Lately I’ve been wrangling a research report into shape and I’m finding it so much easier to just print stuff out, cut it up, organise and rearrange it, then stick it together with sticky tape. Then I’ll go back and edit the document electronically.

Alternative titles for this blog could have been “You know you’re getting old when you…” or “You know you’ve been playing craft and colouring-in with your kids when you…”. (Actually that last one is very apt since I have been loving colouring in with my daughters lately!)

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I still don’t like using the term in most cases, and I’ll explain why. But in the intervening years I have come up with an alternative, which I’d like to share with you. Within the UX team here at NDM, I’ve been referring to user sessions as CIDeR (Collaborative Iterative Design Refinement) sessions. I’ve had some success in convincing my team-mates and the term is starting to permeate out into the business.

Why CIDeR?

Typically our users are involved in our design process by way of a series of one-on-one sessions where users are shown stimuli of some kind, to elicit feedback. The purpose is to guide the design process and allow decisions to be made (usually) regarding the user interface. Successive rounds are used to allow the design to evolve based on user feedback, in effect making users collaborators in the design process.

Hence the name:

• Collaborative – The user is an integral part of the process, as are our colleagues from other disciplines. This word also helps break down the ‘UX guy is expert’ and ‘participant is lab rat’ dynamic that can accumulate.
• Iterative – The approach works best if it’s a process of constantly evolving the design or the idea. This word helps convey to the business that this isn’t a one shot deal, there will be several rounds of user involvement, with some thinking and designing in between.
• Design – Typically these sessions are for the purpose of producing something tangible, whether it’s designing a website or a concept. This word grounds the name/description.
• Refinement – We are working towards producing something. In conjunction with ‘iterative’ this word impresses upon people the fact this is a process, and in conjunction with ‘design’ it gives a sense of progress.

Oh, and of course there’s the added benefit of being able to say “let’s have some CIDeR and think it through” when the team reaches an impasse or isn’t sure how to proceed.

We involve users in our process in many other ways, from up-front ethnographic research through to large quantitative market research, and lots of things in between, but the bread and butter would be the CIDeR sessions. Hence it’s important for us to be clear what this work is and what it delivers—to our team but also to our business.

Why not “usability testing”?

There are four problems with the term usability testing as a label for the type of work done in a CIDeR session, some of which are refinements of the point I made last time:

• Promises conclusive, definitive results – The term sounds too absolute. As you’d expect from “testing”, after all other types of testing deliver conclusiveness or they’re considered a failure.
• Implies a focus on just the UI and usability – Much of what we do is more than usability of the user interface. We’re digging deeper, talking through preferences, perceptions. Part of this is due to the fact that for news products, the content is as much a part of the interface as the buttons, links, labels and code.
• Suggests summative application – To many people, when you say “usability testing” they think that’s something to be done at the end, a validation exercise to make sure we can go live. This isn’t at all the case for most of the work our team does, which is more about exploration over time; a fluid process rather than check-list item.
• Coloured by past experience – Any term that has been around for a while, and widely misunderstood or misused, will be horribly tainted by the experience stakeholders have had with things labelled with that term. This is certainly the case with “usability testing”. I often see this as a tendency towards quant; people expect task failure rates, ‘time on task’ and other rigid measurements and won’t give up on those kinds of outputs from our work. Again, these are rarely the things we are looking to obtain.

Don’t get me wrong, if you practice a method that does live up to all of these things, and you call it usability testing, good on you. Our team rarely does, so I don’t want to set an expectation in the minds of my stakeholders that that is what they’re going to get. We needed a new name.

How does CIDeR work with other techniques?

The CIDeR approach is qualitative and indicative, rather than conclusive. Which means that some findings (ie opinions, perceptions, propensity to buy/use) may not be representative of the larger population, and as such it is necessary to:

1. exercise care in taking these findings on board, using them in the right way, and
2. make use of quantitative methods, either before or after CIDeR, to determine the implications for the broader audience.

