Focus Questions for Site Visits

Lists of focus questions to keep things in context ...

"When we coach clients to prepare for site visits, we suggest they put together a list of focus questions, the questions they’ll keep top-of-mind as they observe people’s context. In Putting Context into Context, I talk about how you can break down context into eight categories: Goals, Process, Inputs & Outputs, Experience, Constraints, Physical Environment, Tools, and Relationships.

The following is a list of sample questions we created for a project exploring new development tools:

Goals:

• What is the user trying to accomplish?
• How will the user know when they are done? What will be different?
• How does the user describe their goals?
• How do the user’s actions fit into the objectives of the organization?
• Who established the goals for the user? Were they self anointed or were they assigned by someone else?
• Are the user’s immediate goals part of a larger scope? (For example, the new point-of-sale application is one piece of delivering an entire new line of business.)

Process:

• What are the steps the user will follow?
• Who defined the steps?
• How prepared is the user for each step? (Do they have it all laid out or does it seem to be ad-hoc?)
• How does information flow from one step to the next?
• What are the various roles (such as creator, contributor, editor, or approver) that are involved?
• How long does the process take?
• What artifacts (such as design documents, emails, or whiteboard drawings) are used?
• How do the various team members communicate with each other?
• What other tools are used during the process?"    (Continued via UIE Brain Sparks)    [Usability Resources]