Instructional designers for online learning can adopt a number of strategies for empathizing with users. Bootcamp Bootleg and the Design Kit both offer several techniques for gaining better understanding of users. After reviewing these, I was drawn to exploring the experience of extreme users.
There are a number of learners in the context of my work environment who are required to take online safety training but who are lacking the skills and/or tools to accomplish that easily. The most extreme examples include those who, for one reason or another, simply cannot manage the technological process and must train in-person instead.
The resources I will need for investigating such extreme users in my work context will be the toolkits mentioned above, along with internal administrative information so I can contact the extreme users for an interview.
Challenges I may face in my mission to shed light on these outliers include finding the extreme users, and finding extreme users who are willing and/or available to share their thoughts and experiences with me.
References
IDEO. (2015). Design Kit – Methods. Retrieved from http://www.designkit.org/methods
Stanford University Institute of Design. (2016). Bootcamp Bootleg. Retrieved from http://dschool-old.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/METHODCARDS-v3-slim.pdf
Hi Angie,
Looking at the extreme users sounds like it might make this really interesting. Perhaps gaining a deeper understanding of why these extreme users can’t manage the technological process may allow you to improve the process in order to allow more people to complete it instead of having them switch to in-person training, which is presumably less efficient?
Yes Jason, it is far less efficient to train in-person. If we have a contract to supply hundreds of workers for a temporary job and half of them are from out of town, it is costly to pay living allowances and it’s also an administrative nightmare to try and process all the training and paperwork the day before the job starts. If workers can train online well ahead of time, it is way more ideal.
Hi Angie,
Gaining insight into what helps make these tech-challenged learners may, in some cases, figuring out what type of technology best suits these leaners needs. I am of the belief that anyone can respond to at least some kind of technology. I recently taught my 71 year old mother how to use WhatsApp, which may sound fairly basic and straight forward, but believe me it was not! So perhaps as you conduct your investigation, try to acertain what types of technology yourusers might use in their day to day that makes their lives easier and try to incorporate that into your design in some way, though perhaps you are already doing this anwyay. Best of luchk in your design!
Hi Marshall, thanks for your comments.
Our users and almost everyone has a smart phone (whether they know how to use it or not lol). Problems we’ve run into are mostly caused by more complicated processes that require computers, applications that don’t work on every device, printers, and/or scanners. That’s a great suggestion to focus on technologies our users have – if we aim to make everything mobile-friendly and user-friendly then it should improve the overall user experience.