Sometimes a more formal method for involving users in the design process is used, which we do call “usability testing”. A more rigorous approach is taken to assessing how easily users are able use a given design, typically later in the design process. Because this technique is dealing strictly with usability, it is acknowledged that relatively small sample sizes (~5) can be used to draw conclusions about the usability of the design for the entire audience.

Questioning regarding opinions or propensity to buy/use, however, do require larger sample sizes. So, alongside both the CIDeR and “usability testing” methods, quantitative research may also be employed, typically to gauge reactions to a product proposition or design. This focuses more on supporting decision making at a product level as opposed to the design or user interface level.

“Pour me a glass!” or “Ewww that’s left a bitter taste”?

What do you think of the name CIDeR? Would you use it in place of the term usability testing? Why or why not? All feedback greatly appreciated.

(Originally posted to the USiT blog, reproduced here with some minor alterations)

Related posts:

1. Stop calling it usability testing
2. Testing a Web site’s first impression
3. The Claw – mobile device usability testing jig

The ominous black shape featured in last week’s “Guess that object” post is in fact my take on a mobile device usability testing jig, inspired by the work of Kirk Henry of Lokion Interactive (via Harry Brignull). I’ve been working on this device to help with testing site and app designs on mobile phones and tablets. Quite often these contraptions are called a sled but I’ve been calling this one “The Claw”, for hopefully obvious reasons.

Its purpose is to allow you to get a good view of the screen of a mobile device—handset or tablet—as well as the user’s face, during usability testing (or any other activity that you’d like to see what’s happening while someone uses a mobile device. Using software such as TechSmith Morae 3.0, you can easily record from both cameras.

A key feature of this particular design is its flexibility, it’s attached to the device and moves with it, and it can be used for two different sizes of device: smaller phones, handsets, smartphones (eg iPhone, Android, Blackberry), as well as larger tablets (eg iPad, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1). This second feature is achieved by having two sets of attachment locations for the cameras: one lower down for handsets and one higher up for tablets.

Design and development

After a much earlier prototype built out of a desk lamp (left side of photo below) a major design decision was made, that the rig needed to move with the mobile device, rather than sticking the mobile to the jig and asking the user to use it fixed in place.

While the claw is tethered to a PC via USB cables, it still allows quite a lot of freedom of movement and lets the user hold the device more or less naturally.

A second prototype was built using a wire coathanger, to get the dimensions and angles right before committing to a building material that wasn’t as pliable (right side of photo above). Two things became obvious and resulted in two distinctive features of the final design.

The downward-facing camera that records the screen of the device needs to be at the right height and angle to get a good view of the screen. If angle A is too much more than 90°, you either can’t see the whole screen, or the view you get is at a steep angle meaning the perspective distortion is high (the end of the device closest to the camera appears much smaller than the end that is furthest away from the camera). Additionally the end of the mobile device furthest away from the camera may be out of focus compared to the closer end.

Also, you’re balancing getting a good view of the screen with obstructing the user’s view of the screen. This is especially an issue when the camera is this close to the device.

Another factor to take into account is the ‘focal length’ of the camera being used. The Microsoft VX-6000 webcams I used couldn’t be placed any closer to the device than I’ve placed them, otherwise the picture was blurry and the camera also gets in the way of the user viewing the screen.

I also discovered that in order to provide a good view of a larger device like a tablet (without too much of any angle) the downward-facing camera needed to be more directly overhead. Hence the second bend in the claw that brings the jig back past vertical (ie angle B). The height of the camera was also a factor, as having it too close to the device means that you can’t see the whole screen of a 9-10” device. As before, a balance needs to be struck between getting a good view of the screen and obstructing the user’s view.

After some experimenting, the angles and heights were worked out and it was time to build the next prototype…The Claw.

Manufacture

With very little budget, and because it was just a prototype, I decided not to use something like Ponoko but instead to make it myself. The Perspex is 10mm thick, to give it strength and stop it bending when in use. You can get it at any plastics fabricator, I bought this black specimen from Australian Plastic Fabricators for about $20.

There are also places that can cut, bend and drill any design you want (including Australian Plastic Fabricators) but it can be expensive if you’re ordering a low number of units, like one. So I again decided to do it myself.

