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Newsletter 26th October 2005
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User Centred Design (UCD) of Financial Services Project News is
a fortnightly e-newsletter that keeps you in touch with what is
happening in the Banking and E-Commerce streams of the Smart Internet
Technology CRC project on Security, Trust, Identity and Privacy.
The aim is to stimulate interaction with our wider project team,
industry partners and researchers involved with the use and design
of financial services. In this issue: <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><<><><><><><<><><><><>< ********************************************************************************* In a project workshop this week, the conversation moved to how qualitative research is done in a team. The textbooks written for academics assume there is a lone researcher who is going through all the research stages on her or his own. Some of the software that is designed for the analysis of qualitative data also allows the individual to capture memos as he or she is coding the data. Themes of analysis emerge from this coding. But the team work poses challenges even before this stage is reached. The first step is the interview. There is variability even when one researcher is interviewing. The first interviews are often markedly different from the interviews mid-project. But when there are six people interviewing, and each comes from a different disciplinary perspective and research background, how do we ensure there is some continuity in the questions. Some of the focal points of the project have a connection with the history of the project and the nature of the SITCRC. The interview guide is a basic check list so that everybody covers the territory. But not everyone knows why we are asking questions about privacy, trust, identity and security. Once that is ironed out, the transcription and coding offer other check points as they are ideally done by another team member. The interviewer also sends around a story of the interview with reflections on the interview and methodological aspects. These reflections are further discussed at weekly meetings. Coding, that is saying this bit of the interview is about this area, is also vexed. As people joined us at different stages, we found it essential to define the codes and continually revisit the index. Having Dr Jan Browne and Jenine Beekhuyzen on the team, was a great help, for they are experienced also with qualitative computing. We also code briefly together to catch great variations in coding. But in the end, we have to work around coding that is not always perfect or uniform. So we analyse along broad codes, that is the area of ‘identity’ for instance, rather than the finer area of ‘identity theft’. We then retrieve the text in these broad codes and work out the general themes in the text through matrices. After that, to make sure, we have not missed anything, we do a text search around key words. That may give us something that was lost in the coding. Fitting theory to data is not unlike working out a jigsaw puzzle. If we have accounted for say 26 of the 38 people, we need to say what happened to the other 12. Did we ask the question? Did they not answer it? Each of these dimensions are important for theory. We have to also account for cases that went totally against our emerging theory. We are at present analysing the way people deal with independence and jointness in their money and banking. Is the changing mix of families altering the way people deal with money in their relationships? Has marriage been replaced by children as the trigger for jointness? As we are trying to work out these puzzles, we come across a case where the woman has no bank accounts. Her money goes into her husband’s account. It happened initially because she migrated to Australia and it was easier to use her husband’s account. But she is not worried about it for she does not doubt her commitment to him and the marriage. She hopes to grow old with him. So for her the jointness is being expressed in no joint account. Associate Professor Supriya Singh ********************************************************************************* Mats joined us a few weeks ago to help us visualise our findings about users’ behaviour. Our first challenge has been to convert our Digital Rights Management findings into pictures. Apart from livening up the presentation, the visualisation process has forced us to be very exact about the detail of our findings. We found ourselves spelling out that both men and women download music, that people often purchase music together, that they do not listen to music together in each other’s homes very often. Briefing Mats itself was a learning experience. He asked us what we wanted. We gave him the paper and the presentation. But then we went to and fro with sketches and illustrations till all of us felt the ‘wow’ factor. We needed to learnt how to think and communicate visually. For Mats, the SITCRC also is most likely a different experience. Mats has moved from a PhD in Medicine to becoming an illustrator/animator. He has worked with CSIRO, the Master Builders’ Association, illustrated text books and done animation for TV. So if you suddenly feel our group has become superb communicators, you know we now have Mats on the team. Look him up on magipics.com.au ********************************************************************************* Jenson gives a clear outline of user centred design from a product design perspective. He is excited about personas and scenarios and how they are a communication vehicle with technologists, sensitising them to the realities of users’ lives. The aim of his book is to persuade companies to develop a mature culture of valuing simplicity that is integrated at all levels of operation, not just the design department. Jenson says the way to do that is to address bad practices in companies that are rooted in user blindness, feature blindness, innovation blindness and implementation blindness. ********************************************************************************* A one day conference on digital media theory, culture, practice and play For Further information please visit: http://www.mindplay.org.uk/ ROUND-TABLE DISCUSSION at the Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) Cinema, 4.00pm - 6.00pm, Thursday 10 November 2005. Further details can be found at: http://www.britac.ac.uk Third Iteration investigates three major themes: human-computer creativity, generative meaning systems, and the computational sublime. For further information, please see: http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~iterate/TI/ The theme for CITA'05 is 'Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing: Computing
Anytime, Anywhere for Everyone’. There will be eight major
tracks: ********************************************************************************* The Second International Workshop on Security in Networks and Distributed
Systems (SNDS-06) For further information please visit: http://www.comp.polyu.edu.hk/SNDS06/
A number of sessions providing wide coverage of the rapid developments will be arranged, complemented with daily plenary meetings, where eminent speakers will present latest research results. http://www.osgk.ac.at/emcsr/ The Encyclopedia of Mobile Computing and Commerce presents current trends in mobile computing, and their potential use in business and commerce. It also includes research challenges and innovative in mobile computing and commerce. We are inviting papers to be included in this encyclopedia. Further information can be found at: http://users.monash.edu.au/~dtaniar/encyclopedia/
If you have any comments regarding this e-newsletter or the Money website, or you would like to submit an item for publication, please contact Anuja Cabraal at: anuja.cabraal@rmit.edu.au. |