User+study+goals+and+Research+methods

**User Study **

 * a) Statement of user study goals. What are the major questions you want answered regarding how users use the technology in question? About what they may want to see as an alternative?**

The topic for user study goal is to design the best apartment which can cover every tiny problem people can have. There are so many people who live in apartment, and there are several issues and problems. However, these issues can be rectified with acceptable solutions. People can live without those solutions, but this is the intelligent way to making them live in better and more comfortable environment. The entire apartments have elevators on one side of a floor and they are usually three elevators and people are dependent on these three alone. The goal is to improve the efficiency of elevator use.

The __major questions__ that would be addressed in this research plan are the following: a. How frequently do elevators arrive? b. What advantages would there be for changing the system of the elevators in high rise apartment buildings? c. Would people still use this system efficiently? d. Do elevators accommodate disabled people efficiently?

__Alternatives__ In order to obtain the alternative ideas the residents may have, opinion boxes would be incorporated into the surveys to allow individuals express themselves appropriately.


 * b) Provide notes on research methods considered to answer the questions noted above. Why these methods? Why not others?**

__Research methods__ There are various research methods that would best fit this design plan and they are; 1. Interviews 2. Surveys 3. Observation

Interviews provide a means of obtaining information from individuals about certain subject matter by face to face means or technological means. They help designers explore the needs of people in the situation they are investigating and they may also drift into other relevant subject matter that the designer may not have considered previously during the course of the interview. Interviews also have a downside in that people may not be comfortable expressing what they really feel about a product so that they do not hurt the interviewers' feelings. This may limit the information provided in the interview and it may not be as detailed as the designer expects hence some problems may still be lurking.

Surveys provide a detailed explanation of the pros and cons of the design from the data that is being collected. Surveys help to evaluate what the individuals absolutely need. Surveys also allow the individuals to express themselves in full details about the usage of the product. With the anonymity of surveys, it allows for free self-expression and it produces unbiased responses about the idea of a design and ways the designers can improve.

Observations would be carried out to identify how individuals relate with the product in the environment. This involves the designers placing themselves in the environment where the product would be used and monitoring the activities of the individuals using it. This applies the rules of ergonomics which is the study of the relationship between man and his environment. Observation helps to capture the little details of activities that people never put in a survey or supply in an interview.

Experiments would have been a good idea for researching the design but it would be time consuming and may not allow designers meet their deadlines.