Assignment 3: Requirements

A requirement is a statement about an intended product that specifies what it is expected to do or how it will perform.

– Helen Sharp, Yvonne Rogers, and Jennifer Preece, Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction

For this assignment, you will work individually to derive requirements, personas, and scenarios for your project. Then as a team, you will select from your individual work a set of requirements, personas, and scenarios that will guide the next steps of your project. You will present these in class as a team.

Data Gathering (Individual) #

First, you will gather data about the needs and requirements of your intended users in the context of your project. I recommend either interviewing or observing target users, but you may use any method discussed in the books or class to gather data. You should collect data from 3-5 target users (those you are designing for). You cannot collect data from your teammates, but you can from fellow classmates. I encourage you to also gather data from target users outside the course.

For interviews, do NOT simply ask a participant what they need. Rather, ask them about particular problems they have with existing systems and what they wished these systems provided. Have them detail relevant interactions with existing systems and describe why they performed those interactions in that way. Identify motivations, goals, and frustrations. Gathered data should help you form a set of requirements.

Requirements (Individual) #

From your data gathering, you should identify at least 5 functional, data, environmental, user characteristics, usability, or user experience requirements. Make a list of requirement statements. Requirements should take the form of user stories (or needs statements) with the structure:

As a <role>, I want <behavior> so that <benefit>.
[example: As a traveler, I want to save my favorite airline for all my flights so that I will be able to collect air miles.]

Personas (Individual) #

Create two personas by synthesizing data gathered with user characteristics, environmental, and user experience requirements. Personas need to represent realistic users, not ideal or perfect ones. Each persona should be unique and represent a user with particular motivations and behaviors.

You may make use of any persona templates that you find online, or create personas from scratch. Keep in mind that the template personas are often designed for a particular context, which may not adequately match your project. For example, including a section on favorite brands is unlikely to be relevant to most projects. Include content that helps describe a potential user and their motivations and goals.

Scenario (Individual) #

Think about your persona users and the tasks that they need to perform within your proposed interactive experience. Create a scenario as an exploration of how a potential design of your interactive experience could meet a subset of your requirements.

A scenario is a short story or visual narrative (e.g., comic) that describes the activities of a particular user or set of users. Your scenario should depict the activities of a persona user(s) within the context of your proposed interactive experience. Describe the circumstances leading up to the interaction in question. Provide context for who is engaged in the activity, what are their goals, when are they performing this activity, where are they performing this activity, and why do they want to perform this activity. Do not use complex or technical terminology. Your scenario should be understandable to everyone.

Example scenario from Kerr et al. 2014:

Ben is out with friends catching up over a meal. A friend asks if he has ever made the dish they are eating. This reminds Ben that he has not cooked for a while.

Later in the week, Ben sees a TV programme on cooking and again he is reminded that he has not cooked for a while. Thus he decides to cook later that week. Ben goes online and Google’s “mee soto”. He looks through the various sites for pictures that not only look good, but also have few steps and a short time to cook. He spends some time browsing through the sites for other ideas to use in the future.

Next day at work, he remembers to go to the supermarket on his way home. As he is only getting a few ingredients (for a simple recipe), he just remembers what he needs to get. He buys ingredients in whatever size is readily available and is not too concerned about the freshness. Whilst in the shop, he also makes some spontaneous purchases.

On the day he is cooking, Ben checks out a YouTube video on preparing chicken pieces. When he gets home he prints out a recipe and asks his mum for some last minute advice. He had asked her previously about a similar question, but was so long ago that he has forgotten her advice. His mum looks at the recipe and suggests some alterations to it and writes notes on the recipe.

Ben places the recipe near the stove and follows it closely in terms of steps (one process at a time, no preparation) though haphazardly gauges the amount of ingredients to put in. He tries to gauge one portions worth of ingredients (the recipe is for 3 people), only using some of the chicken, so puts rest back in fridge (he thinks his mum might use it later). He will estimate the time the mee soto needs for cooking, tasting it when he thinks it is ready. He is initially worried about hot oil splashing on his face, so he is hesitant when handling the hot pan.

When ready, he serves the dish and finds out he has made a bit too much. Depending on how much leftover is available, he will either put it in the fridge for later or it will just be wasted. Afterwards, he loads up pictures of the dish on Facebook. He is greatly encouraged when people ‘like’ his link or leave a comment and it makes him feel good.

Discuss Requirements, Personas, and Scenarios (Team) #

Once each team member has completed the above individual components, meet to share and discuss each team member’s requirements, personas, and scenarios. Select a set of requirements that will be the focus of your design for the next assignment, the prototype. Then, choose three personas and two scenarios. You may need to slightly revise scenarios to fit the motivations and behaviors of the selected personas.

Deliverables #

The deliverables for this assignment take two forms: (1) an individual submission as a PDF document to Moodle; and (2) a team presentation of selected user requirements, three personas, and two scenarios.

Requirements Document (Individual) Due: Wednesday, October 4 at 11:59 PM #

You will submit a PDF document via Moodle with the following contents:

  • Summary of methods and participants: Describe the methods you employed to gather data. How many participants? Did you conduct interviews, observations, or use other methods? If interviews, were they structured, semi-structured, or unstructured? What questions did you ask? For observations, what kinds of activities did you observe? How did you record data (e.g., notes, photos, video)? How did you analyze that data?
  • List of requirement statements: List the requirements that you derived from your data (5 or more).
  • 2 Personas
  • 1 Scenario

Presentation (Team) Due: Monday, October 9 at 11:59 PM #

Your team will present your selected set of requirements, three personas, and two scenarios in class. These presentations should briefly describe methods you employed to gather and analyze data. You should describe any insights gained during this process, and how those will shape your next steps.

One member of each team will need to submit a link to the Google Slides for your presentation via Moodle by Monday, October 9 at 11:59 PM. Make sure that access permissions allow anyone with the link to view the slides.

Grading Rubric (100 points) #

Requirements Document (Individual) and Presentation (Team) #

Your individual requirements document and team presentation will be graded based on the following criteria (100 total points):

  • Methods [10 points]: Use of appropriate methods and adequate number of participants.
  • List of Requirements [30 points]: Identify at least 5 requirements of different types (e.g., functional, environmental, usability). These requirements are clearly rooted in data gathered from target users.
  • Personas [25 points]: Personas present demographics, motivations, goals, and behaviors. Personas are grounded in actual data. Personas are unique and representative of the target users.
  • Scenario [25 points]: The scenario depicts a realistic story of the activities of a user or set of users and how they might interact with a potential design. The scenario provides adequate context and shows how particular interactions will address a subset of the requirements. Interactions by users in the scenario are reflective of their motives and behaviors specified in associated personas.
  • Presentation [10 points]: Methods, requirements, personas, and scenarios are presented clearly and coherently. Team has clear insights and directions for designing their project.