F26 CS 449 / 649 Project Output Activities PO1 - PO2
PO1. Interviews
In PO1, you will find people to interview; people who are NOT students in the F26 CS 449 / 649 class. It is helpful to have two people conducting each interview, one serving as the interviewer, the other serving as a note-taker. Over the course of the term, your team should interview betwen 6 and 8 unique people in total who will represent the target population of people who are likely going to be the primary audience for your app / product / service. All team members are encouraged to rotate between interviewer and note-taker roles across all of the interviews.
For each interview, add a section to the design notebook to capture (1) a summary of your findings, (2) a description of any changes to your interview questions or procedures that you plan to introduce in future interviews based on what you learned.
Keep track of your users! Have a simple anonymized participant table, with some very simple, but relevant demographic information. Keep this in your design notebook and post the final version on week 10’s entry. Based on all the findings each week, create (or update) a consolidated affinity diagram. If the students that you mock ("pilot") interviewed were representing themselves (i.e., not pretending to be a persona), then you can also include those as findings. Include a screenshot of the affinity diagram in the design notebook. Leverage the consolidated affinity diagram to revise your interview questions (if needed).
Completed ethics training (P1) is required to conduct interviews or work with any interview data.
To recruit users, you can use word of mouth (e.g., people you know, friends of friends) via a variety of channels (e.g., email, phone call, social media, chat interfaces such as Slack). When using social media / chat interfaces (e.g., Facebook group, Slack workspace), you should post only if the norm of the social media / chat group permits this type of study recruitment posts. If in doubt, first check with the social media / chat group owner before posting. You must use this recruitment script in your email, phone call, or chat/social media post when recruiting participants.
Make sure you obtain consent from the participants before starting an interview. You will find all the consent forms on the Resources page of the course website. For PO1a, you should be using the informational interviews consent forms for in-person interviews or online interviews. You will obtain written consent from the participants (see the last page of the consent forms) and store their written consent responses in a password-protected computer, data server or cloud service; the TAs and instructors might ask to see this spreadsheet at a later time. This spreadsheet should have the participant name, date of interview, and participants' responses to each of the written consent questions. You must keep this spreadsheet separate from your interview data and securely stored for a minimum of 1 year.
Note that participants are allowed to withdraw from the study at any time. There are also NO audio or video recordings allowed for PO1a, so take good notes.
Remember to keep your raw interview data (e.g., your notes) private and viewable to your team only; DO NOT put the raw data (notes and images) in the design notebook. Only include a summary of your findings in your writeup. Make sure that the data is anonymized (i.e., with no identifying information) and stored in a password-protected computer, data server or cloud service. In the raw data or any report summarizing the data, interviewees should be referred to by their code names (e.g., P1, P16) instead of their real names.
Your interviewees must be adult (age 19+). Our ethics protocol does NOT allow you to interview children. Note that the definition of minor varies by province. To be safe, interview someone who is 19+. You should also stay away from interviewing students/employees in K-12 schools and hospital staff (e.g., doctor, nurses), because doing so would involve the school board's and the hospital's ethics board. If you were to interview an employee of a company/organization about work-related things, you will also need permission from their manager (using the manager in-person and online interview consent forms) before conducting the interviews with the employees.
Details to be provided after reading week.
PO2. Final Project Outputs
Details to be provided after reading week.