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<!DOCTYPE html>
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<title>A Beginner’s Guide to Finding User Needs</title>
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<header id="title-block-header">
<h1 class="title">A Beginner’s Guide to Finding User Needs</h1>
<p class="subtitle">Qualitative research on user motivations, activities, and problems</p>
<p class="author">Jan Dittrich</p>
</header>
<nav id="TOC" role="doc-toc">
<ul>
<li><a href="#research-focused-on-understanding">Research focused on understanding</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#projectTypes">Types of projects you can use qualitative research in</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#research-for-open-topic-exploration">Research for open topic exploration</a></li>
<li><a href="#research-based-on-an-idea-for-a-new-product-or-feature">Research based on an idea for a new product or feature</a></li>
<li><a href="#research-based-on-an-overhaul-of-a-product-or-feature">Research based on an overhaul of a product or feature</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="#researching-alone-and-together">Researching alone and together</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#research-for-you">Research for you</a></li>
<li><a href="#research-for-a-team">Research for a team</a></li>
<li><a href="#research-with-a-team">Research with a team</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="#understanding-is-a-messy-process">Understanding is a messy process</a></li>
<li><a href="#summary">Summary</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="#prepareResearch">Preparing your research</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#what-do-you-want-to-learn">What do you want to learn?</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#writing-a-research-project-question">Writing a research project question</a></li>
<li><a href="#researchSessionQuestions">Writing research session questions</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="#get-to-know-the-field-without-going-there-yet">Get to know the field without going there, yet</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#desk-research">Desk research</a></li>
<li><a href="#talk-to-experts">Talk to experts</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="#find-people-who-participate-in-your-research">Find people who participate in your research</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#define-recruiting-criteria">Define recruiting criteria</a></li>
<li><a href="#where-does-the-research-happen">Where does the research happen?</a></li>
<li><a href="#payment-and-incentives">Payment and incentives</a></li>
<li><a href="#plan-how-many-participants-you-need">Plan how many participants you need</a></li>
<li><a href="#recruit-with-an-agency">Recruit with an agency</a></li>
<li><a href="#recruit-by-yourself">Recruit by Yourself</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="#invite-participants-to-the-research-sessions">Invite participants to the research sessions</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#let-participants-know-what-to-expect-and-ask-for-their-consent">Let participants know what to expect and ask for their consent</a></li>
<li><a href="#setting-the-date-and-time-for-the-research-session">Setting the date and time for the research session</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="#bad-things-that-can-happenand-how-to-prevent-them">Bad things that can happen—and how to prevent them</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#preventing-harm-to-participants">Preventing harm to participants</a></li>
<li><a href="#preventing-harm-to-yourself">Preventing harm to yourself</a></li>
<li><a href="#beyond-individual-harm-ethics-of-project-outcome">Beyond individual harm: Ethics of project outcome</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="#cheatsheet">Write your cheat sheet</a></li>
<li><a href="#summary-1">Summary</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="#dataGathering">Learning from research participants</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#set-up-the-research-session">Set up the research session</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#remind-participants">Remind participants</a></li>
<li><a href="#prepare-your-note-taking-and-recording-equipment">Prepare your note-taking and recording equipment</a></li>
<li><a href="#brief-your-research-partner">Brief your research partner</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="#how-to-start-the-research-session">How to start the research session</a></li>
<li><a href="#methods-to-learn-from-participants">Methods to learn from participants</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#listening-and-asking-questions">Listening and asking questions</a></li>
<li><a href="#observing">Observing</a></li>
<li><a href="#coDocumenting">Co-documenting</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="#captureData">Ways to capture data</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#notes-and-sketches">Notes and sketches</a></li>
<li><a href="#taking-photos">Taking photos</a></li>
<li><a href="#recording-audio">Recording audio</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="#assure-and-encourage-the-participant">Assure and encourage the participant</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#affirm-that-you-listen">Affirm that you listen</a></li>
<li><a href="#make-a-friendly-impression-through-body-language.">Make a friendly impression through body language.</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="#be-open-to-how-the-participant-works-and-thinks">Be open to how the participant works and thinks</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#ask-open-questions">Ask open questions</a></li>
<li><a href="#rightAnswers">Do not suggest “right” or “wrong” answers or processes</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="#silence-feels-strange-but-its-okay">Silence feels strange, but it’s okay</a></li>
<li><a href="#take-a-closer-look">Take a closer look</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#probing">Probing</a></li>
<li><a href="#check-your-understanding">Check your understanding</a></li>
<li><a href="#ask-for-examples">Ask for examples</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="#steer-the-course-of-research">Steer the course of research</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#changing-between-topics">Changing between topics</a></li>
<li><a href="#switch-methods">Switch methods</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="#wrapping-up-a-research-session">Wrapping up a research session</a></li>
<li><a href="#after-the-research-session">After the research session</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#debrief-with-your-research-partneror-alone">Debrief with your research partner—or alone</a></li>
<li><a href="#complementing-data-from-memory">Complementing data from memory</a></li>
<li><a href="#transcribe-notes">Transcribe notes</a></li>
<li><a href="#complement-from-audio-recordings">Complement from audio recordings</a></li>
<li><a href="#pseudonymize-your-notes">Pseudonymize your notes</a></li>
<li><a href="#organize-and-archive-your-data">Organize and archive your data</a></li>
<li><a href="#next-steps">Next steps</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="#summary-2">Summary</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="#dataanalysis">Analyzing what you learned</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#commonalities-and-contrasts">Commonalities and contrasts</a></li>
<li><a href="#doing-the-right-analysis">Doing the “right” analysis</a></li>
<li><a href="#a-process-for-making-sense-of-diagrams">A process for making sense of diagrams</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#preparing-diagrams">Preparing diagrams</a></li>
<li><a href="#finding-commonalities-and-contrasts">Finding commonalities and contrasts</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="#summarize-what-you-learned">Summarize what you learned</a></li>
<li><a href="#a-process-for-making-sense-of-notes">A process for making sense of notes</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#organize-notes-hierarchically">Organize notes hierarchically</a></li>
<li><a href="#create-meaningful-groups">Create meaningful groups</a></li>
<li><a href="#prepare-your-notes-for-analysis">Prepare your notes for analysis</a></li>
<li><a href="#annotate-your-notes">Annotate your notes</a></li>
<li><a href="#decide-whether-data-should-be-held-by-lines-or-sticky-notes">Decide whether data should be held by lines or sticky notes</a></li>
<li><a href="#developFirstStructure">Develop an initial structure</a></li>
<li><a href="#fill-in-the-structure">Fill in the structure</a></li>
<li><a href="#revise-the-structure">Revise the structure</a></li>
<li><a href="#completing-your-analysis">Completing your analysis</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="#summary-3">Summary</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="#sharing-research-results">Sharing research results</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#reports-should-be-easy-and-quick-to-understand">Reports should be easy and quick to understand</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#putting-first-things-first">Putting first things first</a></li>
<li><a href="#easy-to-read-style">Easy-to-read style</a></li>
<li><a href="#clear-and-helpful-graphics">Clear and helpful graphics</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="#common-forms-of-documentation">Common forms of documentation</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#posters">Posters</a></li>
<li><a href="#slide-decks">Slide decks</a></li>
<li><a href="#reports">Reports</a></li>
<li><a href="#beyond-reporting-research-results">Beyond reporting research results</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="#summary-4">Summary</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="#appendix">Appendix</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#learn-even-more">Learn (even) more</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#books">Books</a></li>
<li><a href="#examples">Examples</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="#forms-and-templates">Forms and Templates</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#co-documentation-templates">Co-Documentation Templates</a></li>
</ul></li>
</ul></li>
</ul>
</nav>
<h4 class="unnumbered" id="abstract">Abstract</h4>
<p><em>A Beginner’s Guide to Finding User Needs</em> shows you how to gain an in-depth understanding of motivations, activities, and problems of (potential) users. The book is written for UX researchers, UX designers and product managers.</p>
<h4 class="unnumbered" id="license">License</h4>
<p><a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by/4.0/88x31.png" /></a><br /><span xmlns:dct="http://purl.org/dc/terms/" property="dct:title">A Beginner’s Guide to Finding User Needs</span> by <a xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" href="https://github.com/jdittrich" property="cc:attributionName" rel="cc:attributionURL">Jan Dittrich</a> licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License</a>. Some images may have other licenses (like CC-BY-SA).</p>
<h4 class="unnumbered" id="contributors">Contributors</h4>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://github.com/lisacharlotterost">lisacharlotterost</a></li>
<li>Claudia Landivar</li>
</ul>
<h4 class="unnumbered" id="resources">Resources</h4>
<p>Additional information and co-documentation templates can be found at <a href="https://urbook.fordes.de">urbook.fordes.de</a></p>
<h4 class="unnumbered" id="suggestions-and-feedback">Suggestions and Feedback</h4>
<p>This book is free/libre, if you help to improve it, it helps all other fellow readers. To point out mistakes you can:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://github.com/jdittrich/userNeedResearchBook/issues">file an issue</a> (If you are on GitHub)</li>
<li>write me a mail: dittrich.c.jan AT gmail DOT com</li>
</ul>
<h4 class="unnumbered" id="payed-and-free-versions-of-this-book">Payed and free versions of this book</h4>
<ul>
<li>If you/your team/your company wants to buy this book and pay for my coffees, <a href="https://leanpub.com/beginnersguidetofindinguserneeds/">visit its page on leanpub</a>.</li>
<li>You can read this book for free at <a href="https://jdittrich.github.io/userNeedResearchBook/">github pages</a> or download versions for ebook readers on <a href="https://urbook.fordes.de/">urbook.fordes.de</a></li>
</ul>
<h1 id="research-focused-on-understanding">Research focused on understanding</h1>
<p><em>This chapter covers:</em></p>
<ul>
<li><em>What qualitative research is about</em></li>
<li><em>In which projects you can use qualitative research methods</em></li>
<li><em>Why research is not a linear process</em></li>
</ul>
<!-- TODO rewrite a bit more direct, it the surprise-stuff feels side-tracking-->
<p>Although I am a user researcher since a while, every research project still brings a lot of surprises. What me and my colleagues want to know seems rather simple in the beginning, yet often turns out to be complex and surprising: “Oh, I did not see it this way, but it makes a lot of sense now”. These surprises and complexities lead to a better understanding of why (potential) users of a product do what they do.</p>
<p>This book is about methods for understanding people you design for and about communicating what you learned. The methods used for this are interviews, observation and structuring the data into meaningful patterns. This is sometimes called <em>design ethnography</em>. In such research, you directly engage with people and data you analyze is language- or image-based. This means you use <em>qualitative methods</em>.</p>
<p>There are also research methods that use number-based data and focus on testing hypothesis using measurements and statistical analysis. These are often referred to as <em>quantitative methods</em>. A typical example for quantitative research is A/B testing: A/B testing compares two versions of an interface by measuring which of the versions performs better in a certain metrics e.g., how many people clicked the “buy”-button.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Note:</em> Other research methods</p>
<p>Maybe this book is not what you are interested in. Perhaps you rather want to learn about quantitative research using measurements and statistics. In this case, I recommend getting Jeff Sauro and James R. Lewis’ book <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/957731269">“Quantifying the User Experience”</a>. If you then crave yet more math and complex methods, try Andy Field’s <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1290244477">“Discovering Statistics”</a> and his <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/961100072">“How to Design and Report Experiments”</a>.</p>
<p>If you are undecided whether you want to use qualitative or quantitative methods or just wonder what research methods exist, you can get an excellent overview and introduction to several methods with Erica Hall’s brief <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1256408019">“Just Enough Research”</a> or Goodman, Kuniavsky and Moed’s <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1194531136">“Observing the User Experience”</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Qualitative research helps you to get a holistic understanding of how a future product could be used by finding out about motivations, activities, and problems of users and gain an in-depth understanding for their activities, replacing stereotypical assumptions. For example, when people cook, it might be plausible to assume that:</p>
<ul>
<li>They decide what to eat</li>
<li>Get a recipe for the meal</li>
<li>Buy ingredients</li>
<li>Cook following the recipe</li>
<li>Eat</li>
</ul>
<p>But in everyday life, people often don’t follow this clear script: It will influence their actions that their kid or spouse prefer another food than they do; They might wish for variety; they might see something that they fancy even more than what they initially decided for; they might not trust their cooking skills… If you want to build a product that supports people when cooking or shopping groceries, it makes sense to understand how people actually do it. This does not mean that initial ideas or existing knowledge should be discarded: Concepts like “Programming is typing text that makes computers do stuff” or “Cooking is combining different groceries to get a meal” are not <em>wrong</em>. Such knowledge is just not rich enough to develop products based on it.</p>
<p>There are different ways in which such understanding can be helpful for a project. In the following sections, I show several typical setups in which qualitative research can help you to develop a product.</p>
<h2 id="projectTypes">Types of projects you can use qualitative research in</h2>
<p>It makes sense to understand motivations, activities, and problems of potential users <em>before</em> a lot of time and money has been invested in product development. You can do research to understand potential users without having a working product at all and find out what their motivations, activities, and problems are now.</p>
<p>Still, understanding-focused research can also make sense when product development is already ongoing, as long as this research can still influence the products further development. Depending on what is already set or not, there are different project types you can use understanding-focused research in.</p>
<h3 id="research-for-open-topic-exploration">Research for open topic exploration</h3>
<p>Putting research at the very beginning of a project and having it as the primary driver puts the user needs first and gives you much freedom in your research, allowing you to focus directly on the user. An example would be to explore “Sharing recipes on the web” or “the future of cooking”. If you read case studies about design research led by famous agencies, you will read about this type of research. Such projects are not common: Often there are more constraints.</p>
