UX and
Design Research for a Mobile Application in A.R
A study
case for portfolio.
Antrop. Miguel
Palau* and Eng. Yilber Sisco**
Research,
Design, and Engineering Team
*Ph.D. Student of Anthropology,
M.Sc. Computer Sciences. Strategic Design and User Experience (Team Lead), at
CEAP
**Ph.D. Student of Computer
Sciences, MSc. Computer Sciences. Machine Learning Expert (Technical Manager) /
Computer Vision & Data Science at Mercado Libre
Project Background
The following aims to present a real case of
foundational research for the design of a mobile application utilizing a
conceptual feature for geolocation and augmented reality. The organization
(stakeholders) required the main functionalities as a concept and a strategic
condition; the objective was to facilitate the user's acquisition, engagement, and
product acquisition.
For exemplification, this example has been
divided into parts for the economy of the reader. Each part has incorporated
the elements of what we did as a team or what I did as an anthropologist and
how I contributed to a group of two.
Preliminary Data.
Product: Digital Mobile
Application with Augmented Reality Functionality.
Client: University (ranking
5th in Latin America)
Type of Platform: Mobile, Android
(based on the market share in the country, Venezuela: 83.5%, users on 2016). Source:
StatCounter, Global Stats.
This is a real case that was published in a
Computer Science Magazine, and it has been transformed into a portfolio
showcasing, complying with omissions based on proprietary laws and non-disclosure
agreements. This case was originally developed in a formal article published
while in the development of a master’s degree in computer sciences focusing on
Human-Computer Interaction at the Central University of Venezuela.
This case represents the collaboration among
us (*,**) professionals who have developed cross-transference skills in
engineering, software development, design, and anthropology. This development
includes ethnographic research and quantitative analysis on user profiling to
elaborate the main components of the digital application, the requirements of
the connectivity, as well as the guidelines for the design, all by an initial
method that observed a group of users, interviewed them while interacting in their
context and while completing their tasks naturally with different systems.
Also, an innovative approach from
anthropological analysis has been applied to understand the meanings of usage
for the comprehension of the product in the development and the perception as a
benefit instead of an app. Step by step the following pages describe the
process and decisions to begin and propose a functional prototype.
The development of this application should
consider an augmented reality functionality required by the organization
(stakeholders) to facilitate and engage users in acquiring the product.
The length of this case study as a method has
been divided into sections for the ease of the reader/employer/student to whom
research is of interest for the development of new products.
1. Product Heart
1.1 Underlying Needs, a
Mythical Approach
1.2 People and Systems
2. What’s the Problem?
3. Defining and Refining Research Goals.
4. Project Challenges
5. Project Constraints
1. Product’s Heart and people's desire: Core Values.
As an anthropologist, what
can bring to the table?
Frequently, research for the design of digital products is found in
opportunities that can be identified in the organization because of an analysis
of data that indicates probability or trend and that represents the insertion
of a product. In this case, this methodology that applies the use of myth
analysis (stories told) by users was the first step to be taken in the
identification of the separate needs between the emic (what is said to want),
and the unconscious (what is taken as symptomatic in the discourse) and to
represent it visually we have decided to define it as a myth that explains
the origin of things (digital object).
1.1.
Underlying Needs: The Mythical Thinking (to want or desire a product)
For anthropology, the study of myths
as an element of unity of the unconscious or human thought has been relevant.
This tool is (myth analysis) particularly applicable when research is carried
out that seeks to identify the essential components of a product and the character
of the group is implicit behavior (when what is desired is complex to obtain
through the story or interview); it’s not proper from User Experience Research
or Design, it’s an innovate model developed as an anthropologist based on structuralism.
We assume in this research that
myth, as an analytical unit to be investigated, corresponds to the ways in
which users perceive the world and how their thoughts can account for even that
which cannot be expressed in words. The complexity of analysis in this sense in
relation to a non-existent product is generated in the invention of a story in
which it does not account for a specific concrete meaning.
Unlike the interview, the story as a
mythical element places the user in his group in the character of an inventor.
At an initial level, the myth as an unconscious element operates for the
desires of what it wants in a product, and at a second conscious level it
requires to minimize the efforts related to work; This transfer mechanism
between the user and the object yet to be created is more complex, but I must
focus only on these aspects.
And so, the group begins its story
in groups of users whose initial or germinal element originates in the
following way:
"In this university campus,
whose vegetation is extensive, and the landscape fills us with joy, a series of
artistic works are also combined that make us think that we are immersed in a
forest. We go through the university, and at every moment we find sculptures,
with elements that generate joy in us."
User’s Conceptual Image 1.
