Pat’s Point of View

Over on the USiT blog, I’ve just posted my 13 top tips for using Posterous as an online cultural probe (aka user research diary)…

Briefly, the purpose of a cultural probe is to conduct user research from a distance. So rather than having to literally follow the user around for two weeks, they contribute to the probe, either explicitly by writing ‘diary’ entries, or implicitly by leaving ‘digital footprints’ of their online activity. One might label the former as a reflective diary probe and the latter as a ‘lifestream’ log probe. Both types are useful, the lifestream log as evidence akin to analytics of what they actually do, and the reflective diaries in terms of exploring the motivations behind what they think and do.

In years gone by, diary studies have ridden both peaks and troughs in popularity with social and market research practitioners, but these days there are now many ways to conduct a probe online, for little or no cost (aside from recruiting users and compensating them for their time). For example, you can easily setup a blog to act as an online diary—I’ve done this using WordPress on a number of occasions—but if you’re less technically inclined or want the convenience of using an “off the shelf” tool, then there are things like Tumblr and Posterous.

Having just completed a piece of research where I used Posterous in this manner, I thought it would make for a nice instructional article. Enjoy!

I’ve been very bad and not uploaded any photos of my girls for a long, long time. Busy I guess. But the two of them are growing steadily, too fast it seems, and are becoming good friends.

Evangeline is a little crawling machine, and today she started ‘talking’. It’s only baby talk but it’s very cute for an 8 month old. She’s very happy, always smiling, but she’s tough and doesn’t take any nonsense from her big sister. In fact, I think Evie will be the one dishing it out!

Grace is still talking up a storm; we’re just not sure which language she’s using sometimes! She’s almost 2 and a half, and bounding through each day like the curious and whacky chick that she is. I’ve started driving her to day-care three days a week on my way to work, and I’m looking forward to spending that time on the road with her.

I’m delighted to announce that I’ll be speaking at this year’s Oz-IA conference, October 6-9 in Sydney. I’m running a pre-conference workshop User Research Methods for Information Architecture and I’ll be giving a short presentation during the conference on Five user research methods you have probably never seen.

The workshop is a new version of one I’ve run a few times before, updated with new examples and activities. The presentation will give a short intro to a few research methods that are not so common in the IA field.

Hope to see you there!

Lately I’ve been having fun (that’s a lie, it wasn’t fun at all) trying to get VOIP to work as our home phone. If you just read that sentence and are asking yourself “what’s a VOIP?”, then the rest of this post probably won’t be very useful to you. But so that you don’t leave here totally and utterly bewildered, VOIP stands for “voice over IP” and is a method of replacing a normal telephone line with calls made over the internet.

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I’m slowly and not-so-surely making my way through Good Thinking that I talked about in a recent post. It’s full of really great tips for researhers, not just with regards to methods and methodology but also in terms of mindset.

In a chapter discussing the psychology of small groups, the author talks about the effects of deception and economy with the truth, on the part of the researcher. In her opinion, and I agree, a good researcher must adopt a more respectful attitude with regard to the people they are researching:

It means a shift in perception from treating respondents as laboratory experiment ‘fodder’ or human guinea pigs to consenting adults who have points of view to contribute. It means letting go of the idea that the information the client is looking for can be extracted from respondents whether or not they give permission. It means challenging the view that both client and researcher have the right to be manipulative and controlling because they have paid respondents to attend the session, or have paid the researcher (or company) a large amount of money to retrieve information to solve a marketing problem.

This passage is followed by a ‘quote’ from David Ogilvy:

The consumer may or may not be your wife, husband, child or parent, but you can be sure that he or she is a real living, breathing, thinking and doing human being, who has as much of a right to their way of life as you have to yours.

I like this, and in fact I have used the sentiment embodied in the above quotes as the basis for a ‘principles of user research’ blurb in my research proposals.

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I originally started writing this post when I was at UPA 2007, but for one reason or another I never published it. On several occasions, I played with the idea of combining the conference notes with some later half-written posts on generally the same topic. But alas it never made it live.

Seeing as I firmly believe that for every unpublished blog post there is one less bit of momentum keeping the interwebs spinning, I’d better put this up. And it’s interesting to look back at what I wrote two and a half years ago…

Day 1 started with a very inspiring talk by Bill Buxton. I think this was just the thing the industry needs, a bit of a reality check and a wake-up call. Firstly usability evaluation is not design and for that reason most people here don’t actually practice User-Centred Design. It’s all about data, rules, strict methodologies, large companies. They’ve even turned agile into something overly defined and bogged down (I have no strong belief either way when it comes to agile methodologies by the way). Bill’s talk about sketching as an important tool for the design process flies in the face of the artefact centric practice many Usability Professionals follow. No there’s no template for it, no there’s no software tool to do it, you have to use your brain! I mean the theme of the conference (“patterns”) says it all really.

This sounds really negative, but I don’t want to be. There are some smart and talented people here, but overall the industry is weighed down by strictness and illusions. Strictness in the sense that many people want some methodology to tell them what to do. I can understand that, but as Bill said, if you find yourself thinking that all the time (being scared of wining it) then maybe this isn’t the job for you. Illusions in terms of the discrepancy between literature and practice. A lot of the things published are not followed in practice (eg rapid, flexible approaches by clever people are replaced by limited, templated projects) and good practice is not published (eg using multiple design alternatives in usability testing). Then there’s the illusions of grandeur, like the way many practitioners think of what they do as some kind of scientific crusade and admitting there is some I-don’t-know-ness to it is an act of heresy.

For me, the best thing I saw at the conference was this talk. It’s a pity someone from outside the field (perhaps technically but really as far as I am concerned he’s slap bang in the centre of what we should strive for) had to be the one to say it. You can’t truly be doing UCD if you’re just evaluating, testing and documenting. This shouldn’t be about statistical analysis techniques.

