Academia: How UI/UX Is Practiced (Case Study)

Impact

We published a case study in ACM CHI 2018!

image

We Wanted To

Understand the work of UI/UX professionals – the tools they use, the deliverables they build, the people they collaborate with and how they fit in the hierarchy of the organization. Another objective was to know the professionals’ opinion on the HCI curriculum and how it can be improved to better fit the industry standards.

What We Did

I worked with a team of four other Research Assistants, under the guidance of Dr. Cynthia Putnam. My role was to shadow the professionals for about four to five hours a day, throughout the week.

I recorded my observations in notebook and later uploaded it into Optimal workshop where my other team members also posted their data. I also conducted interviews with the UI/UX practitioners before we shadowed them – asking a few questions about what they do and how they do it. I transcribed a few of the interviews. Later we used the AEIOU framework to code the data obtained. All the five Research Assistants met to develop a codebook based on our individual codes.

Image 1:
Image 1: Sticky notes were used to help us grouping the codes and framing new ones while discussion.

We used the emerged codes for our second round of coding, which we did in Atlas.ti. After coding, we developed sequence and flow diagrams for each of the role observed:

Image 2:
Image 2: Sequence diagram for the role of Senior UX Designer, including the tools used, artifacts made and the interactions with other roles in the organization.
Image 3:
Image 3: Flow diagram for the role of Interaction Designer, indicating the work done by a person assigned this role.

What We Came Up With

From this study and through inductive coding, we learnt that UI/UX practitioners hail from different backgrounds, inexpensive tools were used to work on the artifacts/deliverables and the leadership who is responsible for recruiting preferred the employee force to be from diverse backgrounds. While talking to researchers/ human factors engineers, we found that they collect a lot of data during their field visits and transferring it into the system takes up a lot of time. Keeping that in mind, we as a team to I developed the front-end of an interface, along with another Research Assistant, which can help the researchers scaffold their AEIOU observations easily. The interface would provide the user:

  1. Easy creation and deletion of codes in the form of tags
  2. Clock on the top left so that they can keep a track of the time while they’re in the field
  3. Area to quickly sketch a scene
  4. Chatroom to interact with other researchers in real time
image

Through the results of this study, we were able to suggest changes in our program curriculum as well. It was a good way to experience and understand how UX works in the industry – to know the expectations attached to the role and the work one would be responsible for.

Team: Prof. Cynthia Putnam, Abhinit Parelkar, Dan Spinner, Mary Bungum, Phobey Cass, Silpa Vipparti