Preliminary Research
As I was reading through the case studies online, trying to absorb as much information as possible, I checked the form out of curiosity. The kind of curiosity you have when you just check your phone 2minutes ago, knowing full well you won’t have any new notifications, but you might as well, right? However, to my delight, I had already received one reply! Harry from Neontribe had already filled out my form and I was thrilled. However, he wasn’t allowed to talk about Addaction because it is an ongoing project so he suggested Mind Of My Own instead. I accepted because I already knew about it due to my week’s work placement, and as excited to get started.
Whilst reading through the replies, I noticed he had gone into a lot of detail and I felt as if I was off to a good start. He was eager to help and it was nice to have someone support me from the start. Additionally, he pointed out a classic mistake I had made in my questioning which was assuming the user knows what I’m talking about. It’s easy to become immersed in the work and forget, sometimes, that the outside world might not know what an organisational objective or a company value is. In this case, Harry didn’t know what I meant by “What’s the client’s values for this project?” and initially interpreted it as a monetary question. I explained the meaning in an e-mail back to him and changed the question to read “What fundamental beliefs and values does the client’s company adhere by in regard to projects and customers?”.
Within the same hour proceeding the e-mails being sent out, I had also received a reply from Tim Caynes at Foolproof UX and Happy Finish. Both provided great answers and Tim had even offered to set up a meeting for us to talk more in depth. He realised that I was interested in a complex subject and won’t have sufficient knowledge of medical terms, so we set up a meeting for the following week to discuss ideas. We agreed to keep in contact until then.
Main Research
I started to gather research for Mind Of My Own based on the research triangle provided by my tutor. The three points are:
- Supplier & Client – Information provided directly by the supplier of the service or the receiving client.
- Background Information – Facts, statistics and any other additional information about the company to show its size and capabilities.
- Independent Specialist Knowledge – Quotes from industry professionals and testimonials clients.
Research Triangle
This assignment is different from other research projects in the past where we analyse the data to use it productively, in that this research all needs to be articulated in a certain way. I do worry that my writing won’t make sense, due to my dyslexia, so I wrote down a structure for me to follow for each case study.
- Introduction – Background information to prove its place in the sector. Is the company big? Small? Well-known?
- Context – Talk about what the product is and who it is for. Bring in statistical information to show the improvements that had to be made.
- Outline pain points – Explain what the organisational objectives are and why they are important to the development and growth of the business/product/service.
- Measure success – How effectively have issues been solved and can this be backed up by quantitative or qualitative data?
- UCD – Does this line up with Nielson’s heuristics?
- Summary – Briefly sum up how effective improvements to the product/service have been.
Mind Of My Own
Neontribe’s Google form reply can be found here.
Happy Finish’s Google form reply can be found here.
I spend a number of hours collecting statistical information, reading articles, assessing the form Harry had sent back and trying to piece it all together for the purpose of an essay. By the end of the day, I had my first research map.
MOMO Research Map
CydarEV
Foolproof’s Google form reply can be found here.
I did not feel nervous at all when going to meet Tim, rather I was very excited. It was pleasant to chat with him over e-mail and I had so many questions that I was so eager to get stuck in.
We began with a tour around their Norwich office. Due to it being the Christmas break, there were only one or two employees in. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to experience the usual hustle bustle of the palce. After looking around the two floors, we sat in his office and I explained the project again, in more depth. He then spoke about his/Foolproof’s place in the project. We sat for a total of 2 hours discussing medical terms, pain-points, user design methodologies and interaction design choices. I was fascinated by the amount of knowledge he had acquired having only 3 weeks to complete the project.
One of the most interesting points he spoke about was how difficult it was to get the surgeons to trust him. Surgeons, being very busy people, unfortunately don’t have time to explain endovascular surgery to a designer. Tim sat with Tom and learnt all about the basics of an endovascular surgical team in a few hours. Additionally, he stood in during a surgical procedure to become fully immersed in what software the surgeon would be viewing during surgery.
After the meeting, we kept in e-mail contact and he sent over a PowerPoint presentation he had created to show stakeholders. This was another goldmine of information and I was overcome with gratuity at the amount of help he had given me. I now had enough information to generate a mind-map.
CydarEV Research Map
I have included Tim Caynes’ presentation in my submission sheet for reference.
#AutismTMI
Happy Finish’s Google form reply can be found here.
I began by applying the research triangle methodology and looking for external sources. This was straightforward to achieve with #AutismTMI because of its direct involvement with social media. I was able to source a lot from online articles and reviews. Unfortunately, I lost all of my research work due to a file corruption so for this case study, I have no research map to show. I’m absolutely gutted to say the least but luckily, I had for the most part, completed this part of the essay so my findings had already made their way into my essay.
Ximbio
Unfortunately, I heard nothing back from Cyber-Duck or Ximbio. This was a personal shame because I love learning about medical science and it would have been a great opportunity to gain more insight to the world of life-science. This didn’t dishearten me, but it definitely made me rethink how I would go about my starting my reasearch.
As with the #AutismTMI case study, I started by mapping out the three triangle research points. I wasn’t able to find a lot of external testimonials about this subject. Ther was lots of inforation on their website but it was very hard to back it up. All of the news articles about Ximbio were regurgitated information which I assume was included as a press-release by Cancer Research Technology or Ximbio themselves.
Trying to find statistics about this subject on sites such as Statista was also extremely difficlut because of the barrier I had with technical jargon. I did not have access to the same amount of inside help with medical terms as I did with speaking to Tim about CydarEV.
Ximbio research map
Mind/NHS Apps Library
Whilst researching Sigma UX’s case study on their revamp of the Mind website, I had much the same problem at Ximbio, but worse. For such a big charity company, I really struggled to find external opinions about how their website helps their business goals. All of their statistical data about their website’s impact on their users is part of yearly reports and these could easily be made to look a certain way. For this reason, I chose to switch my case study to the NHS Apps Library.
NHS Apps Library had more information surrounding the service itself, the subject of mobile health apps and statistics from apps featured on the website. Alongside this, Webcredible, the company developered the NHS Apps Library, had lots of useful information on their case study featured on their company website.
NHS Apps Library research map
Writing the Essay – Reflection
I always find writing essays very difficult and enjoy the research much more. I find myself conductin researching thinking “This will be easy to write up!” and when I get round to it, I struggle to get my thoughts into order. This is something I will need to work on throughout the duration of my second year in preparation for my dissertation.
The most challenging parts were the introduction and conclusion. When writing the main case studies, I was merely rearranging the research I had conducted into real sentences. It was a lot tricker to sum up my points in a coherent manner. I will be working n this too.
My favourite case study was Foolproof UX’s interaction design study for Cydar Medical. I am very much interested in how good user experience design can benefit the healthcare industries and this was a great example of saving time, money and reducing health complications with user-centred design.
All in all, I enjoyed being able to research a subject area I am passionate about and it was good to practice my writing skills. If I want to have a career in user research, I expect to be writing my fair share of reports, so my time in university as good as any to challenge my dyslexia and learn to arrange my thoughts.