When companies began doing usability research in Japan in the 1990’s, usability research was mainly limited to evaluations in the final stages of the design process, just before the release of a new product. Methodology consisted of usability tests and heuristic reviews that were used to evaluate the usability of a nearly complete design.
Today, while the rest of the world has embraced more upstream user research methods and evolved design processes, not much has changed in Japan. Here the waterfall process of design is popular, and the use of user research to evaluate usability late in the design process is still the most common user-centered design (UCD) practice. User research methods that integrate well early on in the design process, such as contextual inquiry, personas, and storyboarding, are not yet widely used.
However, the design community in Japan has been receiving guidance on how to integrate user experience (UX) research into the design process and push user research activities more upstream from the outside (mostly from the West), and we believe there is evidence that the design community is currently undergoing a change. In 2009, Design Research 10 Methods was published with the aim to introduce advanced and current design research processes to Japan through interviews and case studies with foreign companies (all European and American companies except one example from Korea, INNO DESIGN). Right now, the Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference (EPIC) is being held in Tokyo. It’s a 3-day conference whose topic, the practice of ethnography in industry, certainly reflects a growing interest in Japan of qualitative research practices in the workplace that are usually upstream in the design process. And recently, Microsoft Japan has visibly taken on the task of developing the UX design market in Japan, including teaching upstream UX design methods. They are dubbing the task “Project UX,” and if you can read Japanese then you can learn all about it on the project’s website.
For those who do not read Japanese, the stated goal of “Project UX” is to work together with developers who pursue great user experience in their products in order to increase the number of user-friendly applications and services throughout the world. In order to teach UCD methods to Japanese developers, they have decided to sponsor and jointly create a UX design workshop for Microsoft clients. Mitsue-Links employees were lucky enough to have been given the opportunity to partner with Microsoft Japan to put on this 1-day workshop on July 16, 2010. Thirty participants, representing about twenty different web and software development companies, attended.
The specific goal of the workshop was not only to teach UCD methods to web and software developers, but to give them sufficient hands-on experience so that they could feel confident to try out the methods when they return to work. The structure of the workshop consisted of introducing new methodologies, and then giving the participants the opportunity to apply the new skills to a problem. During the course of the workshop the participants made and presented personas, task flows, and sketches, all aimed at designing a fictional room reservation application.
Post-workshop questionnaires indicated that attendees had come because they were interested in changing their design processes, but that prior to the workshop they didn’t know how. For many this was their first experience with upstream UX design methods. In general, respondents knew about upstream UX design methods and were convinced of their value, but didn’t have the training necessary to change their current design processes.
The satisfaction ratings given by the participants after the workshop were so high that Microsoft has decided to continue holding the workshop in Tokyo once per quarter, with the next workshop being held on October 15th. From now on it will be open to anyone, not just Microsoft clients, and as of yet there is no fee to attend. With the success of this workshop, maybe we can expect to see more programs like this in the future. Perhaps even at a location near you?
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