User Research Method

My own, small diary project

Today was the day of analysis of my first own, small diary study. We were introduced in class to different qualitative research methods by Louise Healy-Adonis, who works in the strategic insight consultancy Flamingo.

In order to capture the experience or habits of users, she suggested to apply cultural probes. One method within this field of observational research is the so called ‘diary study’. A diary study is a method in which participants report all activities or experiences to a certain topic over a defined period of time themselves. The researcher provides a template for the participant as well as an instruction of the task and expectations. Included in the process are choice of participants, introduction and providing of a template, feedback during the process, activity recommendations for the analysed period, monitoring of the participation and finally an analysis and summary of the findings (Spotless Interactive London UK, 2004-2018).

Louise Healy-Adonis encouraged us to set up a small diary study ourselves to become familiar with the different steps and to gain hands-on experience. The project should be presented in the next session in class.

I would like to share now the project I conducted. The topic I chose for the diary study is plastic consumption. My aim was to find out how much plastic waste one person produces in one day and observe which kind of recycling information were displayed on the packages. Here are the stages I went through:

1. Find a participant The participant for my study had to be from my class and willing to monitor all plastic waste for one day. Luckily, I found a participant quite fast and we decided on a time to exchange the template and have a quick introduction.

2. Preparation of the template and introduction To understand the plastic consumption, I decided to set up a form in which each piece of plastic should be noted down, the time of usage or disposal and the reason the plastic was used for. I did not want the participant to be biased about the recyclability of the plastic, therefore I did not inform her about my aim to understand this topic. But, to get access to the information, I asked her to collect all plastic pieces and label them according to the line of the diary form. For this I provided prepared stickers with numbers and a plastic bag to make the observation as easy as possible. To make the instructions clear, I wrote a short summary of the steps that were to be taken, so that she could read them again at any time and I added a short personal introduction to thank her for her support and motivate her to fulfil the tasks. As I handed over all documents I explained the task personally as well.

3. Analysis and summary of the findings After I received the filled-in diary template and the bag with plastic items I analysed them on basis of three main aspects: Number of items, purpose of plastic and recyclability. I was positively surprised: The number of items was smaller than I had expected. She collected 6 items in the whole day. Because of this, only few lines of my template were filled. All items on the list were food packaging or food related. By seeing this, I realised that one day is maybe not a representative time frame for plastic consumption because only the waste that is caused immediately with consumption of the content is registered within one day. All plastic packaging or plastic items that get used for a longer time (e.g. packaging of multipacks like carrots or bananas, detergent bottles, tooth brushes, shopping bags) are unlikely to be monitored within that specific day. The recyclability information on the plastic items varied a lot. On 3 of 6 items there was an information about recycling. 1 item had no information but at least the packaging was designed in a way that paper and plastic could be separated easily which makes recycling possible. And 2 items had no information on it at all. But this observation has to be seen critically because the plastic items were both probably delivered to the user within any kind of other packaging which could have contained an information on recycling: The bag for cereals comes usually in a cardboard box and the plastic fork is normally bought in a multipack. The recycling information varied a lot. I found the Green Dot that states only that the packaging producer donates an amount of money to the organisation of recovery, sorting and recycling of sales packaging. It does therefore give no instruction about how to dispose the plastic. Then, there was the information “Recycling: Widely Recycled”. This written statement is equivalent to a more widely known sign, which was not displayed on the plastic. It means that the plastic can be recycled in most of the recycling authorities (Waste and Resources Action Programme, no date). Finally, there was one quite comprehensive statement on the yoghourt cup. It listed all single parts of the package, their material and how to dispose it. Additionally, it provided the link to a website that informs about recycling. All my findings were summarised and captured in a presentation:

Presentation About the Diary Study (Hinger, 2018)

Feedback during the process and monitoring of the participation was not necessary as the observations lasted for one day only and the task was easily understandable. On purpose I didn’t recommend any special activities because my aim was to get a realistic picture of the plastic waste and I didn’t want to influence the normal routine and habits.

After going through the whole process, I drew some conclusions for my next diary study:

• Form of the diary study: The template and stickers provided worked well and the participant was enthusiastic and motivated to take part because of the playful design. So, engagement of the researcher supports engagement of the participant.

• Time frame: One day is too short to get a deeper understanding of a complex topic. With regards to the consumption of plastic next time 1 week or 1 month would be necessary to get a representative consumption overview of the non-regular or non-daily plastic items.

• Collected items: The choice of items to be collected was not completely sufficient to get a wholistic picture of the recycling issue. Next time all kind of recyclable waste (plastic, paper, glass) should be included in order to get a better overview of waste production and recycling information on packaging that is combined of various materials.

• Follow-up interview: In order to understand the issues more deeply a follow-up interview would be necessary, especially to ask the participant about the recycling information: Does she read it? Does she know the meaning?

Overall it was a very helpful exercise for me to conduct a small diary study by myself. I have learned from the issues I faces and feel more confident to conduct a larger scale cultural probe in any of my future research projects.

Reference List:

Spotless Interactive London UK (2004-2018) 6 things to consider when setting up a UX diary study. Available at: https://www.spotless.co.uk/insights/6-things-for-ux-diary-study/ (Accessed: 21.11.2018).

Waste and Resources Action Programme (no date) Recycling symbols explained. Available at: https://www.recyclenow.com/recycling-knowledge/packaging-symbols-explained (Accessed: 21 November 2018).