Field Methods in HCI part 1
Bentley University's HFID graduate program has immersed me in a world that I could have never imagined existed. Not only are my classmates some of the most intuitively insightful individuals I have ever had the pleasure to meet, but the professors are approachable and down-to-earth - something I rarely had experienced in my undergraduate career. Universal usability is awe-inspiring, as is the professor for my Field Methods in Human Computer Interaction course. User research is fuzzy and complicated, and even more difficult its implementation in a particular set of circumstances rather than discussing it just in theory. It's curious how the UX professionals tend to pit themselves against marketing gurus - especially when I'm aiming at a synthesis of both. It's also very curious that the class doesn't say much about agile project methodologies when so much of the user research is centered on aiding the product development process. It seems like the nature of user research suggests a waterfall or plan-driven methods that don't require as much schedule planning up-front. Yet, as my education suggests, the iterative capability of an agile method would be far more useful to any UCD approach. Not only can a team can react more quickly to new findings the emerge from the research, but could more easily slipstream these findings into design and development phases. I always find it disappointing when a particular organization "drinks the Kool-Aid" of usability research, but won't consider an agile environment to allow the research to be conducted optimally.
NOTE: There a numbers of typos or instances of incorrect grammar in this text. I still record the text exactly as it is written (that is, with the typos).