Virtual Floorspace

This continues a recent post, in which I first stated that it’s not really “vs.” but a matter of deciding which research method will provide the design guidance that you need for an acceptable expense. I was discussing some of the advantages of conducting field research.

Another advantage of conducting user research in the field is the presence of cues and artifacts related to the interactive behavior. These cues and artifacts, such as cheat sheets or a constantly running television or crying children or a nearby expert or magazine tear sheets or people brushing behind the user, can dramatically impact usage of a particular web site, but are missing from the lab setting. In one case, a participant had her woot.com alarm set, and it went off during a session. She ran upstairs to see what the sale was, and she allowed us to follow her. She explained that her most recent purchase was a “bag o’ crap,” which was a miscellaneous set of items for $5. She could have told us about this in an interview in a corporate office or lab, but it wouldn’t have provided the same context for her lifestyle that being in her home at that time provided.

Finally, field research lends itself extremely well to multicultural settings, whether they be within one country or within many countries. A lab setting tends to be localized to geographies where such labs exist and are available. The field setting is literally anywhere the researcher team can go. Ethnography was literally developed to understand the unique aspects of different cultures.

Copyright 2009, Paul Bryan, Usography Corporation (http://www.usography.com)

Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts

Uncategorized e-commerce design strategy, ethnography, methodology

Well, it’s not really one or the other. It’s both. But there are differences between these two research methods that are significant to research practitioners.

Usability studies typically focus on evaluating a design that already exists. Popular forms of usability studies include heuristic evaluations and user testing of web sites. Ethnography as a design research methodology focuses on formative, rather than evaluative, inputs to the design process. The goal of ethnography in web design research is to create an interactive design that is usable because it fits the full range of needs associated with the usage context.

Another characteristic that distinguishes ethnographic research from usability studies is where they take place. Many practitioners think of usability as an evaluation procedure that is optimally carried out in a lab setting with video cameras, microphones, computers, and one-way mirrors. This setting helps to minimize distractions and compare apples to apples in terms of benchmarking and performance testing.

Ethnography, on the other hand, takes place in the location(s) where the web site is used, or where decision-making or other significant task-related processes take place. Conducting research in the field has some distinct advantages. The main advantage is reduction of research bias associated with participant reactivity. Reactivity is the psychological term used to describe changes in a participant’s behavior because of the awareness of being observed. The most famous study of this phenomenon led to the term “Hawthorne effect,” which people use to describe the tendency of people who are being observed to change their behavior. When participants enter a usability lab and see the one way mirror and the video cameras, the sense of being observed is very tangible. The consciousness of being observed has a distinct impact on a participant’s behavior, which introduces bias into the research results.

Ethnographic research overcomes this limitation because it takes place in a setting that is familiar to the participant. Participants may or may not be aware that they are being observed. Even when they are aware of being observed, for example in an in-home interview, the familiar environment tends to lessen the impact of the observation, and users are able to focus on their behavior and decision-making processes.

Copyright 2009, Paul Bryan, Usography Corporation (http://www.usography.com)

Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts

Uncategorized