UXFACTORY : User Modeling
User Modeling begins with primary and secondary research techniques designed to find key insights, provide reasoning and justification for decisions, and to establish baseline understandings. In many cases this is referred to as Ethnographic studies. This is a series of assessments in the ‘field’ to evaluate what is in a user’s environment, how they interact with the environment and what disrupts their ability to successfully achieve a task. It is more commonly utilized in process-heavy interface design.
The UXFACTORY compiles this information and creates task-based models as the design lifecycle continues through User Modeling. This information leads to the creation of audience demographics and intention based profiles that provide a basis upon which subsequent design decisions are made. In short, we help identify and create accurate personas. Personas are user models based on insights gained about customer (user) behaviors. This is a mechanism to derive motivations and desired outcomes. In many instances, user modeling can also consist of the evaluation of existing user flows, tasks and processes. The determination of key methods can be derived during this process and is sometimes deemed Pluralistic Inspection. These exercises enable the documentation of task-by-task process maps to evaluate task scenarios.
