Diary Study: Exploring the Audio listening Experience
This article outlines a diary study to gain insights into individuals behavior, emotions and experiences while listening to audio.This study was conducted by and for Humber college students for the course “Empathic Research Frameworks”.
Why Diary study
A diary study is a qualitative research method used to collect the data of participants and the findings will be based on thoughts, feelings and observable behavior over an extended period of time . It is an effective method for understanding long term behavior of targeted users and to identify participants hidden needs.
Scenario
Organization-Y needed to understand people’s current behavior, emotions, and experiences listening to audio entertainment (e.g., music, podcasts, radio, audio-books, etc.) that can help them to identify problems and uncover new opportunities.
My Role
To carry out the study,I was placed with six other researchers to collaboratively plan,collect and analyse the results.The details of the study is drafted in this article.
Research question
What are the pains and gains of individuals audio listening experience?
We did some preliminary research on our scenario by evaluating the questions to narrow down the challenges of audio entertainment into research question aimed to uncover the pains and gains of individuals listening to audio content.
Research Process
We decided to conduct a structured study by adhering to a systematic timeline to plan,gather and analyze the content.The entire process of the diary study is covered in five weeks.
Phase 1: Planning the Study
As a team, we brainstormed on our topic of audio experience to develop a research question, identified prompts for the target audience, laid out the instructions and consent form.
Furthermore, created first draft of the questionnaire followed by a dry run of the questionnaires with random participants to ensure that we didn’t accidentally use any confusing terms or jargon that would make a participant tumble.Also, identified participants and assigned reliable self-generated unique codes for all the participants to match the cases in our study.
Additionally, determined the roles and responsibilities of each member in the group while conducting the study and assigned individual participant to run the study. Below are the few of the details from our diary study plan.
NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS : Seven adults in the age range of 21–50 years, all of them are classmates.
DURATION OF THE STUDY : The study on targeted users is conducted between Nov. 10 to Nov 12. (3 days)
FREQUENCY AND MODE OF THE SUBMISSION : During the study, we asked the participants to submit a diary entry 3 to 5 times a day through Google Forms. We also asked the participant to submit an entry every time they find themselves choosing to listen to some sort of audio, whether it’s music, an audio-book, a podcast, the radio, or even live music! And mentioned it doesn’t matter how they do it, either phone, car radio, or a record player!
REMINDER : Set daily e-mail reminders through Gmail once in a day to remind the participant to submit the form.
PROMPT : Submit an entry every time you choose to listen to audio for the primary purpose of listening.
QUESTIONNAIRE AND REVISIONS : After identifying questions, initially a dry run of the questionnaire was conducted by group members which helped us to identify and fix language that was unclear. Then, a pilot was conducted in which one participant responded to the prompt and completed the questionnaire.
By piloting we learned that for efficiency sake the participant consent should be changed to a statement rather than a question. We also learned that the questionnaire needed to include a question to identify the participant. From this we made our final version of the questionnaire as shown here.
Phase 2 : Conducting the study
Before conducting the study, we sent an introductory e-mail to the assigned user to assure that he/she is comfortable using the Google form for submission for his entries, also provided the contact information in case the participants have any question anytime during the study period. We sent our participant periodic reminders to submit the forms when they hear any kind of music. The participant would simply complete the Google form through accessing the link in their e-mail box, answering all the questions in the form. We have also asked them to upload photos showing they are listening to music if they are comfortable in doing that and make sure that participants were submitting the entries.
During the study we regularly monitor the responses from our assigned participants and sort out the important points they have made in their responses. Below is the snap of the response sheet containing the time stamp, code assigned to the participants, device the participant is listening on and other useful information as captured.
Phase 3 : Data analysis and synthesis
At the end of the research study, the data gathered is carefully reviewed, read all the entries and pulled out important information from them. The quantitative data acquired through questions was analyzed using charts and graphs as shown.
Quantitative Data
Qualitative Data
To gather the information for qualitative data, we used affinity diagram to synthesize our findings from the conducted research. The affinity diagramming was conducted in the group to identify common patterns among the participants’ responses.
We have gone through all the data and identified individual’s information with their unique code assigned before and recorded it on sticky notes. When the data was duplicate, we combined them as clusters and added it in a same theme. After re-grouping the notes for several times and discussing within the team identified several themes on grouping the insights further to :
What everyone is listening to?
