1. USER ORIENTED DESIGN
“If you don’t go, you don’t know”
- Eric Rasmussen
Nicolás di Tada Martín Verzilli Ary Borenszweig
nditada@instedd.org martin@manas.com.ar ary@manas.com.ar
twitter: nditada
2. THE PROBLEM
• Design is a contextual activity
• What works here doesn’t work there
• You don’t know what your users know
• What you think your users need is not what they need
• What users think they need is not what what they need
16. PLAYING WIZARD OF OZ
• Test how users interact with
your system before it actually
exists
• Make users believe that there’s
a system already built and you
want them to help you test it
• Put someone behind the
curtains to interact with them
as if he/she was the system
23. UNSTRUCTURED VS. SEMISTRUCTURED VS.
STRUCTURED WAYS OF SHARING
INFORMATION
• Unstructured: “We are dealing with cholera Simple, easy,
outbreak will call you later” flexible
Simple,
• Semistructured: “at Rachaburi, we are requires
FEATURE
seeing Cholera URGENT” EXTRACTION,
some training
• Structured: “H5N1, Birds:200, Lab:No, Complex for
human entry,
FollowUp: no” hard to learn
and to get right
27. How do I spell it?
Diahrrea, diarhea,
diharrea?
disease:23 place:Thurdor
cases:15
Received report
of 15 diarrhea
cases in Thurdor
Ooops... I meant
dengue
28. How do I spell it?
Diahrrea, diarhea,
diharrea?
disease:23 place:Thurdor
cases:15
Received report
of 15 diarrhea
cases in Thurdor
Ooops... I meant
dengue
31. WHEEL DESIGN GOALS
• Instructions must be in users’
native language
• The wheel has to explain itself,
to minimize the need for
training
• Have you ever tried to write
instructions and make them as
short as possible? Quite a
challenge!
32. USERS HAVE THE ANSWER
• Findpotential users and
conduct usability tests over
the first prototype with their
help
• Givethem a minimal
explanation about what the
wheel is trying to solve, not
how it works
34. COLLECT FEEDBACK
• Amazing feedback just
from the initial reactions
• “Why can’t I report
what’s in the left?”
• “What do I have to do
with the report I built?”
• “What will happen if I
call that number?”
37. SUMMARY
• Don’ttry to guess: you
won’t get it right
• Leave your preconceived
ideas of what works at
home, at home!
• Listen, watch, ask, be humble
• People like to play
• Iterate...forever
38. THANK YOU!
QUESTIONS ?
Nicolás di Tada
Ary Borenszweig Martín Verzilli nditada@instedd.org
ary@manas.com.ar martin@manas.com.ar twitter: nditada
Notas del editor
- There’s not such a thing as a Good or Bad things: there are things that work for some people in some places under some circunstances
The windmill powers a bicycle dynamo, designed to power a bicycle’s headlamp. William ran the bicycle dynammo through a transformer, which provided enough power to charge a 12 volt battery. That battery in turn powers four lights, two radios and a mobile phone charger in William’s home.
Most of them don't have access to Internet or even a computer at their workplaces, but in general they do have a cell phone and the ability to send SMS.
-Focusing on usability: design a simple and usable command syntax for Geochat
-Focusing on usability: design a simple and usable command syntax for Geochat
-Focusing on usability: design a simple and usable command syntax for Geochat
-Wizard of Oz for usability testing before the system exists
-Focusing on usability: design a simple and usable command syntax for Geochat
-Third step: writing SMS is hard, and some health workers don't know how to do it. Even if they knew, for example in Cambodia there are just a few phone models which support Khmer, and they're not very popular. So they have to learn English disease names (most of them are too difficult to  spell!) or code numbers by heart. The whole process becomes too error prone and uncomfortable for users: either they are forced to learn words in a foreign language which are easily misspelled, or they have to enter code numbers which have no semantic value for them. Moreover, if they mistype a single digit, they may end up reporting a totally different disease from the one they wanted to!
-Third step: writing SMS is hard, and some health workers don't know how to do it. Even if they knew, for example in Cambodia there are just a few phone models which support Khmer, and they're not very popular. So they have to learn English disease names (most of them are too difficult to  spell!) or code numbers by heart. The whole process becomes too error prone and uncomfortable for users: either they are forced to learn words in a foreign language which are easily misspelled, or they have to enter code numbers which have no semantic value for them. Moreover, if they mistype a single digit, they may end up reporting a totally different disease from the one they wanted to!
Play Wizard of Oz: ask her to send a report by calling a number (which supposedly belongs to the system). Record a video of the whole experience for later analysis.
Record initial reactions, fears, uncertainties, doubts and feedback. The feedback collected from the first couple of users was amazing, and very eyeopening!