Note: 10mm Perspex is hard to bend! :) If you have a heat gun (used for heat-shrinking, stripping paint, welding copper plumbing pipes etc) it should be fairly easy, especially if you have a nozzle that focuses the heat to a narrow strip. I didn’t have one. So I used my toaster. I don’t exactly recommend it, but it does work.

1. Print out a scale diagram of your design and place it on a heat resistant surface right next to the toaster (you’ll use it as a guide to bend the perspex)
2. Mark the Perspex where you want to bend it
3. Place the Perspex over the top of the taster, with the mark positioned above one of the slots (don’t stick the Perspex into the toaster!)
4. If you have a multi-slot toaster you might need to cover some of the slots so that your Perspex only gets heated in one spot. I used slices of bread to do this, since they were right there next to the toaster and I got a bonus snack! Don’t completely cover the slots of your toaster might have a meltdown
5. Adjust the toaster setting to a fairly high/long setting, I had to heat the Perspex for about 4 minutes, but experiment a little and see what it takes for your toaster to make it pliable enough. You don’t want to melt it, firstly because it will give off fumes but also because it’ll likely stretch as you bend it, you want it about as pliable as a paper clip
6. Once you think it’s ready to bend, use oven mitts or some heat resistant gloves to pick up the Perspex and place it on the scale diagram and bend to the desired angle and hold it in place
7. Do this quickly as the plastic will cool and stop being flexible within 10 seconds or so

[A toaster oven might also work, but it wouldn’t be very precise in terms of where it heats the plastic, and you’ll probably burn your hands. Just buy/rent a heat gun :) ]

After bending is when you drill and cut the holes. If you drill and cut before bending, the lower structural rigidity will probably mean it won’t keep its shape. The purpose of the drill holes is to mount the cameras. The cameras I used are both Microsoft LifeCam VX-6000 models, fairly cheap but also fairly good quality, but probably their best attribute of this webcam is it’s tilt and swivel bracket that attaches to a round base. If you unscrew the base and removed it, you can mount the tilt and swivel bracket to the perspex, using the original screw. The hole for the screw will need to be countersunk because the screw is not long enough to make it all the way through 10mm of Perspex.

The purpose of the large cavities is to save weight. That’s why I used 10mm Perspex, because that thickness would mean there would be enough strength after the weight-saving holes were cut. Also these large holes are a neat way to thread the cameras’ USB cables out the back of the claw.

To make the cavities I drilled holes around the perimeter, very close together and then bashed out the centre and filed down the edges. It’s an old trick I picked up somewhere, probably making stuff in the garage when I was a kid, but you could drill one hole and use a jigsaw to cut around the perimeter. The weight-saving cavities remove about 32% of the weight, but leave structural integrity.

Cameras

The cameras I chose are good enough for the job, but to further advance the design, smaller and higher resolution cameras might be used. But is likely to mean a move away from USB webcams, making for a more expensive and complicated exercise.

To attach the mobile device to the rig, I use 3M Command Strips (normally used for hanging pictures on walls etc). The advantage of these strips over double-sided tape is that they can be easily removed and they don’t damage the mobile device or leave any sticky stuff on it.

Morae setup

Morae 3 allows you to record from two webcams, and it’s pretty easy to do so. Start with a hardware or mobile recording configuration and set the “Main” source as the bottom webcam (the one pointing down at the device). I mount the webcams upside down to allow the tilt mechanism to work, giving an easy way to adjust the angle of the camera in relation to the rig. So in Morae you need to flip the camera using the camera settings.

Set the “PiP” source as the top webcam (the one pointing at the user’s face). Again I mount it upside down so you need to flip the image in the settings.

For a reason I can’t currently figure out, Morae won’t use the microphone in either of the webcams as the audio source for recording, so I use a Logitech USB desk microphone placed nearby, it picks up audio well enough.

That’s it, the only things you need to do each time you use the claw is adjust the camera tilt and angle, and maybe adjust the focus ring (in case it has been bumped since last use). Then you plug in the USB cables, stick on your mobile device, launch Morae and away you go!

