Technology

Chapter 3 Methodologies

3. Introduction
ThisIn this chapter we will begin with an explanation of the rationale behindfor the choice of the life cycle methodology used along withlife cycles including the alternative methodologies that could have been considered. Furthermore, there will be a brief discussion about of the type of data collectedused to collect along with the research methods used for collection. With many options to consider, a justification is shown on why the particular research method was viable for the project for collecting information abouton the user requirements along with testing and evaluation.

3.1 Methodologies
Methodologies are applied within the subject of human computer interaction using life cycles which entails a series of steps when designing a prototype.  There are many life cycles, the usage of which are imperative when developing a prototype or software as it has different activities that follow one anothercan be followed depending on how the designer goeswill go about it.this.

3.1.2 Considerations of Methodologies

Spiral Life Cycle Model
Spiral life cycle model is based on the concept of incremental prototyping and is an advanced version of the waterfall model. It aims to combine the advantages of waterfall model with the features of prototyping. It starts as a subset of the waterfall model and delivers bigger prototypes with more features each with each iteration thereby taking the shape of a spiral. It is used for large and complex projects.

Waterfall Life Cycle
This is one ofcan also be known as the most common and popular System Development Life Cycles. It isCycle. Its often used in small projectsa project which involve multipleinvolves phases for a designer to go through. This effectively means that each stage must be completed before continuing onto the next step.

UCD Life Cycle
The User-centred design (UCD) is an approach to focus the design process around people. The product will be targeting the people in the centre of this design bythrough involving the users in the phases in the design phases by receiving information from them. UCD processes focus on users through the planning, design and development of a product (Usability Professional Association 2010).

3.2 Justification of Methodology chosen
The method that waswill be adopted for this project waswill be the UCD methodology. This washas been chosen ahead of the Waterfall cycle and the Spiral Life cycle. One of the primary reasons for choosing UCD methodology for this project is the user-centricity that it provides. Since a major portion of the research for this project is going to be based on interactions with users to fulfil their specific needs, it was important to choose a method which provides special focus towards user experience. While waterfall or star life cycle methodologies could also have been adopted to conduct this project, some of the main reasons why UCD was chosen ahead of these 2 methodologies are outlined below-

Since the project does not contain a finite set of requirement definitions to begin with, it is difficult to plan each and every step ahead of the project initiation which is needed for traditional methodologies like the waterfall cycle.

The requirements can change dynamically and vary vastly between different groups in a user-centric project like this. Hence it is much easier to work with UCD in this scenario as it is quite difficult to accommodate changes dynamically in other methodologies.

UCD will help in reducing future maintenance costs and efforts in this project by carrying out user evaluations early in the project as compared to other methods. It also helps in identifying failure points early on in the project thereby reducing testing and bug fixing efforts as well.

Since the trends in mobile applications tend to vary very rapidly, using a user centred approach will help in keeping up with changing user needs by concentrating on a research and evaluation based plan and design.
Using a user-centred method will also reduce the learning curve for the target user group thereby ensuring user satisfaction and ease of adaptability of the application.

The UCD methodology will help in gathering a large amount of data with limited sampling and help in creating a robust user interface since it is scenario-driven as compared to the other methodologies which are system-driven.

The involvement of users at every stage will ensure that the product serves its intended purpose and also helps in fulfilling user expectations much better than other methods. (Abras, Maloney-Krichmar and Preece, 2004)

In addition to the points mentioned above, using a customer-centric methodology will also help in providing a compelling user experience, faster application development, more flexibility and better control of presentation layer. (Spillers, F, 2006). The information gained by user-evaluations and interviews can be applied dynamically in several iterations thereby producing an end product which provides extensive attention to individual user requirements. Due to its flexibility, it is quite easy to integrate and overlap UCD with other methodologies like Agile if needed in the future. It helps in developing applications which are relevant and custom made according to specific user needs. Since the aim of the project is to design an application catering to a specific target user group, it is possible to create a personalised solution for each target group using this methodology.

Figure 1 A symbolic representation of the UCD methodology is given below

Source of Information from Usability Professionals Association (2010)

As depicted in the diagram above, the major focus of UCD is the requirements of the user and it focuses on a human centred design. The design is validated against user requirements at various stages which is very important for this project. Hence, UCD seems to be the most appropriate choice for conducting this project.

