0:05
Hello, I'm joined again by Dr. James from College.
And what we're going to talk about now is how we can move from this abstract idea
into something a bit more concrete.
And we're going to talk about things like what can people do within our thing that
you're going to make.
And how do we define that process, what's the experience going to be like and so on.
Okay, so where do we get started?
How do we sort of make our idea become something which we can
describe clearly to someone else?
>> Yeah, well that process could be summarized as pitching the idea.
Now in order to pitch an idea, you need to start formalizing it.
And by that, I mean, taking it from being an abstract idea and
putting it into a sort of concrete form.
So what do I mean by that?
Well, one of the key processes you can do is something called process analysis.
And what you do is you sit down and you try and
identify the key processes that are gonna be in this piece of software.
>> So these are things that, when you say processes, do you mean if I'm,
from a user perspective, as in things I can do using this piece of software?
>> Absolutely, that's exactly what I mean.
And one of the ways of doing it is literally to identify the different
people that will be involved in the software.
And what are the main things they can do.
>> So let's say we bring up the example of the online house selling website, right?
So one type of person might be an estate agent who
wants to list some houses on there that are for sale, right?
>> Absolutely, absolutely.
And another might be, of course,
a customer who wants to look up those houses.
So there's two key processes.
One is searching for a house and the other is listing a house.
There might be other processes as well.
There might be logging into your account to see what houses have been sent to you.
So what you want to do is identify all the key processes.
And this is sometimes understood as process analysis.
>> And is that a kind of software engineering kind of term,
process analysis?
>> Absolutely.
>> So, something people can look up if they want to read
different ways of doing it?
>> Yes, very much so.
And what I would encourage,
of course, is to look at processes in a very unformalized way.
Sort of say, well for example, if we look at a restaurant.
Obviously there are certain processes that take place that are primary processes.
Cooking the food, taking the money, that kind of thing.
But there are also secondary processes which are also just as important,
like cleaning the restroom.
2:59
A primary process might be how do we actually play the game.
So what does the user interact with to play the game.
But a secondary process, might be how does a user manage their account.
>> Right, so it's about prioritizing the processes that we've identified.
And then that gives us a starting point, so
we know where we need to start in describing in more detail these processes.
And okay, so we've got our process, a set of processes.
But how do we sort of talk about user experience?
How do we sort of start to make the idea of how it will feel
to go through that process more concrete.
>> Sure, so there are several different ways of doing that, and
one of the ways that people do a lot is to look at the different steps or
the user experience in terms of interacting with the product,
or the software, or the game, or the piece of art you've created.
>> So the person will want to see the most pertinent stuff for
the process they're doing.
>> Absolutely. >> So we need to make it clear which
process they're doing, and we need to make it clear what they need to do next.
>> Absolutely, and once we've done that,
we would start to begin to capture what we would call the user experience.
So one way of doing that is by going through what's called a user journey.
4:20
Now a user journey is where we say, okay, I'm a player of this game.
What's the first thing I see?
What's the second thing I see?
What am I meant to press at this point?
And you go through all the steps one at a time through that journey.
>> So it's a step by step description of a process.
>> Absolutely, it's a step by step description of a process and
then a step by step description of the journey from one process to the next.
>> Okay great.
Okay so, I've heard of these things called elevator pitches and I think that's quite
an interesting idea because, well, what's it all about the idea that you have to
somehow pitch to someone in an elevator, or a lift as we call them in the UK?
What does that mean?
>> Right, okay, well.
The idea comes from an old story.
And the old story is that you're sitting at home and
you've got a great idea for a film.
You happen, then, to go into the lift in the lobby of your house.
5:23
As you go up, in the lift, there's a film director, and
you've got one minute to tell him everything about your film.
So, it's the idea that you're in an elevator and
you've got a minute to pitch your film.
It's a great way of trying to crystallize that vision that we talked about before,
the key processes that are involved and what the benefits or
the pleasures or the output of the thing you're creating are.
5:54
>> Okay, so the elevator pitch kind of brings together the whole
concept of idea creation and vision with these processes
into a compact form that anyone can understand really quickly.
>> Yes, and I reckon that now is a great time to learn
using elevator pitches, because we all have cameras on our phones and
on our computers, so what you can do is practice yourself.
You can sit down in front of your computer and
give yourself one minute to pitch the idea.
Record it as a video message and then play it back to friends and
colleagues to see whether they get your idea.
Whether they buy your project, whether they buy your vision.
>> Got you, right.
So what have we got there?
So we're thinking about how we can turn an idea into something
that's a bit more concrete.
So we start off with this idea of what can the users do in our process analysis?
And we prioritize those things.
And can go into whatever detail level we want but
the idea is to get a list of things that a user can do on our site.
And then we think about how they can do each of those processes.
To define a step by step experience and what they can see at each of those steps.
And then finally we can kind of bring it all together and try and
make it really compact by thinking about an elevator pitch and
practicing how we describe our idea in one minute.
[MUSIC]
Dr Matthew Yee-KingLecturer
Dr James Ohene-DjanSenior Lecturer and Assistant Pro Warden
