User Experience Design at Sony Ericsson - Introducing the Virtual Pet

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Results Designers noticed that the majority of the people interviewed were positive to the idea, however this was not the main insight during the interviews. The most interesting knowledge gained was how hard it was to present the idea and get valuable feedback from users. The attempt to evaluate the concept in a “quick-and-dirty” manner could be seen as a failure. It was impossible to know if users expressed their own opinion, said things to please the interviewers, or just made things up to say something at all. What would have been interesting was if there was a clear negative reception of the concept. A positive reception merely states that an idea might be interesting, while a negative reception contradicts expectations and therefore indicates that users probably not are interested in the concept. Some of the shortcomings of the method tested were: 14 • It was difficult to explain the idea in a short time. • Users are not creative when evaluating, they do not have the energy to think a problem through. • Designers might choose to talk to people that show a positive attitude, leading to a bias in user data. • People have nothing to lose when being positive. • When designers are conducting the interviews themselves, evaluating their own design, there is a risk for bias. What Should Designers Do With the Collected Data? It is not clear what designers should make of user’s opinions. As noted, it is very hard to gather ecologically valid data, and even if data are fairly valid, the question of how much designers should let the data affect their design still remains (Hynninen et al 1999). Users are most of the time unaware of coming technology and it could be argued that it is not their job to innovate. Alan Cooper (1999) convincingly argues that “merely being the victim of a particular problem doesn’t automatically bestow on one the power to see its solution”. There is a difference in being inspired and informed by users rather than being led by them (Malone 2002), which might point at letting designers innovate more freely, without being inhibited by user’s opinions. Nevertheless, if we are to move into the area of user experience design, where the success of a product can be explained and repeated, there is a need for evaluation methods that can explain why users like or dislike a product. Therefore, some recent evaluation methods that assess other use qualities than efficiency and effectiveness will be presented in chapter 7.
5.4 Goal and Task Definition Moving on in the design process, the next two phases are goal- and task definition. Goals are the reason why we perform tasks. Analyzing goals is done in order to identify the user’s goals behind the use of a certain design, be it the entire mobile phone, an application, or a single function within the application. When a user is using an application, e.g. the phonebook, she has an underlying goal that she wants to achieve. The design should be goal directed - not only task directed. It is therefore important to look at the underlying goals of the user. Your design should help the user to achieve these goals with minimum effort. Goals are constant in that users do not care how they achieve the goals, just that the method or task is convenient, reliable, easy. From the Sony Ericsson user centered design process An analysis of users’ goals frequently renders several different goals. Some of them are high-level goals that are related to use qualities; others are low-level goals that liken feature specifications. Not all goals are immediately related to each other, but some goals are formed in a hierarchy that can be understood by laddering. Laddering is a method with a history of use in marketing where it has been used to uncover users’ underlying wants and needs (Jordan 2000). An example of laddering is seen below, where the ability to change phone cover is linked to the ability to express individuality. Example of laddering. In the current design process, it is assumed that users have fairly well defined goals or sub-goals, and that they can reach these by conducting multiple sub-tasks. If the user’s goal is – for example - to call a friend, this approach can be quite fruitful; rendering clear sub tasks that can be approached with usability methods to make them as easy and efficient as possible. The ease of goal definition is partly due to fairly well developed measurements for the three use qualities efficiency, effectiveness and user satisfaction. Below is an example of how the three use qualities in usability are broken down to measurements. Use Quality Goal (abstract) Goal (concrete) Measurement Efficiency Users should be able to find a contact quickly A few steps should be enough to call a person Effectiveness Users should be able to find and call a person without mistakes User Satisfaction Users should feel that it is easy to make a phone call Users should be able to find a contact in less than 60 seconds. Users should be able to make a call in less than 4 steps. 75% of users should be able to complete the task the first time they try it. User should rate ease of use 4-5 on a 1-5 scale Time Interaction steps Error rate Likert scale In traditional usability, three use qualities are broken down to goals and measurements. Table adapted from Qvarfordt (20002). 15
Page 1: User Experience Design at Sony Eric
Page 4 and 5: © Copyright 2002, Simon Lessing Ba
Page 7: Acknowledgement I’d like to thank
Page 11 and 12: 1. Introduction In traditional usab
Page 13 and 14: 3. Objectives The goals of this pap
Page 15 and 16: 5. Designing the Virtual Pet Concep
Page 17 and 18: Why Should Sony Ericsson Consider D
Page 19 and 20: Business Viability It is of great i
Page 21 and 22: Who Wants a Virtual Pet? The first
Page 23: Some of the virtual pet sketches. A
Page 27 and 28: 6. User Experience Frameworks What
Page 29 and 30: Alben - Quality of Experience Alben
Page 31 and 32: To identify opportunities, ethnogra
Page 33 and 34: Forlizzi & Ford - The Building Bloc
Page 35 and 36: Shedroff - A Unified Field Theory o
Page 37 and 38: Flexible Permitting use by people w
Page 39 and 40: 7. Recent Evaluation Methods Curren
Page 41 and 42: Bendek & Miner - Measuring Desirabi
Page 43 and 44: Hassenzahl et al - Engineering Joy
Page 45 and 46: 8. Discussion One of the objectives
Page 47 and 48: qualities extracted from personas a
Page 49 and 50: Hynninen, T., Liukkonen-Olmiala, T.
Page 51: Appendix 41
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