Copies of the research method protocol template. Each form depicts one of 27 different interpretive research protocols based on the 'Learn', 'Look', and 'Ask' cards from IDEO.
Time:
Allow a day between setting and concluding the exercise.
Protocol:
- Write your name and the research context you will investigate on the form
- Investigate and propose your own version of the procedure for the research method assigned to you. Base this procedure on readings or your own creative extrapolation of the description on the IDEO methods card.
- Conduct a trial run of the procedure on yourself first, then involve another willing participant, and another...
- Make notes and analyse them for findings.
- Keep a record of evidence gathered.
Evaluation:
In class discussion of findings.
In research pairs.
Notes:
Names and descriptions for the IDEO Method Cards (IDEO, 2003)
Ideo (2003) IDEO Method Cards: 51 Ways to Inspire Design. William Stout.
Ideo (2003) IDEO Method Cards: 51 Ways to Inspire Design. William Stout.
LEARN
| Research Method | Description |
|---|---|
| Activity Analysis | A description of project relevant dynamics: actions, interactions, tasks, and objects of achieving goals. |
| Affinity Diagrams | Represent or diagram clustering of design elements with activities, goals, obstacles. Proximity, dependence and relationships |
| Anthropometric Analysis | Human factors or ergonomics to assess project relevant use factors. |
| Character Profiles | Personas. Archetypes of real people with real goals, lifestyle, behavior, identities. |
| Cognitive Task Analysis | List, summary of all available sensory inputs decision points and actions. |
| Competitive Product Survey | Collect, compare, and conduct evaluations of extant and competitive products. |
| Cross-Cultural Comparisons | Personal accounts of differences in situations, behavior and artitfacts in different national or cultural settings. |
| Error Analysis | Capturing the things that actually go wrong in the project relevant setting. |
| Flow Analysis | The flow of information in existing and/or new system. |
| Historical Analysis | Identify trends and cycles of product use, customer behavior, market, and practice. Relate to timeless goals |
| Long-Range Forecasts | Narratives of future scenarios complete with social and technological trends to predict behaviours. |
| Secondary Research | Summary analysis of existing sources and 3rd party data on project relevant areas. |
LOOK
| Research Method | Description |
|---|---|
| A Day in the Life | Catalogue a person’s whole day without necessarily focusing on project relevant aspects. |
| Behavioural Archaeology | Look at use, wear, the detailed arrangement or organization of use objects in their use setting. |
| Behavioural Mapping | Map position, movement, and use of space over time. |
| Fly on the Wall | Observe in context without interfering. |
| Guided Tours | Ask the user to guide you through project relevant spaces and activities. |
| Personal Inventory | Ask the user to reflect on and describe the things they view as important or significant |
| Rapid Ethnography | Participate and experience it first-hand with the user for as long as possible. |
| Shadowing | Tag-along with people through the day. |
| Social Network Mapping | Notice the relationships between people, groups. Look for identity, profession, culture, and connections. |
| Still Photo Survey | Build up a visual record of key use and interaction moments over time. |
| Time-Lapse Video | A way of summarizing activity over time, use of time, space, and location. |
ASK
| Research Method | Description |
|---|---|
| Camera Journal | A written and visual diary of project relevant circumstances and activities. |
| Card Sort | Organise cards spatially in ways that make sense. To expose mental models of device or system. |
| Cognitive Maps | Create a map of an existing or virtual space. The pathways they know and navigate, mental models. |
| Collage | Self created collage of arranged images. Used to help verbalise complex or unvocalised themes. |
| Conceptual Landscape | Sketch and juxtapose social and behavioural constructs from participants. People’s mental model. |
| Cultural Probes | A visual journal for participants to build up themselves. A self generated reflection. Gathered and compared across many participants. |
| Draw the Experience | Ask participants to visualize and draw the experience in their own way, with their own associations, order, relationships, theories. |
| Extreme User Interviews | Evaluate (ask) users at extreme ends of market (early adopters, power users, beginners) to highlight their issues. |
| Five Whys? | Ask “why?” in response to five consecutive answers. Expose/uncover deeper attitudes perceptions. |
| Foreign Correspondents | Elicit inputs from others (snowball sample) to build up varied cultural and environmental contexts. |
| Narration | Users perform tasks and achieve goals while describing aloud. Talk aloud protocol. Stream of consciousness. |
| Surveys & Questionnaires | Targeted questions to assess design, usage, interaction characterists and perceptions of users. |
| Unfocus Group | Gather a range of tools or materials and get diverse user group to create things relevant to the design or project. |
| Word-Concept Association | Users associate words with design. Cluster user perceptions to evaluate design features & concepts. Value and priority. |
TRY
| Research Method | Description |
|---|---|
| Behavior Sampling | Snapshot people’s activities at different times. How do pervasive products intrude in your lives? |
| Be Your Customer | What is it like to purchase your product? Actual experience of searching, buying, consuming, disposing. |
| Bodystorming | Act out scenarios with many people, using space, place, sequence, queues, etc. Test performance in context. |
| Empathy Tools | Experience the range of users capability for involvement under real conditions. |
| Experience Prototype | Mock up a rough but workable prototype to simulate the experience of using the new product. |
| Informance | Act out scenarios observed in the field to interpret and analyze in the lab. Builds shared understanding and good for solution formation. |
| Paper Prototyping | Rapid paper based mock-ups that are manipulated to demonstrate functionality. To articulate design concepts with users. |
| Predict Next Year’s Headlines | Involve users in future design possibilities. Futuristic, wishing, unmet needs. Help separate what is needed now from what can wait. |
| Quick-and-Dirty Prototyping | Assemble a very rough mock-up of a new feature or product to help start and refine a design. |
| Role-Playing | Identify actors/stakeholders involved in design use, enact real activities in real or imagined context. |
| Scale Modeling | Simulation technique to test arrangements of space, place, context. |
| Scenarios | A character-rich story, to communicate (simulate) and test a plausible story in probable context. |
| Scenario Testing | Show depictions of possible future scenarios. Share reactions, refine concepts. |
| Try it Yourself | Like Microsoft’s famous ‘eating our own dog food’ being the first user. |