<h3 id="research-based-on-an-idea-for-a-new-product-or-feature">Research based on an idea for a new product or feature</h3>
<p>You want to find out user motivations, activities, and problems that are important to consider when building a product or service. This is the scenario in which I use user need research most often, for example in tasks like “We would like to build an app that allows people to curate recipes and use recipes when cooking”. The research is shaped by the initial idea, but what will be created in the end is not yet certain.</p>
<h3 id="research-based-on-an-overhaul-of-a-product-or-feature">Research based on an overhaul of a product or feature</h3>
<p>If a team plans a substantial overhaul of a product, it makes sense to observe how users are using the product to find out where needs are not being met. A task could be “We provide an app for curating and reading recipes. It has not been updated in several years, and we want to increase its use among a younger target group by providing features that are attractive for them.” The research task is rather focused: What is to be done is already mostly set, but research shall shape the way it is done.</p>
<p>In all of these situations, understanding users can help to shape new products and features. But what the research focuses on, is shaped by the initial goals. These constraints are an important influence on your research project. Another important factor is the collaboration with others in the research project.</p>
<h2 id="researching-alone-and-together">Researching alone and together</h2>
<p>Researchers can collaborate with others in different ways: Researching as a contractor is different from the research as a member of a product team.</p>
<p>All methods in this book work well if you need to run the research on your own. But researching alone is not a requirement: Research can and should be done collaboratively, sharing both work load and gained knowledge.</p>
<p>The way of collaboration depends on your way of work. The following are three prototypical models for using the methods taught in this book: Research for <em>you</em>, research <em>for</em> a team, and research <em>with</em> a team.</p>
<h3 id="research-for-you">Research for you</h3>
<p>You can research even as a one-person-team—for example, if you are an entrepreneurial developer who wants to create a product yourself. Most entrepreneurial developers talk to others about the challenges they try to solve for their users and using the methods described in this book is similar, but more rigorous.</p>
<p>Researching by-you, for-you gives a lot of freedom but often has only tight resources and can easily lack structure.</p>
<h3 id="research-for-a-team">Research for a team</h3>
<p>Research for a team is a typical situation for many research contractors. You develop a research question, usually together with some key representatives of client; do the research; and deliver the results back to your client. Often, people hire contractors because they do not have a researcher on their team, because the workload is too high, or because they want an outsider to bring knowledge into the team. While there is some collaboration, particularly when creating a research question and when delivering the results, you will do a large part of the work by yourself.</p>
<h3 id="research-with-a-team">Research with a team</h3>
<p>Product development often involves several people and different roles. At least you have a product manager and developers, but you might also have UX designers, UI designers, market analysts, tech writers, and many more roles.</p>
<p>It is important to have a common direction. This is partly provided by communicating what you find out in your research. But even the best reports can not convey the rich impressions that one has when researching. Involving people directly as co-researchers can be very helpful: You can set them up with some simple tasks and as they learn, give them more responsibilities and help them to bring in their individual skills. For me, the most common way of collaboration is people being co-researchers in interviews. They help with taking notes, but depending on their skill and confidence, they also can shape the research themselves and, for example, ask questions.</p>
<h2 id="understanding-is-a-messy-process">Understanding is a messy process</h2>
<p>In qualitative research, you are constantly dealing with new people and new situations. Uncertainty and surprises are therefore part of all projects. It has been my experience that dealing with these uncertainties is one of the biggest challenges for beginners.</p>
<p>University teachers, conference speakers, and agencies often present research as finding clear facts with rigorous methods and execution of research in clear subsequent steps. Such models are very helpful for giving structure to your plans and actions, but they are idealized. It is helpful to keep this in mind.</p>
<p>When you do an actual research project, it won’t always follow a clear and linear structure. It will need iterations and adjustments. Don’t think of it failing to do “good research” when something does not go as planned. In fact, it is often a good sign if you feel that you need to adjust plans: It shows that you have learned something new and are aware of it. Plan in time for such adjustments. If your research project is only possible if everything runs very smooth, it might be at the risk of going over time and budget. Also, you and the team might not learn a lot of new things as you can only do what you have expected anyway.</p>
<h2 id="summary">Summary</h2>
<ul>
<li>The methods discussed in this book focus on understanding and documenting the activities of people to design better products for them</li>
<li>Research projects can vary in their constraints they put on research: They can be very open and explorative or suggest a solution already</li>
<li>Research projects can vary in how you collaborate with other roles (or not): You can research for yourself, you can be part of a team you do research for, or you can be brought in</li>
<li>Understanding-focused research methods can be challenging: Be prepared to learn new, surprising things and to adjust your plans</li>
</ul>
<h1 id="prepareResearch">Preparing your research</h1>
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<p><em>This chapter covers:</em></p>
<ul>
<li><em>Defining what you want to find out in the research project</em></li>
<li><em>Writing the questions you want to ask participants</em></li>
<li><em>Learning about your research field before going there</em></li>
<li><em>Recruiting participants for your research</em></li>
<li><em>Preparing research sessions</em></li>
<li><em>Preventing to harm participants or yourself</em></li>
<li><em>Writing a cheat-sheet</em></li>
</ul>
<p>It would be awesome if you could start with learning from people immediately. But before you meet your research participants, you need to do some preparation. It might not be the most glamorous part of being a researcher, but it is crucial to be well-prepared. Planning the research is important for you and your collaborators to get a common understanding of the research goals. The preparation is also useful for learning about the field you are going to do research in. This prepares you for the next step: finding potential participants and asking them if they would like to participate. As a researcher, you are responsible for the impact of your research—on society, on participants and on you. Anticipating this in advance prevents harm.</p>
<p>A good preparation will enable you to focus on learning from participants when the time comes, as you, your team and your participants will be well-prepared for the research. A good way to start with your research preparation is to get a clear understanding of what you and stakeholders of the project want to learn.</p>
<h2 id="what-do-you-want-to-learn">What do you want to learn?</h2>
<p>The question of what you want to learn leads to two kinds of questions: <em>research project questions</em> and <em>research session questions</em>. <em>Research project questions</em> are about what the goal of the research project itself is. You will work towards that goal by learning from participants in your research. For this, you will ask your participants questions. These are the <em>research session questions</em>. They are questions focused on what the participants do or feel.</p>
<p>Before you work on the <em>research session questions</em> that you ask the participants in the research sessions, you should clarify the overall goal of the research project with your <em>research project question</em>.</p>
<!-- EXAMPLE: -->
<p>Imagine, you are asked to support a company in finding out more about a business area they potentially want to move in: They currently publish content and recipes for cooking enthusiasts online and in a paper magazine. They would like to explore improving their offers to younger people who might not be cooking enthusiasts yet. You were brought in by their product manager. While your contract outlines the topic you should research, it is not yet clear what exactly you will work on in practice. For this, you create a research project question.</p>
<h3 id="writing-a-research-project-question">Writing a research project question</h3>
<p>A research project question briefly outlines the question you want to explore in the research project. It is helpful to start your research project by writing a research project question as it will help you to think about your research and communicate it.</p>
<!-- TODO: write more cooking-related examples, less development -->
<blockquote>
<p><em>Research project question examples</em></p>
<ul>
<li>“How and why do students use digital media to learn better?”</li>
<li>“How and why do people become Wikipedia editors?”</li>
<li>“How and why do developers use Docker images in collaborative software development?”</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>There will be many situations in which your research touches on other people’s concerns. At least they will be interested in the purpose of your research: Curious colleagues and research participants will be happy to know what it’s about. Telling them your research project question is an efficient way to describe why you do the research. Some people have a stake in your research. They will not only be curious but want to ensure that your research helps them. This is most obvious when you’re researching for a client, but also when you are researching as part of a product team in your organization. A clear research project question helps to communicate the project’s goal. It also ensures that everyone understands what the research will be about.</p>
<p>In the example I use throughout the book, I’m researching for a client and I have at least one person with whom I should have a shared understanding of the research project question: The product manager.</p>
<p>The initial task proposal you are approached with might be vague or very broad. For example, the initial question could be “We want to find out how to appeal to younger people” or “Explore if an app for recipes is right for us”. While these are questions that the client has, they are still focused on a future product—but a product that does not exist yet, can’t be researched, so it makes sense to focus on (potential) users and how and why they do.</p>
<p>Here are the questions you should be able to answer before proceeding:</p>
<ul>
<li>What are the goals of the research project? What do you need to learn more about? For example, you might be told the following:
<ul>
<li>“I think we do this to learn how people actually cook in practice”</li>
<li>“We have been thinking about using videos in our app since quite some time, but it seemed too expensive. I wonder if we will find out that we actually should be doing that.”</li>
</ul></li>
<li>What is the context and history of the research project in the organization? For example, you might get the following responses:
<ul>
<li>“There was a discussion if we actually want to move in this field and be more ‘tech’ and have this app.”</li>
<li>“According to research we had done so far, a lot of younger people seem to have an interest in learning to cook better. However, most people we cater to are in their 40s to 50s, so I am unsure if it works for us.”</li>
</ul></li>
</ul>
<p>Even if you are researching for your own project, without a team, it can be helpful to ask yourself these questions and write down the answers.</p>
<p>The research project question should be concise. This can be difficult to achieve when many people with different interests are involved. To allow for input while keeping the research question short and simple, keep a visible “research interest backlog”, a table of smaller, specific questions and who asked them. This prevents the research question from becoming a long list of individual questions.</p>
<p>I have already mentioned that initial questions for a research project might be focused on the product rather than on (potential) users. Instead of dismissing the initial product focus, you transform these initial ideas and use them as a starting point to create a user- and activity-focused research project question:</p>
<ol type="1">
<li>Take the initial idea for a future product (or market, or feature)</li>
<li>Ask yourself why the product would be good for an activity people do.</li>
<li>Take the activity from 2. and ask yourself how and why people do this activity.</li>
<li>Refine the question.</li>
</ol>
<p>Here is an example:</p>
<ol type="1">
<li>The initial idea the team wants to explore is “creating an app that offers recipes and teaches cooking skills.”</li>
<li>The related meaningful activity can be “Learning new cooking skills when cooking with recipes”</li>
<li>Asking how and why I got to “How do people learn new cooking skills when cooking from recipes?”</li>
<li>We can then refine the question a bit. The people we work with may not want to focus on enthusiasts but on people who have less cooking skills yet, given that enthusiasts are probably a more saturated market. So, we can refine the research question to: “How do people with low to intermediate existing cooking skills learn new skills when cooking from recipes?”</li>
</ol>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Tip:</em> In many research projects, you might not just have several people who need to be involved in shaping the research project question. In this case, a research planning workshop might be helpful to gather input and to help the team to gain a mutual understanding of their interests.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The research project question serves to align, communicate and plan the research project. It is relevant to you and the people you work with, but it is not relevant to your direct work with participants in research sessions. What matters in research sessions are the research session questions.</p>
<h3 id="researchSessionQuestions">Writing research session questions</h3>
<p>The research session questions are the questions you want to ask participants, for example, “Can you tell me about how you cook?” They can also be invitations you want to give, like “Can you show me some recipes you like to use?” or “Can you show me around your kitchen?” Some of your questions are not voiced at all, you ask them <em>yourself</em> to guide your attention, for example, “Are there annotations in their recipes?”</p>
<p>You may have noticed that such questions don’t target specific, short answers typical of surveys, like “How much do you like your job on a scale from 1(I hate it) to 5 (I love it)?” or “Please name your most frequently used app”. Such surveys are usually analyzed quantitatively. In this book, I focus on understanding how and why people do what they do—qualitative research. I show you how to ask questions to which you can get in longer and more descriptive answers. By this, you will learn what you did not know before. Such questions are called <em>open questions</em> because they don’t have a pre-determined (closed) set of answers. Open questions are, for example, “Describe how you started your work today” or “Why did you add sugar to the dough?”</p>
<p>It makes sense to write down your research session questions. This helps you to remember what to ask and allows you to review and improve your questions. Writing down the session questions is also useful for collaborating with co-researchers: They might have good ideas about what could be asked and collaborating on the questions will help you to understand the motivations and strengths of your co-researchers.</p>
<p>When I start writing my research session questions, I often structure them around three themes: <em>Motivations</em>, <em>Activities</em> and <em>Problems</em>. They are relevant for design, and easy to remember with the mnemonic <em>M-A-P</em>.</p>
<p>Questions about <em>motivations</em> are concerned with what the participant wants to achieve and what is important to them. Motivations can give you context to what the participants do.</p>
<ul>
<li>“What is the most annoying thing about cooking?”</li>
<li>“Can you tell me why you chose this recipe?”</li>
<li>“What is a meal that you have not cooked yourself but would like to try?”</li>
</ul>
<p>Questions about <em>activities</em> are about what the participant is doing and how they are doing it. Activities are the core of research; this is where the action takes place.</p>
<ul>
<li>[Invitation] “Shall we start with cooking?”</li>
<li>[while observing] “How did you know the pan was hot enough?”</li>
<li>“You said you are going to replace that ingredient—can you tell me more about that?”</li>
</ul>
<p>Questions about <em>problems</em> are about what is getting in the way of what the participant wants to do. They can show opportunities to improve existing designs and can surface activities that are so familiar that participants don’t think about them—until something gets in the way.</p>
<ul>
<li>[question] “What is getting in your way when you cook?”</li>
