On Feb 3, 2009, at 10:17 AM, Jamie McAtee wrote:
I am planning on taking notes and hoping for the chance to do audio. I was thinking about video but as others have mentioned that might make the user feel strange and alter the results. I still have to talk to our contact at the location about audio recording.
Don't worry too much about your participants feeling strange. Having someone poking around their office, asking questions, and taking notice is strange enough. It's not like it'll make too much additional difference.
That said, video can be (a) against their company policies (you'll need to check) and (b) more obstrusive. Hand-held cameras are very noticeable and a constant reminder of recording. A tripod or wall mounted camera is less so, but the angles are often weird and not helpful. (Getting the participant *and* the screen into the frame is damn near impossible.)
Here's what I like to do: I take notes in my Moleskine pad. I record with discussion with one of our audio recorders. I bring my Canon SD630 which has both still photo and video capabilities. I take still photos of artifacts that are interesting (post-its on monitor, desk set up, manuals available, instructions on the wall) and at least one short video (1-2 minutes) to help me remember the person when I'm looking through my notes.
I always ask permission before turning on the audio recorder, taking pictures, or shooting the video. I always explain what we're going to do with that information and tell them it's optional but helpful to me. 99% of the time they say yes.
I will have one other person going with me. He is a business analyst and has asked me to let him know what I need him to do. If we do a focus group I'll probably have him do notes since in my experience it has been awkward to facilitate and take notes.
Perfect. You should both take turns at facilitating and note taking.
@Jonathan To the rest of your points. I'll be doing a contextual inquiry since we want to observe how the software is being used vs the model of how we think it is being used. Plus either interviews or a focus groups depending on the number of people they are making available in each user group.
I like using these questions as a framework to guide the visit: http://is.gd/ig4b (Of course, you'd want to tailor the questions to your specific product and how it's used.)
No resources for transcription, our UI team is 3 people.
If you're not in a rush, Castingwords.com has really high-quality, budget transcription services: http://castingwords.com/store/
The on site time is a one shot deal in and out the same day. We have to fly to the location so we have to cram as much as we can into one session. We could probably do some follow up e-mails but I doubt we will be able to go back.
I always find it helpful to ask, just as we're finishing up, if we can contact them in a couple of weeks for follow-ups. I've found that you can even use screen sharing technology (like GotoMeeting.com) to get specific "show me how you do X?" questions answered, quite effectively. It's especially useful when you've subsequently visited other sites and have questions about whether the patterns emerging are more widespread than you first realized.
Hope that helps, Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [email protected] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks Twitter: jmspool UIE Web App Summit, 4/19-4/22: http://webappsummit.com ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
