Diary Study: young adults’ attitudes & behaviours associated with waiting
Guest Contribution
This post outlines the findings of a diary study that was completed for the Empathic Research Frameworks course at Humber College.
OVERVIEW
The scope of this study was to put the research method into practice and uncover young adults’ attitudes, beliefs, behaviours and experiences associated with waiting. The scope of the project spanned early brainstorming sessions to create the study plan, to conducting the study, to synthesizing the data.
SCENARIO
Organization Y creates educational media for children. They’ve recently decided to expand their user base by creating short educational media for young adults.
You’ve been hired by the company to help them understand people’s current behaviour, emotions, and experiences of waiting (e.g. waiting for a bus, waiting for food, waiting for a friend, etc.). The findings from this research will help them identify ways to improve people’s waiting experiences and will help inform both the type of media they create as well as how it’s consumed (e.g., interactive, games, video, articles, etc.).
A BRIEF ON THE RESEARCH METHOD
Diary Study
A formal diary study was conducted over a period of three days with a group of mature students. Participants were asked to submit a ‘diary entry’ each time they found themselves in a situation in which they were waiting, via an electronic questionnaire, throughout the duration of the study. Diary studies are a research method used to collect qualitative data through self-reporting by participants over time, to gain insights about user behaviours, attitudes, beliefs and experiences (further reading on Diary Studies: Flaherty, 2016).
RESEARCH QUESTION
What behaviours and emotions do people experience while waiting?
USER GROUP
- Young adults
- Students
- Mobile phone users
- Internet & social media users
TOOLS
- Google Forms allowed study participants to easily submit their ‘diary entries’ on the go, throughout their day
- Google Sheets was used as a plug-in to Google Forms to efficiently short and manage all incoming ‘diary entries’
- Google Chrome extension Boomerang was used to schedule & send reminder emails to study participants throughout the length of the study
- Analog “Affinity Diagraming” was used as a collaborative exercise to synthesize data and identify patterns
- Mural (mural.co) was used to tidy the affinity diagram and incorporate participants’ submitted photos into the data clusters
CONDUCTING THE STUDY
Participants were primed for the study with the following instructions as a prompt for each diary entry:
- “Please complete the following form every time you are in a situation where you are waiting.”
- “What constitutes as “waiting”? Any time you are… waiting for a bus, for food to cook, waiting in line for something, waiting for a friend after class/work, etcetera.”
Participants were sent periodic reminders that when they were in a situation in which they were waiting. The participant would simply complete the Google Form through accessing the link in their email inbox, answering a series of four questions and uploading one photo each time.
The questionnaire (Google Form) consisted of two multiple choice and two open-ended questions to help participants submit efficiently. We asked participants what they were waiting for, how long they have been waiting, what were they doing while waiting, and how did they feel & why.
Data was collected into Google sheets and monitored throughout the three day study. Diary entries were monitored to ensure the participants were responding to the prompt and answering the questions in the correct manner. Each participant was assigned a colour and their data was colour-coded accordingly.
FINDINGS
Affinity diagramming was completed as a team task to visualize our study data in space?—?we workshopped with post-its & sharpies, later finalizing into a digital version incorporating our participants’ images of their waiting experiences.
Going through this exercise allowed us to identify the key themes and take-aways from our study.
IDENTIFIED THEMES
Viewing
The act of viewing emerged as a major theme, revealing itself in a variety of ways: viewing social media, viewing videos on YouTube, checking email, and observation of other people, and so on. With a cell phone at easy disposal, participants tend to use it as a tool to pass the time while waiting, especially while they are ‘on the go’. Within this theme falls observation?—?this refers to activities including people watching.
Attitudes/Feelings
All feelings and attitudes recorded from participants fell under one of two categories: positive feelings (& attitudes) and negative feelings (& attitudes). Our diary study uncovered a large range of various emotions and attitudes?—?the attitude tended to relate directly to what the participant was waiting for.
Activities to Pass Time
As each participant answered the question “what are you doing while waiting”, a large trend of specific activities emerged from the research data. A trend that emerged within this theme was activities and thoughts surrounding preparation or consumption of food.
Socializing to Pass Time
Participants often socialized with peers, family members or friend to pass time in various situations. In addition to socializing to pass time, a lot of ‘waiting’ situations our participants documented had to do with waiting for family members or friends before engaging in another activity.
Situational Behaviour
We noticed the trend of waiting behaviours that related back to where the participant was. Behaviours tended to correlate directly to the users environment?—?for example, when users were in a school environment, they would often chat with classmates to pass time.
REFLECTION
The scope and length of the diary study unveiled many more questions that should be further researched?—?our research question was very broad, which allowed us to pinpoint main areas of interest that I believe could be investigated into individually, to get past the general data and insights we were able to collect.
Upon review of the participants’ submissions, I feel that the phrasing and use of multiple choice for two of the questionnaire (Google Form) questions, we biased our participants answers. I believe that we may have received a broader range of answers for what the users were waiting for if we had left this question open-ended, rather than giving them choices. I feel that we may have found more interesting results if we had left this area up to interpretation by the participants.
In future diary studies, I believe the component of following up with user interviews of participants would really help to solidify?—?and better understand and interpret?—?the data collected through the diary study. I feel this information would greatly benefit and supplement the information collected in the study, and it would really help to shed further light into the attitudes and beliefs of the participants.
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