M ETHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS

This section is based on an article by Rasila, Rothe & Nenonen (2009). If the aim is to understand the intra-firm user experiences holistically, it must be noted that all end-users are not aware of everything, and this affects their experiences. For example, all end-users may not even be aware of who is their landlord, and thus they have no idea of the tenant-landlord relationship quality. Asking them about this aspect of the customer experience would distort the findings considerably. On the other hand, all end-users – even if they are in the building for the very first time – have opinions about the physical environment and how they experience it.

The research carried out for this study suggests that the decision making unit may be best studied by individual interviews. Group based methodologies do not work, as the discussion has typically some confidential elements that the interviewees won’t share with others listening. This applies to both people inside the organization and especially to people from other organizations. Our interviews suggest that even having a group interview with the decision making unit from one organization won’t work as, for example, the tenant-landlord contact person may have issues that he does not want to share with the managing director. Thus, individual interviews seem to be the best way to study the relationship element of the end-user experience. (Rasila & al. 2009.)

In studying the decision making unit, it is necessary to first define it; who are the people responsible for the tenant-landlord relationship and the contact persons who are responsible for communication with the landlord and the service provider(s). The easiest way to uncover the decision making unit would be to conduct an initial interview with the managing director. In the beginning or end of the interview a few targeted questions, such as “who is responsible for the contact with the landlord/service providers?”, help to define the decision making unit (and identify the next interviewees). The following interviewees are then defined by the answer to this question, and they may be asked the same questions again. This procedure resembles the so called snowball sampling method (Biernacki & Waldorf 1981).

In the organizations studied here, the decision making unit typically consisted of two or three people: the final decision-maker(s) (typically the managing director), the contact person(s) taking care of the day-to-day relationships with the landlord or service provider(s). In our case organizations, there was typically one secretary close to the managing director who took care of these. In some organizations, the financial manager was also influencing the strategically important decisions heavily, and was thus an important actor in the decision-making unit. (Rasila & al. 2009.)

In this research, the interviews with the decision making unit were carried out as unstructured or semi-structured interviews, as suggested in the introductory chapter. In this initial work, the aim was to find the issues that were important to the respondents without giving them the “right answers” by asking the “right questions”. After this initial work, this problem is considerably smaller and the interviews may be carried out in a more structured manner. The following themes could be suggested for exploration in the interviews with the members of the decision making unit:

1) General information (company information, interviewee background etc.).

2) Decision making unit composition (who are the contact persons towards the service provider(s) and the landlord?).

3) The relationship themes (see the below).

4) The product themes (see below).

5) The service themes (see below).

6) Cost-value comparison (see above; cf. Grönroos 2004).

The findings from the empirical study suggest that the experiences of the other end-users (the decision making unit excluded) may be best studied by using group based methodologies. The product element was studied with two individual interviews and the information gathered by this method was scarce. The group based method, as suggested by article 5, was much more productive in this sense. This suggests that a usability walkthrough or walkthrough audit was a fruitful way to get information on this side of the end-user experiences. The methodological foundations of the walkthrough audit are examined in more detail in article 5. (Rasila & al. 2009.)

The walkthrough audits for this study were carried out with representatives from the case organizations. In hindsight the compositions of the groups were not optimal. The empirical findings suggest that it would be useful to invite one person totally unfamiliar with the environment and/or someone who visits the site rarely. This would add to understanding of the learnability and memorability of the environment (see also article 4). Further, the findings suggest that it might be useful to add the service element to the themes of the audit. It seems unnecessary to carry out additional interviews about the service quality theme as was done in this initial study. Thus, the themes of a walk-through audit would include:

1. General information (the site, the participants, the organizations that are represented)

2. Service themes

3. Product quality themes

This study is limited to the workplace experience, but adding one walkthrough audit with other end-users, such as customers or cooperating partners would be an easy way to get a third viewpoint on the issue of user experience – at least the product element of it.

Adding one or two of these end-users to the employee audit seems to be an easy but risky move, as their presence might affect the data received from the audit. (Rasila & al. 2009.)