Block 2 - Requirements

Question 1

What are the layers of the lilly-pad and onion layers models related to culture?

Answer 1

On the surface (i.e. the flowers/outer layer) is the behaviours, which depend on the attributes and values (i.e. the stems/inner layer) and invisible are the beliefs (i.e. the roots/core).

Question 2

Define Culture

Answer 2

The culture of a particular group is that group’s shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviours and artefacts (tangible objects including symbols)

Question 3

What are the ‘Hofstede’s culture dimensions’?

Answer 3

There are four dimensions:
Power Distance (PD)
Individualism (IND) 
Masculinity-Femininity (MAS) 
Uncertainty Avoidance (UA)

Question 4

Define the Power Distance (PD) culture dimension

Answer 4

Power distance can be defined as the extent to which the less powerful members of institutions and organisations within a country expect and accept that power is distributed unequally.

Question 5

What impact does Power Distance have on interaction design?

Answer 5

If a country has a high power distance index, symbols of power and restriction of information is more likely to be used in an interactive product. Also references to symbols of power are used to motivate users in countries with high power distances.

Question 6

Define the Individualism (IND) culture dimension

Answer 6

Individualism is associated with societies in which the ties between individuals are loose i.e. everyone is expected to look after themselves or their immediate family.

Question 7

What is the opposite to Individualism?

Answer 7

Collectivism - which means that people are integrated into a strong, cohesive groups and throughout their lives continue to protect others in exchange for unquestioning loyalty.

Question 8

What impact does Individualism have on interaction design?

Answer 8

In a individualist culture, symbols of success i.e. individual qualifications or consumer items are valued. Also different opinions are tolerated.

Question 9

Define the Masculinity-Femininity (MAS) culture dimension

Answer 9

This is concerned with gender roles and the expectations that a culture has of its men and women. If there is a high MAS index, men show traits of aggression and competitiveness and woman show traits caring and nurturing.

Question 10

What impact does Masculinity-Femininity have on interaction design?

Answer 10

Cultures with high MAS rating will reflect ‘traditional’ differences in gender roles, have more emphasis on games and competitions.

Question 11

Define the Uncertainty Avoidance (UA) culture dimension

Answer 11

This is concerned with how a society copes with unpredictable events. A high UA may mean avoidance of new opportunities and challenges.

Question 12

What impact does Uncertainty Avoidance have on interaction design?

Answer 12

Cultures with high UA rating will prefer a precise structured navigation, will show avoidance of errors, will be intolerant to ambiguity and prefer simplistic interfaces.

Question 13

What is the additional dimension culture not identified by original Hofstede’s study?

Answer 13

Short-term orientation and long-term orientation. Short term wanting quick results and a desire to ‘seize the day’. Long term wanting persistence and looking to the future.

Question 14

What are the main reasons why designers should be concerned about widening accessibility to disabled people?

Answer 14

Ethics - Disabled people have the same rights to access goods and services.
Good Practice - Make a product available to a wider market.
Law - Disability Discrimination Act has made it unlawful to discriminate against disability people.

Question 15

What are the models of disability?

Answer 15

Medical (or individual) model - locates the ‘problem’ of disability within the individual.
Social model - where society imposes restrictions on disabled people.

Question 16

Give two definitions of disability.

Answer 16

Can be any of the following:

• A person is considered disabled if they have a mental or physical impairment; the impairment has an adverse effect on their ability to carry our normal day-to-day activities or the adverse effect is long-term.
• Disability is any restriction or lack of ability resulting from an impairment to perform an activity in the manner or within the range that is considered normal of a human being.

Question 17

What are the two main aims of the initial phase of establishing requirements?

Answer 17

Understanding users, their work and the context in which they work in order to design a system or product which can support their goals.
Establishing a basic, stable set of requirements on which to base initial design.

Question 18

What are the four main activities involved in establishing requirements?

Answer 18

• Data gathering
• Analysing the data
• Interpreting the data
• Presenting the findings in the form that can be expressed as requirements.

Question 19

What is the difference between functional and non-functional requirements?

