Perhaps during your work on Assignment 1, take some time to discuss with your group options for a target set of users. The goal is to have at least two users in any group that you study. This has two benefits. First, you get some mixture of data, which simplifies the process of seeing across work practice rather than within on person's work. Second, you have some safety net if something goes wrong with one of your participants (e.g. they leave the region, they decide they no longer wish to participate).
The goal at this stage is not to have identified a formal group to study, but to come up with at least three different options based on people your group may have access to. These people can be people you've worked on co-op with, community service organizations you're involved with, parents, friends, friends parents, on-campus groups, etc.
The single most important component of the target group must be that you can study the target group while they do at least a significant portion of their work. What I mean by this is that a target group of daycare workers would probably not be appropriate, as you might not have access to the facility when children are there, and these people do all of their work with children present. In contrast, teachers have worked well as target groups in the past because they do a significant amount of work after school and on weekends, particularly involving assessment and lesson planning. Wet lab scientists or field scientists have both worked well, but on a couple of occasions, they have worried about confidentiality, and have not been able to provide data. The goal is to have access to these people in the environment in which they work. Ideally, you'd like to be able to watch at least one, and preferably all, of your participants while they do real work, and interview them about this work practice.
The members of your target user set must have similar jobs. It is important that both members of the target group do similar things. So, for example, two local municipal managers were chosen by students in the past. They were a very poor group to work with because they do completely different things; however, a manager from Cambridge and from Kitchener might be OK because they may have similar jobs.
For this assignment, you must post on Piazza the following information for each of your potential target groups (minimum 3):
All major grocery stores, some home improvement stores, and many other large box merchants have self-checkout lanes. In this assignment, watch (from a reasonable distance) as people navigate these lanes.
Note whether people have any problems, and identify the frequency of problems. Observe five or six people.
You should go through the self-serve lane and buy something. If you need groceries, buy them. If not, buy a chocolate bar, soda, or your lunch from the deli. You can pay with either debit, credit, or cash. Spend some time taking notes and possible pictures. Feel free to tell the employee in the area and/or the people behind you in line that you are taking these pictures for a class project to try to learn to design the devices better. Note that you should try to go when lines are shorter so you don't hold people up.
Back on campus, put together a one page document (with pictures) describing the process for scanning, weighing, and paying with the system,
Post this document to Piazza. If you want to add pictures, include a link to them and post them on a photo sharing site (flickr, Picassa web album, etc.).