Future development

The claw is currently being is used for several different projects, on both handset and tablet devices. Next steps are to make some refinements to the angles and dimensions and then produce a better quality version using a service such as Ponoko.

(Originally posted to the USiT blog, reproduced here with some minor alterations)

UPDATE October 31st 2011: I’ve just written a new post about some enhancements I’ve made to The Claw

Related posts:

1. The Claw 2.1
2. My laptop thinks it’s a mobile
3. Stop calling it usability testing

The answer will be revealed shortly, along with a full explanation.

(Note: you NDM folks are disqualified from entering!)

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It’s quite an honour to have my contribution included along side people such as Andrew Hinton, Dave Malouf and Mark Hurst (and many others!). Each author has shared a story, either a story from their career in the UX field, a story about using a certain technique, or like mine, a story based on their experiences with users.

I called my story “Seeing Things The Way They Are” (it starts on page 522 of the PDF) and it features the tales of three people I have encountered during user research: Xun (a student), Ahmed (a small business owner) and Stacey (a parent returning to work after maternity leave).

The stories are tied together by what I believe is a central aspect of UX and UCD: a thorough understanding of your audience’s needs. Here’s a snippet:

“We do not see things the way they are, but as we are”. So says an ancient Jewish proverb, or an Indian Jesuit priest, or a French author of erotica, depending on who you believe. Either way, it’s a particularly poignant quote for those of us working in the field of user experience. For the single biggest threat to the user experience is the failure to understand how our intended audience sees the world—including any product or service we might design for them—and instead, basing our decisions on our own view of the world.

The phenomenon that the above quote speaks of is plainly evident for anyone who has conducted usability testing or user research. However, it often isn’t that obvious to our clients and colleagues who haven’t had such contact with actual audience members (aka “users”). They haven’t seen the frustration caused by products that are irrelevant, needlessly complicated or just difficult to use. We see things as we are, until we receive some information that gives us reason to think otherwise, to see things from the perspective of the audience.

We need to hear the users’ stories, such as those of Xun, Ahmed and Stacey. Their stories illustrate the issue of designing a product based not on the views, attitudes, behaviours and needs of the audience, but rather those of the designer.

In each case, seeing and hearing their users’ story would have gone a long way towards ensuring these influencers had a realistic understanding of the audience whom they were trying to serve.

A big thanks should go out to Jan Jursa and the team who put this together; writing stories is the easy part, publishing a book is much more difficult!

No related posts.

I departed from the norm and rather than talk about the five methods I listed in my presentation outline, I went for something a bit more cheeky and light-hearted; the dangers of field research! The idea came to me because so many people I know who have done user or market research have told me stories about the weird and scary situations they’ve found themselves in out in the field. (In particular Stephen Cox and Raymond Van Der Zalm gave me some great anecdotes!)

I got some decent laughs so I was pretty pleased—and relieved—about that. I ended with a practical demonstration of the tongue in cheek self-defense techniques I had talked about, for which I must say a huge thank you to Gary Barber and Oliver Weidlich who volunteered to take part!

A few people have asked me if I’m going to talk about the five methods I originally said I would, and yes I will as there is obviously interest in those topics! Stay tuned.

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A user research method I’ve used many times, and talked and written about several times too, is the cultural probe (also known as a ‘diary study’ or simply ‘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.

My colleague, Chris Khalil, touched on using a Tumblr blog in his UX Australia presentation last year. More recently I’ve been using Posterous for a similar purpose and thought I’d share some hints and tips.

1. Think about whether a probe is suitable

   Are cultural probes for everyone? No, not all research objectives are suitable for probes, nor are they necessary for all research projects.

   Similarly, if you’re investigating an audience that isn’t big on ‘public’ discussion or extroverted self-promotion as some call it, or if the subject matter is not something people want to discuss openly, then online probes are probably not suitable.

   Having said that, I’ve used probes and diaries on several different research projects, including those where it didn’t work that well. There’s no better way to learn.

