Starting this week we continued last week work! We had the interview analysis due on Thursday. On Monday, our group was working to complete the interviews analysis so that we could get feedback from our professor. We had a couple of concerns about the analysis such as we didn’t know how to code and what to include in an analysis. We went back to the video we saw last week in class to get some ideas. Also, we had to search the Internet about how to code. We found an article which somehow useful “Coding Qualitative Data”. It gave us some tips on how to write the analysis and how to collect the data from our interviews. It was hard to see commonalities from the interviews; we were kind of lost about the interview. Since we had the recording for each interview, we decided to listen to the recordings and write a script. We divided the work so each member of our group listens to two of the interviews and writes a script. Each of us tried to code and analyze the interview they listed to. However, when we came together each one had a different kind of code. I feel we didn’t have enough understanding about coding and how to come up with a theme.
We tried to work harder on this assignment, as the last assignment (poster) we didn’t get a good grade. At the end of the day, on Monday we had an online meeting to finalize our analysis outline. On Tuesday, we as a group met our professor for a feedback. We showed him the outline for our work and we got some of the critiques and useful feedback. We got to ask a couple of questions and discuss some of the concerns we had in the analysis. Having these kinds of group meeting with the professor is helpful for our group as our questions get clarified.
After getting the feedback, we started working on the analysis.; writing it down and changing some stuff according to the feedback. From the meeting, we need to focus on the user group needs more the wants. As our professor said “NEEDS AND WANTS ARE DIFFERENT”. Our goal was to find the needs and the gaps that we don’t know. We were thinking of creating an organizing app for our user group since their team operation (Google calendar) is not working. However, after the meeting we got to know that’s not a good idea and we can’t solve this problem. We had to take off this idea from the analysis. Then we started coding each script interviews as our professor showed us.
On Wednesday, we finished our interview analysis and designed it. We created some of the charts to show interviews outcomes. On the other hand, we had a reading and a quiz due for Thursday. I read the reading “Questionnaire” and “surveys”. It was interesting reading about this; Surveys are used for large groups and get a lot of information. There are two dominant techniques for survey; Interviews and Questionnaires. Questionnaires are for smaller groups and used to collect survey information. It’s really helpful to read these readings and apply them as we already did the interview and we are doing the Questionnaires. I got to know the two dominant techniques of a survey.
Other things was due on Thursday was the quiz, before starting the quiz I thought it would be about the reading we had, however the quiz had questions about pervious reading and connecting it to what we are doing. The quiz made me think about how design is connected. The theme “Infrastructuring” is really important in design. I feel the entire thing we were doing from the beginning of the quarter whether its cultural probes, interviews or questionnaire are forms of Infrastructuring, which is designed after design to produce a product.
On Thursday, we were divided into different groups to get feedbacks about our interview analysis and outcomes. The group was asking several questions about our user group that I didn’t know. I feel it was helpful as I came up with some questions that we didn’t know. Moving forward, as we had the reading of Questionnaires, we started coming up with a question that we don’t know about our user group. We brainstormed all the possible questions to ask. Then we were wondering what question is important to ask and will help us come up with a problem. At the end, we decided to have two Questionnaires; one for the general members and one for the executive members.
On Friday, we continued working on our Questionnaires and get the chance to show it to our professor. Some of the questions styles were not appropriate to ask such as using the scale “often and not so often”.
Things I learned this week:
Wants and needs are different. We shouldn’t ask our users about their wants because they don’t know their needs. Forming questions seems to be easy but it’s not; coming up with questions that will lead to a problem is the most important thing.
Some of the Interview Analysis outcome Charts
Questionnaires