<li>[observation] Watch out for participants abandoning plans and finding new ways.</li>
<li>[question] “What makes a ‘bad’ recipe?”</li>
</ul>
<p>The research session questions are flexible and should be treated as a tool for reflection and preparation. There are usually more questions than can get answers to in any single research session.</p>
<p>Your session questions are not static. You should revise them as you learn more about the field. This can be done even before you speak to participants: By speaking with experts and doing desk research, you can learn about the field before you go there.</p>
<h2 id="get-to-know-the-field-without-going-there-yet">Get to know the field without going there, yet</h2>
<p>A basic understanding of the field will help you to interpret what is going on. Otherwise, what you hear and observe can easily seem like an overwhelming amount of new terms, puzzling behaviors, and unspoken expectations. I’ll show you two ways to learn about a field before you go there: desk research and talking to experts.</p>
<h3 id="desk-research">Desk research</h3>
<p><em>Desk research</em> means you can do it from your desk by reading and summarizing reports, books, websites, and so forth. Ideally, you can start with easy-to-grasp introductions. For our example project, you could get some cookbooks for beginners and see how they teach cooking. It may also be worth watching some videos of people explaining cooking techniques to get a feel for how participant observation might be like.</p>
<p>Some areas have a lot of “onboarding material” like books, tutorials, and brochures—for example, parenting or web development. In other areas, documentation might be lacking, for example, because the field is highly professionalized (like being a pilot or a medical doctor), because some procedures are considered bad practice (like shortcuts to get work done quickly), or because the topic is considered not actually part of the discipline (like managing your finances as a freelance designer). Particularly for information on what actually happens aside of what is documented, experts might be a good source of information.</p>
<h3 id="talk-to-experts">Talk to experts</h3>
<p>Although searching the web for information is quick and easy, talking to an expert can help you answer specific questions and get tips on what to consider in practice.</p>
<p>Frequently, the team you work with already has some connections to experts: A company creating digital design tools will have close contact with some designers, and a company producing medical devices will have contact with medical doctors. Very often you can use these existing connections to reach out to experts who already have an established connection to your team or organization.</p>
<p>If you need to contact the expert without knowing them beforehand, you might get lucky, and they’ll talk with you for free. Otherwise, you’ll pay them for their time. What you have to pay varies and some experts are really expensive. But in general, talking to an expert is an efficient way to get an overview of a field and the relevant issues for practitioners.</p>
<h2 id="find-people-who-participate-in-your-research">Find people who participate in your research</h2>
<p>Once you have written your research questions and learned about the field you want to research in, it is time to find people who participate in the research sessions. To be able to do this, you need to get in contact with them, ask if they could participate, and organize that participation. This is often referred to as “recruiting” research participants. You do this by defining criteria that potential participants should meet and by reaching out to them. You also need to set what you can pay participants for their work. Paying makes it easier to find people and makes your research more fair.</p>
<h3 id="define-recruiting-criteria">Define recruiting criteria</h3>
<p>You are probably familiar with demographic recruiting criteria like “30-40-year-old male, earning more than $60k/year and being interested in technology.” However, your interest is in what people <em>do</em> and the problems they encounter. Demographic criteria are only spuriously related to that. This is why you should describe the potential research participants based on the <em>activity</em> that is part of our research project question.</p>
<p>In my example project, the research project question is “How do people with low to intermediate existing cooking skills learn new skills when they cook with recipes?”, so the activity is “Learning new cooking skills when cooking with recipes.” This is a good start, but it could be a bit easier to understand though: “People who want to improve their cooking skills and use recipes” is probably better, since potential participants could more easily relate to it and think: “Seems they are looking for people like me!”</p>
<p>Recruiting your potential research participants based on activities does not mean that you should ignore criteria that are not activities. Age, gender, ethnicity, and other criteria have a large influence on how people act. It will make your research more interesting and potentially more equitable if you include potential participants from a wide range of such criteria. You can set criteria for the diversity of the participants you involve in your research.</p>
<p>In my example project, I know that cooking, as a domestic activity, is usually associated with women. I could say, that I want at least a quarter of the participants to not be women. Similarly, if I would do research with programmers, it is a reasonable guess that many programmers are young, male, and white. Again, I can set criteria to have some participants older than 35, some non-male, and some non-white.</p>
<p>By defining your recruitment criteria along with the activities that are interesting for you ensures that you recruit participants who actually do what you want to learn more about. While activities are the primary criterion, demographics should not be ignored: Having a demographically diverse group of people makes it more likely to observe a wider range of ways people go about their activities.</p>
<h3 id="where-does-the-research-happen">Where does the research happen?</h3>
<p>Research should take place where the participants are doing the activity you want to learn about. In the example project, I’m interested in how the participants cook with recipes, so their kitchen would be the place to do the research: There, they can talk about the context and show me what they do. I can experience the context and see how much space they have in their kitchen, how they use the space when cooking, and where they keep their recipes. Researching at the place where participants do the activities you are interested in, is called a <em>site visit</em>.</p>
<p>However, it is not always feasible to do the research at the site of the activity. For example, some workplaces have a strict no-visitors policy. Some audiences are distributed globally and long flights to each single participant would be very resource-intensive. In-person site visits are also not always the best way to gather data. For example, if almost all relevant interaction happens on a screen, talking and observing via video chat and screen-sharing might give you better opportunities to observe than looking over somebody’s shoulder in their office.</p>
<p>Knowing what your research project will be like and where the research is going take place is helpful when trying to find your participants for the research. You may also learn more about the field and the participants in the process of finding people and adjust the planned setup accordingly.</p>
<h3 id="payment-and-incentives">Payment and incentives</h3>
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<p>Payment for research (also called <em>compensation</em> or <em>incentive</em>) is important for two reasons: It makes participating more attractive to participants and allows some participants to participate at all, for example, if they could not afford to interrupt their usual job for talking to you.</p>
<p>There are several factors that influence the amount you should pay participants:</p>
<ul>
<li>Time spent with you, time spent with organizing, time spent traveling.</li>
<li>Living expenses for the participants: A compensation that is considered just about okay in a Swedish city might be considered high in rural India.</li>
<li>People who are hard to recruit might be swayed by a larger compensation.</li>
</ul>
<p>As a starting point, you can use an online calculator, like this one by <a href="https://ethn.io/incentives/calculator">ethnio</a>, that gives you a suggestion for a sum to pay.</p>
<p>Ideally, you should pay your participants in cash as this poses the fewest restrictions on participants and does not require being a user of a specific service (like using PayPal or having a bank account). It may not be very relevant to research involving middle-class people in a Western country, but not everyone in the world has a bank account.</p>
<p>However, paying in cash is infeasible for many organizations. It may not be allowed or only be permitted for very small sums. Gift cards or vouchers are a common alternative. Sometimes, pre-paid VISA cards can also be a good choice. If your participants already use a product of yours, you can also reduce their monthly service fees for it or give them a free upgrade of their plan.</p>
<p>People might reject your compensation. In this situation, explain to them that they spend time on your questions that they are experts in what you want to learn about, and that it is only fair for them to be paid. Participants may not be <em>allowed</em> to take any compensation, for example, because they work for the government. If people reject the compensation or are not allowed to take it, it can be a nice alternative to instead offer to donate the money instead and let them choose from a list of well-known charities to choose where the money should go.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Tip: Sarah Fathallah’s article <a href="https://medium.com/notes-off-the-grid/why-design-researchers-should-compensate-participants-a65252352f67">“Why Design Researchers Should Compensate Participants”</a> discusses not only the “why” of compensation but also typically raised objections to compensation.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If your work is commercial, pay your participants. However, if you do research as a student or for a small NGO you might only have a very tight budget and people might be supportive of your cause already. If this is the case, I’ve had good experiences with giving a small gift to people—some premium chocolate bars or the like. The costs are relatively small and participants enjoyed the gift a lot.</p>
<h3 id="plan-how-many-participants-you-need">Plan how many participants you need</h3>
<p>There are no clear rules as to how many participants you need. However, most of my projects had more than three and fewer than twenty participants.</p>
<p>If you have done quantitative research in the past, this will seem like a very small number of people. Indeed, it is plausible to assume that user research with more participants is generally better in qualitative research as well. However, unless you invest more resources, more participants would mean shortening each research session, asking fewer questions, and skipping participant observation. But you need time with each participant if you want to understand how and why they work the way they do. To this end, several sessions in a hurry yield less useful results than research with one participant done right.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, doing research on only a very few users restricts the range of behaviors and opinions that will be reflected in your research. For example, you may not notice that different people have different preferred ways of doing activity. Also, you may not see which patterns are consistent across different people and which patterns vary.</p>
<p>My rule of thumb is to have 3 to 7 participants in each user group. Our user group in our example project would be people who have low to medium cooking skills and who cook with recipes. This means that if you want to learn about many groups of people, you also need more participants to cover these different groups. Our research question is currently focused on beginners, but we would need to recruit more people if we would <em>also</em> be interested in people who consider themselves cooking enthusiasts.</p>
<p>When estimating how many participants you need, consider how much time or money you can spend on doing the research. Each additional participant gives you additional data and a broader view of your potential users. However, each research session needs time and adds to the amount of data to be analyzed.</p>
<p>An efficient way to include the “right” number of participants is to do your research iteratively: start with two or three participants and analyze the data (How to do this is described in the <a href="#dataanalysis">section on analyzing data</a>). Take a look at the preliminary findings: If the results seem clear and consistent, you can do research with a few additional participants to refine and check and explore details; or, if time is up, leave it as it is.</p>
<p>If preliminary findings are unclear or contradictory, you <em>may</em> need to include more participants.</p>
<p>Reasons for such unsatisfactory results can be:</p>
<ul>
<li>The participants encompass different groups of people with different needs—For example, for cooking it may be important whether participants are parents who cook for their kids or whether they just cook for themselves.</li>
<li>The topic of your research is too broad—for example, “How and why do people cook” would be very, very broad.</li>
<li>Even if your research is focused and involves only one single group of participants, the actual patterns may just vary.</li>
</ul>
<p>In all these cases you can include more participants—but try to check beforehand whether you…</p>
<ul>
<li>…need to clarify your research topic (to focus your efforts)</li>
<li>…need to specify the group(s) involved more clearly (to recruit the right participants)</li>
</ul>
<p>Coming from research based on measurements and statistics, refinement of criteria during research will feel very unusual or even like cheating. But qualitative research follows a different paradigm. The research I describe here aims at understanding and describing. To do this, it is not only fine but advantageous to do our recruiting iteratively, since we can build upon our improved understanding.</p>
<h3 id="recruit-with-an-agency">Recruit with an agency</h3>
<p>Recruiting participants through an agency costs money but saves your work. It also means that you relinquish control of recruiting details. You provide the agency with your recruitment criteria (also known as <em>screener</em>), how many participants you need, and when you want to conduct the research sessions. The agency will get back to you and tell you the cost and an estimate of when they will have found your participants.</p>
<p>Agencies usually have databases of possible participants. They filter their databases according to your criteria for the desired participants and will talk with them to find a time that works for them. The agency will typically get in touch with you after a few days and give you a list of names, times, and contact details of the participants.</p>
<p>Each recruiting agency is a little different, but they will tell you what they need—and they can answer your questions if you are unsure about something.</p>
<h3 id="recruit-by-yourself">Recruit by Yourself</h3>
<!-- possibly include: Recruit via social networks. You can but don't just barge in. Be aware that you are a guest in their space. Check with gatekeepers, and read community rules (which might explicitly forbid research recruiting) -->
<p>Recruiting by yourself might be needed when you do not have the budget to pay an agency or when it is easier for you to find participants than it is for an agency—for example, because you are familiar with the group of people you would recruit your participants from.</p>
<p>Let’s see what needs to happen for people actually joining your research:</p>
<ol type="1">
<li>They know about the possibility of participating in the study.</li>
<li>They are motivated to actually participate.</li>
</ol>
<p>It is motivating for potential participants when the research improves their lives: A shopkeeper will likely be interested if you work on making it easier to keep track of bills; neighbors will be motivated to help when you try to make living in the neighborhood better. Another important factor can be being reimbursed for time and effort.</p>
<p>When you know what you can offer to potential participants, you can write down what they can expect when they participate. This includes:</p>
<ul>
<li>What the research will be about</li>
<li>How much time it will take to participate</li>
<li>What the research will be like/what you will do</li>
<li>Why they might want to participate, including:
<ul>
<li>How the research results might benefit them or others</li>
<li>What they get as an incentive</li>
</ul></li>
</ul>
<p>You can use this information to reach out to potential participants.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>After speaking to the team you learn that you could recruit potential participants through the company’s website. When talking to a web developer in another team, you find out that the company could add a small recruitment banner to existing content and limit showing it to the geographic area you are located in.</p>
<p>So you ask them to add to all recipes of the “Beginner” category a little banner that says:</p>
<p><em>Participate in a study on cooking and recipes</em></p>
<p>This leads to a page that says this:</p>