   Are online probes for everyone? Likewise, it’s not always suitable or effective to use an online probe. If you’re studying offline behaviour or if your audience is not big on online, then an online probe is probably going to be counter productive. Using the method might actually skew your results because to find people willing to participate in the probe, you’re automatically selecting people comfortable with digital media (either that or they just won’t do it).

   Offline probes can work very well (for example, an A5 booklet that participants fill in over the course of the study). In fact I believe they work better than online diaries because they:

   • cause a moment of pause, you have to stop, think then write (separating the medium from the message)
   • can easily be ‘multimedia’ with little effort (ie write, draw, cut+paste),
   • are easily transported anywhere,
   • exercises and ‘puzzles’ are easily integrated.

   The main argument against these old school probes are that they do not share the medium we are (usually) studying; if someone is using the web to do XYZ, then reporting what they’re doing online would be easier. Perhaps for some, but you at least need to have an alternative for those who don’t find that to be convenient.

   Ultimately, you need to decide if a cultural probe is going to be suitable for your research project, and whether an online or offline probe will work best for your participants.

2. Is Posterous right for my probe?

   The main benefit of Posterous is the fact that you interface with it using email, primarily. So the participant simply sends an email to a unique email address and it creates a blog post for them automatically (in our case it becomes a diary entry). There are other interfaces, which are described below, but the email interface is a boon for those investigating an audience who is adept in the use of email, but possible little else in the web world.

   

   Posterous can be useful for both the shorter, ‘lifestream log’ style probes and the longer, ‘reflective diary’ style probes. But that’s not to say it has to be the only tool you use, your probe could actually be made up of several elements: Posterous (via email), iPhone app, Twitter updates and hand-drawn ‘mud maps’.

3. Timing is crucial

   The timing of a probe is possibly the biggest factor that determines its success as a research method. You need to ensure your probe takes place during the activity that you wish to investigate is occurring.

   Recently we were researching people undertaking renovations to their house and how they interact with tradespeople, a diary that spanned the period of their renovation would be extremely useful. Again, the recruitment is such a crucial part of this method, you would need to find participants that would be willing to keep a diary over this time. One way of selling or “incentivising” the idea would be to talk about the fact that keeping a diary of such a big thing in their lives can be very rewarding to look back on later. Mention documentaries and TV shows like Grand Designs.

   (Talking about benefits, I’ve found that participants usually really enjoy the diary experience. They tell me it’s fascinating to actually see what and when they do certain things. This is particularly the case with the reflective diaries; they find the reflection quite enlightening.

   So the timing (or more accurately the duration) of a probe can be a big deal in terms of both recruiting appropriate participants and encouraging their participation.

4. Carefully recruit participants

   One thing that academic researchers (design PhD students etc) who use probes, stress is the importance of, is recruitment. They even go to the extent of interviewing candidates beforehand to select the best people to participate in a probe. This is obviously time consuming and costly, but it goes to show how important it is to get the right people. It’s a case of “garbage in, garbage out”, I suppose. This can start to lead or influence the process somewhat, rather than it being completely open and exploratory, but the amount of time and investment in a probe justifies the risk. I’ve learned this the hard way!

   I usually make do with a phone call, as described below, but it’s also a good idea to build as many fail-safes into your recruitment processes as possible. My main point of concern in this regard is what exactly the participant has been asked and told; using a third party recruiter often means you relinquish control of this information flow to a certain degree.

   Tell your recruitment firm to recruit suitable candidates; those that meet your specs and are willing to spend two weeks keeping an online diary. I usually suggest telling potential participants that it’s like blogging but private (only they can see it), and they will be required to write a few entries a day. Usually recruiters want you to quantify the effort required, in terms of minutes per day etc. This can be difficult but you need to make sure you’re going to get people who are going to use the diary.

   Get the recruiter to send you the participants’ phone number and email address, if nothing else. That way you can call them and send them important details in writing, both of which I recommend below.

