A Mixed-Methods Approach to Ethnography (Caroline Little)

•

2 likes•1,704 views

As UX professionals we may not often get the opportunity to observe and interview users in naturalistic settings. Ethnographic techniques, such as observation and contextual inquiry, are not as popular as more traditional, lab-based methods like user experience testing or user interviews. Researchers can often be daunted by the complex methodology and staffing needs necessary to coordinate studies with an ethnographic component, and clients often perceive this type of research as too expensive and time-consuming. However, understanding usersÕ latent needs can be the key to developing a successful product, especially when starting from the conceptual stage. This presentation will discuss when applied ethnography is best used and how a mixed-method approach to a study can create more meaningful insights with less cost and effort than a traditional ethnography study.

Design

Caroline Little | UXPA International | Thursday, 24 July 2014
A Mixed-Method Approach to
Ethnography
(or… how I ended up doing research in the rain)
PRESENTED BY
Caroline Little
User Experience Lead, SPARK Experience
!
 
!

Caroline Little | UXPA International | Thursday, 24 July 2014 2

Caroline Little | UXPA International | Thursday, 24 July 2014 3

Caroline Little | UXPA International | Thursday, 24 July 2014 4

Caroline Little | UXPA International | Thursday, 24 July 2014 5
Meet
SARAH.
!
!
!

Caroline Little | UXPA International | Thursday, 24 July 2014 6
Meet
ALEX.
!
!
!

Caroline Little | UXPA International | Thursday, 24 July 2014 7

Caroline Little | UXPA International | Thursday, 24 July 2014 8
Business viability
Possible with Technology
Market viability
Technology
possibility
INNOVATION.
User need

Caroline Little | UXPA International | Thursday, 24 July 2014 9
The approach:
Mixed Methods.
!
!
!

Caroline Little | UXPA International | Thursday, 24 July 2014 10
Mixed Methods:
In-person.
!
!
!

Title of Presentation | Date of Presentation
1 1
Observation.

Title of Presentation | Date of Presentation
1 2
!
Activities.
Environments.
Interactions.
Objects.
Users.
!
!

Title of Presentation | Date of Presentation
1 3
Contextual Inquiry/Interviewing.

Caroline Little | UXPA International | Thursday, 24 July 2014 14
Mixed Methods:
Remote.
!
!
!

Caroline Little | UXPA International | Thursday, 24 July 2014 15
Diary study.

Caroline Little | UXPA International | Thursday, 24 July 2014 16
Diary study.
Observation.
Contextual Inquiry.
!
Collected by a researcher

In-depth snapshot in time

Researcher time and resource-
intensive
!
Reported by a participant

Longitudinal

Demanding of the participant

Caroline Little | UXPA International | Thursday, 24 July 2014 17
Mixed Methods:
In-person OR Remote.
!
!
!

Caroline Little | UXPA International | Thursday, 24 July 2014 18
Participatory Design Sessions.

Caroline Little | UXPA International | Thursday, 24 July 2014 19
Mixed Methods: Beneﬁts.
!
!
!
!
Structured

Complementary methodology

Additional data without added signiﬁcant cost

More touch points between researcher and participant

Caroline Little | UXPA International | Thursday, 24 July 2014 20
Lessons Learned:
Tips & Tricks.
!
!
!

Caroline Little | UXPA International | Thursday, 24 July 2014 21
Project Team.
!
!
!
!
Set deﬁned roles &
responsibilities

Ensure frequent
communication

Caroline Little | UXPA International | Thursday, 24 July 2014 22
Participants.
!
!
!
!
Consider over-recruiting

Look for some outliers

Dyads may be useful

Caroline Little | UXPA International | Thursday, 24 July 2014 23
In-person research.
!
!
!
!
Come with a plan, but
be ﬂexible

Take lots of photos

Caroline Little | UXPA International | Thursday, 24 July 2014 24
Diary study.
!
!
!
!
Choose the right tool
for your user base

Start participants in
waves

Be proactive

Caroline Little | UXPA International | Thursday, 24 July 2014 25
Analysis.
!
!
!
!
Embrace ambiguity

