Assignment: Interview at least five different individuals who you believe share the gap you are addressing for your course project. These interviews should be done in person, preferably in the person’s „use environment“. Using the methods from the videos on user needs, identify the user needs. Your website should have a blog post titled „Assignment #2.2“ and include the following:

• A refinement of the gap you are addressing (it’s possible, even likely, that your understanding of the design problem will evolve based on these interviews). Express this simply as a refinement of your one-sentence problem statement.
• A list of at least 30 user needs. These needs should be arranged into a hierarchy with at least one level of abstraction. That is, cluster your needs into groups, with a primary need describing the cluster in bold. Ensure that your needs adhere to the coding rules explained in the video.
• A short paragraph describing your experience gathering user needs.
• Identify one or more latent needs with an exclamation point (!).

Submission:

Refinement of the gap: With the web-based course evaluation software it will be possible to get feedback from participants. Process: First, the trainer sets up a predefined survey. Then, the participants complete the survey. Finally, the trainer gets the anonymised results.

List of user needs:

Keep it short and simple (KISS)

• It’s easy for trainers to create a new survey
• Trainers don’t have to compile a list of all participants
• Trainers don’t have to distribute a one-time password to participants
• Predefined questionnaire adapted to organisation
• Administration sets suitable periods (e.g. semester) for averages

Meaningful analysis of the gathered survey data

• Visual representation (e.g. radar charts, red-flag) of the survey results
• Trainers may compare their results with the average trainer
• (!) Purposeful averages e.g. current (semester) and evolution over time
• Distinguish trainer, departmental and organisational averages
• Export of the collected data for archiving or further analysis

Privacy and security

• Access for trainers to their own survey results
• Administration may see all surveys results
• Participants may complete survey only once
• Trainers can not complete survey themselves
• Uses an encrypted connection (if desired by customer)

Functional questionnaire design

• Open (text input) and closed (multiple choice) questions
• Description of the questionnaire at hand
• Administration defines survey questions to form questionnaire
• Provide online and paper-based questionnaire
• Allows individual questions posed by the trainer themselves

Product and service

• Software as a service (SaaS) or simple in-house hosting
• (!) Runs on all devices (smart phones, portable computers, desktop PCs etc.)
• Professional layout on demand customized with corporate identity
• Import of departments, courses, trainers, participants
• Offers a reasonable price/performance ratio

Help and support

• Active community of users to connect and exchange
• Speedy and competent help-desk maintains a FAQ
• Good practice examples and user stories are available
• Fast bug-fixing and long term support for major releases
• (!) Adjust future versions of the software to additional user needs

Additional features

• Integrates into existing infrastructure such as learning management systems
• Trainers are able to activate / deactivate surveys
• Scales with potentially increasing demand for evaluation
• Facilitates extensions and customisation of the software
• Allows anonymous and personalised data acquisition

Gathering user needs: I interviewed people from several user groups: Participants, trainers, administration and decision-makers. This gave me a broader selection of needs. But their needs may differ (e.g. predefined versus individual questionnaires) which makes things more difficult…

Time schedule:

• 2013/06/17 Alpha test
• 2013/07/01 Beta test
• 2013/08/05 Stable release