   By the way, if you’re not using a professional recruiter, the above still applies, just perform the actions yourself. Then ask yourself why you’re not using a professional recruiter :)

5. Send each participant a “welcome pack”

   Via the recruiter, I almost always send each participant a document (a “primer”, if you will) with an overview of the research and general instructions on what they have to do. This allows me to ensure that each participant gets the information I want them to have before they start the probe, as well as setting focus questions or pre-tasks as per a normal primer.

   In terms of guiding the participant in the use of their diary, I usually include the following list of tips in the welcome pack:

   • Write as much as you can about your experiences, both positive and negative, big and small.
   • We are interested in whatever you have to say, no matter how minor it might seem to you.
   • We are especially interested in things that are surprising or unexpected.
   • If you’re not sure whether to include something or not, please put it in.
   • If you make a mistake, you can correct it, or you can just keep on going.

6. Setup a Posterous account for each diary

   You can create an account with Posterous for free, and it’s possible to create up to three blogs per account. You can “add a contributor” to each blog such that you have one blog per participant, creating more accounts if you need more than three blogs. Making each of the blogs private means each participant can only see their own blog, but you as the researcher, can see them all. This works fine, but since each participant is only a contributor, they don’t have a Posterous login and thus cannot use things like the “bookmarklet” (described below).

   A better solution is to create a Posterous account for each research participant, with one private blog for each account. I create these accounts as generic research accounts (eg myresearchdiary1, myresearchdiary2, myresearchdiary3) that are re-used for each project, I simply clear out each blog and reset its security when a project is finished.

   

   Add one participant to each blog using the email address they provided during recruitment, if they have multiple email addresses they might want to use (eg work and home) then them all. When you add a contributor you have the opportunity to send a welcome email to that contributor. This is when you send them the details of how the diary works.

   Make sure you include the unique details for each blog in the welcome email:

   • The “post” email address (eg post@myresearchdiary1.posterous.com)
   • Blog URL (eg www.myresearchdiary1.posterous.com )
   • Password (one idea is to set the password to the participant’s surname)

   Make yourself a contributor for each blog, so you can monitor what’s happening and also ask questions or make comments if need be.

7. Call participants on the phone

   Before the probe begins, call each participant and introduce yourself. It goes a long way to making the whole process much smoother if there is a real person they’re talking to via the diary. Of course you could meet them in person too, but there are many reasons why this isn’t practical (eg travel time and cost).

   Other than building rapport, you want to use the phone call to check that they…

   • Have answered the recruiter’s screener questions correctly
   • Have received the research “welcome pack” including the consent form
   • Have received the Posterous welcome email (see above)
   • Are able to send a test email to Posterous
   • Are willing and able to participate in the diary for two weeks

   (Get the recruiter to arrange the phone call for a specific time when they will be in front of their computer and able to access their email.)

   You should also reiterate the purpose of the research and what you’d like them to put in the diary. They should have already received the welcome pack and the welcome email—if you use them—but it doesn’t hurt to run through it all again and answer any questions they may have.

8. Remind and encourage your participants

   Inevitably you will have some (possibly all) participants who are really not sure what they are supposed to be doing. Even if you use a welcome pack, you may still need to prompt them into action.

   The beauty of an online diary is that you, as the researcher, can monitor the submissions as time progresses. If necessary you can prompt participants to write diary entries by

   • sending them a reminder email
   • posing a question (or task/exercise) in the blog itself
   • commenting on one of their posts (asking for clarification etc)

   I find that positive feedback and examples of what you’re after, can go a long way. I usually don’t like to be too perspective, preferring to “let nature take its course” but sometimes you do need to step in and guide or moderate.

   Posterous has a nice feature in terms of email notifications. If I write a post in a diary asking a specific question or setting a task for the participant, the system will send them an email. They can simply hit Reply and starting typing their answer, hit Send and their response will be added to the diary as a comment on my original post. Neat and simple.

   But be careful not to spam them.

9. Introduce the Posterous “bookmarklet”

   If the participant is comfortable with Posterous via email, and if you feel they would benefit from a more powerful interface with their diary, you can suggest two additional tools that might be more convenient for them. The first is the Posterous bookmarklet which can be added to their browser toolbar and allows quicker and easier posts to the diary (especially good for video etc). But not everyone will “get it” or be able to “install” it (eg corporate IE6 users).

