Tag Archives: Human Factors

October – Customer Data Analysis Month

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It’s been a while since I have written a new blog entry. Being emerged in the Scrum process has definitely kept me busy. I have also been working on some personal development. I’ve started a new eating lifestyle that will hopefully result in losing some weight. And I’ve started writing down a lot of recipes that I may turn into a healthy cookbook one day. I also went to Orlando for two days last week to see my best friend who was visiting from Hawaii.  I haven’t been recording this information because my Blog is generally focused on UX related topics, but it explains the lapse since my latest update.

I stated previously that when I started the Scrum process for my latest project, that I felt more like I was in the role of a business analyst and interaction designer than a Human Factors Engineer.  I spent the last week updating our new Employee Orientation to reflect the new Scrum project management methodology, and I have a new project on the horizon. This is very exciting for me because the last project I worked on was for UI enhancements to an existing application, whereas this project will be building a new application from the bottom up. Therefore I hope to be able to do more real Human Factors work such as building personas, and creating mental models. And basically contributing more towards the to the requirements, and functionality, and more original design than what I had the opportunity to do previously. This is exciting because it means I will be in uncharted territory and doing some things for the first time. I expect this will be a huge learning opportunity for me as well.

Today I cracked open my Mental Models workbook from training that I attended by instructor Indy Young. I brushed-up on customer data analysis techniques before going through data collected through customer visits. This consists of summarizing content by using a verb + noun = atomic task. This will be used in an affinity or mental model diagram that I will create. I am recording the users behaviors, philosophies and feelings and leaving out the tools/medium, statements of fact, explanations, circumstance and complaints. In a nutshell I’m getting back to doing Human Factors related work and I’m loving it!  Yippie!

Scrum initiated – downtime eliminated

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Immediately after I went on my last customer visits, we started scrum at work. In fact they were actually waiting for me to get to work on that Friday after my visits to get started. I am the only Human Factors Engineer at my office, that has over 100 engineers in it. I support everyone. Right before I left town, I sat in on 2 scrum teams, but there was no real UI work involved. Now we are doing a UI enhancement scrum, and I’ve never been busier. Fortunately for me, I enjoy being busy. I utilized my not-so-busy period at work, which I spent researching Human Factors and design methodologies. I also got active in the UX community, but now I have been thrown feet first into the fire.

I would say the biggest thing that I’ve noticed about scrum is that it brings issues that may have otherwise been missed to the surface. I design UI and functional items before they get to development. This has been an interesting process because we get requirements from Product Marketing, and at first glance, they may seem simple. Then I start mocking things up, and prototyping what the customer would experience and LOTS of questions come up. I think in the long run this will be a positive thing, because I help hash things out between Product Marketing, customers, before development. I bring my mock-ups in front of users before they are built to get feedback on the design.

The only thing that has become a concern to me about being consumed in the scrum process now is: will I have time to do the process research and customer research while I’m also creating designs for development. My goal has been to make sure that I do not alienate any of my internal customers; being responsive is very important to me. But there are higher-level Human Factors initiatives that I would like to work on, but I’m not sure if I will have time. I would like to take the customer data that I’ve collected, and create mental models to deliver design ideas to development.

Today I was audited by an ISO auditor. The auditor mentioned that he thought I should have some more visibility in my organization. I have personas that I created a while ago that have never been presented to development and test because I never got approvals back from marketing. This item took a backseat to all the new work I’ve been focusing on. I think I need to focus on communicating persona and mental model deliverables that will give the developers and testers more insight into our customers.

Customer Visit Success

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Boy have I been busy! My customer visits in the North East went swimmingly, but it was extremely hectic. I travelled to 4 states in 4 days and interviewed 6 customers. We started with Morgan Stanley, and then Bloomberg in New York. Then drove to New Jersey, and met with US News (Dow Jones) and Susquhanna Investment Group in PA. Then drove to Jersey City for Lord Abbott and up to Purdue Pharma in Connecticut.

My tools for the interview was a Sansa recorder, a notepad and pen. Our clients all had different work styles, environments and processes. There was one thing I was very happy about, and that was how nice and patient everyone was during the interview process. Everyone was more than amicable to take the time to answer our questions, it was almost like we were providing them with psychiatric treatment where they could unleash all of their IT problems.

I’m glad that I got the experience of going to customer interviews on this trip, I learned so much about our products, how they are being used, and about our customers. I took the customer data that I collected and assembled it into a call report. I also think that my relationship with product development has grown from this experience.

Now that I have collected user data first-hand. I am interested in viewing some of the previously collected user data and generating a mental model of this material. Unfortunately I don’t know if I will have the time to work on it.

Also, tonight, I will be giving a speech at RefreshMiami on Human Factors. This is at Yahoo Latin America in Coral Gables. It will just be a 10-15 minute speech on what a Human Factors Engineer does.

Scrum, an Agile project management methodology

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Today I attended a 2 hour session on Scrum. Apparently the concept of Scrum is derived from the sport Rugby. The concept is that you have a team of people working together to achieve a common goal in small iterations. The scrum process consists of periods of development known as ‘sprints’, and are moderated by people called ScrumMasters. Yes, it all sounds strange, but the concept is that if you design something iteratively, that you can change development direction as needed and determined by the Product Owner.

I was partially exposed to an Agile development methodology working from a remote location, and it seemed rather chaotic. Hopefully this will run smoother since most of the people involved are in one location. One of the most important elements to Scrum are daily stand-up meetings. These are 15 minute long meetings to monitor progress on a day to day basis.

Tomorrow I will be giving a presentation on Interaction Design integration into the Scrum process. This integration may prove to be a challenge for me as I am the only HF/UX Designer at this facility, and there may be several Scrum projects going on concurrently. I will need to determine when and how I will be involved in each of the projects. I’m sure that my role will evolve throughout time. I am interested to see how this all pans out.  For more detailed information on scrum, you can check it out on wikipedia here.

Getting Familiar with User Centered Design

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I have to reiterate my previous statement about not having time to keep up with everything.

I signed up to Facebook the week before last, and I’m just starting to get my friends list built up. You can view pics of my trip to Utah on my Facebook page here.

I spent the past 4 days in South Jordan Utah for a Contextual Design course. The class was taught by Hugh Beyer the author of the book Contextual Design and one of the key players at InContext.

When I was first hired at Avocent I was given a copy of Contextual Design to read. I found the content to be rather dry. In case you are not familiar with Contextual Design, it’s the process of using customer centered data to drive design decisions.

The class I participated in was fairly engaging, however, I would like to think of some ways to spruce up the content for when I present it to my peers at work. I found the process to be slightly different than the Mental Models class I took in California a few weeks ago. I will probably end up adopting a hybrid of techniques. Apparently InContext suggests there to be at least 2 people to work on each project, and seeing how I am a UX Team of 1, I will have to streamline the process to make it easiest for 1 person. Of course I would include my coworkers for pieces where I need assistance.

I will be sorting through and organizing the content from what I learned on Contextual Design over the next few days, and perhaps put some highlights up on this page.