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Introduction to User-
Centered Production
Dr. Will Kurlinkus
University of Oklahoma
Student Example: Screen Print

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+ Technical Documents: Key Points
1. Users
 Difference between a user and an audience.
 Who are your users? Always more than one type.
 What do you know about their skills, their background knowledge, their demographics?
 How can you find out more about your users? Why might you want to?

2. Goals
 What are your user’s goals?
 Primary, secondary, tertiary?
 How can you help different types of users achieve their different goals efficiently?
 Think dual stream reading.

3. Stakeholders
 Beyond your users, who else has a stake in you being successful at the document you are creating? The
difference between a client and their users/customers.

4. KPI’s: Key Performance Indicators

 Before you start creating a document (or any project) for someone, set Key Performance Indicators.
Markers that show that you have been successful at your work and that show the client when you are
done.

5. SME’s: Subject Matter Experts

 Who can you gather information from in order to make texts in the best manner possible?

6. Textual Tests
 How can you test that your document makes sense and is useful.
Everyone think about a time you
+ to learn a difficult task, skill,
had
or activity. Write it down.
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User-Centered Research and Design

 Ethnography: The study of a person/culture in context with the

goal of uncovering cultural codes, covert expertise, and
vernacular literacies. To gain this understanding ethnographer’s
use a variety of methods including:
 Observation: Going out and observing in the wild. Mimicking as
close to real world conditions as possible. Not interrupting. Seeking
out things that you don’t understand—codes and culture involved in
the job. What does this thing mean? Why did you do it that way?
 Think aloud protocol: Asking your SME to think aloud about what
they are doing and why while they are performing a task.
 Interviewing + Storytelling: Tell me about a time…
 Literacy narratives: How did you learn this?
 Empathy mapping
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Empathy
Mapping
& Literacy
Narratives
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User Persona
Personas are fictional characters, which you create based upon your
research in order to represent the different user types that might use your
service, product, site, or brand in a similar way. Creating personas will
help you to understand your users’ needs, experiences, behaviours and
goals. Creating personas can help you step out of yourself. It can help you
to recognise that different people have different needs and expectations,
and it can also help you to identify with the user you’re designing for.

 Character Bio: Name, photo, job, motivations, skills, interests, values,

pain points, how the character has succeeded and failed at the activity
in the past.

 Scenarios: Tell short stories of this persona doing the task in action,
incorporating features of the bio. Shows why and how this action might
take place.

 Goals: Shows the character’s goals in doing the task.

*Note: An empathy map is based on a real person vs a persona is a

generalization based on multiple interviews/data.
+ How Might You Redesign the
Workflow of this Hematology Lab?
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Make an Instruction Set

1. Think of something easy that you know how to do on the

computer/Internet: whether that’s search for courses, order
a pizza, etc.

2. In a team of two you are to teach and record that skill and
create a set of instructions.

3. Use the ethnographic methods we’ve learned today.