The next event will see us have a chance to disuss two great items:
- Exploring Users’ Values, Motivations and Emotions, presented by Sarah Thew
- Does Technology make any difference in our social life, presented by Alistair Sutcliffe
Exploring Users’ Values, Motivations and Emotions
Requirements Elicitation is a technical and analytical process, but it is also a highly social and potentially emotive activity. All but the smallest software developments can have a wider organisational impact and the potential to change people’s working lives in positive and negative ways. Users’ reactions to such changes are shaped by their own personal values, motivations and emotions. Exploring and understanding such information can help requirements analysts in:
- Developing a deep understanding of users’ long term goals, working practices, preferences and problems
- Making design decisions
- Building a rapport with users
- Anticipating user wants and needs
Sarah Thew has been exploring these ideas during her PhD, carrying out a series of interviews with novice and experienced analysts investigating if and how they consider users’ values, motivations and emotions. These interviews contributed to the development of a method to support analysts in considering and exploring values, motivations and emotions during the requirements elicitation process, which she is currently evaluating.
About Sarah Thew
Sarah is a PhD student at Manchester Business School.
Does Technology Make Any Difference In Our Social Life?
This talk will give an overview of the EPSRC/ESRC Foresight project ‘Developing Theory for Evolving Socio-Technical Systems’ (TESS). The project is based on Robin Dunbar’s Social Brain Theory that explains the evolutionary constraints on human relationships and social organisation. With the spread of Social Networking Sites such as Facebook and MySpace, will we be able avoid those constraints to keep up with more friends and be more social, or is the downside, invasion of privacy, stalking, and a less social world ? The TESS project is researching these issues by studying social networks and work-related groups. I will describe current research on social networking sites and how this fits into the wider picture of social mediating technologies such as Twitter, Wikipedia, etc. Investigating the questions- does technology really change the way we behave in our social life, how do we adapt and use these technologies, and what impact might technology have a social capital?
For more information on the project http://www.mbs.ac.uk/research/DTESS.aspx
About the Speaker
Alistair Sutcliffe has been principle investigator on 15 EPSRC and European Union projects on requirements engineering, multimedia user interfaces, safety critical systems and cognitive modelling for information retrieval. His research interests span a wide area within Human Computer Interaction and Software Engineering. In HCI particular interests are interaction theory, and user interface design methods for the web, multimedia, virtual reality, safety critical systems and methods for usability evaluation. His research also covers application of cognitive theory to design, and design of complex socio-technical systems. In software engineering he specialises in requirements engineering methods and tools, scenario based design, knowledge reuse and theories of domain knowledge. Alistair Sutcliffe is a leading member of both the international HCI and requirements engineering communities and chairs / serves on a number of committees.
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Time
The event will be from 7pm to 9pm
Venue
Code Computerlove
Ducie House
Ducie Street
Manchester
M1 2JW
Sponsor
The venue has been kindly provided by Code Computerlove, a digital communications agency based in Manchester, England.
Future Events
- September 2010: Selling UX Internally & Design Exercise
- October 2010: agenda tbc
- November 2010: Communication theme for World Usability Day
- December 2010: Christmas social
- January 2011: Interaction Architecture for Startups and Digital Agencies
