Comments on Solving Mobile Challenges with Psychology-driven IA

Alan Seideman — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 05:24:51 GMT

Hi Oded,

Are you still checking comments on this post? I’m wondering if we could talk more about your work with FriendZone. This piece you wrote is really fascinating.

thanks
Alan

Rani Einav — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:51:27 GMT

This is a very well written article. You should write more. Waiting for your next piece.

Jimbo trite — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:51:27 GMT

Thanks a lot for your article. I liked the way you wrote your stuff.

Ohad Ouziel — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:51:27 GMT

Hi Oded,
Let me start by praising you article and thanking you for sharing your insights with us. The psychological facet is undoubtedly an important part of all any AI effort and you have elucidated the importance and methodology for creating in beautifully. However, I feel there is something, which needs further clarification.

In “the real world” (whatever that may mean) “…seeking to understand and allay the fears and needs of the users…” will not provide you with the solution to the much nastier issue of addressing the fears and needs of “the system”. It is exactly the forces outside the community of users, those who believe the needs and especially fears of the users are not nearly substantial enough (“they don’t know what’s good for them”) which will coerce you into compromising the PDIA you developed.

True, PDIA will be used to soften the blow of those imposing external forces (using your excellent example – by creating a language which will be less intimidating), but if the system is successful these forces will eventually weaken the psychological tools to such an extent they will become mere frills.

If my hypothesis is correct, then the case you referred to as “…the carrier with the most use of the privacy management tools was also the one in which the system was the least successful…” was the one, which imposed most restrictions.

Then again, I could be dead wrong….

oded napchi — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:51:27 GMT

Dear Katie,
First, thank you for the response.
I am not sure I understood your question, but if I got it right, it seems as it was taken from the semantics field (i.e linguistic philosophy).
If so, I think that if you are trying to get to full meaning of a term the explanatory (based on B. Russel and G. Frege) approach you used is limited and therefore the understanding of the term is not complete. I prefer the approach of understanding the meaning through the use, suggested by L. Wittgenstein. (this is the basic conflict between B. Russel approach and the later L. Wittgenstein). So if I will follow the wittgenstein approach I will claim that in order to understand the meaning of the term “psychology” you should look at the work of psychologists. This the meaning I refer to in the term psychology. But if in any case I should use explanation, I will prefer the britanica’s one: “scientific discipline that studies mental processes and behavior in humans and other animals.”, since the driver of my design the possibility to analyse the behavior pattern of the target audience.

Hope It answered you question, if not please e.mail me again

Oded

oded napchi — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:51:27 GMT

Hi David,
First, sorry for the delay in my answer. I will answer just part of your question now, and the rest will follow later.

I used the pdia method in the past also in smaller scales and for other target audiences. The main points I try to keep in small scale are:
Psychology analysis of the target audience. Try to sit in brainstorming with a psychologist who is familiar with the target audience or, if it is a company, you can do it with VP HR or Organizational Behavior consul. Try to understand from them what are the needs of your target audience? What are they fears? Try to embed this insight in your program (even small things as a possibility of putting your daughter picture as a wall paper to CRM application). Use this brainstorm also for building archetypes of people in the target audiance

The second is find a group of people who give a good representation of your target audience, using the archetypes you developed in the previous point. Meet with them, think with them and understand what they need, I believe that 1 session of one on one and 2-3 sessions with the group could give you some excellent insights.

This basic usage of the pdia should take around a week of work, I found that in most cases I can spare a week for designing the system.

Part 2 in few days…
Oded

Katie Harter — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:51:27 GMT

Oded,
At first glance, I thought it was unusual the way you use the term “psychology” in the title of your approach. I was assuming the primary and most well-known definition of “psychology” – “the science of mind and behavior” – and was waiting to see how your use of the term was relevant. On second read, I realized you must be going with a secondary definition of “psychology” – “2 a : the mental or behavioral characteristics of an individual or group”. Is the term often used this way in your line of work? The word encompasses so many things and it seems like you are referring specifically to perception of or feelings for a product/service. I’d love some clarification on this if you (or anyone else) are willing to offer.
Many thanks.

David Heller — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 03:39:52 GMT

Hi Oded,

Ok, I had a printout on the train w/ me when I read the article and the last page must not have printed. I went back and read it again and I see where your methodology appendix is.

The two references I made in my above comment can be seen in two books by Alan Cooper (most famous for being the inventor of Visual Basic):
“The Inmates are Running the Asylum” & “About Face”. He writes about Personas & Goal Directed methods. “Contextual Design” is written and promoted by Karen Holtzblatt.

Both methods though promote more of an ethnographic and less of a focus group approach than you used. I think the researc of sub-culture that you did bears merit. I think purely methodologically speaking that both of them would have used less focus groups and psychological data and spent more time actually with teenZ trying to see how they use their phones. How they make them a part of of their lives in their day to day use and how they then can fill a whole in their service.

I see PDIA beign useful for the structural analysis but less useful towards innovating the idea in the first place. Both are incredibly important pieces of the pie.

My next question would be how would the “garage band” version of PDIA work? In order for smaller organizations and groups to get involved in this type of work to prototype it before making it a major piece of their organization they will need to do it on a discount basis w/ shorter time frames. How might you see that happening?

Lastly, if you were to do this project now for another age group, like Yuppies, how might you do it differently? What did you learn in your results through this process that would make you ammend it slightly?

As you can tell, I’m incredibly interested in this method. I have a strong background in culture & personality and in UI design and combining the two is something important and useful to me. I also really appreciated the real-worldness of your example and this is not just a graduate student study, but a real application of a methodolgy with measured results.

oded napchi — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:51:27 GMT

Hi david,
Thanks for the comment.
The PDIA is based on a field experience I gathered in the past 7 years while working in different media (tv, internet and cellular) I used it in each one of them. I developed while trying to imply the samba school theory of Seymour Peppert (i hope i spell his name right) of mit media lab. He claims there that community should be built by the community members themselves. The pdia is basically some kind of a “jump start” for this approach or a solution to target audiences who can’t build the community and especially the community tools. Regarding the methodology i explained it in appendix b of the paper; if you need more information please send me a specific question. Regarding the approaches you mentioned, unfortunately i am not familiar enough with them. While working on the paper i got feedbacks that prof. sonia livingstone of LSE has a Contextual Inquiry approach, which resemble in some aspects my approach, is this the case you mention? i mentioned her work in the bibliography of the paper, in any case i will appreciate if you could refer me to the paper you mentioned. i hope i answered your question, if not, please feel free to ask

David Heller — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:51:27 GMT

I have to say I love this article as a case study for how ethnography really makes such a HUGE difference in the design of products and services.

Oded, I have a question about how you cam up w/ your “persona development”. What were the methods used to get the info.

I’m also curious as to how you feel your PDIA method differs from Contextual Inquiry or Cooper’s Persona and Goal Directed design methods? Think of this not as a criticism or dismissal, but a request to compare and contrast.