Create participant
proﬁles

Drive analysis toward
deliverables

Title of Presentation | Date of Presentation
2 6
CONTACT
Caroline Little
User Experience Lead
caroline@sparkexperience.com
www.sparkexperience.com

Similar to A Mixed-Methods Approach to Ethnography (Caroline Little)

NISO Open Discovery Initiative - ALA Midwinter 2015

National Information Standards Organization (NISO)

Sargeant and Lindquist_IDRC2014_8.25.14b

Global Risk Forum GRFDavos

Too Many Varied User Requirements for Digital Humanities Projects

MaxKemman

IDRC 2014_correction_02

Global Risk Forum GRFDavos

Barriers to Adoption for Learning Analytics at a Dutch University

Eduworks Network

Overcoming barriers to adoption for Learning Analytics in a Dutch University

job_knowledge_research

CHMUTINA-Towards integrated urban security and resilience-ID1011-IDRC2014_b

Global Risk Forum GRFDavos

IDRC14-ppp-GB ANT presentation

Global Risk Forum GRFDavos

PROVIA Greenroom Event at the First ever UNEA on 25 June, 2014

PROVIA

ANDS_TrainingTheTrainer

Darya Vanichkina

Participatory Exhibition Design

Silvia Fantoni

Earney2007

University Health and Medical Librarians Group

Sargeant and Lindquist_IDRC2014_8.25.14_final

Global Risk Forum GRFDavos

URBACT Summer University 2013 - Labs - Promoting Entrepreneurship - Session 3

URBACT

Todd Carpenter Presentation at Project Muse Publishers Meeting - April 24, 2014

National Information Standards Organization (NISO)

Community-based collaborative disaster management approaches in the new infor...

Data4Resilience

Советы по усилению редколлегии журнала... Aliaksandr Birukou

Margarita Saydalieva

KornakovaMarchAmethodforlearningacrossdifferentdisastercasesexampleoftheurban...

Global Risk Forum GRFDavos

Kornakova marchamethodforlearningacrossdifferentdisastercasesexampleoftheurba...

Global Risk Forum GRFDavos

DataShare: Empowering Researcher Data Curation

University of California Curation Center

Similar to A Mixed-Methods Approach to Ethnography (Caroline Little) (20)

NISO Open Discovery Initiative - ALA Midwinter 2015

Sargeant and Lindquist_IDRC2014_8.25.14b

Too Many Varied User Requirements for Digital Humanities Projects

IDRC 2014_correction_02

Barriers to Adoption for Learning Analytics at a Dutch University

Overcoming barriers to adoption for Learning Analytics in a Dutch University

CHMUTINA-Towards integrated urban security and resilience-ID1011-IDRC2014_b

IDRC14-ppp-GB ANT presentation

PROVIA Greenroom Event at the First ever UNEA on 25 June, 2014

ANDS_TrainingTheTrainer

Participatory Exhibition Design

Earney2007

Sargeant and Lindquist_IDRC2014_8.25.14_final

URBACT Summer University 2013 - Labs - Promoting Entrepreneurship - Session 3

Todd Carpenter Presentation at Project Muse Publishers Meeting - April 24, 2014

Community-based collaborative disaster management approaches in the new infor...

Советы по усилению редколлегии журнала... Aliaksandr Birukou

KornakovaMarchAmethodforlearningacrossdifferentdisastercasesexampleoftheurban...

Kornakova marchamethodforlearningacrossdifferentdisastercasesexampleoftheurba...

DataShare: Empowering Researcher Data Curation

More from UXPA International

Imagine creating experiences for your rookie designers’ first couple years that are rewarding, enriching, and full of learning — without taking all your time or energy to manage. We’ll share techniques any team leader can put into practice using real-life examples from associate programs, apprenticeships, and internships. Topics include onboarding, varied work challenges, developing multiple capabilities, buddy systems, group sharing, guest speakers, time with executives, and mentorship. We’ll also share how to operationalize learning, soft skills like communication and collaboration, setting boundaries, time management, achieving deep work, and more skills we all wish we were explicitly taught early on. We’ll focus on modern-day associate programs, but even if you can’t create a full-fledged program, you’ll leave this session with ideas to use with your fledgling professionals. The benefits go beyond efficiency; it’s a foundation for culture, camaraderie, autonomy, and mastery.

