UCD Project News Edition 8, July 21st, 2003
UCD Project News is a fortnightly e-newsletter devoted to increasing
awareness of user-centred design (UCD) principles and contributing
towards a culture of UCD within the SITCRC.
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In this issue:
1. Supriya: The Role of Qualitative Research in UCD
2. Meet the Newest Member of the Group
3. Prof Lindgaard to Give Second Public Lecture
4. Virtual Café holds Concept Development Workshop
5. Upcoming Conferences & Calls for Papers
6. Useful Links and References
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1. The Role of Qualitative Research in UCD
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Qualitative research is now becoming essential for UCD in all its
phases. It is now acknowledged that in order to see an issue from
the perspective of the user, it is important to see people in action,
to ask them how they perceive their worlds. UCD also faces a challenge
in that the qualitative research during the designing of the project
has to be structured and paced very differently from academic qualitative
research. So relevance with rigour is the aim. In the process, some
of the guidelines for rigour have to be re-thought in ethnography,
theoretical sampling, and qualitative analysis.
It was good to have the UE team in SITCRC well represented at the
recent international Association for Qualitative Research (AQR)
conference with papers by Pam Coutts, Christine Satchell, Jenine
Beekhuyzen and myself. It was interesting though that the conference
did not attract the wider UCD community. One of the questions that
comes to mind is whether the identity of people in this community
is primarily as UCD or HCI professionals rather than qualitative
researchers? This of course is something that the world of qualitative
research also has to address, so as to be more relevant and inclusive.
To this end AQR is thinking of re-introducing disciplinary streams
to attract groups of people from different disciplines. But it is
also a challenge for the UCD community. We will only be effective
in influencing design if our user insights and processes of work
are seen as trustworthy. And for this, it is important to connect
with people in all the disciplines who have a passion for qualitative
research and worry about its rigour and relevance.
Supriya
Assoc Prof Supriya Singh,
Project Leader
supriya.singh@rmit.edu.au
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2. Meet the Newest Member of the Group
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The UCD Group would like to extend a warm welcome to its newest
member:
Youngmi Choi, Research Fellow, RMIT
Youngmi.choi@rmit.edu.au
Prior to joining the UCD group, Youngmi worked for a small user
centred ICT research firm where she looked at the use of various
communication channels between three user groups (volunteers, managers
& trainers) and a national skills resource centre. This followed
her position with CIRCIT (Centre for International Research on Communication
and Information Technologies) where she managed the 'International
Research Monitoring project', the 'CIRCIT Research Monitor' project,
and the 'Aboriginal E-commerce project.' Youngmi began her research
career as a research assistant for Prof. Trevor Barr, working on
his book 'New Media.com.au: the Changing Face of Australian Media.'
Youngmi is finalising a Masters by Research in Business Information
Technology (MBIT) from RMIT and a Bachelor of Arts (Media Studies:
Telecommunication Policy) from Swinburne University. In her MBIT
thesis, Youngmi explored the use of ICTs (including e-commerce)
by Boutique Fashion designers running SMEs in Melbourne.
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3. Prof Lindgaard to Give Second Public Lecture
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As most of you already know, Professor Gitte Lindgaard, International
Visiting Fellow and User-Centred Design Chair and Director of the
Human Oriented Technology Lab at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada,
will be giving a public lecture titled “Designing for the
Customer and the Bottom Line: Costs and benefits of User-Centred
Design” tomorrow, Tuesday 22 July from 4-5.30 pm in Council
Chamber, Bld 1, Level B, Room 11, RMIT University, 124 La Trobe
Street, Melbourne.
Due to the overwhelming number of responses received from people
wanting to attend, a second lecture has been scheduled for a week
later. The second lecture will be held on Tuesday July 29 from 4-5.30pm
in RMIT Council Chamber, Bld 1, Level B, Room 11, 124 La Trobe Street,
Melbourne.
All members of the SITCRC community are encouraged to attend this
event, which promises to reveal how much is gained through UCD and
how much may be lost by ignoring this approach. Numbers are limited
so, if you have not already done so, please contact Charlotte Scarf
on charlotte.scarf@rmit.edu.au to confirm your place.
As part of her visit, Prof Lindgaard will also be conducting a SITCRC
workshop with members of the User Environment program this Friday
25 July from 10-12 am in I-Cubed: Bld 91, Level 2, Room 15, RMIT
University, 110 Victoria St. Melbourne. This is a unique opportunity
for members of the UE program to get together and discuss some of
the broader issues that tie their research and the UCD group looks
forward to seeing all members there. Again, please contact Charlotte
Scarf on charlotte.scarf@rmit.edu.au
if you wish to attend.
