Content from Choosing a Research Method

Last updated on 2025-02-20 | Edit this page

Estimated time: 0 minutes

Overview

Questions

  • What distinguishes any method from another, i.e. are ther different method types? -How will learners know which methods are the right ones for their research?
  • What ethical considerations do learners need to take into account when choosing a method?
  • How does the research plan effect method selection?

Objectives

  • Define a target audience for the user study
  • Identify risks of participation in a study and ways of addressing those
  • Develop an appropriate recruitment strategy based on the chosen target audience
  • Create an outreach plan and craft relevant materials (including screener, emails, etc)

Lesson content goes here

Challenge header

  1. Define your project
  • Describe your tool/software
  • State one usability goal (e.g. reduce user errors during form completion)
  • List your project’s constraints
  1. Brainstorm
  • List all possible methods you know / recall
  • Use cheat sheet as a reference
  1. Filter & Select
  • Narrow your list to 5 methods that your team thinks best fits your project’s constraints and goals
  • Evaluate each method choosen against checklist/rubric??? (idk rn)
  1. Reflect
  • Finalize your list
  • Write a sentence per method explaining why it fits in your project ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: solution

Solution text

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Inline instructor notes can help inform instructors of timing challenges associated with the lessons. They appear in the “Instructor View”

Challenge 1: Can you do it?

What is the output of this command?

R 

paste("This", "new", "lesson", "looks", "good")

OUTPUT 

[1] "This new lesson looks good"

Challenge 2: how do you nest solutions within challenge blocks?

You can add a line with at least three colons and a solution tag.

Figures

You can use standard markdown for static figures with the following syntax:

![optional caption that appears below the figure](figure url){alt='alt text for accessibility purposes'}

Blue Carpentries hex person logo with no text.
You belong in The Carpentries!

Callout

Callout sections can highlight information.

They are sometimes used to emphasise particularly important points but are also used in some lessons to present “asides”: content that is not central to the narrative of the lesson, e.g. by providing the answer to a commonly-asked question.

Math

One of our episodes contains \(\LaTeX\) equations when describing how to create dynamic reports with {knitr}, so we now use mathjax to describe this:

$\alpha = \dfrac{1}{(1 - \beta)^2}$ becomes: \(\alpha = \dfrac{1}{(1 - \beta)^2}\)

Cool, right?

Key Points

  • Presenting research method types, i.e. qualitative vs. quantative and attitudinal vs. behavioral.
  • Introducing frameworks for method selection and considering constraints.

Content from Preparing your User Study and Recruiting Participants

Last updated on 2025-02-20 | Edit this page

Estimated time: 0 minutes

Overview

Questions

  • How do I determine who my target audience is for a user study?
  • What are the risks I should consider before conducting a user study and how do I proactively mitigate them?
  • How do I ensure that I connect with and recruit participants from the chosen target audience?
  • What materials do I need to prepare before conducting an interview?

Objectives

  • Define a target audience for the user study
  • Identify risks of participation in a study and ways of addressing those
  • Recruit users based on chosen target audience
  • Create an outreach plan and craft relevant materials (including screener, emails, etc)
  • Develop and refine an interview protocol

Text here

Challenge 1

Read the following scenario and describe which outreach methods the researcher should prepare to reach their target audience.

Rae would like to better understand the needs of field scientists who are monitoring algae blooms and sharing data through a web application. The scientists are scattered across different time zones and are more communicative over phone or video call. Rae is interested in recruiting current users and potential users for the study, but does not know everyone personally. They have access to their lab’s mailing list and know a few independent researchers with contacts.

Challenge 2

Read the following statements and determine if they are true or false.

Statement True/False?
During the interviews you plan to record audio but not video, so you do not need to prepare a media consent form.
Paragraph
Paragraph
Paragraph

Key Points

  • Add
  • Add
  • Add
  • You should prepare an interview protocal with your target audience in mind. The interview protocal will outline information such as your research goals, interview questions, and…

Content from Conducting a user study

Last updated on 2025-02-20 | Edit this page

Estimated time: 0 minutes

Overview

Questions

  • How can you efficiently take or create notes about each participant’s session in your user study?
  • How can you productively stray from your interview protocol?
  • How do you know when you have enough data?

Objectives

  • Choose a method of recording your participants and taking notes
  • Craft useful followup questions on the fly
  • Elicit more detailed responses from participants
  • Record notes that remain understandable and accessible over time
  • Implement strategies for managing time during an interview
  • Determine when data collection can end

Content goes here

Lorem ipsum

This is an instructor note. It contains information that can be useful for instructors to know.

Recording notes

Read the following scenarios and answer two questions individually: What issues can you foresee for Rae in each of the following scenarios? What approaches could you take to mitigate those issues? When time is up, we will return to the group to discuss everyone’s responses.

  1. Rae has gotten permission to record the session in Zoom, meaning they will also have access to a transcription of the session. No one else is available to join Rae as a note taker for the session.

  2. Rae’s participant has asked them not to record the session and they do not have anyone else available to help take notes.

  3. Rae used Zoom to record and transcribe their session, then immediately saved it to a drive that their whole department can access.

  4. Rae was able to record and transcribe their session using Zoom and they also had someone else do a rough transcription while the session was conducted. Rae took notes themselves too.

