Diary Study + Contextual Inquiry → Shopping Experience

One-Week Ethnographic Study, HCID 531 User Research Studio

This week, we aimed to do a small-scale ethnographic study, in order to practice this fantastic research method, as well as as a good start for our capstone project primary research.

Research Question

How does user do shopping across devices?

Ethnography Study Research Methods

Diary Study

Data: 05/12 — 05/15

Participant: 1, XXX, female, MHCID student

Instruction

Hi, XXX, thank you for participant in my shopping experience ethnographic study. This study lasts 4 days, starts from today/Monday to Thursday. Please text me with a photo about your shopping experience anytime you do anything related to shopping. At the end of each day, I will interview you about your shopping experience on that day, around 5 -10 minutes. And at the end of this study, we will do a card sorting activity to synthesize this study (this research method depends on the study findings, may change). Please let me know if you have any questions, thanks again!

Diary Study Example

Contextual Inquiry

Observed user browsing online on laptop and phone as she usually does, and asked her in-context shopping questions, as well as general shopping questions.

Key Findings

1. User almost doesn’t buy any product online. Especially for clothes, she never buys online but she has bought special T-shirts that only sold online, very few times. For books, digital devices, flight tickets or hotel bookings, she prefers shopping online. There are three reasons that she prefers in-store shopping. One is that she is quite not sure whether it is fit her if she cannot try it on, and she really wants to try and see the fit, see herself in the mirror and they buy; The second reason is that she doesn’t trust online store, she is afraid that the delivered real product is different from the online product; Lastly, she really loves in-store shopping, not because she can try it on and has true feeling, but the in-store shopping experience makes her cheer up and feel happy. Additionally, she really likes shopping in-store alone rather than together with her friends.
2. Though user rarely does shopping online, she browses online stores quite often, especially clothes, she wants to see to keep in mind to style herself. She has two ways to browse: One way is to browse Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. She follows some styling brands she likes, and she will browse those brands in any break time both on laptop and phone. The other way is to browse a certain styling brand directly. If she finds something that attractive, she will pin it.
3. User uses apps (Pinterest) to manage and organize her shopping. She has styling clothes boards on her Pinterest, and all are clothes that she likes. Also, she has a board, used as a wish list, she puts products that she wants to buy someday she can afford it. Moreover, when she wants to buy gifts for her friends, she also will create a board for inspirations, but once she decides which gift to buy, she will delete that gift board.
4. User uses apps to look for food and places. She uses Yelp to find food and restaurants, and Foursquare to see where her friends eat/travel/visit, mainly for recommendations.

Reflection

1. Unfortunately, user only sent me one diary, for the reason that she rarely does shopping online and these days she had heavy class assignment, had very few free time. It is better to recruit power users as my participants.
2. It was only a one-week class project, for practicing user research, thus, had many constraints. It is better to recruit more participants (4-6 users) and in a longer time (2-3 weeks).