User Analysis
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Objectives
❑ To understand the needs of users of different experience levels
➢ beginners, intermediates, and expert.
❑ To understand UI goals and strategies for beginners, intermediates,
and expert.
❑ To understand user profiling and personas.
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Area of investigation and information
gathered for UI design
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Area of investigation and information
gathered for UI design (Cont’d)
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Beginners, intermediates, and expert
❑ Most users are neither beginners nor experts; instead, they are
intermediates.
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Designing for different experience levels
❑ Both beginners and experts tend over time to gravitate towards
intermediacy.
❑ Nobody wants to remain a beginner.
➢ Most occupants of the beginner end of the curve will either migrate into
the center bulge of intermediates, or they will drop off of the graph
altogether and find some product or activity in which they can migrate
into intermediacy.
❑ A well-balanced user interface …
➢ Does not cater to the beginner or to the expert, but rather devotes the
bulk of its efforts to satisfying the perpetual intermediate.
➢ Provides mechanisms so that both of its smaller constituencies can be
effective.
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Designing for different experience levels:
Goals
❑ To rapidly and painlessly get beginners into intermediacy.
❑ To avoid putting obstacles in the way of those intermediates who
want to become experts.
❑ To keep perpetual intermediates happy as they stay firmly in the
middle of the skill spectrum.
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What beginners need
❑ Nobody wants to remain a beginner.
❑ They need some instruction, but not very much, and the process has
to be rapid and targeted.
❑ Beginners don’t need reference information; they need overview
information, such as a guided tour.
➢ Standard online help is a poor tool for them.
❑ A separate guide facility— displayed within a dialog box — is a fine
means for communicating overview, scope, and purpose.
❑ Beginners also rely heavily upon menus to learn and execute
commands
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What intermediates need
❑ Intermediates need access to tools.
❑ They don’t need scope and purpose explained to them because they
already know these things.
❑ Intermediates know how to use reference materials.
➢ Online help
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What experts need
❑ Experts want shortcuts to everything.
❑ Expert users constantly, aggressively seek to learn more and to see
more connections between their actions and the product’s behavior
and representation.
❑ Experts appreciate new, powerful features.
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UI strategies for beginners, intermediates,
and expert
❑ Beginners
➢ Few and simple features
➢ Lots of feedback and confirmation
➢ Careful defaults
➢ Tutorials
❑ Intermediates
➢ Help remembering
➢ Easy to recognize, consistent
➢ On-line help with search
❑ Experts
➢ Shortcuts
➢ Customization
➢ Little or no feedback (distracting)
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User characteristics relevant to UI design
❑ Stakeholders
➢ Primary users
➢ Secondary users (affected by the system or affect its development)
❑ UI should match the characteristics of the intended real users.
❑ In UI design, users (or user groups) are described in relation to their
characteristics. A profile for each user (or user group) is created,
usually through questionnaire, that includes:
➢ Age
➢ Sex
➢ Culture
➢ Physical abilities and disabilities
➢ Education background
➢ Computer/IT experience
➢ Motivation
➢ Attitude
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Example: User profile of ATM customers
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Example: Self-service grocery checkout
❑ Who are the users?
➢ Grocery shoppers
➢ Wide range of ages (10-80) and physical abilities (height, mobility,
strength)
➢ No computer experience
➢ No training: walk up and use
➢ Knowledge of food, but not about supermarket inventory techniques
➢ Supermarket shoppers often ask each other for help finding things
❑ Major user classes
➢ Family shopping is often done by women, often accompanied by small
children
➢ Store clerks who need to help shoppers
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Translating user characteristics into UI
design requirements: ATM example
User characteristics ATM UI Requirements
Age range from 12 to 80+ ATM screen height needs to accommodate users of
varying height.
May be fully able-bodied or may have ATM screen height needs to accommodate able-
some physical limitations bodied users as well as users with walking sticks or
those who use wheelchairs.
May have some physical limitations in All user inputs should have both visual and auditory
relation to hearing feedback.
May have some physical limitations in Screen text should be of a reasonably large font.
relation to sight
May have some physical limitations in Touchscreens, if used, should have target areas that
relation to use of hands are large enough to locate.
Touchscreens, if used, should be sensitive enough to
respond to users with decreased strength in fingers or
hands.
Little or no experience of computer/IT The application should be easy to use and easy to
use learn.
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Personas
❑ A persona is a precise description of a user and what he wishes to do when
using a system.
➢ An effective way to design for a broad population.
➢ Personas are not real; rather, they are imaginary examples of the real users they
represent (like cast of characters).
❑ Why we need them?
➢ To create reliable and realistic representations of your key audience segments
for reference.
❑ These representations should be based on qualitative and some
quantitative user research.
❑ Personas do not describe real people, but you compose them based
on real data collected from real people.
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Personas
Effective personas have the following characteristics:
1. Represent a major user group for your product.
2. Express and focus on the major needs and expectations of the most
important user groups.
3. Give a clear picture of the user's expectations and how they're likely
to use the product.
4. Aid in uncovering universal features and functionality.
5. Describe real people with backgrounds, goals, and values.
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Best Practices for Developing Personas
1. Conduct user research:
➢ Answer the following questions: Who are your users and why are they using the system?
What behaviors, assumptions, and expectations color their view of the system?
2. Condense the research:
➢ Look for themes/characteristics that are specific, relevant, and universal to the system and its
users.
3. Brainstorm:
➢ Organize elements into persona groups that represent your target users.
➢ Name or classify each group.
4. Refine:
➢ Combine and prioritize the rough personas.
➢ Separate them into primary, secondary, and, if necessary, complementary categories.
➢ You should have roughly 3-5 personas and their identified characteristics.
5. Make them realistic:
➢ Develop the appropriate descriptions of each personas background, motivations, and
expectations.
➢ Do not include a lot of personal information. Be relevant and serious.
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Elements of a Persona
Personas generally include the following key pieces of information:
1. Persona Group (i.e. web manager, nightshift security staff, …etc)
2. Fictional name
3. A photo representing the user group
4. Job title and major responsibilities
5. Demographics:
➢ Age, education, ethnicity, and family status
6. Goals and tasks:
➢ The goals and tasks they are trying to complete using the product
7. Environment:
➢ Their physical, social, and technological environment
8. Quote:
➢ A quote that sums up what matters most to the persona as it relates to your site
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Example: The use of personas in
developing the roll-aboard suitcase
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