« Sign Painter | Main | Designing Outside Human Limitations »
Quiet Before the Storm
10 days before the next in-depth user study starts, 240 hours of relative calm before the storm.
Sometimes its possible to plan a year in advance. The minimum stress free lead time is 2 months to draw up a project plan, pull together a team - typically people working in other time zones so expect late nights and early mornings working from home, sync travel plans to the study location, recruit participants, engage subcontractors for the stuff you can't/don't want to do, assess and arrange local assistants and expect to deliver something decent. The actual work load before the study is much less with access to people with the right skills.
A lot of the prep work is simply project management and logistical planning. We have processes to deal with most eventualities and I'm a self-confessed form junkie. Data consent form? Sure, what language you want it in? Probably about 75% to 95% of the plan will go as scheduled and the rest is dealing with the situation you have and getting on with it. I'm not sure how we would have dealt with Katrina though - the team left New Orleans about a week before she arrived.
During the planning phase the creative part comes in figuring out which mix of methods to use to get the data you're after: shadowing, home stay, diary variants, in-depth interviews, observations, street interviews, expert interviews, ...? Who are the most appropriate participants? Where is the most productive place to spend time with them? What data you want to collect? What formats? Why? Really Why? Really really why?
The real creativity and IMHO the value added for clients, comes in figuring out what else the participants, team and location has to offer, and finding a way to bottle and communicate the experience(s). Maybe this part of the job is not user research - but experience bottling?
Writing from Roppongi Hills | September 13, 2005 | Permalink
Comments
Experience bottling...which type of experience goes best with pasta? In this case, I assume that the value pyramid is inverted and the freshest vintages are the most valuable. But that implies that your experiences are fermenting :)
Maybe holographic projection? A fragment of the original allows you to recreate an (admittedly attenuated, but complete) image of the thing itself. Or are you distilling experience after all, so it can be served in concentrated form?
Is that pic taken from the Mori building?
Posted by: Andrew at September 14, 2005 6:05 AM
> Is that pic taken from the Mori building?
Yup. Ubicomp reception Monday night.
Posted by: Jan at September 14, 2005 8:25 AM