User Diary

Diary Studies: Understanding Long-Term User Behavior and Experiences

Main goals

• understanding the problem space and the context;
• discovering the most frequent use cases and the edge cases;
• getting insight on the users’ habits, motivations behavior and
• identifying pain points.

When to Conduct a Diary Study

• Habits — What time of day do users engage with a product? If and how they choose to share content with others?
• Usage scenarios — In what capacity do users engage with a product? What are their primary tasks? What are their workflows for completing longer-term tasks? (These scenarios can be used for user testing later in the process.)
• Attitudes and motivations — What motivates people to perform specific tasks? How are users feeling and thinking?
• Changes in behaviors and perceptions — How learnable is a system? How loyal are customers over time? How do they perceive a brand after engaging with the corresponding organization?
• Customer journeys — What is the typical customer journey and cross-channel user experience as customers interact with your organization using different devices and channels such as, email, phone, websites, mobile applications, kiosks, social media, and online chat? What is the cumulative effect of multiple service touch points?

• Product or Website — Understanding all interactions with a site (e.g., an intranet) over the course of a month.
• Behavior — Gathering general information about user behavior (e.g., smartphone usage, college-student web-visitation patterns)
• General activity — Understanding how people complete general activities (e.g., sharing information via social tools or shopping online)
• A specific activity — Understanding how people complete specific activities (e.g., buying a new car or planning a vacation)

Methodology

1. Planning and Preparation. Define the focus of the study and the long-term behaviors that you need to understand. Define a timeline, select tools for participants to report data, recruit participants, and prepare instructions or support materials.
2. Pre-study brief. Take time up front to get participants ready to log. Schedule a face-to-face meeting or phone call with each participant to discuss the details of the study. Walk through the schedule or calendar for the reporting period and discuss expectations. Discuss the tools they will be using and be sure each participant has familiarized themselves with the technology; answer any questions they may have before beginning.
3. Logging period. To support effective activity logging, provide a simple framework. Be as specific as possible about what information you need participants to log, without stifling natural variability and differences that you cannot plan for. (Discovering the unexpected is after all one of the primary reasons to do user research.) Create clear and detailed instructions for logging. Give users example log entries to help them understand the level of detail you need from them. (But make sure you don’t bias participants toward those types of entries that you happened to provide as examples.)There are two common techniques researchers employ to collect diary data from participants.
• In-Situ Logging — This method is the most straightforward method to collect data. Participants are asked to log information about relevant activities in the situation they occur (or in situ). When participants engage in a relevant activity, they must report all important details about that activity right away. Since this technique requires participants to take the time to report this information at the time of the event, this technique is best reserved for situations when you don’t foresee a large volume of diary entries occurring or if the context is such that participant’s daily activities will not be adversely effected by logging in situ. In-situ logging is best supported by channels and devices that can handle structured long-form text entry such as, email, web-form questionnaires, traditional paper diaries, or digital customer-insight tools such as FocusVision or 7daysinmylife. Audio or video diaries are also great tools for participants, but the output may need to be transcribed for analysis.
• Snippet Technique — Another popular, less intrusive method for logging activities is the snippet technique. With this technique, participants only record short snippets of information about activities as they occur. Then, at the end of each day, or when participants have time, they elaborate on each snippet by providing additional details about the activity. This 2-step technique ensures that relevant information is captured in situ, before being forgotten but without requiring participants to provide extensive detail at the time of capture, which can be intrusive and unnatural in certain situations. Common channels for study participants to report snippets to researchers include email, text message, Twitter, or Facebook. These channels are widely familiar for short-form communication. Participants are encouraged to use their mobile phones to report events as they happen, since these devices are accessible. Expanding upon reported snippets can be accomplished with the channels and tools mentioned above for more in-depth reporting. Consider asking participants to expand on their snippets by filling out a questionnaire about each of them. This will enable you to get specific and consistent insights about each snippet.
4. Post-study interview. After the study, evaluate all the information provided by each participant. Plan a follow-up interview to discuss logs in detail. Ask probing questions to uncover specific details needed to complete the story and clarify as needed. Ask for feedback from the participant about their experience participating in the study, so you can adjust your processes for the next time.
5. Data Analysis. Because diary studies are longitudinal, they generate a large amount of qualitative data. Revisit your research questions, then take a deep breath and dig into all of the rich insights you’ve collected to find the answers. Evaluate the behaviors you’ve targeted throughout the study. How do they evolve and change over time? What influences these behaviors? If the focus of your study is around a particular product or service relationship, look at the entire customer journey. Construct a 
   🌱

   Customer Journey Mapping
   to help you understand the end-to-end user experience from the perspective of your customers.

While diary studies can require more time and effort to conduct than other user-research methods, they yield invaluable information about customers’ real-time real-life behaviors and experiences.

Sources