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2. User Engagement Depending on your project, this phase may be more tailored than the observation of users. By now, you should have some idea of what specific aspects of use you are interested in understanding more about, as well as those uses you might wish to motivate. Engaging with users will entail the design of a data collection instrument that will require some thought. You should be very clear on your objectives— social researchers Doug McKenzie-Mohr and William Smith suggest that it is useful to write an objectives statement summarizing the key purpose of the research. As above, it is important to remember that there is no such thing as and 'objective' interview, questionnaire or even focus group. Your questions are also a form of designing, and will inevitably steer the responses that you get. It is worth remembering Donald Norman's point that people tend to blame themselves rather than the design of things when they encounter problems in use. So you have listen carefully to what is said and learn to read between the lines. You are again therefore not looking for the 'truth' but rather for ideas for design. McKenzie-Mohr
and Smith underscore the importance of assuring research participants
that there are no right or wrong answers, that what you are most interested
in is their perceptions. You should also of course assure their confidentiality.
It is also a good idea to obtain commitments from participants for the
later trialling of your product and to provide you with feedback. Here is a list of suggested questions: Behaviour
related Attitude
related
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