Data Gathering: More Methods

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Data Gathering (More) Methods

• INFO 360 A
• Spring 2009

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Agenda

• Announcements
• Questionnaire Practice
• Observing
• Direct observation in the field
• Direct observation in the lab
• Indirect observation
• P1 Project Feedback
• Whats next?
• Course Feedback

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Announcements

• Your questions, comments, issues, appreciations?
• Upcoming work
• Read Chapter 1, 2-3 (last week), 7 (this week)
• Read Chapter 6 (for next week)
• Third quiz next week
• P2 Project Scope, Field Work, Three Ideas
• A2 Observation Action

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Design Activity Devising Questions for
Questionnaires

• Scenario You would like to determine how people
  share videos online and what features they find
  useful and not useful. Propose two questions
  and a plan for creating and running the
  questionnaire.

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Observations in the field

• Helps you understand peoples context, task,
  activities, goals
• What people do is different than what people say
  they do
• People are notoriously poor and describing their
  work

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What to pay attention to

• Key features

• Questions

• Space
• Actors
• Activities
• Objects / workarounds
• Acts
• Events / triggers
• Time
• Goals
• Feelings

• How is the physical space adapted to the job?
• What are the key constraints on the job?
• Where are strategic decisions made?
• Where are tactical decisions made?

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Example Making Museums more Active

• Suppose you wanted to make museums more active,
  allowing people greater opportunities to do
  things. What field work would you do

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Laboratory studies

• Useful for studying the details of how people
  perform
• Goals
• Tasks
• Action sequences

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Example
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Indirect observations

• Diary studies
• Cultural probes
• Interaction logs (Beta software)

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Design Exercise Improving MS Word

• Suppose you wanted to improve the spell
  correcting feature in Word. Describe TWO
  different kinds of indirect observational
  approaches that might be useful.

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Summary Consider study needs and purposes,
pros/cons of methods

• Interviews
• Focus groups
• Questionnaires
• Direct observation in the field
• Direct observation in the lab
• Indirect observation

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Whats next?

• Interaction Paradigms
• Read Chapter 6 (for next week)