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Methods

4 Lists aka Contexts Behaviors Pains & Pleasures

The 4 lists writing exercise is a method you can use to interview users about a given problem space. It is a good method because it keeps the users doing more of the talking and prevents you as the interviewer from asking leading questions. To facilitate this exercise provide your interview subject with a pen and paper and instruct them to write out as many words, stories, phrases, or anecdotes that come to mind for the topic/problem space you are researching under the following categories: contexts (times & places), behaviors (verbs), Pain points, and Pleasure points. For example, if you were studying how people experience social interactions you would say

Hi, and thanks for being here today to help me study Social Networks! To begin our interview I’d first like you to do a little writing exercise – dont worry I wont make you write an essay. Think of this like a personal brainstorm. Start by writing out all the stories, phrases, anecdotes, or just words that come to mind when thinking of the painful parts of dealing with social network interactions. Take 5 minutes and try not to stop writing, theres no wrong answers here at all.

Once they are finished with their first list go ahead and give them the next category, we want to wait til the end before interviewing users about what they wrote. If your user is still having issues understanding the exercise describe the category more instead of giving examples–we dont want to lead or bias them–so, for Pain Points describe the things they should be writing as frustrating moments, infurating situations, or sad times; for contexts just say times and places. By the end of the exercise your subject will have 4 lists and then the real interview begins. Take the lists and start asking “What did you mean by this?” and “Tell me what you mean by that.” You may need to probe deeper and deeper based on the responses until you find a connection between the contexts, behaviors, pains and pleasures.

By the end of the interview you will have a better means to define the problem space you are studying through connections between contexts (times and places), motivations (avoiding pains or pleasures), and user goals (outcome of behavior).

Example: Google Form Version
This was used internally with the team and not with users. That is why the intro is a little different.

Additional Resources

Books

• Just Enough Research by Erika Hall
• Observing the User Experience, Second Edition by Elizabeth Goodman, Mike Kuniavsky, & Andrea Moed

Services

• UserTesting
• SurveyLegend

Articles

• Interviewing Humans by Erika Hall

Key Terms & Concepts

Generative Research

Research geared towards generating new ideas and widening the area of exploration.

Evaluative Research

Research geared towards evaluating existing ideas in order to narrow the area of exploration.

Quantitative Research

Research generates numerical data to answer a question.

Qualitative Research

Research that generates non-numerical data, such as open-ended survey questions or interviews.

Attitudinal Research

Research aimed at determining how something is or will be perceived.

Behavioral Research

Research aimed at determining or predicting how people actually behave.

User Interview

User interviews are great for generating rich qualitative information, and can lead you in new directions. However, they take a lot of time to plan and run, and because they are performed out of context, the results may lack accuracy in some ways.

Contextual Inquiry

Contextual inquiry is the act of observing users in context. Most typically, this is done to analyze how users accomplish certain tasks, such as choosing a brand of cereal in a supermarket or deciding the best route to take home. These studies are a great way to witness how people actually behave, but they are also costly and, because the researcher typically doesn’t interact with the participant, results are not guaranteed.

Surveys

Surveys are written questions that prompt written responses from users. They are effective at gathering quantitative and qualitative feedback from a large number of respondents quickly. The downside to surveys is that they may indicate a problem or trend, but the researcher can’t follow up to ask respondents to explain why. They also suffer from a sampling bias — certain types of users elect to respond to surveys, so the results may not represent all users..

Card Sorting

A research method that asks participants to sort index cards with concepts into groups in order to assess how they categorize information.

Diary Studies

A longitudinal method in which participants keep a journal describing their activities, behavior, and attitudes over a period of time.

Data Analysis

Using existing data to draw inferences about user behavior.

Eye Tracking

A method that uses eye-tracking technology to determine what areas of a page users look at.

A/B Testing

A method that randomly shows two versions of a page to actual users in order to determine which version performs best.

Multivariate Testing

A specialized type of A/B testing that generates multiple versions of a page based on more than one variable and determines which version performs best.