3.3 Participant Sample used in Research

Following this approach, there will be a justification of the research methods applied within each stage of the project.

Stage 1Stage 2Stage 3Pilot StudyInitial User Requirements InterviewTesting and EvaluationUnstructured InterviewSemi-Structured InterviewLaboratory Test (Visual Basic) User Tasks  Evaluate user with Structured Interview3 Male  3 Female Participants5 Male  5 Female
Participants6 Male  6 Female
Participants
Figure Explanation of the methods applied using this user centred design process.

The aim of this research aimed at targeting is to target male and female respondents for themy primary research who are users of the gym and are interested in keeping fit and users of the gym. The choice of data will target age group of the research participants was fixedwho are aged between 18- and 30 years as this is the average age group for the users of the gym. The main purpose of the research is to concentrate on the varying these gender differences to meet their specific requirements of both genders belonging to this age group and gather specific data on what they expectentail in a mobile application.

The research involved a step-by-step approach beginning with a pilot study and gradually expanding into a full-fledged testing and evaluation. The main reason behind using a pilot study here is to permit preliminary testing and confirmation of the concept so that the testing efforts are reduced in the final phase. Since the pilot study is only a prelude to the main phase, an unstructured interview will a smaller number of participants sufficed at this stage.

The next stage involved an interview to gather the user requirements. Since the requirements were not yet finalised at this stage, it was important to allow flexibility in the interview with options to introduce new questions as and when required. Hence a semi-structured interview with a slightly bigger number of participants is justified at this stage.

During the third stage, it was important to subject the prototype to a full-fledged laboratory testing. At this stage it was necessary to finalise the scope and boundaries of the application and hence a structured interview with a larger group of participants was used.

3.4 Ethical Considerations
The foundation of this research involvedwill involve human participants of male and female participants species who must obey the ethical principles set by according to the British Psychological Society. As this research involvedwill involve qualitative study, before carrying out any research, it wasis essential to get consent fromthat the participants give consent so they are aware of the principles before agreeing to take part. Ethical principles can be used to guide the research in addressing the initial and ongoing issues arising from qualitative research in order to meet the goals of the research as well as to maintain the rights of the research participants (Orb, A et al., 2001).

Before agreeing to take part in the study, the participants wereare given an informed consent sheet (See Appendix A) which gives an explanation of the project towards whichthat they will be contributing to. These sheets were given in the stages all the three stages stated in the table above.  Once the usersthey have read the information consent sheet, they had to fill out and sign the model consent form (See Appendix A). Following the ethical rules they werehave been told that their responses will be kept strictly confidential.  These ethical issues are areas that should be considered during any stage of the research.

3.5 Research Methods
The data collection actively appliedwill apply research methodologies in order to gather data from the sample participants involved in the centre of the design. Participatory design does not just ask users opinions on design issues, but actively involves them in the design and decision-making processes, (Web Credible 2010). The), the participants involvement was spreadis across two stages during the project which include

1. Initial User Requirements

2. Testing and Evaluation process

For themy primary research these participants werewill be selected from Brunel University Gym as they were easily accessible and workingit will make it easier to work with them was easierregularly.
The involvement of the participants during the two stages mentioned above was important as applications in the UCD lifecycle are completely user centric.

3.6 Initial User Requirements
In order to carry out themy research, an investigation of the user requirements offrom male and female participants was neededto know what is required for the designer to fulfil each genders need. From a qualitative perspective, there were many considerations to bear in mind while gathering the in order to gather my research data on the user requirements. A semi structured interview approach was a chosen method of data collection at this stage.

3.61 Pilot Study
In order to conduct a fair research of the users requirements, starting off the data collection was triggered using a Pilot study to experiment with males and females who are users of the gym, using the students from Brunel University Gym. A Pilot study can refer to so-called feasibility studies which are small scale versions, or trial runs, done in preparation for the major study (Polit et al., 2001). The pilot study was used towill test out the questions considered in order to collect the user requirements tested on a small sample of participants. An unstructured A structured interview was used which lasted 8-10 minutes, involvingasking people at the Brunel University Gym. As enough data was not gathered it was followed up with an interview to gather further research on the users requirements for the mobile application based on Gym and Fitness in the later stages. .

The main reason behind conducting a
You need to be more specific about the pilot study was to capture failure points in the research in advancetoo and also make modificationsgive the same level of detail to the questions based on the user inputs.

