Another method I've both heard about and (briefly) used is to get a person already doing the job to teach you how to do it.
Judy Ramey has a case study about working with healthcare professionals reading a large set of medical images. She ran into two problems: first, they worked so quickly that she wasn't able to follow their actions without some explanation; second, they could not stop and talk while they were working (both due to time demands of the job, and because it interrupted their workflow). To address this, she: - Received some basic training on how to "read" an image. This primarily involved simply learning how to move through the process: mount them for viewing, the systemmatic viewing of details, etc. This did not, of course, make her a medical expert, but it let her have a good feeling for the mechanics. - Video taped some work sessions and then viewed them with the HCP in a retrospective. In some cases, I think they actually got out the images again for a "replay". One concern about using "self-discovery" methods to learn about a job is that you need to be careful that you don't assume that everyone's reaction is the same as yours. Participation can give you a first-hand view and can be an excellent way to learn the mechanics. But, it's just one view (even if a well-informed and well-documented one). Someone mentioned issues of covert vs. overt participant observation. There's no particular reason why this exercise should be covert, in most cases. In fact, there can be some advantages to being "one of them" and actually trying to learn the real job. Cognetics had a project some years ago for a utility company (regulated, unionized workforce). We were the third company to try to design a hand-held device for their field service folks. The first thing the person working on the project did was a day of "ride-alongs". There wasn't much he would be allowed to do, but just going through an entire day provided a lot of insights. The real pay-off however, was when the new design was reviewed with some users. One of the ride-along participants stood up to say "These guys took the time to really find out what we do out there." I'm constantly hearing that user research takes too much time, and so we should find ways to work around this problem. Perhaps the question we ought to be asking in each situation is exactly what we need to know, and decide on the most efficient way to learn it. -- Whitney Quesenbery www.wqusability.com Storytelling for User Experience Design www.rosenfeldmedia.com/books/storytelling ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
