This week, we were supposed to join other classmates and create a group to come up with a contextual design project. I joined a group that grew to nine people. This weekend we met up as a large group, with a few people missing. We decided that the best way to split our group into two would be to nominate the top ideas and then divide depending on topic preference.
The top two topic choices were technical appliances (such as kitchen utilities) and the interface of a coffee shop. Both ideas were intriguing to me, but at the time that we were deciding, the technical appliances group was wavering between a couple ideas. Therefore, I decided to go with the coffee shop group, since it is an interface that I am familiar with and have access to many users of the coffee shop interface experience. I find that everyday activities, such as going to the local Starbucks, are experiences that may be confusing to a novel user, but have become so ordinary for us in contemorary times that we take interaction and design of a coffee shop for granted. We have become accustomed to a typical coffee shop scenario that it will be interesting to see the flaws of the design and possible design changes.
My group, consisting of Daniel, Jenn, Tim, and myself, have many variables to consider for this topic. We decided to narrow down the user group to the customer, opposed to the coffee shop employee. We have yet to make any further decisions, but some ideas that we've brainstormed include the following:
1. The variation of customers depending on the time of day. For example, perhaps early morning coffee-shop-goers are the regular customers who already know what they want and are in a hurry to get to work/class, the afternoon crowd is more of the stroll-in crowd that are meeting others for a social hour, and the night group might be that need their caffine fix for a long night of studying. These factors would affect how the users interact with and what they expect from the menus, organization, etc.
2. It would be interesting to observe where the customers stand to wait in line to order, how they approach the counter, and where the relocate after they order and are waiting for their drink. These types unspoken rules of where to stand reminded me of Professor Hollan's example of the ATM and bank lines(i.e.how far could you push the lines until people ignored them, did they use physical marks on the floor,etc.)
3. Often times, there are other items to be purchased while waiting in line and a customer may reach over with his/her body to grab the item, while still leaving his/her foot to hold his/her spot in line. Why do we do this?
4. Depending on the purpose of the coffee shop endevour, some people may use the tables in the coffee shop for socializing or studying. Sometimes, the customer needs to claim a spot before he/she can order his/her drink, or vice versa.
5. Individual customers would vary from group customers. For example, a group of customers may ask eachother for drink suggestions instead of interacting with the coffee-shop employees or menu.
6. How do customers respond to mistakes in the order?...taking to long? ...a drink that tastes bad?
7. Who/where do customers approach when the cream/sugar/chocolate/etc has run out of the side table? What tactics are used to get those refilled? (i.e. a customer may approach one of the coffee shop employees in the back instead of the cashier so as not to defile social rules of cutting in line)
8. How effective are gift cards? .. advertising new products? ... music sampling exclusively at Starbucks?
These are just a few of the examples that we have brainstormed at our first meeting. Our goal for this week was to come up with more ideas and then narrow them down to the ones that we want to focus on. We will be interviewing six people, hopefully with a variety of individuals and groups indifferent time frames. We will most likely focus on the user group of college students, though this has yet to be established. We have many more decisions and actions to take as we continue to work on our contextual interviews, but these are the first steps to our assignment 2.
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Hi Jill, I made a comment on Daniel's blog and I'm just copying and pasting it here because it's largely the same content:
I'm glad you guys have a topic that interests you. I would caution your group a little bit however - ethnographic studies tend to balloon out of control. While these questions are very interesting, make sure you narrow this down into a manageable set of questions that you know how you are going to answer (you don't have to narrow things down entirely before looking - spending some time watching people will help you guys get an idea of what's interesting and what's answerable). For example, re: question 4, think about how feasible it would be to determine the mood of the customer.
For an example of a really interesting ethnographic study, you can check out The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces by William Whyte, which is at the library. The key to making this kind of study interesting is having some sort of goal in mind - for example, Whyte was operating on the premise that it's a good thing for people to be outdoors and potentially mingling, and looking for factors which enhanced the possibility of that. The French researcher whose name escapes me at the moment, but is in the lecture slides, was looking to increase office efficiency. So it might be nice to see if you can unite this with some kind of common goal.
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