The pilot study was conducted on a relatively smaller group of 3 male and 3 femalequestionnaires, tasks etc, that you asked participants who were similar to the final target user group in terms of gender and age. Since the main aim of this phase was initial testing of the questionnaire, an unstructured interview approach was followed wherein the questions can be altered according to the requirements and understanding of the respondent. The emphasis here is on acquiring deep knowledge and authenticity of peoples life experiences ( HYPERLINK httpwww.esds.ac.ukqualidatasupportinterviewsreferences.asp l Gubrium o Gubrium and Holstein Gubrium and Holstein, 2001). While the basic questions remained the same, some questions were gender and age group specific. The questions were also varied based on the responses of the individual participants.to use and complete

Some of the questions based on general fitness requirements and the type of exercises were also varied according to the age of the participants. Some of the sample questions which were provided to the participant based on their age group are as follows

Do you have any specific health concerns(Answer can be issues like joint pain, muscle pain etc)
Do you follow any dietary restrictions along with your gym workout (Answer can be low fat diet, no sugar etc)

3.6.2 Interview
In the second stage, aA qualitative interview waswill be used to gather requirements on gender differences. The main task in interviewing is to understand the meaning of what the interviewees say (Kvale, 1996). Using a qualitative research for interview is a good technique to investigate the user requirements as compared to other methods such as multiple choice questionnaires, surveys etc. The as the interviews are a far more personal form of research than questionnaires since the interviewee directly works with the interviewer. Also, in questionnaires, the answers are limited and hence the Although it is time consuming, it gives the researcher a great advantage as it gives them a chance to ask follow up questions to gain more of a detailed response as compared to other methods such as multiple choice questionnaires, offering multiple-choice answers can be rather dull for the participants, because there are only preselectable answers (Gillham, B 2000). As the answers are limited, respondents tend to rush the answers which are not a great help to the study. Interviews are particularly useful for getting the story behind a participants experiences. The interviewer can pursue in-depth information around the topic. Interviews may be useful as follow-up to certain respondents to questionnaires, e.g., to further investigate their responses (McNamara, 1999).

There are many methods of interviews to choose from as qualitative interviewing is often split into unstructured and semi-structured interviewing (Urmetzer, F et al., 2006). In this stage,The approach used will be a semi- structured approach was used. This was used ahead of the unstructured method used in the Pilot Study. The reasonReason behind choosing this method was as itll help to get reach a detailed answers supplemented byanswer so the respondents individualrespondent adds their own opinions. These responsesideas can help the designer in understanding what the users wantuser wants as this method will help what male and female would need to help them if they had a gym and fitness application running on the mobile phone. Since the responses come directlyThey will need to add opinions to what is beneficial to the users for the usability of this interface and it will give a direct response from the users along with their personal opinions about their specific requirements,that follow the user centred approach, where thorough data can be captured is more comprehensive and thorough.. It allows the interviewer to probe and explore within these predetermined inquiry areas (Hoepfl, 1997).

During this stage there werewas a total of ten participants (5 Male and 5 Female), who took part in the interview to understand the user requirements. GivenHere below are a few sample questions from theis an example of Initial User Requirements Interview (See Appendix B for the full list of interview questions)

1. How often do you go to the gym

2. HowWhat would you class yourself
Beginner
Intermediate
Advanced

3.7 Testing and Evaluation

In this stage the participants were will be involved inwithin the testing and  the evaluation ofused to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the prototype. Further explanation will be givenshown later in this project (See Chapter 5).

Prototype Method
With testing and evaluating prototypes, there are many ways that can be used inuse within the final stages. The testing usually involveswill involve the users in experimenting withto experiment the prototype to analyse whether the initial user requirements were met. This will also investigate the users experience in order to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the prototype. The software proposed to build this high fidelity prototype will be Visual Basic 2008 Express Edition which will be used ahead of J2ME Environment mainly due to personal preference and also due to the fact that it is highly optimized. The reason for development in the UCD and RAD models. Also, Visual basic provides highly appealing user interface elements which are very important in an application that is user centric. Also, the platform provides working with these platforms is multiple features that it provides to the user so as to translateput all the imagination and innovations in the mind toon technology. Further explanation will be shown about the prototype design later (See Chapter 5).

