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H2 Who will use or be affected by the tool?

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Theme: WHO?

Quick Start:

  • Heuristic Question: Who will use or be affected by the tool?
  • Who (else) will use the tool? Who provides information for inputs? Who uses information from outputs?
  • Asking "Who?" is useful - we found a broad and non-stereotypical group of people are testing, and therefore may be using the tool.
  • You will also have stakeholders who may not use the tool, but may influence the goals for the tool.
  • As you identify Why the tool is needed, you might find that different stakeholders have different perceptions of why the tool is required and what it should do: you need to understand Who needs the tool.
  • Quality in Use Attributes: Satisfaction
  • Product Quality Attributes: User goals, Appropriateness
  • Mapping Heuristics to Quality Attributes

Explanation and sub-questions

Click for further explanation

Think about:

  • The people/team who have identified/named the problem may not be the person/team who has or needs to solve the problem.
  • You may be designing this tool for yourself – because you are the person who is going to use it.
  • In future – tomorrow or next year… - other people may need or want to use it. Who might they be? How might they be different to you? What different needs or ways of working might they have?

Research Point: we found that people using the tools were not always the people who had acquired the tools, and that tooling solutions could be seen as imposed and inappropriate.

Research Point: we found that case studies uncovered the need to revisit H02 Who? because participants either spent more time with customers focusing on costs and timescales or more time with users focusing on usability and UX, when a balance between those two areas of concern is required; both are important.

Key questions to ask yourself:

  • Who (else) will use the tool?
  • Whose work will change because of the tool?
  • Who provides data to the tool
  • Who uses information from the tool?
  • How will people be affected negatively (e.g. redundancy) or positively (e.g. tedious work removed)?
  • Who is paying for the tool?
  • Who will design, build and maintain the tool?
  • Who will choose the tool?
  • Is it for you or someone else to use?
  • Who else will want to use it or be affected by it?
  • Who doesn't / shouldn't use the tool?
Mini usage case - the people who identify the problem may not be the people who have the problem... "The people/team who have identified/named the problem may not be the person/team who has or needs to solve the problem" was picked out by one case study participant as an area that requires careful exploration with a customer:

'This heuristic is particularly relevant when engaging with buyer personas. Conducting a stakeholder mapping exercise early on can help us identify key individuals for discovery. Customers may not initially recognize all the roles involved so it can be valuable to provide them with examples of roles that may be relevant based on past experiences.'

In the research the data indicated that people buying tools forget to ask 'Why?' and people building tools forget to ask 'Who for?' This comment indicated that 'Who for?' is more generally forgotten than 'Why?'. Both H01 Why? and H02 Who? are important

Research Points and Quotes

``In my experience end users almost never use these tools [instead they use a spreadsheet giving the tester the task of prepping the spreadsheet for users] prefer simpler interface for users - upload or import is something that that is but I would even more like a simplifies interface for users to use … instead of having to log into this tool and being in the domain of the IT supplier''

``[as well as test specialists] PO's, users, developers, service people [will all use a defect management tool] and management want access but I'm not sure what they want''

``I wanted to solve this one problem for myself ... As I shared it with people who had different skill levels, different preferences they had exactly the opposite ideas about what it should support, how it should it be used ...    Completely different audience''

'thinking about break-even points in the customer workshop'

Activities, tools and techniques to help answer the questions

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Click for activities

To understand who will use or be affected by the tool you need to understand who is a stakeholder. Don’t forget yourself.

You will need to iterate between “Why?” and “Who?” as you identify stakeholders and their goals.

When you have a small number of people to understand, you may be able to interview them. With a large population, you can use sampling, or statistical methods. You can model this with activities to help you understand and model the characteristics of those groups of people include mapping to personas or archetypes:

Another activity you might find useful to help you understand Who include:

  • Stakeholder Mapping which includes simple mapping onto a matrix, the onion model, value chain modelling and Wardley Mapping.

We have tabulated the Quality in Use and Product Quality Attributes in a priority order based on the input from industry practitioners during our research. Use that data to help you focus on the optimal product attributes to meet the QiU/UX goals for your tool. We've included quotes from practitioners that you can use to help you understand your own goals, stakeholders, and contexts, plus a cross reference between the heuristics and the quality attributes. These may help with persona development.

However you map the "Who?" enrich your answer by using the rest of the heuristics to add details.

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