  5. Rae holds a session that covers highly technical material and uses a substantial amount of jargon.

Lorem ipsum

Key Points

  • Some combination of leveraging transcription tools, partnering with a note taker, and reflecting on your session after it is concluded can ensure you have useful notes to use later
  • Asking strategic follow up questions and leveraging a well developed interview protocol can help you get more information without losing track of your conversational thread
  • Whether or not you have enough data depends on factors like your available time and resources, how likely you are to iterate on this topic, and how useful the insights you have gathered already are to you

Content from Interpreting results

Last updated on 2025-02-20 | Edit this page

Estimated time: 12 minutes

Overview

Questions

  • How do I know that this is the most appropriate method to use for prioritisation?
  • How can I know that i’m interpreting user feedback correctly?
  • How can i know that the grouping and labelling is the correct way to group and label?
  • Know i have feedback that i can apply to my highest priorities, how can I define an action or a change informed by this feedback?

Objectives

  • To make a choice of a ‘high-priority’ measurement, based on application of a method, having read and reviewed those methods, to the demo project.
  • Making better, more informed decisions about design.
  • Demonstrate how to group and label user feedback and assertain which are applicable to your high priorities or not and why.

Introduction

This is a lesson created via The Carpentries Workbench. It is written in Pandoc-flavored Markdown for static files and R Markdown for dynamic files that can render code into output. Please refer to the Introduction to The Carpentries Workbench for full documentation.

What you need to know is that there are three sections required for a valid Carpentries lesson:

  1. questions are displayed at the beginning of the episode to prime the learner for the content.
  2. objectives are the learning objectives for an episode displayed with the questions.
  3. keypoints are displayed at the end of the episode to reinforce the objectives.

Inline instructor notes can help inform instructors of timing challenges associated with the lessons. They appear in the “Instructor View”

Challenge 1: Can you do it?

What is the output of this command?

R 

paste("This", "new", "lesson", "looks", "good")

Challenge

Firstly what is your highest priority for software right now? What has informed that high priority?

Write down a list (no more than 6) of what you consider your highest priorities right now for your software.

OUTPUT 

[1] "This new lesson looks good"

Challenge 1: Can you do it? (continued)

Challenge 2: how do you nest solutions within challenge blocks?

You can add a line with at least three colons and a solution tag.

Figures

You can use standard markdown for static figures with the following syntax:

![optional caption that appears below the figure](figure url){alt='alt text for accessibility purposes'}

Blue Carpentries hex person logo with no text.
You belong in The Carpentries!

Callout

Callout sections can highlight information.

They are sometimes used to emphasise particularly important points but are also used in some lessons to present “asides”: content that is not central to the narrative of the lesson, e.g. by providing the answer to a commonly-asked question.

Math

One of our episodes contains \(\LaTeX\) equations when describing how to create dynamic reports with {knitr}, so we now use mathjax to describe this:

$\alpha = \dfrac{1}{(1 - \beta)^2}$ becomes: \(\alpha = \dfrac{1}{(1 - \beta)^2}\)

Cool, right?

Key Points

  • Use .md files for episodes when you want static content
  • Use .Rmd files for episodes when you need to generate output
  • Run sandpaper::check_lesson() to identify any issues with your lesson
  • Run sandpaper::build_lesson() to preview your lesson locally

Content from Connecting the Dots and Next steps

Last updated on 2025-02-20 | Edit this page

Estimated time: 0 minutes

Overview

Questions

  • How to remember to use the right method in the right scenario?
  • What are the next steps to designing features in a user interface?

Objectives

  • Able to use UX methods for identifying different high priority user needs
  • List next steps to address your identified priorities

Introduction

This is a lesson created via The Carpentries Workbench. It is written in Pandoc-flavored Markdown for static files and R Markdown for dynamic files that can render code into output. Please refer to the Introduction to The Carpentries Workbench for full documentation.

What you need to know is that there are three sections required for a valid Carpentries lesson:

  1. questions are displayed at the beginning of the episode to prime the learner for the content.
  2. objectives are the learning objectives for an episode displayed with the questions.
  3. keypoints are displayed at the end of the episode to reinforce the objectives.

Inline instructor notes can help inform instructors of timing challenges associated with the lessons. They appear in the “Instructor View”

Challenge 1: Apply your knowledge of user research methods to navigate different scenarios of design decisions in your project.

Here we have 3 different scenarios, for each scenario, choose a research method, explain why you chose the research method and how it will help you and your stakeholders make intentional design decisions about your project. If you want to use more than one method, feel free, just articulate how you would use the methods together. - Scenarios: - Conflicting user input / feature requests - Prioritizing which software improvement or feature to work on first - Deciding how a feature looks/ works in the software

OUTPUT 

[1] "This new lesson looks good"

Challenge 2: how do you nest solutions within challenge blocks?

You can add a line with at least three colons and a solution tag.

Figures

You can use standard markdown for static figures with the following syntax:

![optional caption that appears below the figure](figure url){alt='alt text for accessibility purposes'}

Blue Carpentries hex person logo with no text.
You belong in The Carpentries!

Callout

Callout sections can highlight information.

They are sometimes used to emphasise particularly important points but are also used in some lessons to present “asides”: content that is not central to the narrative of the lesson, e.g. by providing the answer to a commonly-asked question.

Math

One of our episodes contains \(\LaTeX\) equations when describing how to create dynamic reports with {knitr}, so we now use mathjax to describe this:

$\alpha = \dfrac{1}{(1 - \beta)^2}$ becomes: \(\alpha = \dfrac{1}{(1 - \beta)^2}\)

Cool, right?

Key Points

  • Use .md files for episodes when you want static content
  • Use .Rmd files for episodes when you need to generate output
  • Run sandpaper::check_lesson() to identify any issues with your lesson
  • Run sandpaper::build_lesson() to preview your lesson locally