P3—Interviews and tasks

Due F 2022-02-25, 11:59pm EST 10pts

Please make sure you understand and follow the instructions properly. If you have any questions regarding this assignment, please post on Canvas in Discussion: P3—Interviews and tasks.

Table of Contents

• Change log
• Aim of the assignment
• Background information
• Instructions
  • 1. Interview your project partner
  • 2. Conduct task analysis and abstraction
  • 3. Interview reflection
  • 4. Interview notes
• Submission instructions
• Grading notes

Change log

• 2022-02-25: Correct the example table (Identify instead of Filter, and Query Task instead of Analytic Task). A student got a bug bounty! +2 pts
• 2022-02-16: Fix a broken link to P2–Proposal. A student got a bug bounty! +1 pts

Aim of the assignment

You will learn about interviewing target users and how to design visualizations that better address their needs. First, you will conduct a semi-structured interview of your project partner(s). Then, you will perform a task analysis based on your knowledge and insights from the interview. This will help you better understand the motivating questions and tasks of your target user. This information will help guide you in the design of your visualization and the analysis of your data.

Background information

For a refresher on what we expect from your projects, please refer to the Project Overview.

Warning: The requirements listed for the projects must be met unless you have approval from the instructor to do a differentiated project.

Also refer to and address any feedback you received on P1-Pitches and P2-Proposal.

Instructions

1. Interview your project partner

Each final project group needs to interview their individual partner or a representative of their partner organization.

The goal of the interview is to learn about the partner’s target users (internal personnel of the organization/ external stakeholders such as funders, potential volunteers/ the public etc.), their mission, the data they will be analyzing, the user motives for analyzing the data, the possible insights the user is looking for in the data, and what data analysis and visualization work the partner or their users have already completed.

Please be prepared to ask these questions to your partner and also inquire as much as you can about the motivation, target users, data and expectations of the project with them. The answers to these questions and your interview notes will be the basis for second part of this assignment, in which you will need to extract and categorize tasks for your visualization—i.e., the actions that the user wishes to accomplish using the final visualization(s).

Your group should conduct the interview with your partner in-person if both parties (partner and your group) are comfortable meeting in-person. Otherwise, conduct the interview via video call. You are welcome to record the interview for your reference.

Warning: Make sure you have the partner’s permission before recording.

Conduct the interview well before the assignment deadline. You will need time afterwards to complete the task analysis and abstraction (below). If you are unable to arrange to meet with your partner in time, please contact Paige, Uzma, and Cody ASAP.

As soon as you have a scheduled interview meeting with your partner, email Paige and Uzma the name and email address of your interviewee.

For the interview we recommend having a designated interview leader as well as a designated note taker. Make sure to do some pre-reading about your partner and go prepared with your questions. Try not to digress from what is important to save both yours and the partner’s time. After your interview review your notes as a group.

Warning: Make sure you focus on learning about the goals and tasks of the target end users, who may be different from the partner themselves!

2. Conduct task analysis and abstraction

In this step you will use your interview notes and your newly gained knowledge and insights from your interview to characterize the tasks for your project.

1. Start writing a document in your favorite word processor / document preparation system.
   1. For the title, write P3 followed by your Project Group name on Canvas, making sure to include the 2-digit group number prefix. E.g., P3 07 Paint Provenance.
   2. Include all group members’ names at the top.
   3. Write Tasks as a section heading.

2. Construct a “Tasks and Abstraction” table in this section to explain your users’ goals. Follow this outline and use the task taxonomy in Munzner’s VAD book, Chapter 3. These are pictured in Figure 3.2 (PDF). For example:

   Task ID#	Domain Task	Analyze Task (high-level)	Search Task (mid-level)	Query Task (low-level)
   1	Examining a phylogenetic tree, which species are classified as mammals?	Present	Locate	Identify
   …	…	…	…	…

   1. First, fill-in the “Domain” task column which represents all the tasks your user wants to accomplish with the data/visualization. Rank the tasks from most to least important, top to bottom.
   2. Next, translate these domain tasks into computer science terminology by identifying what high-, mid-, and low-level tasks it represents. Make sure to fill in each cell of the table! The original paper (Brehmer and Munzner, 2013) specifies that “Complete task descriptions … must include nodes from all three parts of this typology.”
3. Reflect on the particular problem that you are going to address. Identify who are going to be the primary stakeholder/consumer of your visualization. Write ~2 sentences answering this. This will help you answer the next question.
4. Reviewing your tasks, which type of consumption matches the primary goal for your visualization: “discover” (i.e. exploratory visualization), “present” (i.e. communicative visualization), or “enjoy: (i.e. entertainment/art visualization)? Some projects are intended to be used in a grant proposal, some are intended to be presented to the public, some to funders, some to prospective volunteers or collaborating host sites, while others for the staff of the organization to dive into and explore what strategies are working, how they can improve and many more decision-making purposes. Write a few sentences (3–4) to justify your choice.

3. Interview reflection

1. Create a page break in your document so that this next sub-part has its own page.
2. Write Reflection as the section heading.

3. Create one sub-section with each student’s name. Each student should, individually, write answers to the following questions:

   1. How did the interview go?
   2. What did you learn?
   3. What were you surprised by during the interview?
   4. Has the interview changed your motivating questions?

4. Interview notes

1. Create a page break in your document so that this next sub-part has its own page.
2. Write Notes as the section heading.
3. Include a scanned (or smartphone-photographed) copy of your group’s interview notes.

Submission instructions

1. One person from the group (i.e. the group leader on Canvas) should create a PDF from your document and ensure it contains everything required for parts 2–4. They should then submit it as a single PDF to the assignment P3—Interviews and tasks on GradeScope.

   Note: Use Gradescope’s Group Members tab to add the members of your group to your submission.

   Note: Use GradeScope’s “tagging” interface to associate the pages of the PDF with their associated questions of the rubric.

Grading notes

• Your task analysis and answers to the questions prompts above should demonstrate a thoughtful and detailed effort to understand the target users and their problems you can address.
• You will be graded on the quality of your writing.
• Points will be deducted for grammar and spelling mistakes.
• Points will be deducted for not following the instructions.