Data gathering CSSE371 Steve Chenoweth and Chandan Rupakheti (Chapter 7 Interaction Design Text)

1. Data gatheringCSSE371Steve Chenoweth and Chandan Rupakheti(Chapter 7 Interaction Design Text)

2. Four key issues • Setting goals • Decide how to analyze data once collected • Relationship with participants • Clear and professional • Informed consent when appropriate • Triangulation • Use more than one approach • Pilot studies • Small trial of main study Above – Triangulation in action, here, to observe the precise location of a random person using geo-positioning! Questions 1,2

3. Data recording • Notes, audio, video, photographs • Notes plus photographs • Audio plus photographs • Video

4. Interviews • Unstructured - are not directed by a script. Rich but not replicable. • Structured - are tightly scripted, often like a questionnaire. Replicable but may lack richness. • Semi-structured - guided by a script but interesting issues can be explored in more depth. Can provide a good balance between richness and replicability. • How do you avoid bias? Question 3

5. Focus Groups 3-10 People People develop opinions within a social context

6. Questionnaires • Questions can be closed or open • Closed questions are easier to analyze, and may be done by computer • Paper, email and the web used for dissemination • Sampling can be a problem when the size of a population is unknown as is common online

7. Questionnaire design • Question Order. • Clear Instructions • Length • Decide on whether phrases will all be positive, all negative or mixed. • Do you need different versions of the questionnaire for different populations? • Encourage a good response

8. Question and response format • ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ • Checkboxes that offer many options • Rating scales • Likert scales • semantic scales • 3, 5, 7 or more points? • Open-ended responses Question 4

9. Advantages of online questionnaires • Responses are usually received quickly • No copying and postage costs • Data can be collected in database for analysis • Time required for data analysis is reduced • Errors can be corrected easily Question 5

10. Problems with online questionnaires • Preventing individuals from responding more than once • Individuals have also been known to change questions in email questionnaires

11. Observation • Direct observation in the field • Structuring frameworks • Degree of participation (insider or outsider) • Ethnography • Direct observation in controlled environments • Indirect observation: tracking users’ activities • Diaries • Interaction logging • Insider vs Outsider Question 6

12. Can the observer be invisible? Sidelight Above -- Here we see participants in the Hawthorne study pretending to work away as if nobody were watching them, while photographers and Harvard University professors crowd the room. Question 7 And – How much do social dynamics affect people’s interaction with a system? 1924 was the year that studies were begun at the Western Electric Hawthorne Works, in Cicero, IL, to test the effect of illumination level on worker productivity. These studies were to become famous examples of on-the-job observation. Read about the study in the notes below. Then ask yourself, how could the observers have arranged their experiments, so as to make the results less affected by their presence?

13. Structuring frameworks to guide observation • - The person. Who? - The place. Where?- The thing. What? • The Goetz and LeCompte (1984) framework:- Who is present? - What is their role? - What is happening? - When does the activity occur?- Where is it happening? - Why is it happening? - How is the activity organized?

14. Direct observation in a controlled setting • Think-aloud technique Indirect observation • Diaries • Interaction logs Question 8

15. Choosing and combining techniques • Depends on • The focus of the study • The participants involved • The nature of the technique • The resources available