Human Factors Graduate Course Project Sponsor
Context
As a graduate of Texas Tech University’s Human Factors Psychology Program in 2019, I was asked in the Spring of 2021 to sponsor a project for the Graduate Course “Human Factors Methodology.” The goal of the project was for students to research a UX methodology that the alumni would like to know more about, but may have not had the time to research it themselves.
As mentioned in the Stakeholder Interviews Project, I had recently joined IBM’s Automation team, where I was on a team that conducted research on the newly acquired RPA tool. One of the first things when I did when I joined the team was conduct stakeholder interviews. Following the stakeholder interviews, I conducted a Stakeholder Workshop in order to identify research questions that key RPA stakeholders had about the project.
Due to the success of this workshop, I was interested in identifying what other design thinking activities would be beneficial for a newly formed team to completing during a workshop. The objective for my students was to identify other methods that could be used in a stakeholder workshop in order to drive alignment with a new team.
During the course of the Spring Semester, I provided feedback to their final paper and presentation, and met with the team during bi-weekly scrum calls.
Timeframe: Spring Semester
Results
As a result of the student’s research, my students identified 3 methods that could be used in stakeholder workshops that would benefit new teams.
Their analyses are shown below:
Empathy Maps
A map the potential experiences of the user, as a way of controlling for bias within teams.
Why good for new teams? A method best used for aligning team collaboration around a shared understanding of the user and what may drive user behavior in relation to a certain product. This map should help with the discussion of how the project may affect users.
Hopes and Fears
Assesses the hopes and fears that team members might have when starting a new project or incorporating new members.
Why good for new teams? This method makes a cohesive group that is focused on similar goals and is aware of the overall attitudes towards a project. The hopes should bring inspiration while the fears on the other hand might bring about discussion and debates and help the team be on the same page.
Feedback Grids
Used in the final stages of a project to test prototypes by using stakeholder feedback to understand ways to improve the prototype or make new systems.
Why good for new teams? Useful for finding ways to understand and improve tested designs. Easy to set up, and can be done either while the test is going on, or after the fact. Useful for seeing how different stakeholders think about an idea and how teams might improve earlier designs.
Methodological Changes
The students also supplemented their findings with insights several changes that would improve the three methods, with suggestions to aid the methods:
Empathy Map
For the empathy map there was a rather recent update made to the map by some of its original creators, now naming the updated version the empathy map canvas. Wherein goals were not only included but broken down into who the designers are meant to empathize with as well as what the users themselves do. This is done rather than making the goals a separate section altogether as done by the empathy map that did the same.
Anonymity is also a useful consideration for conducting either the original empathy map or the empathy map canvas. This could be done by directly facilitating notes through the conductors of the workshop. This can be helpful for those that have helpful inputs, but may otherwise hesitate to share due to perceived evaluation from supervisors and peers.
Hopes and Fears
By using online tools, facilitators can also preserve the anonymity of the team members. This allows members to voice their hopes and fears without the fear of judgement from other team members. There are websites that allow users to text single words or short phrases and ask they send them in the words appear in a word cloud, which then groups the same word and makes it larger based on how many people sent it.
Feedback Grids
Practitioners should consider the background of the groups they are getting feedback from beforehand, especially if such groups focus on feedback and criticism in different ways. Controlling the anonymity and how responses are collected may also change the dynamic of the process and could impact the feedback returned.
One such example would be to have participants collect their own notes during the testing period, and then delivering all of their feedback at the end of the process, or doing so anonymously. Finally, anonymous feedback may provide better feedback by allowing responders to avoid criticism and in turn have more honest answers about the product, service, or artifact.