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Everything-I-Touch, Everything-U-Touch

How to capture meaningful user data remotely?

As much as I'd love to spend a month on location (cough, in Hawaii) to run a user study the reality is compressing it into up to two weeks (and more likely to be Hackney or Hangzhou than Hawaii, damn). Well before the team touches down in a new location we will have screened the study participants so one option is to ask them to self-gather data prior to our arrival. A typical self-gathering tool is asking them to keep some form of written, photo and/or video diary.

At best diary methods provide insights into people's context that can be followed up in interviews, and primes the user and the research team for the next stages of the study. At worst they are a waste of time - with participants mis-interpreting or re-interpreting the diary brief, unable to use the tools provided, consider the whole thing one big hassle, and only note down indecipherable comments.

One diary method which has a higher success rate than most I've tried is the eponymous Everything-I-Touch Photo Diary. Using a digital camera the participant is asked to take a photo of everything they touch for at least half a day sometimes from the moment they get up. The method was originally tried in 2001 as an attempt to understand the range and properties of objects/things that a person comes in contact with during the course of a day and was followed up as part of user exploration to develop concepts around Magic Touch / Near Field Communications. What objects and things do we interact with? What range of user interfaces, user experiences do we encounter? What enables or forces us to interact with the same things in different ways? For example turning a light switch on with your hand, but with both hands engaged in carrying turning the same switch off using your nose. How often do you flick that light switch on or off? Open that door? What does your alarm clock, shower knob, front door, fridge, breakfast, key-ring look like? What brands do you use? What interaction experiences are unique to those brands? When is the last time you had a novel tactile experience? Is it possible to go through the day without touching any objects that you haven't touched before?

If you like user research data, the results are a rich orgy of the mundane.

The method was successful enough in achieving its original aims, but also yielded other interesting data such as highlighting the flow of the day, the order in which tasks were completed - people likely to pee before checking the weather in the mornings, and understanding the range of contexts where the user spends time. A sufficient number of photos included enough perspective to show what else was happening, what other things the user could be doing.

Making the photos ready for use in the study is relatively easy. If the camera's time & date is accurately set up then it is easy to import the photos into a software programme such as LifeBlog, view the photos as a time line and add comments. Most of the things we do involve touching something or another and by capturing the touch moment it is possible to gain insights into that context. The time line can be printed and presented to the user for additional comments or as an interview guide. Some of the pilot subjects (Juergen, Matt) kept a diary and posted them to their blogs, though the final format of the photos from study participants tended to be more first person shooter than on these sites.

To encourage comprehensive data collection participants were given a comprehensive sample diary from the life of yours truly, that in turn acted as a form of social reward - a case of I'll show you mine if you show me yours.

There are a number of weaknesses with this diary method. The participant needs to be sufficiently motivated take continue to take photos - the novelty of snapping everything wears off after about an hour. Things that are touched multiple times in a short space of time will be only photographed once - though this is easy to follow-up in the interview. If you are trying to understand micro interaction issues you need to consider the user's dominant hand and are probably better off videoing the session. A user may record photos for the diary with their right, dominant hand for example forcing them to unnaturally use their left hand for carrying out tasks. The volume of photos can be overwhelming to process so shooting at a low resolution makes the volume easier to process.

Ultimately the user frames what you end up seeing. Whilst it is possible this will lead to carefully staged/boring this-is-my-life-isn't-it-wonderful photos, keeping the participant in control of the data collection process means being more likely to get photos of personal moments. The photos from one participant in Milan, Italy were so inspiring to be publishable as a stand-alone book.

If anyone wants to try this out get in ahem, touch and Ill send you more information - if you show me yours, I'll show you mine.

Writing from Sakura Shinmachi | October 14, 2005 | Permalink