Smart organizer widget for Google Calendar
User Centered Research and Evaluation
User Centered Research and Evaluation
About the project
Interviews
Smartorganizing widget for Google calendar provides the best of paper and digitalorganizing tools together. Without interfering with the process of how usersorganize their work using paper tools like notebooks and sticky notes, we cancomplement and support users by providing digital copies of those tangibleinformation storages.
Mostusers work with both paper and digital mediums. They mainly use paper notebooksand sticky notes because of flexibility these tools provide. In addition, userslike to write things down. It helps them to better understand the informationand engrave it in memory.
Place
In Fall semester, 2012 I had a term project for my User Centered Research and Evaluation class where I envisioned a widget for Google calendar including a system that was backend for this widget.
Mostusers work with both paper and digital mediums. They mainly use paper notebooksand sticky notes because of flexibility these tools provide. In addition, userslike to write things down. It helps them to better understand the informationand engrave it in memory.
Place
In Fall semester, 2012 I had a term project for my User Centered Research and Evaluation class where I envisioned a widget for Google calendar including a system that was backend for this widget.
Process
First I started from literature review where I searched for articles to check what technologies are there relevant for organizing tools. Checked demographics of users to narrow down to specific group. After preliminary study I decided to interview program coordinators and faculty assistants because they were heavily loaded with many tasks at the same time and part of success of their work depended on how effectively they schedule and organize tasks. I contacted a group of possible interviewees and managed to conduct an interview with three of them.
Interviews
I created a protocol for the interviews and conducted contextual interviews in work places of users. Each interview took about one hour. Using audio recording equipment and another person to take notes I observed users while they were performing typical tasks. Then I conducted semi-structured interview to understand their work process, work styles and went through different scenarios that may happen in their work.
Synthesis
Affinity diagramming and work modelsOnce I finished all the interviews I transcribed the audio material and from those transcripts took insightful notes. In next step I built affinity diagram to categorize the data. From this diagram I built work models including physical, sequential, cultural, and artifact ones. By consolidating these models I could see breakdowns. From these two methods I wrote down about 20 ideas.
Affinity diagramming and work modelsOnce I finished all the interviews I transcribed the audio material and from those transcripts took insightful notes. In next step I built affinity diagram to categorize the data. From this diagram I built work models including physical, sequential, cultural, and artifact ones. By consolidating these models I could see breakdowns. From these two methods I wrote down about 20 ideas.
Prioritizing
Once I had a number of ideas I started prioritizing them using achievability graph to choose ideas with most impactful and more achievable ones. So the idea with widget for Google Calendar was chosen because it was feasible in the time constraint I had and had great impact since users used Calendar all the time. They also had several breakdowns concerning their calendar tools.
Storyboarding
I've created several usage scenarious for my idea, so they created a space for design later. For the idea I pick I made couple of storyboards where I tried to envision possible scenarios of use.
I've created several usage scenarious for my idea, so they created a space for design later. For the idea I pick I made couple of storyboards where I tried to envision possible scenarios of use.
Secondary literature review
I looked through similar products and found a Pranav Mistry's smart notes tool. Which I liked a lot.
Think aloud usability testing
I conducted think-aloud usability testing and filled out usability aspect reports for my paper-prototype for the widget with users I interviewed before and collected Usability Aspect Reports for my product.
Final report
Finally I created a docuement that finilized the work I've done with all supporting materials.
