This blog post is about diary studies and how to go about conducting them.
What are diary studies?
Diary studies, otherwise known as User Research Diaries or “Cultural probes” were pioneered for use in design research by William “Bill” Gaver, Professor at Goldsmiths London. Interestingly he doesn’t analyse diary content, nor does he create scenarios or personas from them instead using them as a base from which to validate other data. He does not create personas, preferring instead to revisit the raw data.
Diary studies are used in longitudinal research — looking at people over a longer period of time than a typical Contextual Inquiry or interview can allow; and researching people when you could not otherwise be there with them.
What are diary studies good for?
Great for understanding the activities undertaken by participants, what they actually do.
Guardian infographic on public expenditure. "For 670 billion pounds, there must be a space for design there" -- Lauren Tan
Earlier this week Lauren Tan presented at Service Design Drinks on her university research paper. In it she looked at 2007 DOTT (Design of the Times) design projects in the public and social space.
“This PhD programme aims to identify and understand how design methodology is used in the public and social sector and the contributions it can make to the broader context of sustainable development.”
– Lauren Tan. Reference: http://northumbria.academia.edu/LaurenTan
Tan researched the methodology of a number of agencies and within the context of service design found the role of the designer to be that of a:
creator
researcher
provocateur
facilitator
social entrepreneur
capability builder
strategist
Lauren’s talk gave everyone the opportunity to compare their work with what is being done overseas. Lauren ran us through 2 case studies.
Senova's challenge: can we design our industry together?
Melis Senova began her presentation with this premise: if you interpret every choice as a design decision, you can look at your life as a designed experience. And concluded: if we all design our lives, can we design our industry?
Her presentation was a challenge to apply the principles and characteristics of user experience design – collaboration, transparency, sharing, iterative, open, designerly, innovative, empathetic, cross disciplinary – to design our experience of working in our industry.
Melis Senova: attributes of user experience
Melis Senova: Business as usual
Zafer Bilda opened the night with a service design case study that followed a familiar working approach (1) define the business objective (2) survey the landscape with a comparative analysis (3) conduct observational research (4) create customer and staff personas (5) study service tools in use to design a new experience.
The talks couldn’t have been more different at this weeks service design drinks. Stephen Cox, Customer Experience Manager at Westpac opened the night with a presentation on touch-point workshops. Janna DeVylder from Meld Studios invited the audience to ponder whether the service designer has a role to play in the execution of projects. The first was a talk around design education, the second a discussion about design implementation.
Stephen Cox’s workshop is taken from At-One and a more detailed description of it is available at service-innovation.org. Participants are asked to design an experience for a persona across a journey using a range of touch-points cards. To see if the freshly designed experience stacks up, participants then consider if it works with a different persona; and if the experience is still coherent if touch-points are removed.
If you have not been, Service Design Drinks is a casual meet-up, where guest speakers present and take questions from the audience. It’s held regularly at the Trinity Bar in Surry Hills. The fourth event was held on 18 May and was attended by 30 or so user experience designers, including a team from Different.
The last event was a panel discussion moderated by Damian Kernahan, from Proto Partners. The panellists were:
Opher Yom Tov, formally of Ideo, now working with BT
Rod Farmer, Co-founder and Director of Research, Mobile Experience
Susan Wolfe, Managing Director, Optimal Experience
Faruk Avdi, from the NSW Department of Education and Training
The opening question put to the panel was “What is service design?”
Opher Yom Tov: Weaving together discreet experiences in an ongoing relationship.
Rod Farmer: Meaningful value at the point of interaction.
Ryan Bingham (played by George Clooney) is in the business of firing people. He travels the US first class, arrives at his destination to do what his clients are too scared to do themselves.
I couldn’t help but think of work as I watched this film. Not because people are being fired! But because the film is a great illustration of service design, and the pitfalls of an imperfect software implementation.
The opening of the film follows Ryan as he fast tracks airport check in with his first class frequent flyer VIP credentials. He receives personalised greetings and preferential treatment at every turn. Any interaction with the airport, airline, rental car service, hotel, is geared toward his status. Ryan is aware of the service he’s getting, he’s earned it, it’s “the perfect experience”.
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