What do we do with all this knowledge?
Last sprint, we went deep into the research process and tried to learn as much information as possible. The process was fruitful and we developed an extensive archive of observations, insights, and ideas. However, as we developed a deeper understanding of the death penalty space, common topics of interest, and general sentiments, we felt the need to start converging to define a direction.
As is the case with a lot of learning processes, there is a gap between knowing the information, and understanding how it can be useful. Taking a look at our journey so far in the context of the double diamond, we are currently at the first cusp of converging. We have all this knowledge but what do we do with it? This is what we are trying to figure out this sprint.
Our approach to converge
With our plans to converge and narrow down our project direction for this sprint, our focus is on distilling insights and prioritizing ideas. This involves pulling out key patterns and insights, conducting voting activities to prioritize, and characterizing our findings with standardized models. We plan to do so through the following activities:
- Generating “How Might We…” statements based on common themes and prioritizing them
- Creating archetypes that represent the different types of users who seek out information in the death penalty space
- Conducting usability testing to observe how these different archetypes interact with the DPIC site
Through these approaches, we hope to come out of the sprint with a few key ideas that we can start exploring and validating in the coming weeks.
Converging approach 1: “How Might We…” Statements
To narrow down the breadth of insights we collected, we began by affinity clustering them and distilling the categories down to a single encompassing insight. These were some of the categories that these insights fell into:
- What makes people pro-DP?
- General public perceptions
- Information-related challenges in the DP space
- Strategies for communicating information
- DPIC’s image and website experience
Based on the encompassing insights, we came up with potential opportunity spaces in the form of How Might We statements. We came up with 20 or so HMW statements and needed a way to narrow them down. We found that the quickest way to do so would be through dot voting.
These were some of our top opportunities
HMW soothe people’s fears and simultaneously educate them on the ineffectiveness of DP?
HMW encourage DPIC users to learn more when visiting the site?
HMW optimize DPICs workflow to ensure accuracy and match its credible reputation?
HMW use new methods of communication to show complex information clearly without risking oversimplification?
Next steps would be to plot these discovered opportunities on an impact-effort matrix to narrow it down further and identify the top 3–5 areas that we could focus on ideating for.
Converging approach 2: Archetypes
In order to understand who are the key users using DPIC’s site, we decided to create archetypes based on our interview findings. Archetypes are based on a groups’ key behavior and core needs. They are different from personas because they are based on research findings and focus more on user behavior rather than role. To create our archetypes we each took a look at our research insights and separately came up with different archetypes detailing who they tend to be, what their core needs are and what their key behavior is. After that, we came together to align on them.
When discussing, we noted that we categorized people on 2 different spectrums. The first one was the knowledge spectrum, which is essentially the objective amount of death penalty information that a person might know at a baseline. These range from people who have never learned about it to people who have been extensively researching the topic for years. The second one was the investment spectrum, which is a more subjective measure of their attachment to the space. This can range from people who do not care too much about the topic to people who have deep personal or emotional ties to the issue such as personally knowing someone on death row. To connect these 2 spectrums, we decided to use the matrix below.
We plan to map the how our key opportunities can serve the archetypes we defined. This will help us find the opportunities that benefit the most users and therefore have a high impact by encouraging all users to use DPIC’s website.
Converging Approach 3: Usability Testing/Benchmark Study
From our interviews and analytics work, it’s pretty clear that there are different types of people who are looking for death penalty information. The ways in which they find the information, their goals for finding that information, and their level of familiarity with the death penalty — among other factors, influences how they find and interact with death penalty sites, DPIC included. Performing a usability test or a benchmark study will give us information to best understand how current archetypes interact with the current DPIC site or death penalty sites in general. This will help us understand the initial starting state of how death penalty information is searched for by different archetypes.
The plan for this study is as follows:
- Recruitment: Recruit around 5–7 people who fall into the archetypes we come up with.
- Planning: Create a study plan that involves different tasks that people from different archetypes would do.
- Observation: Ask them to share their screen and perform that task as if they were to do it of their own accord. Watch them perform the tasks.
- Interview: Follow up on each task with questions about their overall experience on the task, and ways to improve it.
- Analysis: Analyze the findings and discover high impact areas that we could tackle and improve.
- Evaluation: Eventually use this benchmark study to help gauge the effectiveness of a future solution we propose that helps users with performing these tasks.
Next Steps
At the end of this sprint, we will have a first draft of archetypes solidified. Next sprint, we hope to have our usability test/benchmark study prepped, recruitment started for that study.
In addition, we will have a clear direction we can move into for the rest of the project. Our narrowing down of HMW statements through using the impact-effort matrix will lead our way into ideation and prototyping. Since each HMW is fairly broad, there are many different potential solutions we can take, so rapid serial prototyping will be vital next sprint. We will take advantage of using crazy 8’s or other rapid prototyping techniques to come up with many ideas that we will validate with our users.
