kapow! participant exercises for powerful research

KAPOW!PARTICIPATORY EXERCISES FOR POWERFUL

RESEARCH COLLABORATION

UXPA 2016 WORKSHOP ~ LEAH RADER

WHAT IF?

SAN FRANCISCO | SPRINGSTUDIO.COM

WHAT IF YOU COULD…

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YOU CAN!

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YOU CAN!

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YOU CAN!

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YOU CAN!

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YOU CAN!

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YOU CAN!

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SAN FRANCISCO | SPRINGSTUDIO.COM 15

TODAY WE WILL

LOOK

• Ways to explore experience

• How our minds work

• How exercises fit in


LOOK

TODAY WE WILL


LOOK EXPLORE

TODAY WE WILL

• Types of exercises

• What they’re good for

• Examples


LOOK EXPLOREDRAFT

REVISE

PILOT

• Draft exercises

• Pilot them

• Revise based on feedback

TODAY WE WILL


LOOK EXPLOREDRAFT

REVISE

PILOT SHARE

• Observations and a-ha’s

TODAY WE WILL

LET’S BREAK THE ICE


INTERVIEW A NEIGHBOR:

• Name

• Where they are from

• a favorite thing to cook OR eat

• fantasy vacation (to where? to do what?)

LET’S BREAK THE ICE

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YOU’LL INTRODUCE YOUR NEIGHBOR TO THE ROOM.

THE LAY OF THE LAND


LET’S LOOK AT 3 HIGH-LEVEL CHUNKS

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HOW TO GET DEEPER RESPONSES

HOW OUR MINDS WORKWAYS TO EXPLORE

EXPERIENCE


• Interview

• Survey

WAYS TO EXPLORE EXPERIENCE

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SAY

MAKEDO • Creative exercises

• Expressive exercises

• Researcher observation

• Participant observation


• Interview

• Survey


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SAY






• Interview

• Survey


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SAY



• Researcher as observer

• Participant as observer


• Interview

• Survey


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SAY






• Interview

• Survey


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SAY

MAKEDO

Participatory exercises


• Participant observation • Creative exercises



HOW OUR MINDS WORK

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CAN & WILL IT BE SAID? LAYERS OF RESPONSE

ADAPTED FROM COOPER & BRANTHWAITE


HOW OUR MINDS WORK

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P U B L I C

P R I V A T E

E A S Y

T O

S A Y

H A R D

T O

S A Y

A W A R E

U N A W A R E

SPONTANEOUS

RATIONAL

PERSONAL, TACIT, LATENT

INTUITIVE

IMAGINATIVE

UNCONSCIOUS

REPRESSED




LEAVE TO PSYCHOLOGISTS

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P U B L I C

P R I V A T E

SPONTANEOUS

RATIONAL


INTUITIVE

IMAGINATIVE

UNCONSCIOUS

REPRESSED

HOW OUR MINDS WORK


E A S Y

T O

S A Y

H A R D

T O

S A Y

A W A R E

U N A W A R E



DIRECT QUESTIONS


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P U B L I C

P R I V A T E

SPONTANEOUS

RATIONAL


INTUITIVE

IMAGINATIVE

UNCONSCIOUS

REPRESSED

HOW OUR MINDS WORK


A W A R E

U N A W A R E

E A S Y

T O

S A Y

H A R D

T O

S A Y



EXERCISES

DIRECT QUESTIONS


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P U B L I C

P R I V A T E

SPONTANEOUS

RATIONAL


INTUITIVE

IMAGINATIVE

UNCONSCIOUS

REPRESSED

HOW OUR MINDS WORK


E A S Y

T O

S A Y

H A R D

T O

S A Y

A W A R E

U N A W A R E




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• Reported behavior

• Opinions and beliefs

• Illustrative stories

• Expectations and desires

DIRECT QUESTIONS



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• Help participants remember, select, talk about and interpret past events

• Help participants become aware of and describe behavior, thoughts and feelings

(these are also called enabling exercises)

EXPRESSIVE EXERCISES



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• Help participants talk about sensitive topics

• Help participants express abstract feelings and thoughts

(these are also called projective exercises)

CREATIVE EXERCISES

LET’S MAKE SOME EXERCISES


LET’S TAKE IT STEP BY STEP

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SCENARIO EXPAND NARROW DRAFT

PILOT REVISE COLLECT ANALYZE

PLANNING:

SHARE REFLECTDOING:


COLLECT

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SCENARIO EXPAND NARROW DRAFT PILOT REVISE

YOU’VE BEEN HIRED!

REFLECTANALYZE SHARE


TO UNCOVER POSSIBLE NEW PRODUCTS OR SERVICES MEANINGFUL TO PET OWNERS

YOU’VE BEEN HIRED!

COLLECTSCENARIO EXPAND NARROW DRAFT PILOT REVISE REFLECTANALYZE SHARE


SCENARIO EXPAND

PET OWNERSHIP IS ALL ABOUT…

COLLECTNARROW DRAFT PILOT REVISE REFLECTANALYZE SHARE


SCENARIO EXPAND NARROW

WORKSHEET WITH A PARTNER (15 MIN)

COLLECTDRAFT PILOT REVISE REFLECTANALYZE SHARE



FIRST ALL THE EXERCISE TYPES AND THEN WE DRAFT

COLLECTPILOT REVISE REFLECTANALYZE SHARE

TYPES OF EXERCISES


TYPES OF EXERCISES

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LIST MAD LIB STORY TRACK SORT

PLAYMAPDIAGRAMMAKE ?


WHAT IT’S GOOD FOR:

• Collecting elements of a category (e.g. “types of meals I cook”)

• Gathering feelings and needs around a topic

• Compiling inventories (e.g. “What’s in my bathroom cabinet”)

• Capturing schedules

• Lists can be lower effort for participants to complete but yield rich discussion. Good as an opening exercise.

LIST

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LIST

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List combined with Diagram to show priority of elements—inner circle is higher priority


LIST

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from Afshan Amjad’s research with students about their school experiences before & after immigration.

http://www.academia.edu/1473148/Interviewing_Participants_About_Past_Events_The_Helpful_Role_of_Pre-Interview_Activities

http://www.academia.edu/1473148/Interviewing_Participants_About_Past_Events_The_Helpful_Role_of_Pre-Interview_Activities



• Eliciting associations, desires, preferences, values

• Gathering participant’s own words around a prompt to help with evaluating the symbolic meanings associated with the topic

• Can be used to assess motivations and attitudes

• Good bang for the buck— these are easier to create and offer high value results!

MAD LIB

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(AKA Sentence Completion)


MAD LIB

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from Sentence Completion for Evaluating

Symbolic Meaning by Kujala and Nurkka, 2012

http://www.ijdesign.org/ojs/index.php/

IJDesign/article/view/1166/523

Nice projective question! —>

http://www.ijdesign.org/ojs/index.php/IJDesign/article/view/1166/523


MAD LIB

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First time home buying experience:

left side provides “get to know you” material

expectations vs reality

analogies


MAD LIB

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Mad Lib combined with sketch to understand the role of cash relative to digital payments




• Learning about negative/positive events

• Exploring a category—understanding perspectives and values around a topic

• Gathering lessons learned

• These are best as solo-work to enable enough time for reflection.

FORMATS TO CONSIDER:

• Letters to myself (past self/future self)

• Mini-stories: “tell about a time when…”

• Photo story

STORY

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STORY

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Snags & Delights are mini-stories about negative and positive experiences.


STORY

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Letter to My Younger Self helps to understand the impact of past choices on a participant’s current state



• Recording behavior, routines, feelings over time

• Gathering photos from participant POV—empowers your participants!

• Enabling awareness of automatic behavior around a topic

• Good platform for comparing moments (e.g. does this log reflect what is normal?)

FORMAT VARIABLES TO CONSIDER:

• Diaries & calendars

• Analog or digital

• Any time period, brief or lengthy!

TRACK

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TRACK

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30 day Mood Calendar to track emotions,

key moments, and provide a platform for follow-up discussion.

Researcher’s post-it notes from —> follow-up conversation


TRACK

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dscout snippet for week long diary using

a smart phone to log moments


TRACK

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Visual story book of one dinner - this project happened before smart phones. I like that it breaks down a 1 - 2 hour

event into multiple stages to gather great process details. Participants took

10 - 15 photos over the course of the one special dinner.



