W4: Modeling Diverse User Ecosystems

Abstract

One of the enduring value propositions of ethnographic research is that it facilitates a deep understanding of the needs and expectations of “users.” In practice, however, our understanding of users is often very narrow. Typically, researchers conceptualize users as individuals who interact with something both directly and deliberately. This normative view overlooks the diverse range of interactions and experiences associated with products, services and environments. (Consider, for example, the many ways that people “experience” someone else’s mobile phone when it is being used in a restaurant or on a train.)

The reality is that most of the things we design are “used” in one way or another by a wide range of people whose experiences we probably didn’t carefully consider. These diverse users might be curious onlookers and voyeurs at the periphery of someone else’s interaction. Or they might be spouses, friends, colleagues, strangers, or anyone else drawn into an interactive role that they (and we) did not imagine or anticipate. Understanding these broader experiences can reveal opportunities to extend the value of products and services to larger audiences, optimize designs for varied social environments, and positively influence receptivity to product and service innovations.

This workshop will question the normative conceptualization of the direct and deliberate user. Its goal is to drive toward a more complex theorization of user ecosystems that takes account of multiple and diverse forms of engagement with design artifacts – engagements that are unintentional as well as intentional, indirect as well as direct, undesired as well as desired. In the workshop we will consider case studies presented by the organizer and by two pre-selected attendee presenters. Participants will discuss their own experiences in the field and compare case studies described by fellow participants from different parts of the world. In the latter half of the workshop participants will work in small, culturally diverse, breakout groups to generate models of multi-positioned user ecosystems and explore methodologies for gaining insight into the needs, experiences, and implications of all subjects who engage, in one way or another, the artifacts that we design.

Approach

This workshop is especially appropriate for people who have hands-on experience in qualitative user research.

Structure

Agenda

Duration Activity

15 mins Workshop participant self-introductions and organizer’s introduction to the workshop objectives

15 mins Organizer’s presentation of case studies (from organizer’s research) and tentative frameworks

15 mins Group discussion of organizer’s case studies and frameworks, drawing on and contrasting with participants’ own experiences

30 mins Presentations of case studies by 2 pre-selected attendees

20 mins Group discussion of all case studies, with emphasis on

  • Key takeaways
  • Applicability to other research settings and research challenges
  • Applicability to other cultural contexts (e.g. North America vs. East Asia)

 

40 mins Small group breakouts: each group will be given a hypothetical research setting and a hypothetical object of study (e.g. a consumer product, a service, a built environment) and will be asked to develop a user ecosystem model, including

  • What are the various user types?
  • What are their relationships with other users?
  • What are their relationships to the specific object of study?
  • What methodological approaches would be best suited to generating insights about each type of user?

 

40 mins Report-out from each group (10 mins per group if 4 groups; 8 mins per group if 5 groups)

5 mins Summarization and wrap up by organizer

____________
180 minutes
(3 hours)

Target Audience

This workshop is especially appropriate for people who have hands-on experience in qualitative user research.

Organizers

Mike Youngblood, principal at Youngblood Research, is a cultural anthropologist with more than 20 years of experience studying human interaction with environments, interfaces, products, services, and messages. His work sits at the intersection of cultural anthropology and design, and is focused on helping clients achieve innovative solutions that are exceptionally usable and delightfully useful. Mike has worked with a diverse list of companies, including Bank of America, Michelin, Whole Foods Markets, Starbucks, Boeing, and Sony. He has managed projects and conducted research around the globe, including North Africa, Latin America, Europe, Greenland, India, China, Korea, Singapore, and throughout the United States.

Mike holds a PhD in cultural anthropology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and is a former professor of cross-cultural studies for the School for International Training. Prior to becoming an independent consultant, he was a member of the User Experience discipline at the Sapient Corporation. He is currently based in New York City.