Kapow! Participant Exercises for Powerful Research

KAPOW!
PARTICIPATORY EXERCISES FOR POWERFUL
RESEARCH COLLABORATION
UXPA 2016 WORKSHOP ~ LEAH RADER

SAN FRANCISCO | SPRINGSTUDIO.COM
WHAT IF YOU COULD…
3

4

5

6

7

8

YOU CAN!
9

YOU CAN!
10

YOU CAN!
11

YOU CAN!
12

YOU CAN!
13

YOU CAN!
14

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 EXPLORE
DRAFT
REVISE
PILOT
• Draft exercises
• Pilot them
• Revise based on feedback
TODAY WE WILL

LOOK EXPLORE
DRAFT
REVISE
PILOT SHARE
• Observations  
and a-ha’s
TODAY WE WILL

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
21
YOU’LL INTRODUCE YOUR NEIGHBOR TO THE ROOM.

LET’S LOOK AT 3 HIGH-LEVEL CHUNKS
23
HOW TO GET
DEEPER RESPONSES
HOW OUR MINDS WORK
WAYS TO EXPLORE
EXPERIENCE

• Interview
• Survey
WAYS TO EXPLORE EXPERIENCE
24
SAY
MAKEDO • Creative exercises
• Expressive exercises
• Researcher observation
• Participant observation

• Interview
• Survey
25
SAY

• Interview
• Survey
26
SAY
• Researcher as observer
• Participant as observer

• Interview
• Survey
27
SAY

• Interview
• Survey
28
SAY
MAKEDO
Participatory exercises
• Participant observation • Creative exercises

HOW OUR
MINDS WORK
29
CAN & WILL IT BE SAID? LAYERS OF RESPONSE
ADAPTED FROM COOPER & BRANTHWAITE

HOW OUR 
MINDS WORK
30
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
31
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
LEAVE TO
PSYCHOLOGISTS
32
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
LEAVE TO
PSYCHOLOGISTS
33
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

HOW TO GET DEEPER RESPONSES
34
• Reported behavior
• Opinions and beliefs
• Illustrative stories
• Expectations and desires
DIRECT QUESTIONS

35
• 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

36
• Help participants talk about
sensitive topics
• Help participants express
abstract feelings and
thoughts
(these are also called projective exercises)
CREATIVE EXERCISES

LET’S TAKE IT STEP BY STEP
38
SCENARIO EXPAND NARROW DRAFT
PILOT REVISE COLLECT ANALYZE
PLANNING:
SHARE REFLECTDOING:

COLLECT
39
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
45
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
46

LIST
47
List combined with Diagram to show priority of
elements—inner circle is higher priority

LIST
48
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_He
lpful_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
49
(AKA Sentence Completion)

MAD LIB
50
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! —>

MAD LIB
51
First time home buying experience:
left side provides “get to know you” material
expectations vs reality
analogies

MAD LIB
52
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
53

STORY
54
Snags & Delights are mini-stories about
negative and positive experiences.

STORY
55
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
56

TRACK
57
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
58
dscout snippet for week long diary using
a smart phone to log moments

TRACK
59
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
60

SORT
61
An elegant content sort from
userresearch.blog.gov.uk

SORT
62
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
63
Scenario-based sort with multiple decks:
big cards with scenario elements and
small cards with social media elements

SORT
64
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
65

MAKE
66
Drawing to express how it feels to
have family in diﬀerent countries.

MAKE
67
Mood board collage to explore
current state & future state.

MAKE
68
Sculpture about possible new
ways to use technology in a hotel

MAKE
69
Cut-outs of design elements for participants
to use to build paper prototypes, prioritize
features, add new features, etc.

DIAGRAM
70
• 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
71
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
72
Venn diagram to categorize which channel
should be used for each need (Sort hybrid)

DIAGRAM
73
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
74

MAP
75
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
76
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
77
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
78

PLAY
79
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.

PLAY
80
Game for community building from Thesis Chronicle,
https://thesischronicle.wordpress.com/2011/07/14/
change-by-design-kenya/

LET’S DRAFT TOGETHER
COLLECTPILOT REVISE REFLECTANALYZE SHARE

PLANNING
83

PLANNING
84

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

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
91

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
92

CATALOG
(AKA MAKE
A “MASTER”)
93

CREATE
GROUPS
94

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
95

SCIENCE
FAIR
96

SCIENCE FAIR
97

FULLY DIGITAL OR PARTIALLY ANALOG
• google slides and google docs are your friends
• consider an overhead projector
WHAT ABOUT REMOTE EXERCISES?
98

PARTIALLY
ANALOG
99

GOOGLE
SLIDES
100
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
101

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

Kapow! Participant Exercises for Powerful Research

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Viewers also liked

Viewers also liked (9)

Similar to Kapow! Participant Exercises for Powerful Research

Similar to Kapow! Participant Exercises for Powerful Research (20)

More from UXPA International

More from UXPA International (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Kapow! Participant Exercises for Powerful Research