towards the user
Which one is the facial and which one the hemorrhoid crme?
Empathy is: our intuitive ability to identify with other peoples thoughts and feelings their motivations, emotional and mental models, values, priorities, preferences, and inner conicts.
empathy is happening in context
context is tough to understand
the importance of carefully dening and redening the context for every design problem
alternative stories for the context
imagining the context from the perspective of the dierent users
context always has components of time and space, whereas experience occurs in the context of time
we have a tendency to imagine an ideal world
while the world in not ideal at all
but its innitely creative and full of inspiration
context mapping
- ambiguity of the phrase itself - traditional denition used in the domain of contextmapping: context between people and products - operationalized by the Aristotelian questions: what? how? who? when? where? how long? why?... - the selection of the questions determines, which aspects (beyond cognitive and physical) are important for dening the research problem
try it out
emotions environment mood group context senses place other objects ritual time of the day what happened before what will happen after
how to map context?
1. preparations 2. sensitizing 3. data aggregation 4. data analysis 5. creative workshop
example: travelling with small kids
- tons of luggage - issues pertaining to safety and hygiene - unpredictable behaviour of kids assumptions
sensitizing - preparation of a booklet where the parents could describe and draw how travelling with kids looks like - questions about: how the trip went, feeding and food aspects, contents of the luggage, division of tasks between the parents
data aggregation - preparation of a collage presenting the collected insights, particularly focusing on whats irritating - discussion about ideal solutions for eating rituals during the trips
data analysis - selection of interesting issues, stories and descriptions of critical situations in a form of a scrapbook - returning to the initial assumptions to verify them - categorization of the uncovered issues through drawings and photos - a bag with products taken for the trips with labels with inspirational quotes from the participants
the most interesting insight the way kids behave in the car and in the restaurant
what do you get out of context mapping?
- intensication of usersinvolvement - creation of a common language - looking for inspiration on dierent levels - materialization of new questions and discovery of dead ends - conrmation or rejection of assumptions regarding a given user group
how to do contextmapping?
PREPARATIONS
goal setting
- formulation of the research goal - instead of a broad question, such as: having insight in the use of mobile phone to stay in touch with the partner the goal can be formulated as: what is it like to be a partner who is just returning from the long absence and what concerns, feelings and attitudes do they have when being on the way home? - the product itself should not be mentioned in the goal - a clear goal statement is especially relevant as the resulting data is fragmentary, multi-layered and consists of individual stories
preliminary mapping
- mapping knowledge and views of the experience domain with two goals in mind: - reducing the risk of projecting ones preconceptions on the participants - supporting the researcher in formulating instructions and providing a starting structure for data analysis - having an initial map helps to dierentiate what is already known from what was learned from the participants
participant selection
- inviting a variety of people leads to rich and diverse discussions - the background of participants inuences the study - sessions with a few participants (2 4) reveals fewer stories as there is less opportunity to reect on each others experiences - a group of four is large enough to create a group feeling and have discussions and six is small enough to pay attention to every individual - in a group with more than six participants it becomes more dicult to pay attention to every individual - doing two or more sessions reduces the possibility of group dynamics suering from topics only mentioned by one or a few dominant participants
SENSITIZING
sensitizing package
- basic principle of the exercises in the package is to let people express memories, opinions, dreams around the central topic of the study - participants receive the package about one or two weeks before the creative session - small playful exercises trigger participants to reect on their experiences without analyzing too much - each exercise elicits a fresh perspective on the situation that is explored - sensitizing packages are meant to stimulate reection on the participantsdaily experiences
- the design of the sensitizing package should be playful and professional but also informal - the subject of the package is usually broader than the study subject - the activities should be inspirational and provocative. - the package aims to stimulate participants to reect on a daily pattern over a few days so they slowly become aware about their experiences - the package needs to include white space to write ideas and impromptu comments. - working on the sensitizing packages should require no more than ve to ten minutes per day
sessions with participants
advantages disadvantages group sessions participants can react to each others experiences a global view of the context and various user experiences will be created a large amount of diverse information is generated in one session without professional moderation, one dominant participant can inuence the group it is dicult, although possible to obtain individual responses pair sessions participants feel comfortable because they are with a friend, spouse, etc. participants may reveal things about each other the session can take place at the participants home or workplace less diversity in the total range of participants since members of the pair are related or acquainted individual sessions a lot of attention and time can be devoted to a participant and this can bring out detailed information the session can take place at the participants home or workplace a participant can feel inhibited, because it may feel as if a psychologist is testing him/her about feelings, experiences and needs it is more time-consuming than groups
data analysis
xating on the data - documenting thoughts and remarks from the session - analysis of the audio and video-documentation. - working with transcripts to annotate the data and select quotes
analyzing and being surprised - searching through the data for interesting indicators - all impressions and insights need to be written down - making notes on post-it notes facilitates their rearrangemen