UXPA 2023: Start Strong - Lessons learned from associate programs to platform...

UXPA International

Digital advances are being made at a rapid-fire pace, yet disability inclusivity continues to fall short of the digital revolution. As the number of people living with disabilities rises, the time to take digital accessibility to the next level is now. Let’s disrupt inaccessibility together! Come hear about a multi-part discovery research and ideation project informing foundational UX designs for our customers. You’ll get insights from our unique study, which are widely applicable across industries, and walk away with tips and inspiration to kick off your own accessibility-focused discovery and ideation. Only YOU can prevent inaccessibility – are you in?

UXPA 2023: Disrupting Inaccessibility: Applying A11Y-Focused Discovery & Idea...

UXPA International

UXPA 2023 Poster: ESG & Sustainable UX

UXPA International

UXPA 2023 Poster: The Two Tracks of UX Under Agile: Tactical and Strategic

UXPA International

User experience can be drastically elevated by combining data science insights with user-based insights from research. Data analytics on its own can make themes and correlations difficult to explain and to provide accurate recommendations. For example, themes identified via large global surveys and usage data can be better understood with UX insights from focused user research, such as user interviews and/or cognitive walkthroughs. This presentation will highlight the complimentary nature of data science and UX and will focus on the benefits of bringing the two disciplines together. This will be buttressed with practical examples of enterprise projects and applications that combined data and skills from the two disciplines, guidance on how the two disciplines can better work together, and the skills needed to improve as a UX professional when working with data science teams.

UXPA 2023: Data science and UX: Smarter together

UXPA International

Users do not always accurately describe what they mean or feel. There are many reasons for this, ranging from politeness to poor introspection, to lack of sufficient technical vocabulary. Fortunately, UX researchers have tools in their trade to deduce what was really meant. We call this UX Fracking, a mixed methods approach that is optimized for extracting hidden user insights. We will illustrate the dangers of inadequate, superficial research, and how this may lead to outcomes incapable of addressing the users’ core issues. We will explore ways to avoid these pitfalls by leveraging mixed research methods to test hypotheses about the users’ intent and needs. This starts with a thorough understanding of who the user is, their goals, and how they work today, to an approach that combines surveys, interviews, and comment analysis with behavioral observation, and finally, validating the newly discovered user insights with the users themselves.

UXPA 2023: UX Fracking: Using Mixed Methods to Extract Hidden Insights

UXPA International

UXPA 2023 Poster: Are virtual spaces the future of video conferencing?

UXPA International

This session walks through the concept of user roles as an alternative to personas as a means to generate and disseminate user insights for product development teams. We will describe the tools and methods used to create a research database organized by user roles, along with examples and short exercises to help attendees think through user roles within their own context. By the end of the session, attendees should be aware of tools and approaches for: Organizing user research information in a database Disseminating user role information to product and design teams Managing a user roles database as part of a long term UX Research program If you’re ready to ditch personas but don’t know how, this session is for you!

UXPA 2023: Learn how to get over personas by swiping right on user roles

UXPA International

We will present a case study that details our approach for replacing user personas with user roles for a multi-national SAAS company. We will take the audience on a journey that starts with an executive request for personas, travels through the tribulations of realizing personas suck, and concludes with convincing others to accept a new and innovative way to understand the people who use the product. Our key message is that personas lack real value for organizations that already understand the importance of empathizing with users. Building user-centered products requires easily accessible and well organized user insights. We will discuss defining users through a process of stakeholder consultation and content review, and structuring data around Jobs to Be Done and product interactions. We will also discuss the dissemination of user roles in our organization using relational databases, interactive dashboards and online wikis. Spoiler alert, our stakeholders loved user roles!

UXPA 2023: F@#$ User Personas

UXPA International

UXPA 2023 Poster: Pocket Research Guide - Empower your Solution and Foster Cu...

UXPA International

Agile Methodology refers to software design and development methodologies centered around the idea of iterative design and development, where requirements and concepts evolve through collaboration between self-organizing cross-functional teams. Thus, Agile enables teams to deliver value faster, with greater quality and predictability, and greater aptitude to respond to change. With evolving product features every design sprint, designers & researchers find it difficult to follow the design process. This sometimes leads to designs delivered in haste or sub-par design artifacts which result in UX debt. UX debt is accumulated when design teams take actions or shortcuts to expedite the delivery of a piece of functionality or a project which later needs to be refactored. It is the result of prioritizing speedy delivery of design to the development team over a perfect experience journey. Experience Maps is a great tool to practice UX in Agile as well as manage UX Debt.

UXPA 2023: Experience Maps - A designer's framework for working in Agile team...

UXPA International

UXPA 2023 Poster: Atomic Research in Practice: Using a Feedback Repository to...

UXPA International

UXPA 2023 Poster: Leveraging Dial Testing To Measure Real-Time User Frustrati...

UXPA International

How to build a UX Department from scratch, in an environment they think UX people do social media posters and posts! An agile implementation just started, and people are moving from a waterfall and ad-hoc mindset to agility. In this session, I will talk about my Journey to establish a UX Department for a company that is part of a global brand, but this local branch just started the digital transformation movement. Challenges like: spreading awareness and educating people about UX, hiring the right team, defining the right team structure, establishing workflow and day-to-day operations, and applying localization (non-western culture).

UXPA 2023: UX Enterprise Story: How to apply a UX process to a company withou...

UXPA International

I started my current job in March of 2020. Many of us remember something clearly about the month that COVID started to shut things down. I remember being surprised to hear that my new on-site-only job would be starting in my living room over zoom. How do you lead a design team when none of the team members live near each other and creativity is highly collaborative? Taking from over a decade of working in HR software, I knew whatever I did needed to put people first. That what employees love about a job is often deeper than the work, it’s the culture, the relationships and people they work with. It’s the feeling that their work has value, and their contribution matters. In this talk I will walk though some of the rituals and best practices I have learned over the last two years building a remote-first creative team.

UXPA 2023: High-Fives over Zoom: Creating a Remote-First Creative Team

UXPA International

As humans, we are biased by design. Our intricate and fascinating brains have developed shortcuts through centuries of human evolution. They reduce an unimaginable load of paralyzing decisions, keep us alive, and help us navigate this complex world. Now, these life saving biases affect how we behave with modern technology. Understanding some of the theories and reasons why these biases exist is the key to unlocking their power. In this workshop we will cover some theories around how the brain works. We will review some of our mental shortcuts, take a look at some common biases, and learn how they affect our users, our research, and our designs. Lastly we will review some advantages of biases, and ways to identify and reduce bias. This workshop is targeted for designers who do their own research, and researchers looking to learn more about removing bias from their studies.

UXPA 2023: Behind the Bias: Dissecting human shortcuts for better research & ...

UXPA International

UXPA 2023 Poster: Improving the Internal and External User Experience of a Fe...

UXPA International

UXPA 2023 Poster: 5 Key Findings from Moderated Accessibility Testing with Sc...

UXPA International

Are you new to UX management, or thinking of getting into management? Then this talk is for you. After reading countless books, attending countless trainings, mentoring and being menteed, nothing quite prepared me for management like my first year. I’ll share with you what I wish they’d told me. I’ll also share my process for generating team research roadmaps, establishing team values, keeping employees motivated, and not burning out.

UXPA 2023: Lessons for new managers

UXPA International

Join us for an interaction design case study from the automotive industry. We created a Human-Machine Interface (HMI) for a vehicle feature that provides household-levels of power in electrical outlets for our customers to use at work and play. This case study will reveal: · Our debate of re-using version 1.0’s HMI vs designing a new user interface for the electric vehicle—when to break with consistency and why? · User research we conducted to guide our early design concept. · Paper prototypes we created to support our usability testing of the concept with vehicle owners. · How we solved internal debate over the interaction design in moving from internal combustion vehicles to electric vehicles. * Advice to help you evangelize user-centered design that is also brand-centered for a new product.

UXPA 2023: Redesigning An Automotive Feature from Gasoline to Electric Vehicl...

UXPA International

More from UXPA International (20)