In-Depth Interviews: User Motivations, part II
Discovering motivations can take place through the interview process, through a photo-elicitation or card-sorting exercise. Motivations can also be discovered by observing an online or offline activity and then asking questions about it afterwards. The researcher should be careful to avoid suggesting motivations to the participant and asking them to confirm or deny the motivation. This is leading the participant, and the accuracy of response will depend heavily on the personality of the participant. Constructing a motive and then reading into the motivation can obviously lead to misinterpretations.
Another method for discovering motivations is to use a Likert scale. [xxx example Likert scale questions.] Likert scales in an interview setting can be used to understand the motivations of the individual participant, which may also help understand a composite user archetype. The scales can be used to compare and contrast different participants. But they can’t be used in the interview context to generate conclusions about the larger population of users. That would be crossing over from qualitative data capture to quantitative data reporting, which is never a reliable approach.
Photo elicitation
Photo-elicitation is an interview technique in which participants are shown a series of images, and they are asked to comment on those images. The images may be photos that the participant has brought or that have been assembled by the research team. They may have been created as part of the research process, for example the participant may have been asked to create them as homework in preparation for the interview. Or, they may have been existing photos that were assembled for the interview, for example collected by the research team from a stock photo web site as illustrations of a concept related to the research topic. In a photo-elicitation exercise, the researcher shows participants a series of images and asks them to comment on them, possibly asking questions that lead the participant to talk about specific topics related to the research.
Sample script: Photo-elicitation for resort booking system
What is the first thing that comes to mind when you see these images?
Show series of resort photos from brochures and web site.
Show series of photos of people on vacation from stock photo site.
When customer responds positively to an image: What are some words you would use to describe how you would feel if you were part of this scene?
Copyright 2009, Paul Bryan, Usography Corporation (www.usography.com)
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