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Social Networking, Technology, User Research
Design Research Conference 2010: Day 1 May 11th, 2010
No Comments Two years ago I attended the IIT Institute of Design’s Design Research Conference and I had such a great experience learning from and meeting fellow researchers that I had to come back and see what new research methods are in the mix now.
I just finished up a workshop this afternoon with Martha Cotton of gravitytank called Self-documentation 2.0. Technology is now becoming more portable, smaller and an even bigger part of our everyday lives (especially with social networking sites). So how do we utilize these tools to gather data from participants in conducting our research? During Martha Cotton’s workshop, we explored some new methods such as having participants utilize micro-blogging sites (e.g. Twitter) or camera phones to capture moments in time when interacting with a certain product or activity that relates to your research. This approach takes advantage of technology in order to capture a participant’s thoughts immediately, rather than having them reflect at a later date and possibly losing some information.
As all researchers know, the data collection is the easy part, but analyzing it is a whole different story. In our workshop we conducted an exercise where our group got to play both participant and researcher. We were given a task by another group to find objects in the streets of Chicago that fit a certain criteria. It felt a little like a scavenger hunt. In our role as the participants, we had to document our process of finding these items with a Flip camera, a smartphone to microblog and good old paper and pencil to take notes during the process. We learned through this role that even with all of our tools, it was hard to try to document everything including our thought process while finding these items. In many instances we realized that we had forgotten to document some things, so there were definitely some gaps in our data.
Once we got back inside we had the opportunity to be the researcher and to analyze another group’s artifacts, microblogs, notes and video. As the researcher it was hard to piece together all the information when the other group had gaps in their data. The most interesting part was to see the other team analyze our information and how it matched up (or didn’t) to our thought process during our search.
It was great to use these self-documentation tools from both the perspective of a researcher and a participant. Allowing me to see the experience a participant goes through will be helpful in improving the ways in which i conduct my own research.
Well, Day 1 was great and I’m about to go to a reception to meet the rest of these great design researchers. Stay tuned for Day two…
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