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4. Virtual Café holds Concept Development Workshop
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A successful “Virtual Café – Concept Development
Workshop” was held at I-Cubed, RMIT, on 8 July. Participants
included Farzad Safaei, Paul Boustead (Smart Networks, Wollongong),
John Burke, Supriya Singh, Peter Burrows, Youngmi Choi, Ron van
Schyndel, Christine Satchell (UCD, RMIT), and Adrian Bruch (RMIT).
The meeting started with dinner at Café Saffron on the evening
of the 7th. That gave some of the new members of the UCD team at
RMIT a chance to meet with Farzad and Paul in an informal setting.
The workshop used scenarios as conversation starters in getting
a user perspective into early discussion of designs. The UCD team
had developed four scenarios:
- The Swarm – young people connecting socially
- The Huddle – an outline of a scenario for the UCD and SN
group to work collaboratively
- “Being There” – focus on presence in the virtual
environment
- Ayesha’s family – a family across countries and generations
getting together virtually.
The workshop finished with an agreement to move towards developing
a joint proposal covering the use and design of a Virtual Café.
The first step would be to further develop the scenario of “The
Huddle”, introducing into it elements of “Being There”.
This scenario best fitted the kind of architecture Farzad’s
team was developing. But in the development of this architecture,
we would necessarily keep in mind the different structures that
need to be put in place to enable young people’s use of mobile
communications to connect virtually. We also agreed on the need
for participative design processes.
There was discussion that the project would require wider UCD participation
– for instance from the Disability and SME user study groups.
This will be kept in mind in structuring and funding the project,
and also in the way the UCD group retains its identity within the
UE program and the SITCRC.
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5 . Upcoming Conferences & Calls for Papers
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* IRMA 2003
The 15th Information Management Resources Association International
Conference will be held at the New Orleans Marriot Hotel, New Orleans,
Louisiana on May 23-26, 2004. IRMA brings together researchers,
practitioners, academicians, and policy makers in information technology
management. The conference topic is “Innovations through Information
Technology.”
The call for papers for the conference is now open and researchers
from a range of backgrounds are encouraged to contribute. The due
date for paper submissions is October 3, 2003. Notification of acceptance/rejection
will be given on November 28, 2003.
For further details, please visit: http://www.irma-international.org./conferences/2004/index.asp
or email: irmaconf@irma-international.org
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4. Useful Links and References
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Aaron Ben-Ze'ev, “Privacy, emotional closeness, and openness
in cyberspace,” Computers in Human Behavior 19:4, pp 451-467
(July 2003)
Emotions are typically associated with closeness and openness. The
desire for privacy seems to contradict these related emotional features.
Being emotionally close means losing some of our privacy, and maintaining
a greater degree of privacy prevents us from being emotionally close.
Similarly, great openness endangers our privacy, and a great degree
of privacy decreases our openness. The author argues that the conflicts
between privacy and emotional closeness and between privacy and
openness are considerably weaker in cyberspace. The relative anonymity
of cyberspace and the ability to control what we wish to reveal
allow us to safeguard our privacy while increasing emotional closeness
and openness. In fact, the nature of privacy itself has undergone
a significant change in cyberspace since many matters that are usually
kept private tend to be discussed.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0747-5632(02)00078-X
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Emily Falcone et al, “The Personal Rover Project: The comprehensive
design of a domestic personal robot,” Robotics and Autonomous
Systems 42:3-4, pp 245-258 (31 March 2003)
The authors summarize an approach for the dissemination of robotics
technologies. In a manner analogous to the personal computer movement
of the early 1980s, they propose that a productive niche for robotic
technologies is as a long-term creative outlet for human expression
and discovery. To this end, this paper describes the authors’
ongoing efforts to design, prototype and test a low-cost, highly
competent personal rover for the domestic environment.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0921-8890(02)00379-2
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Paul Beynon-Davies and Steve Holmes, “Design breakdowns,
scenarios and rapid application development,” Information
and Software Technology 44:10, pp 579-592 (1 July 2002)
In this paper the authors consider the way in which two representational
forms, scenarios and design breakdowns, which have emerged in the
traditions of human-centred design are relevant within the recent
commercial emphasis on rapid application development (RAD). RAD
is a contingent approach to interactive software development that
is characterised by large amounts of user involvement, incremental
prototyping and product-based project management. Scenarios have
become popular as an intermediate representation within the human–computer
interaction and computer supported co-operative work communities.
Design breakdowns have been suggested as a useful organising device
and design technique within the co-operative prototyping literature.
Both these representational forms are not currently utilised within
the commercial RAD tradition. In order to detail the relevance of
these concepts to commercial development, the authors describe the
`natural history' of one particular RAD project and show how scenarios,
breakdowns and the resolution of such breakdowns contributed to
the successful implementation of an information system within a
small commercial organisation.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0950-5849(02)00078-2
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