28 5 / 2012
Participant Observation
Apprentice
Hardware technicians — most effective technician was who had been there the longest.But the second most effective technician was located NEXT to the person who had been there the longest. Just by observing, you pick up all the skills/tools that aren’t written down/documented.
- Set up partnerships with people you want to observe
- Be taught the steps in the process
- Observe all the practices
- Validate what you’re observing as you go along
Pay attention to all the artifacts. Look for workarounds and hacks. ERRORS are a goldmine for innovation.
1980s Lucy Suchman made a video of users trying to produce a double-sided copy. 20 minutes later…. DOH.
Walmart lost a billion dollars in sales because they asked customers if they’d like the aisles to be less cluttered, and then they made the aisles less cluttered.
Additional resources:
- Institute of Design at Stanford
- Kuniavsky, Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner’s Guide to User Research
- Beyer & Holtzblatt, Contextual Design: Defining Customer-Centered Systems (Interactive Technologies)
