S-72.1510 Human Factors in Telecommunications

EXERCISES

General instructions

The exercises are done in groups of 2-5 people. You can form your exercise groups by yourself, but all international student will be divided into groups by course personnel at the latest on friday 14.9. If you have formed an exercise group by yourself, or if you want course personel to place you on a group, please send an email to Vesa Riihimäki  (vesa.riihimaki(at)tkk.fi) at the latest on friday 14th september at 9:00 am. The email should include your name, student number and email address, or all this information regarding all the students in your exercise group.

Exercises can not be done individually, and exercises for international students are not the same as for finnish students.

One member of the group acts as a contact person. Only she/he contacts the course assistant (Juha Vartiainen, firstname.lastname@tkk.fi) if there are any problems or questions concerning the exercises. Let the course personnel know the name and the email address of the contact person when you return the first exercise.The contact person will be notified if the exercise is graded fail.

Returning the exercises

Exercises should be returned by email to Juha Vartiainen (firstname.lastname@tkk.fi) according the timetable below. The names and student numbers of each group member must be shown in every written exercise summaries.

Deadlines:
monday 24.9. at 12 a.m. deadline to return the 1st exercise.
wednesday 3.10. at 12 a.m. deadline to return the 2nd exercise.
monday 15.10. at 12 a.m. deadline to return the 3rd exercise.
wednesday 24.10. at 12 a.m. deadline  to return the 4th exercise.

Choosing the user group

All four parts of the exercise work are considered always from the same user group's point of view. The user group can be chosen according to the following:

- The user group must have several members (not just one or two)
- No-one from your group is a member of the chosen user group. Each member of your group must have the possibility to interview a member of the user group in exercise one.

Some examples:

· Children under school age
· Distance workers
· Visually handicapped computer users
· Students at the University of Helsinki
· "Distance families" - families that have at least one family member living part of the time in a different town than the others
· 9th -graders of the elementary school
· Bird watchers

Exercise 1. User interview

The first exercise includes an user interview (that is done according to directions below) that aims at defining the communication needs of the user and the user's present communication habits. Each member of the exercise group covers one interview and the exercise report is written together based on these interview results.

Directions to perform the interview
Inform the interviewee about the purpose of the interview: the goal is to get information on interviewee's communication needs and the use of communication services. Tell him/her that he/she is chosen as a representative of a certain user group and that he/she doesn't have to bound to tell only about this user group's communications but to think of communications in general.

1. Ask the person's background information: age, residence, profession, job description, hobbies, family. You can also think of questions about the special features that are typical to your user group. Ask about the communication tools the person is using daily, what devices he/she owns and what the person is planning to buy in the future.

2. Ask the person to describe the previous day from communications point of view: What did he/she do, how did he/she communicate, with who, where and possibly what types of communication tools were used in the situation. Write down also if there were any problems during the communication incidents.

3. Write down the results from the interview into this type of table:

Instructions for the report
1. Describe the chosen user group. Describe the users' background information and try to make a general conclusion of the user group. Think what similarities and differences they have among the user group and what features separates them from other groups.

2. Write a summary about the results: What types of communication incidents happened to the users (where the incidents occurred, with who and what types of tools were used). Write down also the similarities and differences the group had.

3. What are the common problems that occur for the user group while communicating?

4. Attach copies of the interview tables from all interviewees that were interviewed.

Exercise 2: Quality of service and user experience

The second exercise's aim is to find out (according to the instructions) how the technical quality of a certain communications service influences on user experience and how could the functionality of this service fit to the needs of the chosen user group.

The service evaluated is the different options to find train schedules:

1) Text-TV / begin the task from TV (text)-page (TV1 or TV2) 430.

2) VR (State Railways) Website, http://www.vr.fi/

3) An automatic phone service, tel.0307 20906, 24h. (with gsm 0,3€/min)

4) VR's (State Railways) phone service, tel.0600 41 900 (1 €/call+ local net fee)

Begin the task with a phone and the phone number available for the user. The test user is someone outside of your group; the same person for each option. Timetable of the train you picked must be the same for each option. For example, the first train in the morning from Helsinki to Tampere or the first train after 15.00 from Turku to Helsinki. You might have to do the testing in two different places for it may be difficult to find a place that has both TV and Internet connection.
Help the user to get started on each option and ask him/her to find out the timetable. Do timing during the task (in seconds), timing stops when the user repeats the correct timetable. (advise the user to repeat the timetable immediately when he/she hears it, when using the telephone service).

One of your group members acts as an observer who writes down, using the table below, how the user carries out each task. Especially the errors, frustrations and other remarks are important.

After all the options have been tested, ask the user for his opinion on different methods: what would be suitable for him/her? What was easy and what was difficult to use? How would he/she manage to use these services in everyday life when considering what kind of tools he/she normally uses? Ask him/her to evaluate the best service for him/her.
Ask also the user's background information: age, sex, place of residence, whether he uses text-TV or not, how about WWW, GSM-services or phone services in general, and ask him/her how often he/she travels by train.

Instructions to write the report
Your group's test report depicts informally the observations of each service's usability and speed, how easy the service is to use in practise. In addition, evaluate how each service would suit your "own" user group. Report also the background information about the test user.

Exercise 3. The user group's needs for quality of service

The third exercise is to ponder the general quality needs for a service of the chosen user group (according to instructions). You can divide the task so that each member in the group writes about one service. More than one service/person is not needed to evaluate.

Look from your user interviews what were the different communication services that your users used. Consider the following:

· What kind of user needs could be found from the phenomena?
· What kind of quality parameters could this service have - what could be the different parts of quality concretely considering these communication services?
· How important is each parameter to your user group?
· Is there a certain limiting value for acceptance (to some parameter)?

Report the quality parameters for each service at a time, the importance of them, the typical level for quality nowadays, lowest accepted level of quality and the goal level of quality. Write down reasons why your estimation is this.

An example of analysing a service:

User group: teenagers

Exercise 4. An ideal solution

The fourth exercise includes creating a solution to the chosen user group based on already existing communication services and services that are maybe being developed. It should also be pondered how this kind of new service could in time change the habits of the user group.

Directions
Examine the problems that have come up in the user interviews considering the needs of your user group. Think about observations and conclusions that you got in other phases of your exercise work. What is the basic problem (one or more) that needs to be solved?

Discuss and create what kind of service would be an ideal solution for your users. Don't limit your thinking to existing technology but imagine all that your user would want if everything was possible. Then return to the real world: what kind of service would be the best solution to the problems if every service and tool that is available now would be used? Justify!
How far is the service that you just created from the one that the user would really like to have? What are the obstacles - lack of technology, compatibility of different services, level of quality is not correct, too difficult to use? Or the fact, that no one has actually invented it? There might be many reasons, of course.

Last update 5.9.2007 JVa