Gilly Leshed is a senior lecturer in the Department of Information Science at Cornell. Her teaching and research interests are in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), in which she uses quantitative and qualitative methods and technology design to examine how individuals and groups accomplish tasks and socialize and the roles information technology plays in these interactions. She is particularly interested in designing interactive technologies that empower marginalized populations. Some of her works include visually-impaired users of social media, smallholder coffee farmers in Latin America, and Amazon Mechanical Turk workers. She is the Director of the Master of Professional Studies in Information Science, and is the faculty supervisor of the Design & Tech Initiative Project Team.
Course Overview
After you have conducted interviews with your users, it is time to sift through your notes and transcripts in order to get at the most important insights; this is the data, which will be your guide to what the users actually need as well as what the design requirements ultimately need to be. However, one challenge we face as designers is that the data we have gathered is qualitative and not quantitative, which means that interpreting the data requires us to make associations and inferences as we read through the users' stories, thoughts, and feelings. Fortunately, we have several strategies for translating data into design requirements.
In this course, you will practice analyzing data from your user interviews and identify insights that are not always immediately apparent. After you extract insights from your interview data, you will create a fictitious user called a persona that will serve as a model of your users and help guide your design decisions. Finally, you will create design requirements that will help as you move from explaining the current state of your users to imagining a future where they use your design to better meet their needs.
The following courses are required to be completed before taking this course:
- Human-Centered Design Essentials
- Effective User Research
Key Course Takeaways
- Analyze the contextual interview data with affinity diagramming
- Create a persona
- Create a set of user requirements for the design
Download a Brochure
Not ready to enroll but want to learn more? Download the course brochure to review program details.How It Works
Course Author
Who Should Enroll
- Product managers
- Web designers
- Software developers
- Marketing professionals
- UI/UX designers
- Graphic designers
- Instructional designers
- Accessibility specialists
- Anyone focused on customer experience evaluation
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