Abstract
Observation has been recognized as an effective approach to finding user's potential needs in the upstream design process. In user observation, we observe a user while he/she interacts with artifacts and the environment to find potential problems that he/she faces. Oftentimes, a memo of findings is recorded. After the observation, we share the observed findings with other observers and discuss their causes and solutions. In this paper, the authors discuss three issues regarding the current state of observation: 1)a cognitive tradeoff between finding facts related to potential needs and keeping recording the findings, 2)incorrect description on the event due to the lack of information and the observer's prejudice on the objects, 3)difficulty of sharing findings with others with reality. To respond to above issues, we propose a new recording and sharing scheme and its support system. The proposed scheme consists of two phases. In the first phase, the observer observes the users who interact with a target product and keeps memos of their findings using digital pen. The digital pen memorizes the time stamp and the coordinates of each handwriting. In the second phase, the memos made in the first phase are divided into one by one and shown on digital sticky note, i.e. tag, on the PC display. Those tags are linked to scenes videos related to documents of each tag. These functions allow observers to make two things. One is to break through the cognitive tradeoff between findings and keeping recording events by reducing observer's cognitive load for accurate documentation with linked scene video. Another is increasing accessibility of related scene video that provides observers to share their findings with correct understanding. We carried out experiments to demonstrate the effectiveness of the support system using a user observation video in an office environment.
