9/4/2009 1

The new digital ethnographer’s toolkit: Capturing a participant’s lifestream

Dr Christopher KhalilSenior Experience Architect

News Digital Media

The talk will explain what the 'new ethnographer's toolkit'is, and how it can be used to

reconstruct user behaviour and thus enable better informed design

decisions.

WARNING / RELIEF:No theory will follow

We’re talking about the toolkit remember

So, we’ll look at aCase Study & Try out the Tools

Lifestream

Digital fingerprints• Twitter• Facebook• Email• IM• Blog posts• RSS feeds• Mobile:

– SMS/iPhone/Voice

Cultural Probes

• A great user experience is gained from understanding a user’s– Needs– Behaviours– Motivations

• Ethnographic research gives insight based on observing users, often, over a long period of time

• Isn’t always possible due to lack of time or resource• Good alternative is to use a Cultural Probe . • Cultural Probes can sometimes take the form of paper

diaries

Some issues with conventional probes

• Asynchronous (you do it once a day)

• Minutiae and richness of the everyday is often lost in the edited and processed view the participant takes in their diary entry.

• Self-referential (talk about my day through a frame I think is important)

Digital Probes• Synchronous: Capture lifestream

automatically– i.e. twitter, delicious, facebook, blog, rss

• Less self-referential: ‘Real time’ capture ensures a more realistic, natural record of the participant’s life than asking them to fill out a diary entry alone

• Natural: Recording mechanism is in the same medium & context the researcher is trying to find out more about (i.e. web)

Other advantages

• Closely connect the researcher to the participant

• Facilitates easier analysis, versioning and distribution

• Still allows conventional diary entry (i.e. capture offline events & reflection)

Using Tumblr as Probe PlatformIntegrates several technologies into one lifestream• Twitter• Email• iPhone• Voice• Images• Videos• Bookmarks• Flickr• RSSEXCEPT: Facebook (to come) We setup a FB account participants ‘friended’ us

for a week

Case Study

Moshtix

• Moshtix is one of Australia's largest ticketing sites• WHY: Deeper understanding of audience

– Personas• WHY: Broader view of user behaviours, activities,

philosophies in a specific mental space (music, events)– Mental Model– Common Scenarios

• WHY: Identify new opportunities– Mental Model– GAP analysis

• WHY: Base the product strategy on real, observed user needs and activities

Process

• Recruit users• Pre-Probe Interview (30 mins)• Run the Probe (1 week)• Post-Probe Interview (1.5 hours)

– This is the key stage

Recruiting

Recruit Users

ETHNIO

• Recruit real users from your site• Relatively inexpensive

• Easy to use and setup• Screen based on existing models or business

targets (e.g. Roy Morgan, Prior Research)

• Does take time to recruit users, but good results• Let’s have a look

Ethnio Demo

A few Ethnio tipsScreener:• Keeper as short as possible, use follow up email to

focus in• Speak audiences language• Be very clear on incentive, location• Don’t offer users optionsFrequency:• Adjust the frequency as required depending on

– Number of participants– Time to research– Page traffic– Business needs

• Generally better to start high then turn down Organisation• Factor in a good amount of time to organise• Create 2nd tier list and backups

So, you have some recruits now what?

1. Pick the ones who most closely match your criteria

2. Let others know you’ll use them down the line (focus groups and further research)

3. Ring users1. much faster and reliable than email2. ensure they have enough time to participate

4. Send privacy agreements for review5. Follow up call to quickly explain process6. You’re good to go…

The Probe

Pre-Probe Interview

Objective: Encourage participation by making probe as easy as possible

1. Need access to their machine or demo on your machine

2. Get everything setup for them– Login all setup– Take them through what they need and why. – Set the expectation that we really need their help, incentive

isn’t enough

• Explain what you want from them– Anything relating to music, events or just general interest

• Let’s have a look & create our own probe

Tumblr Demo

Join in the UXA Tumblr

URL: www.tumblr.com | uxa2009.tumblr.com

Login: uxa2009@yahoo.com.au

Password: uxa2009

Lets have a look& see what we’ve got (has the voice been

added)

During Probe Period

• Monitor probes and contributions• Try to interfere as little as possible• Be encouraging• Direct them in how you’d like them to use

the probe (i.e. more commentary)• If it looks like they are not contributing,

gently remind them of probe timescales

Post Probe Interview

• Ask users to take you on their journey• Reflection rather than conjecture• Open questions, get at the why• Expound on context• Get them to ‘show and tell’ on activities

In Practice

• Record screen if possible• Transcribe

– Pay professional service– Playback audio/video

– Have 2 people, one to take notes

What’s next

Analysis

• No way around it, this is hard work• Probes generate a tonne of data• Need to live with data for a while• Use a methodology such as Grounded

Theory– Codify, Cluster, Categories – Generate model– Generate personas– Some tools: MaxQDA, Excel

Examples

Mental ModelProbe

Persona

Conclusion• Effective qualitative research can be carried out using

digital cultural probes• Wide variety of technologies enable us to capture

user’s activities• Probe can be used to create a mental model based

on authentic:– goals– behaviours – motivations.

• Probe can be used to create personas using authentic:

– behavioural dimensions– examples i.e. sites visited (bookmarked in probe)

• VERY useful for finding things that might be out of scope: gap analysis

• Probes are also good for organisational buy-in

Questions ?

Dr Christopher KhalilSenior Experience ArchitectNews Digital Media

christopherkhalil@yahoo.co.ukwww.chriskhalil.com