I’ve been looking all over for 40-year-old participants for my diary study, and I’m glad I’ve finally recruited three willing participants. The last few participants I recruited were fairly young, about my age, apart from one 59-year-old woman, who provided some very interesting insights into how users search for images.
I am excited about this because diary studies are an easy way to get to know people, and in particular, the way they do things and why. In some ways, it takes less effort over a longer period of time, because you don’t need to be with participants to get insights from them. You only need maybe a first initial meeting to build rapport with them, and the subsequent interactions can be over the phone.
Here are some things I’ve learnt, in order to get the real creamy insights that will impact data.
It’s good to step out of your comfort zone and meet new people
I wished I had started off recruiting participants a few degrees away from my main social network. The 59-year-old participant I interviewed showed that she listens to a lot of radio and uses the email a lot. This influences her use of the Internet, because most of her web use is triggered by email links, email newsletters or similar kind. While she doesn’t stream radio from the internet in her car, she does use the BBC iplayer to catch up with programs she’s missed out on.
In fact, the more boring participants tended to be the ones around my age, because we did pretty much the same thing – checking up facebook, blogging, browsing for items to buy, using Google Maps and searching for good restaurants to dine in…
Diary Studies are flexible, and they’re meant to help you get the most out of your session with the participant
Most of the time, the data that will end up being written on diary forms will vary greatly from one user to another. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that for each activity, or item in the form, you manage to get a decent amount of information by asking the right questions. The forms are meant to be flexible so that users don’t feel trapped, because it should only take a couple of seconds for them to fill in a simple question – what are you doing now? (don’t get me started on using twitter for diary studies)
It’s good to do a few pilot studies, in my opinion, with a varied set of participants – say, one within your social circle or demographic, and again with a participant who’s quite different than you. Do it over a proper period, say – two weeks. I only manage to get a sense of how often I needed to be calling people, what kind of questions I should be asking, how they generally tended to respond, etc… after the third participant.
YMMV, of course – but still, it’s good to not put your eggs in one basket. A trial is often a good way to deal with this.
Diary Studies fits very well with Grounded Theory for analyzing patterns
The whole point of using diary studies is to observe patterns in user behavior in order to establish some kind of claim or conclusion about the area of study. And one of the best ways to do this is by using the Grounded Theory method, by coding various bits of data and correlating them with each other, and also comparing and contrasting against each other to observe any other patterns.
The “data” can come in several forms – some studies have used the jottings that participants have written down in the diary forms. Some use audio transcripts from interviews. Some use activity logs. And usually it’s a combination of several of these. The nice thing about it is that the raw data is very powerful – because of its authenticity and appropriateness within the context of the particular environment or activity. This is in contrast to a lot of lab-based studies, where participants may feel obliged to act or behave a certain way.
Diary Studies help me build rapport with real people, and helps me appreciate and gain new skills in user testing and observation in the field
One of my main objectives of this project was to gain experience observing and working with participants in real-world contexts. This can often be quite stressful or intimidating as it sometimes requires being in a completely new environment. Diary studies help soften that a bit – since you can still get insights about the context/environment via subsequent interviews and/or visits. As opposed to, say, sitting next to the participant while he does his work throughout the day (e.g. shadowing, contextual inquiry).
I’ll admit that just by interviewing people and talking to them about their diaries has helped me appreciate user research, and I feel a bit more confident in recruiting participants, facilitating user studies, and getting good data by interacting with participants in various ways. I don’t feel I need to hide behind a one-way mirror. And I think participants don’t mind sharing their thoughts and experiences, as long as their being treated as a fellow human being.