<p><em>We would like to learn more about how people use smartphones and tablets/iPads for recipes and for learning to cook better. We’re looking for people who do not yet consider themselves cooking enthusiasts—so if you are still learning, that’s not only fine with us, but actually helpful! In the research, a member of our product development team would visit you and look over your shoulder while you cook. This would take approximately 1:30h. If you like to participate, please fill out this form: [contact form]</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the previous example, it was easy to reach out to participants because they were already using a product of the company you work for. But sometimes, field access is harder than just putting up some notes or banners. Often, this is because you actually don’t know where to find potential research participants yet. In this case, you first need to do some research to find them.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Here is an example for a scenario where accessing potential participants is more complex: Working with an NGO on using citizen science for environmental protection, you want to find out how people use freely available data on air pollution data, published by the city administration. However, you don’t know anyone who does work with such data. You give it a try and post about your research project on Facebook. A friend of yours answers. He happens to know that a local <em>hackspace</em> is hosting a bi-weekly <em>data for good</em>-meeting. The friend sends you a link. On the linked page, you find the meeting organizer’s email address. You write them an email and ask if you could join the meeting and introduce your project.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the previous example, I outlined a step-by-step process of reaching out: In each step, you try to be referred to a next person who is more knowledgeable and familiar with the people you want to do research with. You do this, until you are referred to possible participants.</p>
<p>At each step, you can learn how to approach the next one: If your friend refers you to a meeting of data hackers, that friend can probably also tell you how you should present yourself and what you should avoid doing. Implicit rules are also relevant: For the hacker meeting, it might make sense NOT to wear a suit. In other places, the smart clothes might be helpful.</p>
<p>Some people who could help you are in a position that allows them to give or deny you access to potential participants. The ethnographic jargon for them is <em>gatekeepers</em>. They can decide to help you and let you through the metaphorical “gate” to your research field and your participants—or they can stop you, if they have reasons to do so. In the preceding example, a gatekeeper could be the person who runs the “data hackers” meetup or the person being responsible for the city’s <em>open data</em> initiative.</p>
<p>Once you have found people who would like to be your research participants, you can ask them if they know others who would also like to participate. This is also called “snowball sampling”.</p>
<p>In any case, it is useful to consider different ways to get to your participants. If one way fails (for example, friends of friends), you may be successful in another (such as writing a mail to a contact person of a community). In case several approaches work, you get more potential participants. But more importantly, you now have a more diverse group of people, leading to richer results.</p>
<h2 id="invite-participants-to-the-research-sessions">Invite participants to the research sessions</h2>
<p>When you have found people who want to participate, you can schedule the research sessions with them. If you are recruiting with an agency, the agency can do this for you, but since there are varying levels of support from agencies and because you may be recruiting by yourself, I will guide you through the whole process.</p>
<h3 id="let-participants-know-what-to-expect-and-ask-for-their-consent">Let participants know what to expect and ask for their consent</h3>
<p>To help attendees decide whether to participate in the research session, share information about what to expect and what you’re going to do with what you’ve learned. After the participants are informed about the project, they can decide to give their consent by signing a consent form.</p>
<p>However, treating it as just a form-to-be-signed hides that consent and the information given for it are a vital part of the communication between researcher and participant. You should shape the process of informed consent so that the participant is always in charge.</p>
<p>You should share relevant information and ask for consent early on. For examples, you can send the information about your project and the consent form a week ahead of the research session. This is better than presenting the information and consent form the first time at the beginning of the research session, with the clock ticking and the researcher expecting a “yes” gives the participant little autonomy, although it might suffice legally.</p>
<p>When preparing the information about the research project, I usually include the following information:</p>
<ul>
<li>What the research is about</li>
<li>What the research will be used for</li>
<li>What the research will be like</li>
<li>If there are any risks that I am aware of</li>
<li>How much time the research session will take</li>
<li>What the participant gets in return</li>
<li>That the participant can ask me at any time if they have questions about the research and a contact to do so</li>
<li>How they can consent (that is, should they sign it on paper? Send me a mail?)</li>
</ul>
<p>In the following example, keep in mind that the correct way for your research may look different.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Hello [Name],</p>
<p>You said you were interested in taking part in a study. My team and I are trying to learn more about how people use recipes on their smartphones, tablets, or iPads. The research sessions would take place in your home and take about 60-90min, at a time when you will cook.</p>
<p>It is very important to me and my colleagues that we do not test you in any way. There are no wrong answers or wrong approaches.</p>
<p>There are no known risks of this research, but still: You can end the research session at any time without giving a reason. You will still get the compensation.</p>
<p>I will record our conversation, which will help me to focus on our conversation instead of taking notes. I will only use the recording to supplement my notes. I will be the only one accessing the recording.</p>
<p>What I learn from you will only be used to improve our products and nowhere else. You can ask the researcher questions during and before the research session. You can contact them under: researchermail@example.com</p>
<p>I have attached our consent form to this email. Please fill in the date and sign it with your name and send it back to me.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If signing a paper is not possible—for example because you are doing the research remotely—you can also ask the participant to send you an email with the text, “I have read the forms attached” or by having them write their name in a shared document or something like that.</p>
<p>With the consent information and form, I also send out a short survey.</p>
<p>At the beginning I usually ask which pronouns they prefer. This helps in the research session to address people properly and to represent them faithfully in the research results. You may think that you can guess people’s pronouns correctly from the name they used in a contact mail or from their appearance. But guessing by looks and getting it wrong can be embarrassing for you and hurtful for the participant, and guessing from name has its limits, too. Some names are not clearly gendered, particularly if you research across different languages and cultures. For example, Andrea might signify female gender to you, but people from Italy would expect it to signify male gender. So, it is easier to just ask.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Asking for pronouns</em></p>
<p>What are your pronouns?</p>
<ul>
<li>He/Him</li>
<li>She/Her</li>
<li>They/Them</li>
<li>Self-describe: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>If there is no obvious risk associated with the research, I also ask how they want to be referred to in the study results. I usually give the choice between “Pick a name for me” and a free text field for their name with the note that it does not need to be their legal name.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Self-defining option for one’s name</em></p>
<p>How would you like to be named when I talk about you in the research?</p>
<ul>
<li>Pick a name for me (pseudonymous)</li>
<li>I would like to be named as: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ (can be legal name or a nickname or any other name you like to used)</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>In many cases, it can be helpful to check for basic demographic variables too, like age ranges or where they live to ensure that your research is not accidentally excluding certain demographics. What is important here depends on your research topic. When you research in higher education, for example, you might want to ask if a person’s parents have already attended college; if you research around mobile apps you might want to know how familiar a person is with certain technologies, and so on.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Tip:</em> Creating surveys, even if they are short, is not easy. If you know people who have experience with this, ask them to review your questions. If not, you can find best practices online that demonstrate established ways to ask commonly used questions.</p>
</blockquote>
<h3 id="setting-the-date-and-time-for-the-research-session">Setting the date and time for the research session</h3>
<p>If you recruit through an agency, they will usually take care of the coordination for you. If not, it is up to you to ensure that participants remember the time and place to meet. The following are some relevant aspects to keep in mind:</p>
<ul>
<li><em>Be clear about time and date</em>: Even if it is a bit awkward, I try to be very clear about time and date. I mention the day of the week, day, month, and time in my mails or phone calls. If I research internationally, I also mention the time zone I talk about. In an email, that might look like: <em>I could meet you on Monday, the 8th of November, 1pm (“Berlin time”/CET)</em>. Sending a calendar invite is also helpful as the calendar apps automatically convert times, and it makes it easy for participants to set a notification.</li>
<li><em>For remote meetings, be clear about the technology used</em>: Most video chat software runs also in any modern browser, so people do not need to install a special software. Let participants know how they can join the call. If you use a software you are not familiar with, give it a test run first.</li>
<li><em>For real-life-meetings, find out if there are any special requirements</em>: Places have their own rules in many cases. I share what I expect with participants, so they can fill me in if the expectations would not match: “I will come to Big Street 6 and ring the bell for ‘Miller’” and maybe they tell you: “Oh, right, the bell has the name of my flat mate, Nguyen. So, ring there.”</li>
</ul>
<p>Getting clarity on date, time, technology, and place helps you start the research session without problems when time comes. In the next section, I want to cover some less obvious issues. However, they can have dire consequences, and it is important to consider them.</p>
<h2 id="bad-things-that-can-happenand-how-to-prevent-them">Bad things that can happen—and how to prevent them</h2>
<p>Research should yield helpful results, but even more importantly, it should not cause harm to you or the participants. “Harmful research” probably conjures up images of non-consensual experiments in medical research which feels very far distant from the research you are doing. But your research can also cause harm. By considering possible risks and avoiding or mitigating them, you can research ethically and in a way that does not harm you nor the participants.</p>
<h3 id="preventing-harm-to-participants">Preventing harm to participants</h3>
<p>As a researcher, you have experience in doing research and you can determine how you carry out the research. Participants have no experience in being participants nor can they easily control how the research is conducted. This makes it essential for you to plan ahead to prevent harm and make the research a good experience for your participants.</p>
<p>Participants should be well-informed and feel prepared before the research, they should have a good experience when they are in the research session with you and there should be a positive outcome for them afterward.</p>
<h4 id="fairness">Fairness</h4>
<p>The participant does actual work to help you learn. They take time to participate in your research, keep that time free of other commitments, take care that they are there on time and last, but not least, they also do share knowledge and skills that often take a long time to acquire. This work they do should be honored. Paying them is one aspect of this. Another is to use the data well and not do research for research’s sake or because someone said that “more participants are better”. In order for participants to judge whether your research is fair for them, you need to share what the purpose of the study is and how you will reimburse them.</p>
<h4 id="participant-autonomy">Participant autonomy</h4>
<p>People should be free to choose to participate in your research and also what to share with you and how. This means that you may not get answers to all of your questions or may not observe everything you like to observe. You have to accept that.</p>
<h4 id="participant-safety">Participant safety</h4>
<p>Much of user need research is not particularly dangerous. Nevertheless, research that can cause physical harm indirectly (imagine researching how people navigate in traffic—distractions could lead to accidents) or research topics that are particularly sensitive (for example, researching with victims of crime). The concerns for participant autonomy are particularly important here, as people often know when something will cause them harm. However, they might not act on it in order to be a “proper research participant.” If you research in fields where physical or psychological harm is a possibility, it makes sense to speak with domain experts, particularly those from the group of potential research participants to get an assessment of your plans.</p>
<h4 id="protectionIdentity">Protection of identity</h4>
<p>There are many reasons why participants do not want to be identifiable. They may just do not want others to know that they are “bad at computers.” It also could be that you observe real work processes that are not exactly like their bosses dictate. For vulnerable populations, it might be the case that they have a stigmatized cognition (for example people having schizophrenia) or targets of law enforcement (such as undocumented immigrants). Thus, the identity of your participants should be protected. This can be achieved by not using their usual name but a made-up one and by describing your observations in a way that context clues do not reveal their identity.</p>
<p>For example, pseudonymizing research is a standard procedure: You replace the names of the participants with other names to protect their identity. However, being credited and being shown with one’s own name can also be important and a matter of pride for the skilled participants. In many research projects, I thus give people the opportunity to self-define how they want to be referred to in the research reports.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Note:</em> Laws to protect personal data: GDPR and CCPA</p>
<p>There are laws that protect participants’ personal data in many jurisdictions. The most relevant regulations are probably the <em>California Consumer Privacy Act</em> (CCPA) and the EU’s <em>General Data Protection Regulation</em>.</p>
<p>There are differences between them, but their basic idea is to give people control over their personal data and what can be done with it.</p>
<p>This means that data can’t just be collected, stored, and used for whatever a company likes. Data needs to be collected for a specific purpose and then used for this purpose only. In addition, the personal data needs to be deleted again if it is not needed anymore or if former participants request it to be deleted.</p>
<p>Personal data can be the person’s name, but also their email address, their age, and their gender. You use such data to get in contact with participants and to process incentive payments. Before you collect such data, you should have a plan for how to delete it.</p>
<p>The organization you work with might also have faced similar questions before and a concept for handling personal data is already in place.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The safety of participants is essential. However, do not forget that research might also carry risks for you as a researcher.</p>
<h3 id="preventing-harm-to-yourself">Preventing harm to yourself</h3>
<p>Just like the participants, you should not feel uncomfortable during the research. It is okay and professional to avoid research situations that are dangerous or just <em>feel</em> dangerous. Err on the side of caution.</p>
<p>In some situations, it may be safer to research together with another researcher or a colleague who likes to assist you. This way, you so can look out for each other. It is very common to have a main researcher and a note-taker, anyway. It is also fine to arrange to meet at places where you feel safer or to shift a meeting online so that both sides can call from whatever place they feel fine at.</p>
<p>Only a fraction of research topics are inherently debilitating, but in some projects, you might hear sad or shocking stories from participants. For example, if you are researching for a hospital you might hear about shocking diagnoses from participants. If you take on such a project, consider whether you are ready for it. It is professional to know your limits to refuse the job. If you are reading this book, you are probably a beginner in user research and may want to gather research experiences before researching inherently difficult topics. Personally, I would only take on such projects if I could collaborate with subject-matter-experts since there would be high risks for me and the participants.</p>
