User Research at Green Lake
WHAT
This week I went to Green Lake Park to to observe commuting practices. I drive by Green Lake all the time and it is always very busy on nice days. The day I went was beautiful so there was a lot going on. The field notes I took were very visual. I prefer to draw, especially when I am observing outside in a public place because it is easier to picture what was going on in that moment when looking back at it in the future. I had to focus on commuting practices because I would find myself writing stuff that didn’t relate much to commuting, even though it was an interesting observation. I moved a couple different times to cover more than one area of the park, to see a variety of commuters. I moved from more inland of the park to two places on the outside, one of them being next to a very busy four-way stop which gave me some good jottings!
SO WHAT
I liked this project because we got to pick where we went and I have been wanting to spend some time at Green Lake Park! At first I was a bit skeptic of how I would look sitting with a pad of paper, looking around, and writing stuff down. But once I was there for a couple minutes I didn’t feel weird at all. I like to people watch in general, so setting a challenge like commuting practices was enjoyable and I competed with myself to see how much I could come up with. I have also always been very interested in the user research aspect when developing a product. Particularly, what the unique questions are to ask and what do the researchers get out of them. With this assignment I was able to dive into that a little and I really enjoyed asking myself those questions while on the field.
NOW WHAT
I could see a parent using this approach if they were trying to find the best park to take their children to! That way they could go to a few different parks, jot down their findings, and compare later! This would not be an approach if you were trying to find a good restaurant or mechanic because usually you can sit-in at those places and observe without buying something. I can see myself using this in the future to find new places to study on campus! Since I have a number of preferences, using those as guiding points would make it really easy to narrow it down!
SOURCES
“Green Lake Businesses.” Green Lake Seattle. Ewing and Clark Inc., 2017. Web. 10 May 2017.
“Green Lake.” Michael Ackerman Seattle Real Estate. Coldwell Banker Bain, 2017. Web. 10 May 2017.