Diary study in UX research
This post is about an assignment we did for Experience Design, Spring 2017 at HCI/d, taught by Prof. Jeffrey Bardzell .
What is diary study btw?
Kim Flaherty, a User Experience Specialist with Nielsen Norman Group explained diary study in her article as:
A diary study is a research method used to collect qualitative data about user behaviors, activities, and experiences over time. In a diary study, data is self-reported by participants longitudinally — that is, over an extended period of time that can range from a few days to even a month or longer. During the defined reporting period, study participants are asked to keep a diary and log specific information about activities being studied. To help participants remember to fill in their diary, sometimes they are periodically prompted (for example, through a notification received daily or at select times during the day).
‘diary’ almost sounds very intimate and personal.
‘Diary’ technically doesn’t have to be a literal diary. The medium of documentation could be upon researcher’s interest and participants comfort. For our assignment, people chose to use different platforms, some of them, like my friend Tosh chose texting as a medium for documentation.
The brief for the assignment
The brief for the assignment was to create an elicitation style of diary study, using whatever medium possible. The class was divided into teams of two, where each student was a participant and a researcher for each other.
“You study me, I’ll study you”
We were tasked to document various kinds of smell which we experience throughout the day. Overall, we were supposed to document experiences for an entire week, interview each other about documenting their experiences of smells, and then reflect. The study was in the service of the following design prompt:
“Imagine a future in which “smart” computing environments (e.g., smart home, smart transportation, smart class, smart city, etc.) are capable of sensing and responding to smells. What would such systems ‘smell’ and how would they react?”
First reactions and the process
For this assignment, I partnered with my friend Hayden. When we came to know that we are supposed to document smells, I was like, I have no idea what that is. But we decided to quickly meet and discuss the assignment. . We were using Google Docs for the entire assignment and were able to see each other’s process. After that, we sat down, interviewed each other, heard reflections and started doing documentation.
We mutually decided to present each other a brief about what we are supposed to do. We wanted to do something specific so we created specific briefs for each other, but kept it open enough to explore. Here is the brief which Hayden gave me:
Once a day please note the smell of a room as you arrive. I have noticed that different places hit you with different smells as soon as you walk into the room. After you have been there for awhile you get used to the smell and don’t notice it as much. Please note the various smells that hit your senses and try to be descriptive as possible.
- Click a photo of the room or environment. If something in particular is causing the room to smell that way it would be nice if you could photograph that object as well.
- Write a small description of the smell, how it made you feel, and if you could associate anything else with that smell (for e.g., does walking into the design studio make you think of IDP or a certain memory)
If possible, try to associate the smell with any place/childhood memory/ any event etc. The more stories the better!
Also, if you could please do a variety of different places (restaurant, house, classroom, community place, store, etc)
Personal Reflection
An excerpt from my own diary study entry
Day 2: February 7 2017, Tuesday
BLEACH (Apartment Laundry room, basement)
I walked in to do my laundry and that is the first thing that hit me, the smell of bleach. In general, I think the place has a lot of chemical-like smell, because this is the common laundry for the entire apartment block. Everyone has to insert quarters to use these machines (super annoying)
The smell of bleach and detergent reminds me of my laziness in doing laundry, especially in my undergrad. I use to wait till it became absolutely imperative to use the laundry, and I had my huge pile of super dirty, smelly clothes waiting to be washed. Just to make it extra sure, I used to add more detergent than required which kind of ended up in ruining my clothes. We mostly don’t have heat dryers in India (because it is almost always sunny) so I used to sun dry my clothes like everyone else.
On documenting smells
I thought that the assignment was pretty straight forward, but the major challenge that I faced was documenting about smells itself. Overall, although I mentioned characteristic smell of various places, these smells were not the kind of strong smells I am used to, when I compare it with India. India has so many smells and strong scents that you can basically distinguish the place even before entering. Like public toilets. They are so pungent smelling that you can smell them from a block. Or open fish markets, which has typical stench of a fish. So my olfactory senses are kind of accustomed to extreme smells, which are not here in the US. The smells are kind of mild and subtle, and you really have to make an effort to smell. Hence, the entire experience of ‘smelling’ and documenting things was bit challenging for me. Also, the kind of smells which are there are sort of alien to me, for eg, the kitchens don’t smell of coffee in India, they smell of the spices and curry. We don’t use bleach in our clothes, so laundry areas do not smell of bleach. I tried to make as many associations as possible, but ultimately I sort of deviated from the original experience of smelling and documented the nearest possible memory I had.
On the process
I don’t think it was that much amount of workload though, because it didn’t take a lot of my time. All I had to do was to take pictures of different places, which I do anyway. I think google doc gave us the independence to write whenever, whenever we wanted, and however long we wanted. We could have done a better job of interacting with each other and communicating with each other, but I think since we were also in the same team for the Methods assignment, we thought we have access to each other and we don’t have to remind each other of the task.
On smart systems in the future that can respond to smell
I think smells and the way humans react to it happens to be the one of the most subjective experiences. Yes, there is a difference between stink, stench and scent, but even in those cases human reaction is very different. Smell is not just an attribute, it is an identity, a personality in itself. To make smart systems which could respond to smells, it pretty difficult in itself.
What did we learn?
Diary study can be an effective way to document an experience and how that experience changes over time. Diary studies can provide rich amount of quantitative data which can provide great insights for design. However, the method has its own limitation. Diary study is difficult to do with a large number of participants, especially when there is a time crunch. Also, the post analysis of an elicitation diary entry can take a lot of time and processing. There are other kinds of diary study, such as Feedback entry, which may provide more specific data than this one.