<p>Regardless of the topic of the research, it is important to take the time to process what you have learned. If you are conducting the research with other people, do a joint debrief after the research session and talk about what you learned. Hearing something sad or irritating can happen even with very mundane topics. Talking about it helps you to put it into context. Debriefs also jog one’s memory and you can use them to supplement notes without haste.</p>
<h3 id="beyond-individual-harm-ethics-of-project-outcome">Beyond individual harm: Ethics of project outcome</h3>
<p>Research can be a lot of fun and make you money. It can also be immensely motivating to be involved in the development of a new product. The culture of the tech industry is driven by the idea of being a force for good by creating greater efficiency, information, and connections with the technologies it introduces. User research is often part of creating these technologies—and what we enable with our research is also a question of ethics.</p>
<p>The technologies we help to develop also might do unjust things more efficiently, they might encourage the spread of false and inflammatory information or destroy existing social fabrics. User research can advance such developments, too. For example, research into people’s ideas of good social relationships can be used to make them spend more time on social media. Such research can be done perfectly ethically by itself, but its outcomes might not be ethical at all.</p>
<p>You too have to pay your bills and in many cases, it will not be possible only and always research on projects you are 100% aligned with. But be aware that technology has social consequences and that your research can be part of building that technology.</p>
<h2 id="cheatsheet">Write your cheat sheet</h2>
<p>A cheat sheet is a little memory aid that you can take with you when you collect data. Most of the cheat sheet will be topics you want to explore and the questions that you want to ask.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Recipe use research cheat sheet</em></p>
<p>User Code:_______ , Date: ________</p>
<ul>
<li>Tell the reason for research: Learn about how people use their smartphones and tablets when cooking.</li>
<li>Tell how the research session will be (asking, listening, observing; 60-90min)</li>
<li>Ask to read the consent form again and sign if OK</li>
</ul>
<p><em>Intro</em></p>
<p>[mutual introduction]</p>
<ul>
<li>“Can you tell me a bit about how and when you cook?”</li>
<li>“Can you tell me about your use of recipes?”</li>
<li>…</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>When writing the questions, start with the general topics and progress towards more specific ones. This is the order that makes sense over the course of a research session. Nevertheless, the sequence of questions is just a helpful guess. You will usually deviate a little (or a lot) from your cheat sheet.</p>
<p>I often include a checklist on the top, especially when it comes to legal matters, such as signing a consent form. That way, I can check off what I have already done and immediately see if I have forgotten anything.</p>
<p>You may be wondering about the “User Code” in the previous example. When I do research, I give every participant an identification code that can be used in place of their name (like “User2”). Later, when you publish the research, you want to retract all names and other identifying information. Such code allows you to identify participants without their names. This is useful for maintaining participant privacy. If you need to keep the names, you can keep a <em>separate</em> list that matches participant codes and legal names. This way, you can revert the codes if necessary. An alternative to codes is to ask participants how they would like to appear in the (published) research.</p>
<p>The cheat sheet is a tool that will support you during the interview and help you when your mind goes blank for a moment. It is not intended to ensure that you ask all questions in the same manner and in the same order. Rather than <em>controlling</em> the situation, qualitative research emphasizes <em>exploring</em> the situation. If the participant does or says something that is new to you, use it to learn, and feel free to come up with new questions that are not on the cheat sheet.</p>
<h2 id="summary-1">Summary</h2>
<ul>
<li>Define what you want to learn in the research project by formulating your <em>research project question</em>.</li>
<li>Define what you want to learn from participants by writing your <em>research session questions</em>.</li>
<li>Get to know the field before you go there by desk research and asking experts.</li>
<li>Recruit based on activities, not demographics.</li>
<li>User need research is in-depth, with few participants.</li>
<li>Pay users for helping you.</li>
<li>Prevent harm by assessing the risks the research itself could pose to you and participants as well as the harm a product your research is helping to create could do.</li>
<li>Write a cheat sheet with the questions you want to research, and what you want to observe and ask.</li>
</ul>
<!-- TODO: Add the " How to do a research interview " by Graham R Gibbs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t-_hYjAKww -->
<h1 id="dataGathering">Learning from research participants</h1>
<p><em>This chapter covers:</em></p>
<ul>
<li><em>Preparing your research sessions</em></li>
<li><em>Observing, listening and co-documenting with research participants</em></li>
<li><em>Collecting data for later analysis</em></li>
</ul>
<p>You have prepared your research, arranged a meeting with a participant, and informed them of what to expect. Now you are ready to learn first-hand about the participant’s motivations, activities, and problems by meeting them, listening to their stories, and observing their work.</p>
<p>This chapter gives you guidance of how to learn best from your participant. A large part is about asking questions and guiding conversations. You are also interested in what people <em>do</em>. To learn about activities, your conversation is mixed with participants demonstrating their work. You take notes and pictures to aid your memory. Participants can take an active role and document their work: You can involve them in drawing diagrams of processes or social relations, to document their work together. At the end of the research session, you will summarize what you learned and give the participant an opportunity to ask questions. After the session ends, you will complement and organize your data. Only then is the research session over.</p>
<!-- TODO: compare to asking open questions again↓ -->
<p>It is a common misconception about user research that it is asking what people want or how much they like a feature. But your research won’t delve into future ideas and designs—you are not going to ask “do you think that [a gadget] would help you?”</p>
<p>It is hard to guess if an imaginary thing would be great to have in the future. Instead of working with product ideas, you will learn the how and why of your participants’ activities. This allows you to evaluate your ideas (“Are my ideas consistent with what participants consider essential?”) and get inspiration for new ideas (“how can I support this activity?”).</p>
<p>See your participants as competent in what they do: they are experts in their daily work. This goes against the notion that people “don’t get it” and need help from designers and programmers. Assume participants have a reason for doing their work the way they do it. If you’re wondering about the actions of the participants, find out why they act the way they do.</p>
<p>Before you learn from the participant, let’s go over what you need to prepare.</p>
<h2 id="set-up-the-research-session">Set up the research session</h2>
<p>Preparing the research session prevents later problems. Send a reminder to participants and have your recording equipment ready.</p>
<h3 id="remind-participants">Remind participants</h3>
<p>It can be helpful for you and your participants to send a short reminder mail to participants the day before you meet them. (If you recruit via an agency, they might do it.) Here is an example:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Hello Sarah,</p>
<p>I look forward to meeting you tomorrow at Small Avenue 123 at 12:00pm. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach contact me.</p>
<p>Jan</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If you are coming with a research partner, let the participant know, so they are not surprised if a second person comes. Also tell the participant know your research partner’s name and pronouns, so the participant can address them properly.</p>
<h3 id="prepare-your-note-taking-and-recording-equipment">Prepare your note-taking and recording equipment</h3>
<p>To collect data, you should have your recording equipment ready. This is what I usually bring along for in-person meetings:</p>
<ul>
<li><em>Printed Cheat sheet</em> (I described <a href="#cheatsheet">how to write a cheat sheet</a> in a previous section)</li>
<li><em>Paper on clipboard</em>: You might need to write on your lap or while standing.</li>
<li><em>Pens or pencils</em>: Whatever you like to use. If you plan to sketch or co-document with the participants, take some felt pens in black, red, and green along.</li>
<li><em>Audio recorder</em>: A simple device for about 50€ is sufficient. It should connect to your computer via USB or take micro SD cards, so you can transfer the files on your computer easily. More expensive models, like a <em>Zoom H2</em>, have better microphones and more settings. You can also record with your phone if the quality is fine for you. Test it beforehand in an environment similar to where you will hold the research session.</li>
</ul>
<p>When you meet online, the tools are different. In this situation, you should have the following prepared:</p>
<ul>
<li><em>Video-conferencing app</em>: There are many of them. Which one you choose depends on your organization, potential legal restrictions (like <a href="#protectionIdentity">GDPR</a>) and participant preferences.</li>
<li><em>Headset</em>: Often has better sound quality than the built-in microphone. If you want or need to use your built-in microphone, check how audible keystrokes and mouse clicks are—on some devices they drown out any other sounds!</li>
<li><em>Printed cheat-sheet</em>: Opening it on your computer would take up screen space that you might want to use for the video chat and notetaking.</li>
<li><em>Writing on paper or computer</em>: Both writing in a text file or writing on paper is fine. If you can touch-type, you can write notes and look at the camera.</li>
<li><em>Whiteboarding-app</em>: Whiteboarding apps like miro, mural, or tldraw are a remote equivalent to pens and sheets for collaborative activities. They’ve improved a lot in recent years, but ease of using pen and paper is still unmatched—your mileage may vary, especially for people who are not familiar with such tools.</li>
</ul>
<h3 id="brief-your-research-partner">Brief your research partner</h3>
<p>If you are conducting research with a research partner, you should have a conversation about what you are going to do in the research session, how you want to divide tasks, and what you both should be aware of. Your research partner should also know when and where you are going to meet for the research session itself and if they should bring equipment.</p>
<p>It is common for research partners to be new to user research but curious about it. If your research partner does not have experience with user research, it is best if they start with supporting tasks like taking notes. In a <a href="#captureData">later section</a> I explain how to take notes, sketch, and make photos and audio recordings. It’s also good to show your research partner an example of notes from previous research. It may be unusual for them to make detailed notes instead of summarizing strongly. For example, they may only write “Likes the software” when the participant talks for a couple of minutes how they like to use a product. An example easily shows what you think the notes should look like.</p>
<p>As your research partner gains experience, they may take a more active role from time to time. If you think that your research partner can and should ask the participant questions, tell your research partner—otherwise they may not. Remember that, if the research partner takes an active role, you need to take the notes.</p>
<h2 id="how-to-start-the-research-session">How to start the research session</h2>
<p>When you arrive at the location you do the research at, greet the participant and take care the both you and your co-researcher (if present) are introduced to the participant. Usually, a short bit of small talk will follow. This is pretty normal and it happens intuitively. It helps to build trust and to get used to the research situation. But after a brief time both you and your participant will want to get started with your research session proper. You can initiate this by saying something like:<br />
<em>“So… I’m happy that we can do this and that you could free some time for showing and telling me about your experiences with cooking with online recipes.”</em></p>
<p>Give some context of why that is interesting to you:<br />
<em>“We are thinking about improving the usefulness of the recipes that we present to people. We have some enthusiasts in our community, but also a lot of people who do not consider themselves particularly good at cooking and we are wondering what we could do for them.”</em></p>
<p>Explain that you are here to learn—and not to judge the quality of the participant’s work:<br />
<em>“…that’s why we would like to know more about how you cook and how you use recipes or videos for it. This is not a test. No matter if you cook elaborate meals or not: You are an expert in your kitchen, you know best what you need, and we like to learn more.”</em></p>
<p>Although you may have already described the time frame and the research method when recruiting the participant, tell them again what you will do:<br />
<em>“We will talk about your work and will ask some questions. In addition, I’m interested in watching you cook. This is, as we talked when we had contact via mail, why we came slightly ahead of the usual time you prepare your meal. The whole process takes about an hour.”</em></p>
<p>In case they did not already agree to the consent form via email, you can use a written consent form and explain its purpose and content.</p>
<p>The participant must know how you record data and who will access it, even if they already agreed to recording before via mail. So, tell the participant:<br />
<em>“I’d like to take notes, and, in addition, record audio—if you’re okay with that. The recording helps me to focus on your work, because then I don’t have to concentrate on writing everything down. A colleague and I will listen to the audio for transcription; We will anonymize the transcribed data before we share it with the product design team. If you feel uncomfortable with being recorded at any time, we can pause or stop the recording.”</em></p>
<p>In my experience, it is rare that someone does not agree to being recorded. If that happens, you can ask politely if they have any specific worries—they might agree when they have additional information about how the data is used and handled.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This is an example form an in-house research project, where I visited a programmer from another department in a larger company. After explaining the process, the participant said this:</p>
<p><em>Participant</em>: “Audio recording… I’m not sure…”</p>
<p><em>Researcher</em>: “That’s fine with me. May I ask what worries are?”</p>
<p><em>Participant</em>: “Hmm… yeah, aren’t you from HR?”</p>
<p><em>Researcher</em>: “I understand your concern. It is fine if you don’t agree to the audio recording. I can assure you that HR is a separate department. We work in the product department on internal tool, that is, we help to improve the applications you use to do your work.</p>
<p>We do not share personal data and what we record today is not accessible to them. Also, any data that leaves my computer or the one of my colleague is anonymized, and we remove any data that points to you as person, including the names and so on.”</p>
<p><em>Participant</em>: “Oh, sure, them… I just assumed you were from HR and wouldn’t have liked the recording thing, you know.”</p>
<p>It could have happened that the concerns of the participant were not resolved by me clarifying that I am not from Human Resources. If they were still fine with the research, but not with the recording—so be it. We would have taken notes instead: It’s their choice.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It goes without saying that it is important that you accommodate the participant’s wishes and respect their agency. There may be situations where the participant, for example, hesitates to respond or seems uneasy, possibly because of a question or a request of yours. Do not push them if they seem uncomfortable, even if you want to hear their answer. Offer them a way out of such situations if you unintentionally caused one. You can, for example suggest an alternative task or say that it is fine not to answer and go to the next question. The well-being of the participant is your primary concern.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Note:</em> Dealing with difficult situations</p>
<p>Most research sessions go smoothly—but if you are worried about being offhand in a sticky situation, I recommend <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1065715898">“The Moderator’s Survival Guide”</a> by Donna Tedesco and Fiona Tranquada: Bite-sized, actionable advice for all sorts of researcher problems.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Now you and the participant are ready to move into the conversation about the topics you want to learn about. To do this it’s helpful to consider how you can learn from the participant.</p>
