Learning Outcomes
Understand
- Key terms like usability and user experience can have many definitions
- When investigating an activity or a practice, look at the context
- Usability and user experience are only well-defined relative to a context of use
- Card sorting is a general technique to elicit somebody’s own mental model of a field
Remember
- Classic three part and five part definitions of usability
- Definition of User Experience
- Self-tracking
- Quantified Self
- Card Sort – technique, open versus closed
Apply
- Card Sorting techniques
- create a working concept of usability and user experience that you can use in your own practice
Overview
In this face-to-face session, we will provide some scaffolding for your first exposure to the readings. The aim of the activities is for me to find out what you already know, and for you to recall relevant material from your studies, so that you have a cognitive hook on which you can hang the theories, methods, and debates that will follow.
For the only time in this course, therefore, key terms and definitions will be made available only after the lecture, not before.
Activities
I will start by giving an overview of the course, course topics, and the recommended readings. Throughout today, we will work in pairs or triples that mix MSc and MA students, and that mix West and East.
Activity 1: Course Topics
Think (5 mins) / Pair / Share -> Share on Top Hat (5 mins)
- What would you like to learn more about?
- What is missing from the course outline that you expected to see?
After you have shared with each other, one of you enters your results on Top Hat
Activity 2: What do Usability and User Experience mean for you?
Discuss in pairs. 5 minutes.
- Pairs in Group 1: Usability
- Pairs in Group 2: User Experience
Three pairs from each group share with the class. After that, I will discuss some definitions from the literature that I often work with or that I find useful in my own practice. These definitions can be downloaded here: Useful definitions for Usability and User Experience
Activity 3: Self Tracking Card Sort
Each student takes two index cards. On the yellow card, you write down one thing that you currently track about yourself or have tracked about yourself, and on the white card, you write down one thing that you would like to track about yourself. We will then sort the cards into categories together.
For more about the method of card sorting, see the Card Sorting entry on usability.gov. Card sorting can be used for far more than web sites – in general, it is a useful tool for figuring out how people define and relate concepts.
Additional References
Hartson, Rex and Pyla, Pardha S. 2012. The UX Book. Morgan Kaufmann