Pat’s Point of View

Yesterday (well it was yesterday when I started this post but it’s now two days ago) I ran my design research workshop at UX Australia. Very happy with the day, I had a great group of twelve people who were enthusiastic and at varying levels of knowledge regarding UX and design research, which made for many interesting discussions and many enlightened people.

Which is all good. As I said announced on the day, I’m happy if people leave at the end having learnt something (even if that something is “I already knew this stuff, but didn’t know it!”) or at least having some confirmation that what they knew was pretty much spot on.

And I’m happy to report that I too learnt a few things, for instance:

• Tableau is a statistical analysis software package, available at low(er) cost and easier to use than SPSS
• Many Eyes – data visualisation thanks to IBM
• Joint Interpretive Forum (JIF) – collaborative post video analysis method (anyone got a link to more info on this?)

As always, I was keen to get feedback from my participants. And here’s what they said they liked:

“Excellent for beginner level people in the field, like me. Took a lot of trepidation away”
“Good mix of theory and real examples”
“Keeping to [tea and lunch break] timings was appreciated”
“Having more in the handouts than was shown on-screen is good”
“Interactive structure”
“Ethnographic video”
“I liked how it gave a good overview of methodologies”
“[Patrick was] friendly and competent”
“Thorough notes and books on tables to browse”
“Activities were quite useful to match with different ideas”
“Storytelling, card sorting, diagrams”
“[Patrick was a] good communicator” (which made my wife laugh)
“[Patrick was] clear and warm, obviously very skilled”
“Links to reference materials”
“Very comprehensive”
“Videos worked really well”
“Recommendations/tips for implementation”
“Storytelling activity”
“[Patrick was] very experienced, lots of real-world examples”
“Detailed, well-written handouts”
“The process was very straightforward”
“Activities seemed a little rushed but were really helpful!”
“[Patrick was] very knowledgeable! Great willingness to share with us”
“Materials were great, chock full of examples and references we can re-use”
“Ethnographic interviews”
“[Methods for] displaying information/data”
“Anecdote Circle”
“Very competent”
“Able to associate techniques to other areas of research”
“Comprehensive”
“Content was good”
“Nice guy – friendly”
“I liked the videos”
“Structure of topics and the reflection using mind maps”
“Comprehensive”
“the videos were great”
“The storytelling activity”
“Activities; discussion with others was good, really helped get my head around things”
“[Patrick was] knowledgeable, approachable, open to going off-topic, clear and articulate”
“Clarity, comprehensiveness, referencing, practicality”
“Explanation of methods and how they work”

Storytelling (or “anecdote circle”) activity being referred to was a form of group research in which you allow participants to share their experiences about a particular topic through telling stories. It’s a great and relatively simple method of research that can elicit quite a lot rich detail, and using forms of narrative analysis you can then extract causal relationships, chronological relationships, tasks, trusted sources etc. Find out more at www.anecdote.com.au.

The video being referred to is “Getting People to Talk: An Ethnography & Interviewing Primer” produced by Gabriel Biller and Kristy Scovel. It’s a great introduction to ethnography and the power and the challenges that come with the territory. It’s available online at: www.vimeo.com/1269848

And in the spirit of openess, honesty and transparency yadda yadda here’s what they said were the areas for improvement:

• “Activities to be longer”
• “Beginning was a bit quick…”
• “Long video was a bit long”
• “Less Powerpoint”
• “Needed more examples … and more interactive exercises”
• “Tried to fit too much in”
• “Time was not enough in the activities”
• “Slides were not readable sometimes”
• “For each technique, a worked example or short hands-on activity”
• “How some things relate to the practicality of interface design”
• “More small activities”
• “More video, eg examples in the field”

They’re all good points, and I’ll do some tweaking of the workshop to ensure I have more time for the good stuff and less of the other stuff. I’m looking forward to the next time!

Photo credit: Doc Baty

I’m very pleased to have my first article How to combine multiple research methods: Practical Triangulation published on Johnny Holland. Here’s a taste:

All research methods have their pros and cons, the problem comes when you rely on just one method. I’m often disappointed when UX and IxD practitioners describe the research they do, and it’s obviously very one dimensional. They only do surveys, for example. Or they only do usability testing at the end of the project (it’s quite alarming but this practice does continue).

…

This is where the concept of “triangulation” comes into its own. Also known as “mixed method” research, triangulation is the act of combining several research methods to study one thing. They overlap each other somewhat, being complimentary at times, contrary at others. This has the effect of balancing each method out and giving a richer and hopefully truer account.

This will of course be one of the many topics I will be covering in my full day workshop on design research methods for UX practitioners at UX Australia 2009 – a 3-day user experience design conference to be held next week (26-28 August 2009) in Canberra (Australia).