Methods of data collection

The Motivation of data gathering in User-Centred Design is to understand the user needs and find facts and assess the opinions of the potential users before designing. Hence

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data gathering technique is essential for establishing prerequisites and assessments [50].

Kicking off a new project be a pretty daunting prospect, especially if we are building a new product or service or if we are working with a new client. There's usually somebody that knows almost all. If we are tasked with understanding the project. It can feel like a pretty massive task. So many questions. What is the project? Who's going to use it?

What will they use it for? How do we expect them to interact with it? How will you know if it is a success? What are our goals?

 Ethnographies, Oral History, and Case Studies

 Documents and Records

The following data gathering methods were used in this thesis: interviews (audio, video, and pictures), observation and diary methods.

3.2.1 Interviews

One of the more common methods of data collection, in UCD, is the use of interviews.

Interviews can be conducted with individuals, with pairs or with groups. They can be short and focused. They can be long, intense dialogues involving multiple sessions. In-terviews can be conducted via telephone or the internet, using something like Skype or they could even be conducted via a series of emails despite this variety. [31]

First, Aim of the interview is to understand the interviewee point of view regarding the issue. An interviewer should give freedom to participants that they can easily express their thought in their own words. The interviewer should avoid putting his words or thoughts into participants thoughts.

Secondly, The interview is one of the best methods to collect in-depth information. The interviewer should allow participants to answer in details and express freely. A single word or short answer will lead to an unclear story. Then the deep analysis will be difficult, and the final outcome will be in the inform of low-quality research.

Thirdly, interviews allow researchers to probe, and to follow up ideas. Researchers can ask the participants to expand on the right answer or even ask them why they answered the way they did. The interview is a conversation between the researcher and those people being researched. A dialogue in which the participants respond to the questions and then the interviewer responds to the interviewee. [31]

3.2.2 Observation

The meaning of observational research or field research is to observe the behaviours of people in their natural environment [32]. The study participants are observed by the re-searchers, in naturally occurring situations. Such as studying how people act as a pop concert? Observational research is one of the ways we gather market information, which we subsequently analyse. For example, we can observe fans at a pop concert and then analyse their behaviour. We can determine how many were happy with the ticket price.

How many enjoyed the actual concert and how many complained about the temperature.

In the world of business, observational research occurs when we want to study, how humans interact with goods and services? It is only observational research if the partici-pants are being watched in their natural surroundings. For example, observing people at a supermarket is observational research. Observational research may involve par-ticipant and parpar-ticipants observers. There is no intervention by the researchers in non-participant observations. In non-participant observations, researchers are also the part of re-search or in other words, they are also a participant. They mix in with the people that they are observing.

3.2.3 Observational research offers the following advantages:

 It is a hypothesis to a real-world aspect.

 It allows us to observe people acting together or separately.

 It validates actual results rather than having to use data to predict things.

 It is very ideal in no verbal communication.

 The gathered data from this type of research is more reliable than self-report metrics.

3.2.4 Diary method

It is a longitudinal method, where we ask our participants to keep a diary of things that they do and how they feel over time [33]. Longitudinal means over time. The study can be a few days, a few weeks, or longer. Whatever we think would be appropriate to an-swer our research questions. When do we use a diary study method? One example could be, studying general behaviour. We want to do field studies but we cannot. We can also

use this method for testing a new product. When we wanted to launch something new, we want to understand how people would use it in the real world, in context. What do they use it for? What do not they use it for and why? How long it took them to learn it.

Positive and negative experiences with it. Those things we cannot really capture in a lab study. Therefore, if we want to understand our user's day-to-day experiences, what they do, how they feel? Diary study is the best proxy for understanding that user experience.

Since we are gathering data over time, we can track those changes. Changes in attitude, behaviour or skill.

Here are five steps on how to conduct a diary study.

Step 1: Recruit participants who fit our criteria. What kind of people do we want to talk to? Get a sense for how engaged they might be? All this can be hard because some people might forget to fill out Diaries. When recruiting, tell them upfront about what they should expect. For example, this is going to be a one-week-long study and we expect two diaries per day.

Step 2: We want to create our diary form with the questions that we want to learn. There are many ways. We can do with online apps, such as deep Scout or Paco. We can set up the Diary study and send out invitations links to our participants. If we do not want to use an app. We can send them through Google Forms or we can also have them write their own paper diaries and just email or take photos and send it to us, later.

Step 3: Set up an introduction with participants. Either via a phone call, email or through a video chat. Just introduce yourself, tell them what we expect from the study. What they can expect from us.

Step 4: Constantly check responses, to make sure that people are filling it out and if there are any problems, we can address it.

Step 5: Once have all the data from diaries, analyse it. Look for patterns, changes in behaviours, skills, attitudes or whatever want to learn. To make sure we can get answers to the research questions.