Improving the usability of waste management system via personas
Ollikainen, Severi (2022)
Ollikainen, Severi
2022
Informaatioteknologian ja viestinnän tiedekunta - Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2022-12-02
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202211218503
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202211218503
Tiivistelmä
Knowing the users and their goals is critical when building a product that users find desirable and easy to use. When the users and their goals are preserved in usable format, design decisions can be based on user data. Regardless of the vast research in the area, many companies struggle to create products that are pleasant to use.
The goal of this thesis is to gather information about the users of a waste management system called Wasteado to understand how the system is used, and to use this knowledge to improve the usability of the system.
This thesis presents a case study of collecting user data using contextual interviews and condensing the data to personas and scenarios. The study targets two roles from Wasteado, scale operators and carriers. The collected data is analysed to find common behaviours and motives between groups of persons in the same role. Personas are composed based on observed behaviours and motives of a group of similar people. The story of personas is elaborated by creating persona-based scenarios, that depict the ideal interactions of personas using the system. Together, the personas and scenarios are used to evaluate possible pain points in the current system by finding the most important interactions and evaluating how the system currently acts in relation to the ideal scenarios.
The study deepened knowledge of the users of Wasteado, and the results guide the design to be more user-centered, but also raise the importance for further research. Contextual inquiry appeared to be a useful method when collecting user data from a small number of interviewees, but other approaches may be more beneficial for larger groups. Personas and scenarios proved to be a potent way of describing users and their activities, as their narrative style is highlighting users’ goals and bringing the environments visible and tangible, making it easier for the development team to understand the reasons and motivations behind the users’ actions, which essentially leads the design to serve the user better
The goal of this thesis is to gather information about the users of a waste management system called Wasteado to understand how the system is used, and to use this knowledge to improve the usability of the system.
This thesis presents a case study of collecting user data using contextual interviews and condensing the data to personas and scenarios. The study targets two roles from Wasteado, scale operators and carriers. The collected data is analysed to find common behaviours and motives between groups of persons in the same role. Personas are composed based on observed behaviours and motives of a group of similar people. The story of personas is elaborated by creating persona-based scenarios, that depict the ideal interactions of personas using the system. Together, the personas and scenarios are used to evaluate possible pain points in the current system by finding the most important interactions and evaluating how the system currently acts in relation to the ideal scenarios.
The study deepened knowledge of the users of Wasteado, and the results guide the design to be more user-centered, but also raise the importance for further research. Contextual inquiry appeared to be a useful method when collecting user data from a small number of interviewees, but other approaches may be more beneficial for larger groups. Personas and scenarios proved to be a potent way of describing users and their activities, as their narrative style is highlighting users’ goals and bringing the environments visible and tangible, making it easier for the development team to understand the reasons and motivations behind the users’ actions, which essentially leads the design to serve the user better