Reformer - Contextual Interviews

Contextual interviews provide a great insight into how our users, currently solve the tasks, we aim to solve with our software. We conducted four contextual interviews with different potential users of our Reformer product and collected data from the results. In the next sections we will describe our procedures for performing each the interviews further.

Interview 1

To gather information on how we can assist and accelerate dyslexic student's reading while learning, we visited a dyslexic student at the library at Reykjavik University. We started by introducing our team and our goal of helping dyslexic people read. We introduced our work-in-progress product Reformer and described how, a simple chrome add-on, can make text on a website more readable for dyslexic people. After introducing Reformers core concepts, we told the student the purpose of interview and described how it would take place and for how long. We asked for permission to record the interview and stated that all confidential information will be kept private. The student said he was exited about the project and told us about tools and techniques he used to assist him with reading. During this conversation we gathered information about his background. The transition period between the interviews was short and the student began solving one of his homework assignment. The assignment required him to read an academic paper online. While the student worked on the assignment, he described the tools and techniques he used to both gain better understanding of the written text and how he was able to solve the task at hand faster. We observed his process carefully, asked questions without interrupting his workflow and took down notes. The student finished the assignment in 45 minutes and we continued the interview by asking him about the workflow, if it differs by assignments and if so how. The student then described to us how he solved previous assignments in different classes. We then started discussing the Reformer project again and the student gave us feedback about the design. After our discussion we started wrapping up the interview by recapping the information we had gathered and thanking the student for the interview.

Interview 2

We visited Kevin's co-worker who is a programmer at his workplace in Vodafone. We sat down where his desk is and looked professional. We started by introducing our team and our goal of helping dyslexic people read. We introduced our work-in-progress product Reformer and described how, a simple chrome add-on, can make text on a website more readable for dyslexic people. After introducing Reformers core concepts, we told the programmer the purpose of interview and described how it would take place and for how long. We asked for permission to record the interview and stated that all confidential information will be kept private. The programmer thought this was a good concept to help people with dyslexia, and hopefully something that he will use to assist him at work. During this conversation we gathered information about his background. The transition period between the interviews was short and the programmer began reading code from other employees. The programmer made a little program for us to show how programs work and how it interprets on screen. The programmer finished the program and reading other codes in 30 minutes. We then started discussing the Reformer project again and the programmer gave us feedback about the design. After our discussion we started wrapping up the interview by recapping the information we had gathered and thanking the programmer for the interview.

Interview 3

We sat down with Randver's family member, his fifteen year old sister that is dyslexic and asked her to do a little test for us. We introduced our team, and our goal of helping dyslexic people read with a simple chrome addon by replacing text on web pages with a better formatted text. We took two articles that were of similar difficulty and made her read one without any help, and then quizzed her from that article. Also we took the time it took her too read it. Next up we introduced our competitive software, OpenDyslexic and used that on the second article and quizzed her again and also timed her reading. Results were pretty good, because it took her 17% shorter time to read the second article and she scored 20% better on the quiz. We then asked her if there was anything she could think about that would make it better, and talked about the project for a while. After the discussion we wrapped up and thanked her for participating.

Interview 4

I spoke to a friend who is is studying graphical and game design. We had to chat through Skype because the interviewee is currently studying in England. Because this couldn’t be a contextual interview I had a basic list of questions I wanted to ask. The questions were designed to be open and spark a conversation so we could talk about the issues and about his work in a nonlinear way. The questions were mainly about him as a person to get a good feel of the user with a few questions directly about the problems that he faces. When the Skype chat started we talked a little bit about the project and the idea we were working on and after a little bit of chatting I began to ask the questions from the list. I wrote down a few interesting points I could catch from the answer and would make a followup question depending on the points I wrote down. Finally I would clarify how I understood the answer he gave me in on sentence and ask him to clarify if I got something wrong.