"When we ask ourselves, what we
do, what we can say is that we are in this field to carry out research tasks
that enrich our scientific thinking, but we observe many documents thrown and
piled up that we do not know their content, and this saddens us."
User’s Conceptual Image 2.
"We would like, instead of
having to find a computer, to be able to generate a mechanism that allows us to
locate and provide information in this natural and artistic forest that is the
university. And that we can see in a simple and easy way what we are looking
for and even exchange it with other students".
User’s Conceptual Image 3.
These extracts of stories to which
we have resorted by the users have allowed us to develop, through the study of
their differential meanings, a relationship between abstract perceptual thought
and concrete categories of meaning, as corresponds to the following model of
study of mythical thought:
From each story we have extracted by
significance an operation in culture, that is, a model of operation that
transitions from an origin to a concept as indicated in the continuous table:
Analytical Table 1.
|
Myth (unit) |
Cultural Significance |
Conceptual Operation |
|
Users:
transition from nature to knowledge. (Forest
to the University) |
Transformation and Transit |
Belonging
to the immersive experience (AR), aesthetics of flow. |
|
Users:
combining nature and knowledge to operate on technology. |
Combinatorial Creation |
Pertaining
to the functionalities of the system: location and knowledge. |
|
Users:
operate technology as an element for the search for knowledge. |
Social Operation |
Belonging
to the product concept: location and exchange (in transit). |
The analysis of the unconscious for
the initial generation or foundational research in the development of new
products must transcend the clichés with the search for elements of the
unconscious of the group and its significance in the culture.
Findings:
- The potentialities of the method
allow us to reveal the initial forms that give rise to differences between the
relationships of the internal and external worlds that can conceptualize the
immersive experience in virtual reality.
- The initial conceptualization requires
an immersive experience among the transit and location inside an aesthetical
world familiar to the campus.
- The compass for the localization will
require a deeper understanding on how to utilize the mobile device as a tool for
finding objects of information.
- An important meaning in the
development of the mobile device must include places or spaces of interchange
that do not depend on physical spaces but more as a social element or other
places located in multiple spaces on campus (not centralized).
Impact:
This initial model and insights
allowed the initial conceptualization for a product and core values as an immersive
experience in differentiation with the external world.
Allowed the identification of
potential users and posterior profiling with demographic criteria for
developing personas.
Identification of the features: geographic
location within the campus, which would allow the initial sketches of using a mobile device to obtain physical textbooks and reference material in broad
groups of users’ students and administrative staff.
1.1.
Framing research
goals.
Applying ethnography to the development of
mobile applications corresponds to the criteria demand among other
methodologies for the outcomes in terms of providing a model of explanation
based on the conception on behalf of users about answering questions as:
What is a product that can be used versus what should be created in augmented reality to be amplified? and what is not in benefit to the functionalities or features of the system?
On each research project, the number of methods (qualitative and quantitative) should be revised and evaluated according to the project objectives and answers. In this case, observation as a key element from the ethnographic method was the best choice for allowing us to gather information regarding the elements of understanding how users could differentiate and perceive a benefit of the implementation of a series of features. In this matter, ethnography is not only a behavioral observation method but also, considers the psychological human elements of the study subjects.
I then uttered the word, quickly since it was supposed, that through the writings on my blog, these observations would have remained unpunished. It was of my initial interest to turn the Central University of Venezuela into an interconnected field, adding broad connections and prone to exchange, the improvement of efficiency, and above all the shared capitalization of scientific knowledge, the thought created in its classrooms by professors and students to make it apply in Venezuelan society.
The idea of solving the problem arose then, through the suggestion of my
teammate who with his vision oriented to creative resolution told me, “Let’s
solve the problem of storing texts".
Although later, like what is touched when it is problematic, it is
looked at in its reliefs to see it from the scientific to the cultural with
applications of engineering became findings of a set of more complex elements,
all discovered through the "user", but rooted in culture:
relationships between hierarchy,
organizational culture, aesthetics, and iconographic identity, etc.
1.2. Where did the problems originate?
A problem was born, basically observing, and seeking with stakeholders a
possible solution that was not visible to them, and an initial concept
originated in an issue from users on campus unable to reach data which is
intellectual property from the organization.
The photograph below indicates the amount of information in a physical
state that was impossible to locate, there are also part of the initial notes
in the field while observing:
Picture #1.
Fieldnotes while observing users on interaction (Contextual
Enquiry)
From that moment on, we began to reconvert a problem specific to the
place where we carried out our postgraduate studies, into an element of
multidisciplinary ethics that had to be resolved. Or at least we would call
attention to resolving it voluntarily as a form of retribution for the
improvement of the institution.