Why are they listening audio?
The above affinity diagram were created in class on sticky notes and the images captured were unclear. Created a high-fidelity for affinity diagram to clearly visible the written content on sticky notes as below.
Collaborating the responses from the quantitative data and from the affinity diagram for what and why participants are listening the audio content ,we recognized important themes and insights for our research question.
What are the pains and gains of people’s audio listening experience?
Emergent themes and Recommendations
- Negative experiences are often due to extrinsic issues like
- Environmental noise
- Other people picked the content
- Technical
Participants who had bad or terrible listening experiences, often expressed that there was some aspect of their audio listening experience that they could not control.
One participant spoke about the inability to change a song that was playing on repeat because his hands were dirty while cooking. Another participant complained that due to noise from traffic chaos couldn’t continue to listen the audio, Interestingly, one of the participants complained about a weak Wi-Fi connection causing interruptions while listening to music and quote as
“My Internet connection was weak. So, the music would stop and start loading a couple of times and I wasn’t able to listen to the music in a seamless way!”
Recommendation
Design for user control and ensure technology supports a seamless listening experience as much as possible.
2. People listen to audio while doing other things.
From the graphs, it is evident that 51% percent of participants’ audio listening experiences were while they were at home cooking, cleaning, or showering and 24% were while they were driving or commuting. The data demonstrates that people most often listen to audio while simultaneously performing other tasks.The vital reasons for this is music/audio ease their pressure in doing their regular tasks and help them to keep calm in stressful situations.One of the participants quote as
“Music makes my experience doing chores a lot more pleasant.”
3. People prefer to use phones and laptops while listening to music
The study showed that 44% of participants’ listening experiences were through a phone and 21% were through a laptop.The reason for this is the convenience that these devices offered in terms of carrying,storing collection etc.
Recommendation
Focus on mobile app and desktop user interfaces. Ensure technology promotes phone and laptop use.
4. Listeners are cognizant of sound quality and its impact on the listening experience
Some listening experiences were bad due to poor sound quality, while other listening experiences were positive due to good sound quality.
“The experience was great. The voice was clear and audible, and the experience was seamless.”
Recommendation
Use technology that enhances the sound quality.
5. Mood affects listening choice and vice/versa
Participants choice of music was sometimes motivated by a desire to shift their mood.They express negative emotions through sad or angry music.The quotes from the participants to support this:
“I like to listen [Dua Lipa] in the morning. Her music, lifts my mood up.”
“Upbeat music really fit my mood at the time. I found myself singing and sometimes even dancing around. “
Recommendation
Allow users to find songs by filtering by mood.
6. Preferred platform for listening to music are streaming services (Apple Music and Spotify were the dominant choices)
It is visible from the graph that 32% participants music listening experiences were through Apple Music and 25% through Spotify. Participants are listening to their favorite audio on these services.The highlighted reason is the quality of audio content that is streamed with less buffering.
Reflections
The diary study was a great learning experience and below are the serious thoughts from the studies.
- The study needs to be run for a longer time to effectively identify the targeted participants way of audio experiences.
- Gathering participants actual visuals while listening to audio will provide more information about the users surrounding and behavior.
- An interview with the targeted participants after the study will allow us to map empathy and clear view about the audio experience.
- One-third number of entries conveys participants had a bad experience listening to audio. Further inquiries on this front to be made to gather accurate details to soothe their listening experience.
Challenges and Learning’s
Diary study is a useful tool to help understand the user behavior as it provides a record of thoughts and action in context. Yielding a research question from the given scenario is absolutely an insight. Analyzing the data is a demanding task as it requires a deeper study on how to interpret the data in an effective way to get a meaningful information for the user experience.
Thus, project provides a great opportunity for us to collaboratively work as a team and develop ethnographic research skills. We hadn’t faced any difficulties during the study as the participants were very cooperative but getting themes out of the provided data involved lot of productive deliberation/debate within team.
Limitations & Additional details
- One of the limitations of the survey was that it was done on the weekend, people were more likely to be at home than commuting.
- Some research could be done, especially with Spotify, of free vs. premium users.
