The benefits of communication — adjusting to remote research and design
“How do you handle ambiguous situations?” This question comes up often in design as we are challenged with defining requirements and distilling user needs from given information. We also reflect on ambiguity when faced with navigating unfamiliar situations and working in new environments.
There was a sudden change and necessary adjustment needed as Carnegie Mellon University moved to online education and closed its facilities due to COVID-19. As individuals, we are adjusting to remote learning. As a team, we are finding new opportunities to carry-on by leveraging remote tools.
Human-Centered Interaction is a collaborative process and HCI explores how new forms of interaction might be realized to advance current practices. These new forms of interaction could be more pertinent in a world that is increasingly focused on remote work. As we push forward into our design prototyping stage, we are focused on creating and sharing voice prototypes that can be run remotely.
Remote Research Efforts
Shifting our Survey
A primary focus remains to get input from end-users as we move toward design. Trying to reach end-users virtually is a new strategy for us. During Spring Break, our team members flyered around Pittsburgh to solicit potential people to interview. The survey had screening questions and was intended as a recruitment tool to lead to follow-up interviews.
From flyering, we were successful in receiving a half dozen responses of people who are currently on food stamps and can aid us in understanding how our designs might be viewed from a user perspective. We contacted individuals and are waiting to hear back.
As we wait, we are working on two key initiatives: 1. Digitizing Research Insights and 2. Recruiting End-Users through Online Platforms.
Recruiting through Reddit
Leveraging online platforms is critical with CORVID-19 and will allow us to reach an audience beyond individuals in Pittsburgh. Our fellow capstone team who is working with Oasis, has seen success recruiting users from Reddit. This encouraged us to take a similar approach.
We identified a number of subreddit communities who may have relevant interests, needs, and experiences (e.g. r/foodstamps). Subreddits are linked somewhat organically — “sidebars” for each sub have links to other communities that are tangentially relevant. Therefore it is relatively easy to find related subs based on these sidebar links which are curated by moderators.
To ensure that we have permission and can post to the communities, our next step is reaching out to moderators for approval for posts and we are currently posting with a link to our screening survey. The plan is that through broadening our reach through online platforms — first Reddit and exploring other outlets (e.g. Facebook Groups, Nextdoor) we can get timely responses and kickoff conversations with end-users.
How others in our domain space approach benefits
As part of the research, we have also been active in talking to design, outreach, and policy professionals from GovTech startups and from Government agencies to learn about their work and approach to helping people in need access benefits. As designers and researchers in our capstone, we have a lot to learn from the years of experience others have dedicated to building compassion and creating tools to simplify government processes.
A few noteworthy quotes from our newest conversations:
- Tell their [the users] story vs. personas. We go on the frontlines each week to understand access to public benefits at home and do this throughout the design process…when there is low energy, go back to the user.” — CEO of Civilla
- Whenever we enter a new state, we have to make sure that the specification of the benefit for the screening tool is correct for that state (policy varies from state to state). Turning policy into accessible language is the biggest challenge. — Policy Specialist of Benefits Data Trust
- Shift the focus away from the technology. We should meet applicants where they are most comfortable. My priority is not the technology, it’s the more basic human needs. — Product Manager, 18F
- People have different ideas of affordable housing. Housing is the platform from which people can access other services. Let’s put definitions aside, what is the living situation?— Deputy Director, US Interagency Council on Homelessness
- It is really a trust piece when working with these populations. Our agency is the navigator…we help to enroll folks…not just enrolling but guiding them through the entire process— Allegheny Health Coalition
Focusing on Focus Groups
Our team is scoping research methods (e.g. Diary Studies) which will be relevant to participants who we actively recruit from our connections with local nonprofit organizations as well as through our recruitment survey efforts.
We hope to leverage our connections to nonprofits to recruit folks receiving and/or seeking assistance in order to conduct focus groups wherein we can get a better idea of the current state of benefits applications. We would like to potentially put some of our ideas in front of these folks as well in order to validate needs and see where we might be able to make some small changes for maximum impact.
Rolling Into Design
An exciting win for our team in this sprint was demoing our first prototype to our peers and to our clients. From showing off our conceptual prototype, we were able to show our idea of how multitouch points could be used to get non-public information in a public space (e.g. users’ social security number or salary info).
We are using our prototype as a starting point as we explore iterations and how voice alone can excel in gaining user trust. Our goal with the prototype is that a screen should only augment information and a voice design can provide the same information on its own.
In addition to getting thoughts from peers and clients, we got feedback from a voice designer.
We received some valuable feedback which included:
- Building buckets is important to organizing the flow of the voice design — Prior to building out a prototype, you need to think of the flow (the most generic cases) in order to make things organized! Think about how to break down the flow into different buckets. For example, in the case of the conceptual prototype:
Bucket 1 = Registration (both everything that can go right and wrong)
Bucket 2 = Themes as refers to parts of the Screening Tool
- Dynamically Change Hints — as users go through a flow, try to have hints be as personalized to user answers as can be. Experiment with whether you want the hint to give them ideas of what to say or directly tell them what to say.
- Experiment with when a screen is really necessary — not all voice interactions will require a screen so explore what to do with that space when do you don’t need reinforcement.
- Set a designated space on the screen for each feature — ex: hints should always be at the bottom and definitions always on the right — you don’t want to overwhelm the user with information overload if parts of the screen are under constant change
As we continue to apply our research to design, we are getting more technical in our knowledge of voice design. Through design guidelines as well as diving into APIs for Alexa and Google Voice Assistant, we are understanding technical capabilities that can play into our prototypes.
We have also outlined a framework to help drive key features for our designs:
Up Next
While the focus of our work is shifted to online, we may leverage the fact that grocery stores are still open. If safe to do so, message boards at local stores could still be a valuable place to post our survey and attract end-users.
On our radar for this week is how we might leverage the pros/cons of conversation design tools, determine how user research recruitment tools might be used, an increased push for secondary research and prototyping action!
Chat with you next time, Humans!
— Laura, Tommy, Simran, Conlon, and Judy
