Last week was productive, I met with my project supervisor Usman, he provided some useful insight to inform the final revision of the project specification.
Project specification
Investigate survey tools
In preparation for the research, I looked at three different online survey tools. I looked into the features of each of the tools and set up a test survey with a few questions. The findings can be found below.
QuestionsResponsiveAnalysisResponsesCost
| Google forms | Unknown | Yes | Excel/Sheets | 400,000 | Free |
| Survey Monkey | 10 | Yes | Excel/SPSS | 100 | Free |
| Survey Monkey (standard) | Unlimited | Yes | Excel/SPSS | 1000 | £35 |
| Smart survey (free) | 15 | Yes | Integrated, paid export | 100 | Free |
| Smart survey (Pro) | Unlimited | Yes | PDF, Excel | 1500 | £25 |
Out of all three tools, survey monkey is the most suitable option for this project, although it is the most expensive option. It provides functionality to analyse the data set in SPSS, there isn’t a limitation on the number of questions and it offers an adequate number of responses.
The next step with the questionnaires is to decide what information I need to find out and then start to populate a test survey.
Further exploration of the literature
The purpose of this project is to adapt/create a project management method capable of achieving a user-centred design. Before I start evaluating different methods against their suitability it’s important to fully understand user-centred design.
Figure 1: UCD – Interaction design foundation
Terminology is an important factor, UCD and HCD are commonly substituted from one another. The term HCD is used to bring empathy into the design process, defining people as humans as a pose to users which makes them sound like they are parts of the system. The use of personas in the UCD process helps to alleviate the use of the term ‘users’, design teams can simply refer to the users by name.
UCD is the continuous involvement of users within the design process, insight gathering to testing. The purpose of UCD is to help create designs that are fit for purpose and based on actual users needs.
Involving users within the process lengthens the process and is resource intensive, but the work is focused around the needs of the user instead of a designer or stakeholder. The focus provided by UCD means less waste and fewer costly mistakes.
Prepare the project document
Had to be clarified with Usman on the deliverables, that informed the design direction of the document.
Goals for next week
- Create a test questionnaire
- Read
- Research higher education in the North East (Age, demographics, number of students)
References
https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/user-centered-design
UX Modelling 