3.7.1 Prototype Testing
The application created waswill be tested on computersthe computer so that the users coulduser can interact with it. The method used to test with the users waswill be by conducting a laboratory experiment using an emulator on a desktop computer enables testers to thoroughly capture user behaviour (Buyukkokten et al., 2002 Chittaro  Cin, 2002 Jones et al., 1999). This approach will be adopted in the usability testing. The reason for choosing to collect data in laboratory is because the mobile application prototype is not designed for a particular phone due to which thehence why field study cannot be conductedtake place by using a particular mobile device.

Also, testing in laboratory is more cost effective and provides a convenient way to evaluate
During the usability of the application. Furthermore, the use of a usability laboratory can have, in addition to this direct effect on the quality of a particular software system, can have a less direct (but perhaps more powerful) impact on procedures within the development organization (Melkus, 1985).

The laboratory test, this involved the same tasks for all participants both users (male and female) to determineassess how they use the application. The purpose of these tasks waswere to make sure that users can operate with the system well and alsoit helps to evaluate the applications performance. The result of the testing will be discussed later (See Chapter 5). Here is an example of some of the tasks used
Check custom workouts for male class beginners
Check the list of exercises available for Chest workouts.

3.7.2 Prototype Evaluation
ConsideringHowever, considering the methods used for the testing stage, here below is a framework that has been adopted for testing and evaluating mobile applications.

Figure 2 A framework for the design and implementation of usability testing of mobile applications.

 Source of information from The design and implementation of usability testing of mobile applications (Zhang D  Adipat B, 2005)

Looking at this diagram gives you plenty of options to evaluate the results shown from the testing. There are various fundamental data collection methods to consider such as observation, interview, survey questionnaire, and verbal protocol which can be adopted within usability testing of mobile applications.

A structured interview method waswill be chosen to evaluate users thoughts on the mobile application. This involvedwill involve twelve participants (6 male and 6 female) to check if the initial user requirements were met. The testing and evaluation will each lastedlast around 5-10 minutes each. This analysedwill analyse whether the user requirements have been met which in turn analysedwill analyse the strengths and weaknesses of the project. Here below is an example of the questions that werewill be asked to evaluate the prototype (See Appendix B for further list of questions).

What did you think the first time you saw the mobile application prototype

What do you think about the applications look and feel of the application

3.8 Secondary Research
The secondary research was conducted will be used from resources likeof books, journals, articles, websites and many more. This method will also be used in use during themy prototype implementation to gathergathering information. It will alsoneed to be neededrequired to help with the development of the prototype in relation to gym and fitness (diet and gym related topics such as workouts etc).  The benefits offor this approach is that it is cheap and accessible - especially a University Library, often the only resource, for example historical documents and only way to examine large-scale trends (Dunsmuir and Williams 1992).

Also, secondary resources can fill the gaps and missing pieces of information in the primary research and if well used, can act as an able supplement to the main research to provide a detailed and comprehensive set of data.

3.9 Summary
The chapter covers a consideration and justification of different methodologies and methods that werecan be applied within different stages of this project including the initial user requirements and the testing and evaluation of thethis prototype.  Depending upon the needs of the projects and evaluation of different methodologies, UCD was deemed to be the most appropriate choice for the project. Since UCD heavily relies on user inputs, the research and evaluation of the prototype werehave been planned in a way as to provide maximum bandwidth to user participation and face to face research. Overall, all this This will contributehelp in developing an application which is easily adaptable, close to real life needs, more relevant and self-explanatory.

Targeted at both genders aged between 18 - 30

Appendix B
Pilot Study Interview
1. How often do you go to the gym
2. What is your goal when you go to the gym
3 Have you seen a gym application before If so where What did you think of it
4. What is your opinion of having a gym application running on your mobile phone
5. What would you expect in the gym application in terms of information
6. What would you expect in the mobile application in terms of usability and features
Appendix B
Final Study Interview

1. How often do you go to the gym
2. What would you class yourself
Beginner
Intermediate
Advanced
3. Do you follow your own routine
Yes...Would you prefer to create a routineNo...Would you like preset workouts
 
4. What is your goal when you go to the gym
5 Have you seen a gym application before If so where What did you think of it
6. What is your opinion of having a gym application running on your mobile phone
7. What would you expect in the gym application in terms of information
8. What would you expect in the gym application in terms of design
7. What are the features in a mobile gym application that you are most likely to use