• Identifying and exploring categories

• Understanding relationships among elements - leads to uncovering mental models

• Learning about preferences and priorities (when participants rank order elements)

• Remembering stories (when participants select or sort images)

• Always collaborative to create a deck of triggers/images — it helps eliminate gaps in your individual thinking

SORT

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SORT

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An elegant content sort from userresearch.blog.gov.uk

http://userresearch.blog.gov.uk


SORT

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Photo deck to choose images that best fit certain

criteria. (This was an exercise to help participants practice developing a design vocabulary so they

could react to unbranded website designs on the basis of imagery, color, and font only.)


SORT

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Scenario-based sort with multiple decks:

big cards with scenario elements and small cards with social media elements


SORT

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Dixit cards to help with storytelling



• Using metaphors & analogies to express hard-to-articulate ideas

• Capturing moods & feelings

• Generating future scenarios

• Participants need lots of time to create and explain - do not rush!


• Drawings

• Collage

• Sculpture, models

• Building (e.g. with Legos or cut-outs/pieces made by you)

MAKE

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MAKE

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Drawing to express how it feels to have family in different countries.


MAKE

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Mood board collage to explore current state & future state.


MAKE

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Sculpture about possible new

ways to use technology in a hotel


MAKE

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Cut-outs of design elements for participants to use to build paper prototypes, prioritize

features, add new features, etc.


DIAGRAM

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• Understanding timelines and steps in a process

• Looking at relationships (e.g. people, objects, activities)

• Exploring conceptual categories

• Use simple Venns, 2x2s and linear scales as frameworks

• Unless you know the user’s native terms, resist using internal labels on process steps—be vague (e.g. “how it begins”)


DIAGRAM

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How a teacher feels over the course

of an assignment

This is an example of a time when we

did know the user’s vocabulary and put specific labels on the journey.


DIAGRAM

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Venn diagram to categorize which channel should be used for each need (Sort hybrid)


DIAGRAM

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How time is spent vs how time would

like to be spent



• Understanding relationships among elements in a category

• Comparing activities to locations

Maps provide a good platform for creating multiple layers of meaning. Create ways to code and annotate the base layer in order to explore:

• likes/dislikes/feelings

• channel use

• purpose/role of mapped items

• priority of mapped items

MAP

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MAP

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Social media tools this participant uses, the

importance of each, how each is engaged with, the purpose of each and how she controls interactions among them.


MAP

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Maps are a form of diagrams but deserve to be recognized as a unique form…this one is nice

because it is flexible to accommodate each participant’s story and has many layers of

information (see left column).

Follow the participant’s lead on the narrative. Go back to add layer details in one fell swoop

(e.g. timing, emotions, roles—use post-its if your map base gets too crowded)


MAP

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Map of accounts and color-coded channel pathways for how money enters the system and

moves within the system.



• Exploring important scenarios - and noticing emotions/assumptions in scenarios

• Lessening pressure around sensitive topics

• Gathering values, norms, rules, and native language

• Exploring solution spaces


• Role playing

• Games

PLAY

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PLAY

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Role-play moderating for a difficult

topic from userresearch.blog.gov.uk

instead of the participant having to take on a “depressing role”, the

researcher played that part and the participant played the role of family

member or friend to coach the researcher in what to do to meet his needs on the website.

http://userresearch.blog.gov.uk


PLAY

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Game for community building from Thesis Chronicle,

https://thesischronicle.wordpress.com/2011/07/14/change-by-design-kenya/

https://thesischronicle.wordpress.com/2011/07/14/change-by-design-kenya/

BREAK START AGAIN AT 11:00



LET’S DRAFT TOGETHER

COLLECTPILOT REVISE REFLECTANALYZE SHARE


PLANNING

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PLANNING

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NOW YOU DRAFT! (33 MIN)

• Sketch - use a whole page per exercise

• Try multiple versions or approaches

• Avoid perfectionism

SCENARIO EXPAND NARROW DRAFT COLLECTPILOT REVISE REFLECTANALYZE SHARE



TIME TO PILOT! 10 (X2) MIN FOR EACH TEAM 10 MIN TO GIVE FEEDBACK

30 MIN TOTAL

COLLECT REFLECTANALYZE SHARE

LUNCH START AGAIN AT 1:30



REVISE (30 MIN)

• Fix confusing instructions

• Look for opportunities to add layers for more depth

• Create new exercises if you didn’t like the result you got

COLLECT REFLECTANALYZE SHARE


SCENARIO EXPAND NARROW DRAFT PILOT COLLECT REFLECTANALYZE SHAREREVISE

MORE RESEARCH 15 MIN FOR EACH TEAM

30 MIN TOTAL


AN INTERLUDE ABOUT ANALYSIS AND OTHER THINGS NOT YET

COVERED…

SCENARIO EXPAND NARROW DRAFT PILOT REFLECTSHAREREVISE ANALYZECOLLECT


EXERCISES GET FIVE MAIN DATA TYPES:

• Catalog-able things: inventories, types, resources, tools, needs, etc. It can be helpful for your stakeholders to learn by seeing a “set” of information (tell meal types story here.)