The problem is that which is a consequence, what we have called the
problem is the context. So, we had both since encountering and stumbling upon
what is anomic in Venezuela became common. We all presuppose and assume that
everything social in the country is to be directly or indirectly involved in a
set of problems that are left aside, leaving us in the metaphor of the narrator
of the observer who does not get involved so as not to find what we do not
like, but we permissibly let it be there.
The particularities of how things work is so typical of our culture that
extrapolating them, collecting them from elsewhere, or bringing a model of
explanation to solve ourselves internally would mean two great derived
sub-problems:
1.- The external, explanatory outside of Venezuela
would not help us to understand ourselves and this would intensify the problem.
2.- Showing our problems in favor of the solution
and not staying halfway would bring consequences as it was a direct form of
user culture as a form of innovation to see ourselves internally, identify the
problem, and solve it.
Problematization, then, would not only imply the search for, and the
strategies for solving it, the external problem, the one identified in
"reality." Also, that which was so complex to overcome, that to which
we were not accustomed, and that was the meeting of anthropology, engineering,
and design; the multidisciplinary way of working together.
As much as we get used to understanding that the world is already
oriented, especially technology companies, to the incorporation of
professionals from scientific, human, and artistic areas combined, which
provide points of view and analytical elements for product development. In
Venezuela, this was something, although certainly thought utopian, distant, and
dysfunctional before the beginning of this project, which led us to understand
the forms or create a "culture" of multidisciplinary work.
This internal problem is part of the problem. Seeing ourselves apart
socially, academically, and scientifically is undoubtedly one of the great
learnings of our work in terms of internal functionalities.
It gave us, however, the possibility of recognizing each other in the
contributions that each one of us could make to the process, to work in an
organized way without reward, only because of the ethical duty. Similarly, we
received support as we seek from Professor Vanessa Leguizamo at the School of
Computing of the Central University of Venezuela, a major involvement as our
necessary arbiter to give a point of view and guide the process in terms of her
approach within the discipline of user experience.
Externally, and already focused on the study that we would consider as
the task to be done or the duty to be done, we found:
2. What's the Problem?
What did we do?
For the definition of the problem, we observed in the field and talked
to different segments of users of campus:
The primary objective was to talk about the main problems for them to
accomplish their daily tasks.
After a set of initial conversations, we segmented and profiled each
group obtaining an insight:
A mobile device will improve the ease of locating, reading, and
accumulating materials related to subjects of interest; however, they do not
know the specific place in which they were located due to the extension of
libraries on campus.
Storing and finding referred to the following conditions:
·
Absence of
physical storage spaces.
Storage has a dual task for
the user: it must be physically and digitally located in a centralized process
only by the responsible person within the organization.
·
The archiving
space and search process are currently inefficient due to the large amount of
material.
- The implicit difficulty in being able to share between universities
inside and outside the country the information contained in research documents
and theoretical production (articles, degree theses, research papers, etc.)
3. Defining and Refining Research Problems.
What did I do?
To define the objectives, I set meetings with the stakeholder group,
individually that were part of the team, or to be impacted in the product
implementation, a previous guide was developed for the discussion of the
objectives, and the criteria were classified into three major topics:
1. What is important to do for this product?
2. What are your minimum and maximum expectations in terms of functionality?
3. What are the elements of this product that are nice to have?
In this specific case, the
stakeholder's objectives were defined as:
1. How to solve a problem that in its beginnings was
in the understanding of the storage of proprietary knowledge material
elaborated by students at the university itself.
2. As this data (knowledge: articles and books) were
deposited in physical piles due to the lack of space, we wondered how it could
be connected, in a way that could generate the exchanges for consulting and
firstly to locate in which place they were located across the campus.
Storage, space, and location were our starting points as they are
defined as part of the problem and objectives to solve. Once the team was
created, we visited all the professionals who shared this campus space for the
application of technical changes, although our initial objective was to
translate the action into its significance, that is, in the introduction of
cultural changes over technical forms. In this way, it makes people understand
the ethical importance of engineering and anthropology, on the social level
(acceptance and credibility). Creating a product is not only about the methods
of research but is vital to the understanding of social and cultural phenomena
in context because the elements will allow for strategic leverage of the
product functionalities according to the distinction of the user's needs vs.
their desires (tactical vs. strategic), one element acts in the immediate emic
response (what users say), the other on the interaction between culture and
psychology of the group (desires immerse in cultural dynamics).
Best Practices: Setting a workshop
with your stakeholders could be made differently depending on the purpose of
the number of ideas that it could bring over the initial spring of a product
definition. Individual sessions as structured interviews were my strategy since
I didn’t want the stakeholders to hold or repress any of the ideas while in the
presence of a superior hierarchy person. However, each session was compiled
into three groups: minimum, maximum, and nice to have.
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