<h2 id="methods-to-learn-from-participants">Methods to learn from participants</h2>
<p>You can engage with participants in several ways: listening, observing, and co-documenting their activities. Each method has its own strengths, and provides insight into different aspects, so it’s common to combine different approaches.</p>
<h3 id="listening-and-asking-questions">Listening and asking questions</h3>
<p>A common way of learning from a participant is by asking questions and listening to the participant’s answers. Aim for rich, story-like descriptions that about the user’s motivations, activities, and their context. To encourage the participant to provide such story-like answers, you often need to ask for descriptions of an activity and the reasons for doing it. So, your questions may be something like this: “Can you tell me why you chose this recipe?” or “You said you will brown the onions—how do you do that?”</p>
<p>Asking questions and getting answers from a participant is a very versatile tool. It can be done without many resources. In addition, you are not tied to a specific place, and you can talk about both past events and future plans.</p>
<p>However, it can happen that you hardly focus on actual experiences and instead talk about events in the abstract. Observations are therefore a good complement to asking questions and listening.</p>
<h3 id="observing">Observing</h3>
<!-- this section is fairly long and should probably be broken up into several parts -->
<p>Only listening to people might not be the best way to understand what they are doing. Just like a picture is worth a thousand words, it is often helpful to ask participants to show what they talk about and to demonstrate how they work. Frequently, it is also easier for participant and researcher alike.</p>
<p>As you observe, you can notice things your participants would never consider to mentioning, because they’re second nature to them: The tools they use, how they apply these tools, and which problems they meet. But you can observe it. You also can learn about the context of their work, like means of communicating with colleagues or cues in the environment that point out problems—for example quick fixes on devices using tape and cardboard, or added instructions on machines.</p>
<figure>
<img src="images/03_dataGathering_coffeeMachineUserChanges.jpg" id="coffeeMachineUserChanges" alt="Button panel of an automatic coffee machine which is labeled with icons; above the buttons is an orange note, telling that the buttons are for “Full Cup”, “Half Cup”, “Espresso”" alt="" /><figcaption>A coffee machine with added instructions on an orange note, telling that the buttons are for “Full Cup”, “Half Cup”, “Espresso”.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is not necessary to have observation as a separate step in the research process. It is best to interweave observation with asking questions and listening. For example, you can ask for a demonstration instead of a description.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If the participant tells you:<br />
“So, as I have the recipe opened here, and read through the list of things I need, I would now start getting out the ingredients”<br />
you could suggest: “Great—if it’s fine with you, let’s actually do that!”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Think of yourself as the participant’s apprentice. The participant is the expert who can teach you some of their skills. This means that understanding the participant by observing is not a passive process. Like an apprentice, you can and should ask questions.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You can <em>ask about reasons</em>, for example<br />
“You did measure the weight of the flour on the scale, but the for the water you just used a cup. Why?”<br />
Or <em>ask about things you notice in the environment</em>, for example:<br />
“Are there certain things you do at specific places?”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Teaching an apprentice is not a theoretical or artificially set-up process: The tasks you observe should be tasks that the participant is actually doing (and not something set up for you).</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If the participant asks you “What should I do now?”, you can reply with “What would you do if I would not be here?”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Of course, what you observe should also be relevant to <em>your</em> interests. The conversation could continue in this way:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Participant</em>: “I would either start to make this stir-fry vegetables, or actually, only heat something up for lunch and rather make some apple crumble for dessert”<br />
<em>Researcher</em>: “If you don’t have a preference, I would be curious to see how you make the apple crumble—I have not seen how people make dessert in our research, yet!”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>From time to time, you might observe actions that seem wrong or at least not optimal: People might seem to ignore a feature that could make their work much more efficient, or they just never use a product that you focus your research interests on. Remain curious and don’t be judgmental. If you start judging and even possibly “correcting” their practices, you close yourself off to the reasons for the participant’s actions. Also, your participant would stop being open about showing you how they work.</p>
<p>Participants are experts in their work and have a reason for what they do. Maybe they do not want to be more effective because it would mean that their superiors would increase expectations, leaving no wiggle room for everyday contingencies. Maybe they routinely prevent situations from happening where they would need a certain technological solution and thus have no need for it.</p>
<h3 id="coDocumenting">Co-documenting</h3>
<p>You can also document the work with the participant directly. I call this <em>co-documenting</em> because both you and the participant document some aspect of the participant’s life directly through drawing and writing. This can be as simple as asking the participant: <em>“Draw a floor plan of your kitchen. Please highlight what is important for your work and write why!”</em></p>
<p>Here are examples of co-documenting results. Most of them are based on a template that guides the participant. To document the context of the participant, you can use a <em>social space map</em> as shown in the <a href="#socialNetworkDiagramExample">following figure</a>. The participant is in the center, and they add who is relevant for them. Many participants do not limit themselves to people and might add institutions, roles, or technologies that are also important to them.</p>
<figure>
<img src="images/03_dataGathering_socialNetworkDiagramExample.png" id="socialNetworkDiagramExample" alt="A diagram where a research participant drew connections relevant for their cooking: Utensils, YouTube, flatmates" alt="" /><figcaption>The participant is in the center. They draw people (or whatever else they think matters) around them and write the nature of the connection on the arrows.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The timeline-diagram in the next figure is great for getting an overview of which parts of a longer process participants like and dislike.</p>
<figure>
<img src="images/03_dataGathering_timelineDiagramExample.png" id="timelineDiagramExample" alt="A diagram where a research participant indicated their mood during recipe selection and cooking" alt="" /><figcaption>If the graph goes up, the mood gets better, if it goes down, the participant feels bad, bored, or annoyed.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The timeline-diagram usually covers a longer period of time from a bird’s eye view. Often, you also want to know details about a process. To do this, you can use a recipe-like list of steps, as shown in the next figure:</p>
<figure>
<img src="images/03_dataGathering_stepDiagramExample.png" id="stepDiagramExample" alt="A recipe-like overview with sketches to show how to make coffee" alt="" /><figcaption>A recipe-like overview with sketches to show how to make coffee.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If you have the documentation in front of you and the participant, you can easily improve as you create it. You as a researcher, can refer to the documentation and ask for elaboration (“Is this the cupboard where you keep the ingredients?”).</p>
<p>The fact that researcher and participant both need to understand the documentation is a check against unclear terms, vague references, and sloppy handwriting. This makes the results accessible and useful.</p>
<p>A situation in which this is relevant could happen like this:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Researcher</em>: “The line here seems to indicate that you were very happy at the beginning…”<br />
<em>Participant</em>: “Yes, the recipe just looked awesome, I really wanted to try it”<br />
<em>Researcher</em>: “Can you write this in the diagram, so I can understand it later?”<br />
<em>Participant</em>: [Writes as comment in the diagram] “Recipe looks awesome!”<br />
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Who does the drawing and writing depends on what is more convenient and provides more interesting data. When researching workflows, <em>I</em> write the documentation as a researcher, because the participant should be able to demonstrate their tasks directly, which is difficult when you have to constantly switch between demonstrating and writing. When the participants document a project on a timeline, <em>they</em> draw it directly, and I only ask questions.</p>
<p>For some participants, documenting their work by drawing and writing can be a bit unusual. It can be helpful to show a simple example of what the result of a co-documentation. The example can also reduce anxiety in drawing related tasks—some people assume they need to produce a work of art. Showing that a rough sketch is okay will help them to get started.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Tip:</em> Try creating some diagrams about <em>your</em> work to get a feel for it. Select an activity and choose a diagram to document that activity. Review the result: what could it tell another person about that activity? What does it not tell? Try another diagram type for the same activity: where do both diagrams convey the same information? Where do they differ?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It can be easier for the participant if you provide a template instead of a blank page: It provides a basic structure. The template should have fields for name, date, title, and space for the participant’s diagram. Sometimes, I also print a small example in a corner of the template. The following figure is an example for a template that I use for timeline diagrams.</p>
<figure>
<img src="images/03_dataGathering_templateGoodBadTime.png" id="templateGoodBadTime" alt="A template for a mood-timeline diagram: A horizontal time arrow, and a vertical axis with a smiley (top/up) and a frowning face (bottom/down)" alt="" /><figcaption>Example template for mood-timeline-diagrams.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Co-documentation works well in combination with interviewing and observation: You can co-document workflows in combination with observing the workflows, or you can transition from interviewing to co-documenting a specific aspect (“That is interesting! I would like to remember it clearly later on, so I would like to write the steps down with you”) later, you can use the documentation to refer back to it (“You wrote… How does relate to…”) and add further details.</p>
<p>Co-documenting via lists, diagrams, and drawings may seem unusual at first. But they produce very useful and easy-to-interpret data by having the researcher and the participant work together. It can empower the participants that they do not only actively show and tell but also take part in recording.</p>
<h2 id="captureData">Ways to capture data</h2>
<p>Without recording data, you need to rely on memorizing what you saw and heard. As there is a lot to learn from participants, it makes sense to support your memory by capturing data in writing, photography and audio recordings. What you record is strongly connected to how you engage with the participant: A conversation lends itself to notes and audio recording, the work process to sketches, diagrams and maybe even short film clips. However, there is not a 1:1 match of a way to learn from participants and ways to record data: Sometimes a verbal description is helpful for an action focused activity, some people might record a conversation in a more diagram-like form to see central objects and conflicts.</p>
<p>If you have a research partner with you, it is a common division of labor that the research partner focuses on the recording. However, if needed, they can ask for clarifications as they may notice gaps in the data they record.</p>
<p>Even if you have a research partner taking care of the recording, you should be familiar with the equipment. It may happen that they are late or get sick, so you need to record the data yourself. If you have the opportunity to work with an experienced researcher, you could also take on the role of research partner and focus on recording.</p>
<p>Before you take photos or make an audio recording, ask the participant if they are okay with this.</p>
<h3 id="notes-and-sketches">Notes and sketches</h3>
<p>While you observe or listen to the participant, you should take brief notes. It’s a bit like taking notes at school or university: you go into the gist of what’s being said in as much detail as possible, but you don’t write down the exact words (unless you personally find a particular phrase important). One utterance or observation concerning one topic goes in one line, bullet-point style.</p>
<p>When you’re looking down at your notes and are thinking about what to write, listening and observing don’t work well. Try to keep it as unobtrusive as possible. If you don’t care too much about your handwriting, you can write notes without much looking at the paper except for some occasional glances. When you do the meeting remotely you can do notes by handwriting, too, or use your computer. Just check for keyboard noises—they can be annoying, even if you use a microphone.</p>
<p>Taking notes alongside other activities can be challenging. That’s why it’s good if you have a co-researcher who can help you: One person can ask questions and guide through the research, the other person takes notes. Both observe and listen.</p>
<figure>
<img src="images/03_dataGathering_notesExample1.png" id="notesExample1" alt="Interview and Observation notes. They are not very tidy; they are combined with little sketches" alt="" /><figcaption>Notes from a research session</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If you record audio in parallel, you can be more relaxed when writing what was said. However, you still need to take notes to record what you observed. Participants will also point to things and refer to them as “it” and “that”; without notes it can be difficult to reconstruct what the participant was talking about. In the <a href="#notesExample1">previous example notes</a>, I used little sketches to record what the participant was doing.</p>
<p>When taking notes in research, I often write about 1 page every 15 minutes. That’s why notes of a typical session won’t fit a single page or on the margins of your cheat sheet.</p>
<p>After data collection, you complete, transcribe, and analyze your notes. Between gathering the data and reviewing your notes, it is easy to forget the context.</p>
<p>For example, if you observe that someone tastes a bit of their dish and then adds a small amount of sugar, you might just write “sugar”. It could make perfect sense at the moment you write it, since you are watching what is going on, and you know what happened before and after. But without this implicit knowledge of the situation, the line “sugar” does make little sense. Instead, write something like “Tastes → Adds a bit of sugar”. It will help you a lot later when you read your notes.</p>
<p>Your observations will be visual and related to processes. A good way to support your memory of observations is to create sketches or small process diagrams.</p>
<figure>
<img src="images/03_dataGathering_sketchExample1.png" id="sketchExample1" alt="Sketch of washing, chopping, cooking at their respective places" alt="" /><figcaption>A small sketch from my notes, showing where a participant did different activities</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is not important that your sketches look realistic. Realism is better achieved by cameras. Take advantage of the fact that sketches are different from photos: Enlarge what is relevant, leave out what is irrelevant and make annotations with arrows and notes on what was happening.</p>
<h3 id="taking-photos">Taking photos</h3>
<p>Taking photos is easy and can capture a lot of information. For example, you can photograph the participant’s kitchen to aid your memory. Later, you can go back to the photo when you read your notes. Where was their fridge, where was the stove? Where did they put used utensils and cutting boards?</p>
<p>You can also photograph screens of computers and gadgets if you have the participant’s consent to do this. A software-based screenshot might, in theory, be superior—but if the user does not know how to take a screenshot, a camera is a handy way to capture the screen.</p>
<p>You should be able to take photos with your camera or phone quickly and reliably. Use a device you know. The only setting that I use is the exposure compensation. This function is useful when the automatic setting for exposure fails you and an important part of the image is totally dark or disappears in light. Exposure compensation allows adjusting for that.</p>
<h3 id="recording-audio">Recording audio</h3>