I remember thinking that my approach to my work seemed at odds with how other attendees appeared to be working, and from the above it seems this annoyed me! Too many practitioners being more worried about following the ‘proper’ process, rather than actually thinking. And the post I did publish at the time, contains similar thoughts.

I’m currently reading the excellent book Good Thinking: A Guide Qualitative Research by Wendy Gordon. Whilst still only in the first chapter, I thought I’d share this quote (emphasis mine):

[William] Schlackman taught me the fundamentals of human psychology applied to market research: people will not share feelings and thoughts with a researcher if these are in any way embarrassing to self-esteem; that people always try to ‘look good’ (rational, intelligent, helpful); that some attitudes and emotions are difficult to put into words; that ‘rationalisations’, ‘ambivalence’, ‘justifications’, ‘projections’ are part of everyday human life and that integrity in one’s relationship with respondents is paramount.

This certainly reflects my experience with qualitative market/user/social research and I think it’s an excellent micro summary of basic tips for researchers.

Should have included this quote in my So you want to be a user researcher? post :)

Yesterday I was on my way to a training session in the city and I stopped off for a latte in a busy coffee shop. This particular coffee shop is at the end of a very busy building (the Queen Victoria Building) and on a street corner. It thus has entrances on both sides, creating an opportunity for impatient pedestrians to cut through. Doing so leads them past the take-away counter, where I was standing, waiting for my favourite hot beverage with another customer. It’s a narrow route, quite obviously part of the establishment and not a public thoroughfare.

A person then walked through, rather sheepishly, but intentionally; in one door and out the other, weaving between the few customers and staff in their path. Both the othe guy waiting and myself noticed this. The other guy saw the owner/manager of the coffee shop looking on and asked “does that happen often?”.
“All the time” replied the manager in a thick Italian-Australian accent.
“People try to walk through, saying ‘is it ok?’. I say, ‘sure mate, at least you ask’. Most of them don’t [even ask]”
“Is that right?” said the other customer, rather surprised.
The other staff nodded in agreement as the the manager said “It’s just rude…rude”.
“I say to them ‘it’s not a street, it’s money!’” he exclaimed whilst pointing both hands at the passageway.

We chuckled in agreement. His use of English might have been comical, but the manager summed up his frustration perfectly clearly with that last line.

I recently received an email from someone asking me for some advice on starting off in the field of user research field.

Hi Patrick,

I’m Hans, a technical writer from Zurich and wanted to say a quick hello.

I happened to visit your website and liked the article The 7 Stages of User Frustration :)

I have a interest towards user research and have been reading books.

I’m looking out for projects (websites or applications) where I could help with user research and data analysis. I was wondering how to get started in terms of skills required. I know it is not easy for people to entrust such an important activity to me. Could you help me with your suggestions?

Thanks,
Hans

I thought about how I would respond, but since this isn’t the first time I’ve been asked this question, I figured it might be helpful to respond in the form of a blog post for everyone to see.

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I subscribe to many RSS feeds, mostly as a means of aggregating blog posts so I can read them more easily. There are over 100 feeds in my Google Reader account. Nothing unusual about that.

But I’ll let you in on a little secret: I hardly read any of them on a regular basis, I just don’t have time. Again this is nothing unusual.

The ones I do find myself reading quite regularly are grouped fairly precariously under the the label “Strategy”. Here are my top 5 (in alphabetical order):

• acidlabs (Stephen Collins)

  Stephen (or @trib as you might know him) is passionate, if nothing else. He writes on the topics of social media, government 2.0 and collaboration. His posts are enthusiastic, intelligent and well written. I might not share his opinions on some issues, but I do look forward to what he has to say. Stephen also sets a great example for anyone wishing to build a reputation and establish themselves as a thought leader in a certain field.

• Anecdote (Shawn Callahan & Mark Schenk)

  Shawn and Mark don’t blog as often as others in this list, but when they do it’s always a well considered and informative piece. The topics are quite diverse but mostly centre around stories (ie story telling for business) and collaboration. I’ve learnt a lot from reading their posts, and attending their “story listening” workshop, that has helped me during user research and stakeholder consultation.

• Column Two (James Robertson)

  James is my former employer, and I learnt a lot from him during my time at Step Two, and have continued to do so since then. James has his finger on many pulses, and is able to sift out the most useful bits of the tide of information that comes his way. Topics include intranets, content management, knowledge management and a whole bunch of things around these.

• Seth’s Blog (Seth Godin)

  Seth has a real talent for boiling things down to their essence and then stating, simply, the core lessons you should take away. I’ve found his words on business, marketing and customer service incredibly useful and often amusing. His style is frank and to the point, which makes his writing honest and sometimes confronting. But you know it’s real, informed and motivated by his desire for things to make sense and for us all to do things in ways which make sense. Probably my favourite of all.

• Trends in the Living Networks (Ross Dawson)

  Does this guy get around or what? I find that almost everywhere I look (or read to be more precise) Ross pops up, and says something really smart. I honestly don’t know how he has his finger in so many pies, and still has time to write great blog posts, and be a father to his brood of kids! I’ll admit, sometimes it goes over my head, but the breadth and depth of his knowledge is impressive. Equally impressive is his willingness to pass on this knowledge, adopting the very “now” practice of releasing his work to the public domain (for example Implementing Enterprise 2.0)

So there’s nothing (necessarily) about UX, user research, web design or anything on that practical level. I find these blogs worth reading because they’re insightful, multifaceted and inspiring. They keep me thinking about the big picture, not staring down at my toes worrying about low level, day-to-day details.