Debriefing: Kickstarting data synthesis

If you’re a researcher, you’ll know that at the end of a fieldwork day, you’re tired, sleepy and sometimes even hangry. After interviewing 5–6 people in a row, when the findings are starting to get cloudy in your head, what do you do? Yes, you debrief!

Debriefing is the process of collating all the findings of the day and identifying high level patterns from the data gathered. To debrief at the end of the day is essential for two main reasons:

1. Findings are still fresh in your memory- It’s essential to document who said what, when you can still recall it. This can be a great opportunity to make a note of striking comments and interesting findings.
2. To keep the client/stakeholders involved- If the client cannot watch the sessions live (or remotely because of the time difference), sending them a debrief of the findings can be a great way to get their feedback. They might find certain things interesting and want to prioritise what you focus on, on subsequent days. If you’re conducting user research for an in-house product, a debrief can help keep the stakeholders involved and on-board with the course of the research.

At PeepalDesign, when clients aren’t around to observe the sessions (especially when they’re sitting overseas), we ensure, we send them an End of day Debrief.

Tips for writing an effective and quick Debrief

After having written innumerable Debriefs here are a few things that help me write one efficiently-

1. Have the structure ready- Since you always have a Discussion guide available beforehand, it’s a good idea to keep a document ready with basic participant details and the main sections from the Discussion guide- so at the end of the day, you can simply fill it like a template based on findings on top of your head
2. Take notes right after sessions- I personally, prefer to make digital notes after every session (which makes debriefing easier) to have all the interesting findings in one place. You can choose to fill up a wall or make post-it notes after every session, so that a glance at them gives you a good idea of the highlights of the day

3. Write from the top of your mind- Another important thing to remember is that a debrief is a top of the mind summary containing easily identifiable patterns, you don’t want to go back to notes and delve into unnecessary analysis at this point

4. Discuss with the co-researcher but do not depend- If you have a co-researcher taking notes/alternating for moderation, make sure you both work on different sections of the debrief. Though discussing participant-wise findings aid memory and catalyse the pattern-finding process, spending too much time on a topic is not advisable hence it’s best to divide sections and then fact-check and proof-read for each other