<p>I recommend using audio recordings—it is a useful complement to your notes. Audio recording allows you to listen to what was said in the research session.</p>
<p>Audio recordings are not a perfect capture of everything that happened: If the participant points to an ingredient or utensil and refers to “this”, the recording is not much of help. People use such expressions a lot when they talk about activities, so you need your notes to complement the audio.</p>
<p>Photos and audio records complement notes and sketches well. They are, however, not superior to manual recordings: They are different, and you can use that difference to combine their strengths.</p>
<h2 id="assure-and-encourage-the-participant">Assure and encourage the participant</h2>
<p>At the beginning of the research session, the participant may feel insecure. Most people do not have experience as research participants, so they might be concerned about doing something wrong or unhelpful. To make the participant feel comfortable, it is important to support the participant and show them that you are interested in their work and explanations.</p>
<h3 id="affirm-that-you-listen">Affirm that you listen</h3>
<p>You ask questions that aim for descriptions and longer answers. This means, you <em>listen</em> to the participant most of the time. You probably have some intuitive reactions that signal that you are listening—like nodding or saying “yes” or “mm-mhh”. These are ways to ensure the participant that you are listening to what they are saying.</p>
<p>Asking follow-up questions also shows that you care about in what participants say and do. Follow-up questions can be about topics the participant mentioned or workflows that they demonstrated. You can also summarize what you heard and saw: “So, you said that…”. This allows you to check your understanding and show that you listened keenly—without judging what is being said.</p>
<p>Some participants may assume that you can not learn anything from them assuming you already know about their work. For example, if you are from the company that developed a product they use, they might assume that you know about everything they possibly could do with it. Even if you know the product well, you probably do not know how people use it in practice and what its limitations are in such situations. You can tell them: “Thanks, it can seem this way, but I only create a small part of (Product) development and I am not an expert on (whatever the product is used for). I think I can learn a lot about how (product) is actually used in the real world!”</p>
<h3 id="make-a-friendly-impression-through-body-language.">Make a friendly impression through body language.</h3>
<p>Probably, you would not make a bad impression anyway, but let’s go through it nevertheless: Don’t appear angry or stern by frowning and crossing arms and legs. Don’t look careless by leaning back and looking to the ceiling. During the interview, show reactions to what the participant says or does. If you take notes, looking at the participant is not possible all the time—but try to show that you are attentive when you can.</p>
<h2 id="be-open-to-how-the-participant-works-and-thinks">Be open to how the participant works and thinks</h2>
<p>In user need research, you want to learn from participants. This is exciting as you have no way of knowing what you will learn. What you learn unexpectedly is often critical to developing your understanding of the participants and to recognizing potential risks and opportunities. However, it is not easy to be open to these experiences. Not knowing what you learn is unsettling. In our everyday lives, we often trade the openness for efficiency and predictable outcomes. To stay open to how the participant works and thinks is a skill that must be learned—but there are some basic principles that can be of great help: Asking open questions, not suggesting answers, and embracing the value of silence.</p>
<h3 id="ask-open-questions">Ask open questions</h3>
<p>Open questions are questions that do prompt longer, descriptive answers. You already read about open questions in the <a href="#prepareResearch">section on writing your research session questions</a>. Open questions can be contrasted with closed questions, which have only a closed range of meaningful answers. Asking participants open questions will lead to concrete and descriptive answers and potentially lead to insights that you did not expect.</p>
<p>I’ll revisit the subject here because only a part of the questions you ask will be questions you wrote down previously. You will also come up with questions that are responding to what you hear or see when being with the participant. It often makes sense to ask these questions as open questions, too.</p>
<p>In order to be able to come up with open questions during the conversation, it can be helpful to have some easy-to-remember phrases that help to ask open questions:</p>
<ul>
<li>Starting your questions with “Can you tell me more about…” invites descriptive, longer answers: “Can you tell me more how cooking for a large family is like?”</li>
<li>Asking “How”-Questions invites description or demonstration of activities: “How do you go about choosing recipes” or “How did you learn what ‘sautéing’ meant?”</li>
</ul>
<p>These phrases are useful for asking open questions. There are also phrases you might want to avoid as they usually start closed questions.</p>
<p>When it comes to product development, it’s quite tempting to ask “would you…” questions, like “Would you like to bookmark recipes?” Such questions are problematic for two reasons:</p>
<ul>
<li>They ask the participant to make assumptions about their future, which is not very reliable.</li>
<li>They often invite short answers like “yes” or “No”, like “Yes, bookmarks sound good.”</li>
</ul>
<p>“Is” is another word that often leads to closed questions that are answered with “yes” or “no”: “Is it difficult to cook a risotto?”—“No, not really.”</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Tip:</em> Sometimes closed questions can be a stepping stone to asking open questions. “Would you like to bookmark recipes?” points to a relevant activity: About re-finding and organizing recipes. An open question based on this could be “How do you look up recipes again which you liked in the past?”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>By using phrases like “Can you tell me more” or “How do you…” you can ask open questions in response to what participant says or does. While closed-ended questions are sometimes helpful, more often they are not. Rephrasing closed “Would you” and “Is…” questions can help you to get more interesting answers.</p>
<h3 id="rightAnswers">Do not suggest “right” or “wrong” answers or processes</h3>
<p>A common concern of researchers is influencing the participants. One way to deal with this concern is to define how questions should be asked by giving a strict script.</p>
<p>But creating artificially constant conditions would cause you to lose the strengths of the methods described here: Being able to find out about new and unexpected things and gaining understanding of the how-and-why by reacting on the situation. Each participant and their context are different. You can accommodate this by adjusting the research to the context. This would not be possible if you would ask the same questions every time. Being able to react to situations is essential and a strength of the research method.</p>
<p>However, what I think is relevant, is to consider how your own assumptions and wishes can lead to suggesting favorable answers. Such influence in research takes different forms: “This is good, isn’t it?!” Is a very obvious influence, since it as it bluntly expresses what you think the answer should be: a “yes.”</p>
<p>There are also less obvious influences, for example by asking “Would you like a better version of this?”—who doesn’t want something better?! Again, the answer the participant is going to give is “yes”.</p>
<p>In addition to your questions, you could also suggest “right” ways of doing something with direct reactions. For example, if a participant says “I can’t read the recipes on the website, and there is no mobile view to make them readable”, it may be tempting to say: “No, there is!” if the participant did not notice the feature.</p>
<p>Remember, you want to find out what your participant is doing and why. Correcting the participant immediately rarely leads to new insights. Instead, you can simply ask “what do you do then?”, or, if talking about the function itself is important to you, you can ask “What is an example for a website that does it better?”</p>
<p>That being said, if you can clearly help the participant with a simple bit of information, explore the topic and share your knowledge immediately afterward —while not “correcting” the participant: “That was very helpful for me to learn! The team building the website will appreciate learning about such problems. What they assumed is that people trigger mobile view by…”</p>
<p>You may also be surprised or even annoyed by steps or actions in a workflow of the user that seem outright superfluous.<br />
<em>Participant</em>: “When I want to share a recipe, I take a photo of the screen like this… and then I can forward the image in a chat”<br />
You may think that this is pretty inefficient and be tempted to say “Why don’t you use the share-function or copy the web address?—that would be far more efficient!”</p>
<p>No one does inefficient actions because they are inefficient. Assume that the participant has a reason. Try to figure out what that reason might be.</p>
<p>Again, you could ask: “What’s the reason for you are doing it this way?”—and ask follow-up questions to further explore the issue. For example, they may prefer images because they show directly in chats and can easily be tapped to zoom in, whereas the original website would open in another app.</p>
<p>Don’t be afraid to react toward the participant and what they say or do. Adapting to the situation is essential in our research. But don’t judge the actions or answers of a participant. You are interested in the how and why of their work. When you judge what they are doing as right or wrong, questions that you could explore are cut off prematurely.</p>
<h2 id="silence-feels-strange-but-its-okay">Silence feels strange, but it’s okay</h2>
<p>Sometimes, the participant takes time to think before answering. Intuitively you might want to fill the silence to help the participant.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Researcher</em>: “Can you tell me what happened after you put the pepper in the dish?”<br />
(pause) “…was it okay?”</p>
<p><em>Participant</em>: “Yeah, I think-”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is tempting to fill the silence with suggestions for the answer. But it can turn an open question (“can you describe…?”) into a closed question (“can you describe… was it…?”) or prevent the participant coming up with their answer on their own.</p>
<p>Try to tolerate the silence. Usually the participant answers within a few seconds. If you notice silence which you want to fill, count to three or five before probing further. Then, ask about the question rather than giving suggestions: “What makes the question hard to answer?” or “Can you tell me what you are thinking about?”</p>
<p>This way, you can help the participant to continue with elaborating on the question you are asking, even if it takes them some though to answer it.</p>
<h2 id="take-a-closer-look">Take a closer look</h2>
<p>Early in the research session, you only have some basic knowledge about what the participants do. You know some terms and what they describe. Later, you try to learn how it all connects, understand what the participant thinks is relevant and why, and see and experience easily glossed-over implicit knowledge about activities and skills.</p>
<p>To learn more, you can probe with follow-up-questions, check your understanding, and ask for demonstrations.</p>
<h3 id="probing">Probing</h3>
<p>When I learn something new, I often have the feeling that this is just the beginning of a larger topic. In this case, I can “probe” for further information.</p>
<p>You already know one way to do this: silence. Just as you might intuitively want to fill the silence, the participant may just step in and fill the silence with further information.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Participant</em>: “Well, I found that recipe and I tried it once, but it was so-so”<br />
(Short pause, researcher nods)</p>
<p><em>Participant</em>: “I don’t know what the problem was, I guess something about the timing. Everything was just mushy”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Alternatively, you can also repeat the most recent statement or words the participant has said.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Participant</em>: “Well, I found that recipe and I tried it once, but it was so-so”</p>
<p><em>Researcher</em>: “So-so?”</p>
<p><em>Participant</em>:“I don’t know what the problem was, I guess something about the timing. Everything was just mushy.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That way, you can help participants keep going without changing course by asking new questions.</p>
<p>If you want to know more about something specific, you can also ask directly: “Please tell me— What would you do if you had to wait?”</p>
<p>Asking directly can be useful if the participant has answered rather vaguely:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Participant</em>: “Well, I try to get some more information and try to find out where it got stuck”</p>
<p><em>Researcher</em>: “Could you describe to me how you would do that?”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If you gather your data by observing or drawing diagrams with the participant, direct questions are very useful for exploring the work.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Researcher</em>: “You added pepper without first tasting or checking the recipe—how did you know it was needed?”</p>
<p>Or, when co-documenting with the participant in a diagram:</p>
<p><em>Researcher</em>: “This graph seems to indicate that you were in a pretty good mood here. Could you explain a little bit why you seem less happy here [Points]?”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These methods allow you to gain additional information and show the participant that you are listening and observing carefully. Following up on observations and information is important for learning. However, sometimes you want to check your understanding. Even if everything makes sense to you, it is often good to check if your understanding makes sense to them.</p>
<h3 id="check-your-understanding">Check your understanding</h3>
<p>To check my understanding, I often go back to what the participant talked about or showed me before. I tell them how I interpret a situation based on what I have learned from them and ask them if it makes sense to them. In this case, even closed (yes/no) questions are fine.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Researcher</em>: “You said it looks good, now. Did you think the pasta is ready now…?”</p>
<p><em>Participant</em>: “No, I meant the sauce. It looks good, just like on the picture in the recipe.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There are several benefits of checking your understanding:</p>
<ul>
<li>Avoid confusion and misinterpreted research due to misunderstandings.</li>
<li>Show that you care about the participant’s expertise.</li>
<li>Encourage participants to continue and tell you more.</li>
</ul>
<p>For checking, you need to refer to something that you want to verify. You often need to describe it to the participant:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Researcher</em>: “So: If I wanted to cook something, would you first see what ingredients you have and then try to match a recipe?”</p>
<p><em>Participant</em>: “Yes… I mean, somewhat. It matters. I don’t want things to go to waste.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>To refer to what you learned, use your notes as memory aid, and don’t be afraid to just point at things if you do not remember the correct term. The participant will tell you what the thing is called. For example, you could ask: “Can you tell me more about this does?” (points at a utensil)? Or when co-documenting: “Here (points to diagram) your motivation seemed to change quite quickly—can you tell me more about that?”</p>
<p>By checking your interpretations of the participant’s descriptions and activities, you can avoid misunderstandings and gain additional insights.</p>
<h3 id="ask-for-examples">Ask for examples</h3>
<p>When participants mention an activity or tool they use, ask them if you could observe the activity or tool in action. Seeing an example avoids misunderstandings and offers rich opportunities for further insights:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Participant</em>: “…so I would just use the food processor for that.”</p>
<p><em>Researcher</em>: “Can you show me how you do this?”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This avoids ambiguity as to what they meant by “use.” It is easiest for researcher and participant to look at it together.</p>
<p>You can also ask for examples to dig deeper into a topic. The participant may have mentioned a process before, and you can build upon this and ask to learn more about it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Researcher</em>: “You said you would look on YouTube how to cut this. Can you show me how you do that?”</p>
<p>Or, without asking for a demonstration:<br />
<em>Researcher</em>: “…what would you expect to find?”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Asking for examples provides a natural way to show your interest, expand on topics, and to move from a conversation to an observation. Switching methods and topics in your research is important to figuring out what is relevant to you, and that what I will cover in the next section.</p>
<blockquote>
<h4 id="we-have-already-built-something-why-not-use-it">We have already built something, why not use it?!</h4>
