Helpful Links for Diary Studies
1. Classic and comprehensive.
Contains helpful information — from uses, methodology, to motivation:
“Conduct a pilot study. Diary studies can take quite a bit of time to plan and conduct, so it’s helpful to conduct a short pilot study first. The pilot study does not need to be as long as the real study and it is not meant to garner data for analysis. Its purpose is to test your study design and related materials. Practice the process of briefing and debriefing pilot participants. Try out your logging materials to be sure they’re understandable.”
“For participants that are less engaged, give encouragement or offer to answer any questions they may have to get them on track. Let participants know up front that you will be reaching out throughout the study and agree on a means of contacting them, so you can give encouragement or ask for clarification without being overly intrusive.”
2. Good list of basic questions to ask when planning the study.
When will an entry be recorded?
— How often? Over what time period?
How long will it take to record an entry?
— How structured is the response?
Pay well
— Pay per response, but don’t create bias
3. Procedural. Step-by-step tips.
“Before starting the study, decide what tags (e.g. device, location, activity type) will be applied to the data when uploading information to a spreadsheet.”
4. Useful, not just for kids, but also as guidelines for adult diary studies.
Has a differentiation/comparison between formats.
It also emphasizes that diary studies are always a part of a larger research project — either more quanti (to gather more stable insights) or as basis for qualitative in-depth interviews.
5. Helpful format: A checklist for diary studies
“Are progress check points required?
Participants should be required to be available at a set number of check-points during the study. This is important to check their progress and helps minimise any drop-outs by incentivising the completion of each check-point (and if possible having increasing incentives for each check-point). The number of check-points depends on what is being studied, but a minimum of 3 is recommended,”
Bonus: Shade thrown on lab studies: “…Low on experiential realism.” Mic drop.
We’ll update you with what worked for us and what didn’t about the diary process.
(Extra links on the bottom.)
What we know about work, we owe — not only to our formal education and our jobs, but also to the forward-thinking designers, developers, researchers,product managers and teams who choose to share their processes and lessons (for free) on Youtube, blogs, websites and MOOC (Massive Online Open Courses) tutorials. This is the spirit of designing in the open. Where design teams show their process and what they learn along the way. This is done to grow the knowledge base of the industry, and also to get feedback and dialogue going about the work.
(If you’re interested in reading more about the beauty of open design, you can read this.)
We share what we experience in these weeknotes. To respect our clients’ confidentiality, we won’t directly post details about them. Everything we share here are the opinions (and life lessons) of the writer.
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Extras, for those who want to read some more: Good idea for an event — Getting research practitioners together to work out industry learnings.
Book excerpt:
Love the specificity of the question — phrasing diary questions.
Old article — but has practical on-field learnings on conducting a mobile diary study:
- To have a “meatier” study, make sure that something you’re tracking has high enough incidence
- Overrecruit AND keep the diary experience as short as you can
- Make sure your format works for tiny screens
- Build a habit: Make sure questions are consistent for every timeblock
- Experiment with incentives: e.g. Once a day every day, with additional incentives for additional logs
- Don’t presume app prompts are enough
Plus a researcher profile:
For added added info:
Cultural Probe examples!
What we know about work, we owe — not only to our formal education and our jobs, but also to the forward-thinking designers, developers, researchers,product managers and teams who choose to share their processes and lessons (for free) on Youtube, blogs, websites and MOOC (Massive Online Open Courses) tutorials. This is the spirit of designing in the open. Where design teams show their process and what they learn along the way. This is done to grow the knowledge base of the industry, and also to get feedback and dialogue going about the work.
(If you’re interested in reading more about the beauty of open design, you can read this.)
We share what we experience in these weeknotes. To respect our clients’ confidentiality, we won’t directly post details about them. Everything we share here are the opinions (and life lessons) of the writer.
Follow our weekly updates here on Medium, Facebook or on LinkedIn, if you want to read and exchange thoughts about the interaction design process. Join our Priority Studios’ newsletter, for a monthly collection of links we found useful for work and projects.
