Qualitative Methods

Qualitative Methods Interviews      + Specific recent incidents      - bad at estimating frequency of use, typicality      + learn what they do, not what they wish for      + look for where people get excited (or have other emotions)

Contextual Inquiry: Sitting down with someone in place and context, and watching them do something      + thinkalouds      - interruptions

Diary Studies      + text, voice line, photo/screen shots      + capture context      + batch processing, to reduce interruption to immediate moment      + write a script      + calendar reminders      + final interview

Content Analysis      + inter-rater reliability

Surveys      + frequency of a behavior      - watch out for bias (esp. in ordering)      + have someone read over the survey first      - look out for sampling bias

Participatory Design/Card Sort      + start with a presort      = UXPA card sort best practices

Home/Location Tours      + tell them not to clean up

STEPS TO GENERATIVE RESEARCH

  1. define research questions
  2. choose appropriate methods
  3. recruit users
    1. Stop when you see repeat data
  4. conduct study
  5. analyze

What would make sense for us? 

Interviews      - what’s hard about long-distance relationship? (how do you think your partner feels about it?)      - what do you do to maintain intimacy? (a recent example?)      - 

Diary study      - log contact with partner: context, medium,       - take photo every time you connect with partner

Home tour      - artifacts

Users: Do we want to use people who are