<p>When discussing <a href="#projectTypes">project types in the first chapter</a>, I wrote that user need research should be done early in projects. Often, however, people have already started designing something, such as a prototype or a concept document, and they will ask you if you can’t make this part of your research. You can, but some caveats apply.</p>
<p>When you bring up an idea or prototype, steer the conversation towards the effects on the participant’s work. Do not focus on whether they like it or whether they find it useful.</p>
<p>I introduce such ideas or prototypes by saying something like: “There are always a lot of ideas floating around. A colleague said they think about…” This reduces the risk of the participant assuming I am excited about the idea and wanting validation instead of learning from them.</p>
<p>Then, I show them the prototype or the idea. Sometimes it is working user interface, sometimes a competitor’s tool, sometimes just a few sketches or diagrams. But keep it simple—the gist of it should fit on one screen or printout, otherwise you will only create confusion.</p>
<p>After presenting the prototype or idea, focus your questions on how the participant expects it to affect their daily lives. You could ask: “How do you think would this fit into your work?” or “We do not know enough about your field of work, so we were wondering what the impact of such a product would be.” If the participant hesitates, it can be helpful to ask what <em>other people</em> might think: “What would your [peers/team/family…] think about using this?” This is sometimes easier to answer and can yield insights into the participant’s social environment.</p>
<p>The participant’s response will help you to learn about their motivations, activities, and problems. For example, they might tell you: “Yeah, this idea keeps coming up. But it will not be used. Just doing it by browsing takes time, but it is fun. I do not want to make recipe selection more efficient!” or they tell you “I currently use Google Docs for this and only mention people there. But I’m having a hard time keeping track of all the feedback I got, and I sometimes wish it would be more orderly” You can then explore the topics deeper and ask: “Can you show me how your process works in Google Docs?”</p>
<p>I also had people who directly dismissed or were indifferent to what I was showing. They could easily tell why. This is actually great, as it avoids wasting more time and money on an idea.</p>
<p>If you use prototypes or ideas in your research, it should be clear to your colleagues that you do this to learn more about the <em>participant’s work</em>. When people ask you to “evaluate the concept” or “test the prototype” they want to learn about the <em>concept</em> or <em>prototype</em> and should do a usability test instead.</p>
<p>Introducing existing ideas and prototypes can help you learn more about the participant and the context they work in. The results can inform you next steps in working on the prototype or idea. This can only work successfully when you and your colleagues agree that the focus is on learning about the participant, not the idea or the prototype itself.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2 id="steer-the-course-of-research">Steer the course of research</h2>
<p>A research session follows a structure: like in a film, you get to know the world and the protagonists before delving deeper into core issues. At the end you tie up loose ends and summarize what you learned. In order to navigate you and the participant smoothly from the beginning to the end of the research session, you need to provide guide topics and methods of the research session.</p>
<h3 id="changing-between-topics">Changing between topics</h3>
<p>During the research session, you cover different topics. You can set some topics in advance because you think they are important. In order to use your time efficiently and to learn about the topics that are relevant to you, you sometimes have to nudge the participant in the direction that is interests you.</p>
<p>You may want to switch between topics if:</p>
<ul>
<li>There is probably nothing more to be found out.</li>
<li>You have covered enough and need to move to another topic before time runs out (If this happens, plan in more time in the future)</li>
<li>The participant is focusing on a topic that is not in the focus of your research.</li>
</ul>
<p>To switch between topics, you can express your interest in the next topic: “Can you tell me more about recipes that you use frequently?”</p>
<p>Before moving to the next topic, you can end the section by restating what you learned previously: “Let me briefly summarize: […]. So, what would also be interesting for me: You said you have recipes that you go back to again and again—can you tell me about this?”</p>
<p>Switching topics can be particularly useful when a participant gets carried away with a topic that is not relevant for you.: “…there is another topic is important to me: You said you have recipes that you go back to again and again—can you tell me about this?”</p>
<p>To make the change of topics less abrupt, and to show that you have been listening carefully, you can refer to a topic that has been mentioned, but not yet explored: “When drawing the diagram, you mentioned that you would ask your mom about cooking—what is it you ask her?” or “You mentioned that you sometimes prefer printed recipes on paper. What is useful about them?”</p>
<p>By switching the topic, you can cover the topics you need to know about and get your research back on track. But sometimes you do not want to switch the topic, but change the way you approach the topic.</p>
<h3 id="switch-methods">Switch methods</h3>
<p>Each method highlights different aspects of the participant’s motivations, activities, and problems. Therefore, it makes sense to transition between methods in your research. By using different methods on the same topic, you can gain new perspectives on it.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>(Here is a possible switch from interview to observation)<br />
<em>Researcher</em>: “You told me your general process of cooking a meal. Do you think we could cook something now, so I get to see it in practice?”</p>
<p>In this case, you already have a description of the activity. By observing the process, you can gain a less abstract, more specific, and contextual look at it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The methods you use on the same topic can be intertwined. For example, during the demonstration of the activity, the participant may add to their description: “[During cooking]I did not mention this before—I add some annotations to the recipes, in case I found some variant that I like or which is useful.”</p>
<p>Often, a new topic also brings with it a different method. Perhaps, you have heard about motivations of the participant and now would like to explore an activity: “You said you enjoy getting inspiration from browsing the web. Could you show me how you do that?”</p>
<p>Or you might want to talk in detail about something a participant just sketched in a diagram: “In this diagram, you mentioned that it is important to know what foods your kids like. Can you tell me more about what happens when it goes wrong?”</p>
<p>Again, the methods can be intertwined, so that information from one method is brought in when using another method: “Your child would be cranky if they do not like the food, and that easily messes up the schedule… let me add that to the diagram.” I then write “kids cranky:bad” in the diagram, so I can remember it.</p>
<p>Using different methods and switching between them may seem like additional work. However, it can make your job easier while improving the outcome —just like choosing the right tools in manual crafts.</p>
<h2 id="wrapping-up-a-research-session">Wrapping up a research session</h2>
<p>Research sessions often take place in scheduled time slots. This means you can plan ahead and start to wrap up when you have about 20 minutes left, giving you enough time to tie up loose ends, summarize your understanding and then formally close the session.</p>
<p>Ending the session is like starting the session, but in reverse order. Starting meant moving from the predictable to new experiences; ending a session means moving from the new experiences and learning to a formal end.</p>
<p>As the research session draws to a close, you will want to tie up loose threads: Consider what you could not yet make sense of. Ask the participant for what you still don’t know. Don’t be afraid to express your lack of understanding.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Researcher: “There is one thing that I still do not understand: You mentioned you collect online recipes, but we have not talked about how you store them, to come back to the ones you like. How does this work?”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>You may not be able to tie up <em>all</em> loose ends. Focus on what is important to you on and what seems to be particularly interesting about this participant: You may be wondering about how the participants organizes recipes in general, but this participant cooks for their family on a regular basis. You haven’t spoken to many participants about cooking for others, so you could focus on that aspect provided you can still learn more about organizing recipes from other participants.</p>
<p>A good way to guide towards the end of the session is to summarize what you have learned. This allows you to demonstrate what you and the participant have achieved together. It also gives the participant the opportunity to correct you if there are any misunderstandings.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Researcher</em>: “I see that we approach the end of our meeting time. Thanks for giving me these insights into your work. Let me summarize what I learned from you: …”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>After listening to what the participant has to say about your summary and taking notes of it, thank the participant for their time and for what you learned. I also let participants know that they can contact me if they have any questions about the research itself or the use of the data and give them my email address to contact me if needed. In my experience, it is rare for participants follow up, and when they do, it’s often with helpful hints or an example for something that they could not easily explain in the research session.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Note:</em> Oh, before you go, something very important!</p>
<p>In some cases, the participant might start opening up a new and interesting topic just before the end of the research session. I don’t know why this happens. Maybe it is because they considered the topic to be important but were too polite to push for it themselves and hoped that the conversation would eventually get to the topic.</p>
<p>You could expand the session time. It is great to learn more, and it seems that the participant would like to let you know about this. However, it might also expand the time beyond what the participant gets incentivized for or what they actually planned. The best solution is usually to ask the participant openly.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2 id="after-the-research-session">After the research session</h2>
<p>After gathering data, we need to take care that we can use the rich data in our later analysis. To get the most out of your data, you should complement your notes, sketches, and diagrams and add some information about the context of the data gathering to fill gaps and to help you to organize the data.</p>
<p>There are two ways to complement your data: From memory and from audio recordings and photos.</p>
<p>Complementing your data should be done as soon as possible after the research session. I recommend scheduling the data gathering so that you have some time right after the session to complement your data.</p>
<h3 id="debrief-with-your-research-partneror-alone">Debrief with your research partner—or alone</h3>
<p>In the debriefing you mentally go through the research session again and note important insights or new questions. This is easier and more interesting when you are researching together with a partner since you can share your impressions with each other.</p>
<p>Debriefs can vary in length. I suggest scheduling at least 10 minutes, but for an interesting session, you can also fill 20 to 30 minutes.</p>
<p>There is no set structure for a debrief, but there are some points to pay attention to:</p>
<ul>
<li>What was surprising? What led you to develop your understanding?</li>
<li>What was similar to previous research sessions? What matched your expectations?</li>
<li>Which questions could you not answer? What are new questions that you have?</li>
<li>What would you do in the next research session that builds upon these experiences?</li>
</ul>
<!-- roundtrip-->
<p>Debriefs are helpful to get an initial structure to what you learned. They also provide closure and are a first preparation to both future research sessions with participants and analyzing the data. They have their strongest effects when done with a research partner. Aside from the advantages of exchanging and combining your experiences, they are also a great social experience that gives a sense of mutual achievement.</p>
<h3 id="complementing-data-from-memory">Complementing data from memory</h3>
<p>Complementing your notes, sketches, and diagrams is important: Some data may make perfect sense to you now, but since memory fades, it does not make sense anymore later. Complement and clarify your data, so you can still comprehend them after your memories of the experience are not fresh anymore.</p>
<figure>
<img src="images/03_dataGathering_MemoryFades.png" id="memoryFades" alt="A series of 3 sketches, illustrating forgetting; they loose more and more detail." alt="" /><figcaption>You quickly forget about details you heard or saw</figcaption>
</figure>
<blockquote>
<p>In my notes I have the line “No Milk.” This can mean many things, so I give some context here. I add to my notes: “Needs recipes with <em>No milk</em> because: milk = stomachache. Dairy free recipes: Vegan blogs as go-to-source”.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Similarly, if my writing is rather messy, I rewrite some words to ensure that I can later decipher what I wrote (See the <a href="#correctingWritingNotes">following figure</a>). I write and draw my complements in another color than the color of the original notes. When I wrote my notes during the interview with a blue pen, I use black for the complements or vice versa, since I like to keep track of what I did in which step of the process.</p>
<!-- TODO -->
<figure>
<img src="images/03_dataGathering_correctNotes.png" id="correctingWritingNotes" alt="a crop of a sheet of paper with notes that I annotated after the research session. I rewrote a word that was barely readable (“WASHED”) and added the context information that the person cooking was unsure if they could prepare the lentils quick enough before the onions were done." alt="" /><figcaption>A sheet of paper with notes that I annotated after the research session. I rewrote a word that was barely readable (“WASHED”) and added the context information that the person cooking was unsure if they could prepare the lentils quick enough before the onions were done.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Using different colors is useful for another type of complement: Ideas or remarks in connection to your notes. When I go through the notes, I often have some ideas for a design or a question that I would like to explore in a future interview. I write them down in a third color, or I prefix the note with “IDEA:” or “QUESTION” to prevent myself from mixing my ideas with empirical data.</p>
<h3 id="transcribe-notes">Transcribe notes</h3>
<p>Because they are often written quickly, your notes will usually be rather incoherent: Single words, small sketches, and longer sentences will all be scattered on the paper.</p>
<figure>
<img src="images/03_dataGathering_transcribedNotes.png" id="cleanTranscript" alt="Clean transcript. Text: Person looking at the next step in the recipe, reads silently. I ask: What do you think?→ I now need to add the washed lentils. I wonder if I can do this before the onions are done. Looks at onions: I guess that’s fine[→she can make it in time]" alt="" /><figcaption>The clean transcript of the <a href="#correctingWritingNotes">previous figure</a></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Tidy your data and transcribe the notes in a digital document. In your digital document, put one statement in each line.</p>
<p>Avoid tying together two separate statements on one line. This needs to be balanced with another need: Making sure that the data you put into one line is meaningful on its own and is not just a single word or a description free of any context and thus hard to set in relation to other data.</p>
<p>Here are notes that are too short and not meaningful on its own:</p>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>making space</li>
<li>shopping</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>If there is any way to add the actual context (from memory or by using other notes) these notes should be complemented with that context. This should help to learn why the person made space and why they went shopping. However, there can also be too much content in one line if it covers several topics at once.</p>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>For cooking, you need free space in the kitchen, which is often occupied by things, so you need to move stuff around to get the space you need for chopping or peeling vegetables.</li>
<li>If they can plan ahead, they go shopping on Saturdays to buy what they need for the coming week, including groceries for cooking. More often though, they go spontaneously, since the supermarket is nearby.</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>Too much content in each line makes it hard to analyze the data later.</p>
<p>In most cases, you can split lines that cover different observations or statements to multiple lines that still deliver enough content to be understood:</p>
<blockquote>
<ul>