Answer 19

GET FROM SET BOOK

Question 20

Discuss the characteristics that need to be investigated of the users, their tasks and the context they work in?

Answer 20

The areas of investigation are:

• domain of application (scope of project)
• data requirements
• user characteristics
• stakeholders
• the environment
• characteristics of the tasks which the product is designed to support
• usability goals
• user experience goals
• other constraints

Question 21

What are the key issues with data gathering?

Answer 21

• setting clear goals
• determining the level of formality of the relationship with participants
• triangulation of data gathering techniques or data analysis approaches
• pilot studies

Question 22

What are some methods of data recording?

Answer 22

• taking notes
• taking pictures
• audio recording
• video recording

Question 23

What are the four types of interviews?

Answer 23

• Unstructured
• Semi-structured
• Structured
• (Focus) Group

Question 24

Disadvantages of using questionnaires

Answer 24

They have to be carefully piloted (cannot give clarification of the meaning of a question).
Cannot follow up on any interesting topics.

Question 25

What are the factors which impact on the choice of data-gathering techniques?

Answer 25

- the focus of the study, which determines the nature of the data to be collected - the characteristics of the participants involved - the nature of the technique - the available resources

Question 26

What are user profiles and personas?

Answer 26

A user profile is a collection of attributes relevant to that user. Any one product may have a number of different user profiles. A persona are rich descriptions of typical users of the product under developement.

Question 27

What are the advantages and disadvantages of unstructured interviews?

Answer 27

A benefit is that they generate rich data i.e. give a deep understanding and may mention issues that have not been considered. A disadvantage is that the unstructured data can be time consuming to analyse and is impossible to replicate the process as each interviewer may approach with a different format.

Question 28

What are the advantages and disadvantages of structured interviews?

Answer 28

Advantage is that the interview has a structure that is standardised and easy to analyse. A disadvantage is preparing the questions that will gather all the information that you need, can be hard to know if the goals of the product are not already cleared understood.

Question 29

What are the advantages and disadvantages of semi-structured interviews?

Answer 29

An advantage is that this combines un-structured and structured interviews including their benefits. A disadvantage is that you must ensure that the questions that are asked are not encouraging the interviewee to answer in a specific way.

Question 30

What are the advantages and disadvantages of group interviews (focus groups)?

Answer 30

A benefit is that it allows diverse or sensitive issues to be raised. Allows everyone to discuss their opinions. A disadvantage is that they can be very relaxed and it may occur that the participants go off topic.

Question 31

Describe some issues that may arise in conducting an observation.

Answer 31

Observations in the field can be complicated and can result in collecting a lot of unrelated or irrelevant data. Must be open to modifying and refocusing to ensure that there is a balance of information. If not accurately recorded, valuable data can be lost.

Question 32

Name the seven techniques that can be used to gather data in order to inform requirements.

Answer 32

Interviews, Focus Groups and Workshops, Questionnaires, Direct Observations, Indirect Observations (Interaction Logs or Diaries), Studying Documentation and Researching Similar Products.

Question 33

What are affinity diagrams used for?

Answer 33

For making sense of qualitative data such as opinions. This is used as a group activity where it encourages representatives to write statements based on interviews, observations and customer research, on post-it notes. The statements are then grouped into clusters and given a name. then cluster the groups into each other to make less clusters.

Question 34

What is a scenario?

Answer 34

A scenario is an informal narrative description and is usually a rich description of how an individual achieves their goals.

Question 35

What is a use case?

Answer 35

Use cases describe the interaction between a user role ('actor') and a system as a sequence of high-level actions.

Question 36

What is an essential use case?

Answer 36

Essential use cases are more abstract than use cases, and just allocate subtasks to users and system. They contain no assumptions of the technology used which means it can be implemented in many ways.

Question 37

What is hierarchical task analysis (HTA)?

Answer 37

HTA is a technique to investigate cognitive processes and physical actions at a high level abstraction. It involves breaking a task down into subtasks and then into more subtasks etc. The starting point is a user goal i.e. to order a book from a library. Numbering starts at 0. GOMS is also a technique.