   

   You can also do the lifestreaming using the Posterous “autopost” feature, allowing the participant to bring in their activity from social networking services like Facebook. This is where Posterous is on par with Tumblr.

10. Suggest the Posterous iPhone app

    Going beyond the bookmarklet, the Posterous iPhone app is much more convenient for posting to the diary when using an iPhone, especially good for photos taken with the device. Again they need to be fairly savvy in order for this to be worth the time it might take to explain it to them (and they obviously need an iPhone).

    This app is great if you’re doing research that expands wider than just the online environment, and into the ‘real’ world. For example if you’re reaching the process of buying a new car, you might have research participants document that process using photos and Twitter-esque snippets of text via their iPhone.

    You can tell them about these more advanced features in the “welcome pack” or during the phone call, or you can wait and see how they handle Posterous in the first place and then make the suggestion to those who you think are up to it.

11. Follow-up with an interview

    It’s pretty important to conclude the probe with a face-to-face interview (or ‘contextual inquiry’ if you like). This is where you can talk through the diary and any other artefacts created, and get the all important explanation from the participant: why did they do this? what did they mean by that? who did they talk to then?

    It makes sense to have access to the Posterous blog and go through it on-screen, but if need be you can print it out and go through it on paper, adding scribbles and notes as you go.

12. Collect the right data

    As with any research method, you need to use a probe in the right way. Namely, the type or style of diary determines the data you are typically able to get. For example, a reflective diary is self-reported and thus trying to capture an accurate picture of their activity is difficult, but you can legitimately explore their motivations and reasoning. Similarly, a lifestyle log is like a record of their activities, but will probably tell you very little about what they were thinking whilst doing it.

    This decision regarding the style of probe also impacts on how you encourage participation. Asking participants to post entries ‘as and when’ doesn’t work so well if you want reflection, and alternatively if you want to view their lifestream then one entry a day isn’t going to work.

13. Be aware of confidentiality risks

    There is, of course, the issue of security and confidentiality risk. Any online service like Posterous is not going to be 100% secure, so there’s a chance that the contents of the blogs could be leaked. In reality though it’s a small chance; who is going to bother trying to break into a research diary?

    Besides the system itself, your participants might be the problem. My standard practice is to have all research participants sign a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) along with the consent form, but that still won’t stop information from getting out if someone wanted it to. Your company’s strategy or potential new website features might be leaked to your competition. But that’s the case with any user research or usability testing, and the risk is the price of being user-centred!

    Typically though, the contents of a diary and the questions asked of participants, are not that commercially confidential. I certainly believe the benefits of this type of research far outweigh the risks.

So there you have it, my top 13 tips for using Posterous for cultural probes. I stand by probes as a useful research method, though some of my peers question my continued fascination with them. What’s important is to be aware of the strengths and weaknesses of probes, as with any research method, and ideally use them in combination with several other methods.

Feel free to leave a comment below if you have had any experiences with cultural probes, or indeed with using Posterous as a probe tool. I’d like to read your feedback.

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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!

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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.

It’s all to easy for us to forget that our work revolves around people, not answers. The very difficulty in getting the answers we want to inform our business decisions, should be telling us something: that people are complex and messy. And thus the approach we often need to take in research is equally complex and messy and (immediate) success is not always garaunteed.

I think it particularly important to set the scene and establish a certain mindset—and expectation—with the client. And it touches on many different areas of research, how participants are treated, how results are interpreted. It might sound a bit soft and ‘user biased’ but isn’t that what user research is all about, findings out what users think/do/feel/want/need/say? Of course it needs to be balanced with the realities of business (and in particular the limitations of technology) and I am always going on about balancing the raw user-centric view, but when it comes to user input, it should be conducted on their terms, with respect and consideration for them.

Even when they do things that are stupid, silly, strange or simply incomprehensible to us :)

[Image credit: "Geminoid F" by Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP]

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1. The fundamentals of human psychology applied to market research

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.

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