UX Strategy and Planning » planning user research

When is Ethnography worth the cost?

Paul Bryan — Sun, 02 May 2010 09:58:42 +0000

Ethnography fieldwork can be expensive. Part of the expense is due to the time it takes to get significant results, and the travel that is often required. Another expense factor is that ethnography studies require skilled, experienced people to guide the effort. In addition to cost considerations, the results of ethnographic research are sometimes difficult to translate directly into systems design.

Ethnography becomes relevant when design teams need to innovate, rather than incrementally improve an existing design. Ethnographic research is worth the cost when the success of a design is dependent upon being very different from current existing solutions, for example, a completely different way of supporting a real-life activity or exploring a new market opportunity that didn’t exist before.

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Henry Ford

“The future has already happened, it just isn’t very well distributed.” William Gibson

“The future will soon be a thing of the past.” George Carlin

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In-Depth Interviews: Location Prep

Paul Bryan — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 16:38:14 +0000

In addition to the materials required to conduct the research exercises and to capture data, you will need to organize food and drink according to the standard practices of the organization sponsoring the research, and as allowed by the project budget. Sometimes the food and drink offering is elaborate, with a full lunch or dinner provided as a perk to the participants, researchers, and/or project sponsors. In other cases, it is very simple: “The snack machines are over there.” At a minimum, bottled water should be provided for the people who will be talking the most: the participant and the moderator. I prefer a middle of the road set up, because lots of food tends to cause unwanted distractions, and participants fumble with plates and trying to eat while being observed. I prefer a selection of soft drinks and juices, with a tray of assorted snacks like trail mix, power bars, or other easy to eat items.
Research days are often 10 to 12 hours long, and so a lunch tray for the research team is always welcome. I prefer to order lunch and have it delivered to the area where the team is located, rather than going out to lunch. Walking to lunch spots with the project sponsors and team is a good opportunity to bond, but in some cases it leads to many opportunities for getting off-track for the afternoon sessions. Project sponsors or wayward team members start window shopping or stopping for little errands, and then we’re late for the first afternoon session. Being cooped up in the same small room for 12 hours is no joy, but it tends to keep people talking over impressions, which can be very fruitful.

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In-Depth Customer Interviews: Task Analysis & Mode of Interaction

Paul Bryan — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:51:05 +0000

Customers access business web sites to achieve a goal or specific purpose. They are rarely there just to look around, unless they are looking for a job and want to understand the company better. Customer goals can often be grouped into distinct modes, such as reading content, finding products or documents, purchasing products or services, learning new processes or procedures, etc. Understanding these modes is important when designing the interactive space, to enable customers to easily enter a mode that clearly facilitates the activity and presents options related to that mode in a consistent way.

For example, in a resort web site or kiosk, guests may be looking for leisure activities, finding products they forgot, reading about the history of the area, etc. Each of these modes should be simple and straightforward to find in terms of access points, make it easy to achieve the most common and most valuable goals, and represent the task using design components that appear especially suited to the activity (i.e. high affordance). The modes should not be cluttered with lots of options that are unrelated to the mode customers have indicated they want to work in. Marketers often want to surround and interject this experience with lots of selling options, but many times this is interpreted by users as visual noise that damages the perception of the experience and isn’t effective. Looking at the analytics for such off-task design elements, I’ve nearly always found clicktrhroughs to be near zero. If they have to be there, make sure they are not obstructing progress in the primary activity. Billboards are okay, but on the side of the road, not in the middle of the road. And spaced apart so that the visual signal to noise ratio is at a reasonable level.

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In-depth interviews for design research: The Research Plan

Paul Bryan — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 02:29:10 +0000

A research plan describes the activities, deliverables, and timeline of the research that will be conducted for a given web site. Research plans typically include logistical details, such as the approach that will be used to recruit participants, the number of protocols needed, and locations that will be visited.

Research plans do not necessarily include the rationale for selecting the research method(s) unless you anticipate push back from stakeholders. The research plan can be as informal as a list of points to cover, or it can be mapped out in detail.

The research plan is a living document that provides an overview of exactly how the research will be conducted. An informal research plan document should be created as soon as people start having ideas about what the research project should accomplish. The research plan then takes shape as more details are ironed out along the way. It begins with a clear, specific statement of the opportunity or problem that is the reason for conducting the research. Some typical components of the research plan include:

Research project scope definition
Specific questions that will be answered by the research
Description of research method(s) to be deployed
Designation of roles and responsibilities
Description of how data will be analyzed
Plan for selecting and recruiting participants

Written by Paul Bryan, Usography Corporation (www.usography.com)

Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts

Written by Paul Bryan, Usography Corporation (www.usography.com)

Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts