Some pointers on ethnographic research taken from a handout in class. My comments in italics.
Interviewing pointers
- Don’t ask leading questions
No yes/no questions
- Don’t use professional lingo
No technical jargon, especially important during the user testing
- Keep asking why, why, why?
A person from ReD was with on our first visit, he really drove this point home
- Follow the user
- Create a relaxes atmosphere - don’t become a pro interviewer, expert or guest
Becoming a guest was difficult to avoid, especially as a foreigner in an elderly person’s apartment
- Don’t judge - try to understand the respondent
Observation pointers
- Look for mismatch between words and action
Users often tell you what they think you want to hear
- Look for workarounds
What tricks does the staff have to make their job easier? What tricks do the elderly people have? Not always east to spot but crucial. Anne’s writes notes on the back of her photos so she can remember…
- What image is the respondent trying to convey?
- Ask for explanations
- Document what you see: notes, pictures, artifacts
Taking photos
- Get consent/permission before starting
- Take many pictures
I can’t believe I took so many pictures and in the end I was still asking people if they have a picture of this or that
- Get a portrait of the participant
These would have been great for our presentation and user scenarios
- Photograph the context
- Photograph the detail
- Photograph activities (not just talking heads)
User testing with Anne
Starting with a week long course on User Research (led by some fine folks from ReD Associates) and continuing with our Graphic User Interface course (led by Niels Clausen-Stuck), we made three visits to elderly homes here in Copenhagen. The first two visits were to gain insights on the lives of residents and staff in these homes and to practice methodologies we were learning in the User Research course. The third visit, more than two weeks later, was to test the feasibility and desirability of different concepts for projects we were pursuing in our GUI course.
Elderly homes, especially in a foreign country, made for a challenging but interesting setting to gain hands on experience with User Research. The first visit was mostly about observation — fly-on-the-wall observation, collecting evidence through photography, etc… The second day was more focused on conducting interviews using questions and topics we carefully prepared beforehand. Talking to staff was quite easy because they mostly spoke English, although they were incredibly busy. Our talks with the residents had to be facilitated by a Danish speaker but went fairly smoothly. We also spent time talking with residents suffering from Dementia which required that we improvise with our questions and find other ways to gain understanding about their lives in the home.
Our final visit (some groups made further visits) was halfway through our GUI course. We developed several concepts for screen based applications designed to improve life in the elderly home and we needed feedback from the people that would be using these devices. We created simple prototypes and prepared more questions and were luck enough to sit down with Anne. She happily answered our questions, followed our instructions through a couple of scenarios and then showed us specific things in the home relating to our project.
Keep reading for more photos…
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