• Behavior and process: your participants’ routines, the order of steps, variations, relationships among the parts of processes. This is the stuff of journey maps.

• Feelings and desires. This helps you develop empathy in yourself and stakeholders.

• Mental model ingredients: needs, motivations, attitudes, preferences, roles

• High octane illustrative quotes and stories so you can tell a riveting tale.

WHAT DATA TO EXPECT

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PATTERN IDENTIFICATION IS FUN & E-Z WITH ARTIFACTS!

• Try starting with a framework (AEIOU, POEMS, etc) to look for commonalities and differences among the artifacts. Sorting into groups is half the battle. (Effectively, truly naming what is going on in the groups is the other half of the battle.)

• Language/text analysis plays a big part—tag repeating words and language motifs.

• Make a consolidated master.

• It’s ok to keep emotional data simple - it can often speak for itself with just a little category framing from you.

• Weirdly, sometimes you don’t do analysis on the exercise artifact itself if it was used in an organizational way, meaning it helped you track and structure a complex conversation. So, if the resulting artifacts are wildly divergent and not catalog-able, then don’t stress.

WORKING WITH EXERCISE DATA

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CATALOG (AKA MAKE A “MASTER”)

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CREATE GROUPS

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GET IMMERSIVE:

• Consider a science fair (analog or digital)

• Ask for engagement (e.g. “who are you like, who are you unlike?)

• Show artifacts in your deliverables

SHARING WITH STAKEHOLDERS

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SCIENCE FAIR

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SCIENCE FAIR

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FULLY DIGITAL OR PARTIALLY ANALOG

• google slides and google docs are your friends

• consider an overhead projector

WHAT ABOUT REMOTE EXERCISES?

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PARTIALLY ANALOG

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GOOGLE SLIDES

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GO TO GOOGLE NOW…


• Instructions are critical when participants are handling exercises on their own. Triple check how the instructions are interpreted before you send to real participants.

• Keep instructions short. Don’t layer on a lot of steps in pre-work. Save exploring additional layers for the debrief conversation. In-person exercises can more easily have many layers because the moderator is there to manage the complexity.

• Plan your follow up questions carefully—the exercise isn’t fully prepared until you know what to probe on, listen for, and layer on during follow up conversation.

• Try sending pre-work as simple email prompts or in a google form—exercises do not have to be visually designed to be effective! Lists, mad-libs & stories require fewer visuals.

• In-person maps and diagrams can start with a blank page, as long as you have your checklist of elements to layer on and you have practiced how to guide the build-up of info.

CONSIDERATIONS FOR PRE-WORK VS. IN-PERSON

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ANALYZE (20 MIN) WHAT’S YOUR RECOMMENDATION FOR THE

DECISION THAT CLIENT NEEDS TO MAKE?

SCENARIO EXPAND NARROW DRAFT PILOT REFLECTSHAREREVISE ANALYZECOLLECT

BREAK WE’LL START AGAIN AT 4:00


SHARE OUT:

• THE DECISION YOU’RE HELPING THE CLIENT MAKE • 1 0R 2 NEAT-O THINGS YOU FOUND • YOUR RECOMMENDATION

SINCE YOU ARE “SATISFICING" TODAY, JUST DO WHAT YOU CAN WITH THE DATA AND TIME THAT YOU’VE GOT! IT WILL BE JUST RIGHT. :-)

SCENARIO EXPAND NARROW DRAFT PILOT REFLECTREVISE COLLECT SHAREANALYZE


WHAT DID YOU NOTICE?

SCENARIO EXPAND NARROW DRAFT PILOT REVISE COLLECT ANALYZE REFLECTSHARE

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THANK YOU,

THIS WAS FUN!

kapow! participant exercises for powerful research

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