The Usography team coded a number of dimensions for the Millennials Multichannel Apparel Shopping ethnography. Here’s the highlight video for personality of clothing:
Retail Ethnography by Usography: Personality of Apparel from Paul Bryan on Vimeo.
Usography conducted shopalongs with millennial females to determine possible access mobile commerce access drivers in common shopping experiences. As I mentioned in previous posts, we discovered interesting dimensions of decision-making. The clip below highlights one area of findings: the personality of clothing.
Retail Ethnography by Usography
My talk on Ethnography 101 at the Usability Professionals Association in Munich went well. The audience was very receptive and about 50% of them participated in the group exercise.
The feedback on my session was very good. It was about a 4.5 on a 5 point scale, including one person who seemed to not like me or the presentation at all.
The most relevant and informative presentation that I attended was by Andreas Hauser and Daniel Markwig of SAP. I took a lot of notes in that one. They discussed how they adapted a major UX initiative to fit within a Lean process, which is very similar to Agile. The solution was thousands of screens in a complex ERP suite called Business By Design. They didn’t do the typical whining about how hard it is to be UX in an Agile world where documentation is antithetical to efficiency (?huh?). They explained how they used a pattern library combined with use cases and wireframes, to produce a recipe for UX that developers followed.
The overall atmosphere of the conference was very positive. People seemed very smart and focused, and spoke a common UX language, which was interesting to experience.
I really liked the shop windows in Munich. I posted a Flickr photostream:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/43883838@N02/sets/72157624030593401/show/with/4647416633/
In the initial review of the millennials apparel shop along data, we’re seeing the following decision-making variables surface to the top:
We’re going to do a more in-depth analysis to formulate the primary segmentation dimensions. We will also overlay mobile technology.
Copyright 2010, Paul Bryan, Usography Corporation (http://www.usography.com)
Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts
I’m conducting a millennials shop along research project this week. I am really enjoying it, as millennials (Gen Y, echo boomers, 18 – 29 year olds) is a frequent and favorite research topic of mine. The one thing that surprises me is how small of a role mobile technology plays in the shopping habits of these 20-somethings.
On the university campus, which is 5 minutes from my home, I see them on their mobile devices constantly. But in the shopping process, they refer very infrequently to mobile technology, and when prompted, they do not envision a significantly larger role. They seem far more likely to use mobile technology for social contact than for shopping (duh!), but I’m surprised at the extent to which that is true. I expected some inkling of a comparison shopping usage pattern using mobile devices.
Some of the more common data capture techniques in ethnographic research include:
Participant observation is the method that set ethnography apart. But this method has given way in market research to observation, i.e. the researcher does not actively participate in the behavior being observed. Informant debriefs refer to conversations that the researcher has with insiders who understand the behavior being observed, and who can explain phenomena that the researcher finds puzzling. In retail ethnography, this is typically a salesperson.
We use context mapping for nearly every project. We draw a map of the area being observed, include stations at which people pause or interact, and develop codes that allow us to quickly note behaviors and timeframes. Overlaying context maps helps us understand frequently observed patterns.
I enjoy the diary and collage methodologies. They provide a lot of insight into the mindset of participants, although that insight is sometimes difficult to translate into design recommendations.
Copyright 2010, Paul Bryan, Usography Corporation (http://www.usography.com)
Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts
Ethnographic research is broad in scope, so the questions it answers are equally as broad. Ethnography is often used in the discovery phase of a project. Some examples of questions that ethnographic research can answer include:
Ethnography fieldwork can be expensive. Part of the expense is due to the time it takes to get significant results, and the travel that is often required. Another expense factor is that ethnography studies require skilled, experienced people to guide the effort. In addition to cost considerations, the results of ethnographic research are sometimes difficult to translate directly into systems design.
Ethnography becomes relevant when design teams need to innovate, rather than incrementally improve an existing design. Ethnographic research is worth the cost when the success of a design is dependent upon being very different from current existing solutions, for example, a completely different way of supporting a real-life activity or exploring a new market opportunity that didn’t exist before.
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Henry Ford
“The future has already happened, it just isn’t very well distributed.” William Gibson
“The future will soon be a thing of the past.” George Carlin
Copyright 2010, Paul Bryan, Usography Corporation (http://www.usography.com)
Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts
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
Ethnography is the best research method to use when you need to discover the fundamental factors that influence the customer experience. Not the attributes of a given design, but the underlying framework that determines the quality of the customer or employee experience. Ethnography takes you to the source of the experience, and gives you tools to discover the most impactful factors.
Another situation that Ethnography deals with especially well are when you are seeking innovative design solutions for daily life situations. Ethnography is a structured approach for leaving behind current solutions and going back to the life context that the design serves.
Another situation in which ethnography is uniquely capable to provide answers is when the key concepts involved in an activity are not yet well defined or operational. For example, suppose we are trying to design a mobile app and one of the key success factors is convenience. Convenience is not a simple concept. It involves location and time and fulfillment. Until we can break this concept down into operational or observable components, we are stuck with a vague notion of what we need to do to succeed. Ethnography helps discover and operationalize concepts like convenience.
Of course, the bottom line is, that the value of the research has to outweigh the expense.
Copyright 2009, Paul Bryan, Usography Corporation (http://www.usography.com)
Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts