Why can diary studies be useful? Why should you think about introducing them in your company?
First of all: It always depends on the Research question. What else do I want to find out?
In my example, I have already conducted several interviews in the company. The interview partners are always internal people who use the software on a daily basis. So it is also easy to approach the relevant people. At the same time, there were still some unanswered questions after my initial interviews. I thought about whether I should start a second round of interviews right away to delve even deeper into the topic, or whether I would like to establish a new method.
So it started with a research if and which method could be suitable for this. There are definitely a lot of possibilities. I could start a second round of interviews, bring in questions about specific posts, wireframes or initial screen designs, and get feedback from users. At the same time, I could also - to get a broader crowd - create polls on my existing deliverables and thus also sort the features by importance. I think I'll do that too, but not now. It's just so stuck then that I just want to be more open and exploratory in my approach to the question right now.
During my research, I came across the possibility of the diary study, although this is not yet an established method in the company. My UX colleagues have already used this method in their earlier careers and were very taken with the idea.
The advantage is that I currently also have software in which many things change quickly. A migration with relaunch is coming up and my team wants to change and adapt a lot in the next weeks and months. So the timing for your diary study would not be so bad. I would, while a lot is changing and developing in the tool, constantly get feedback directly from users and can also see if features and things are improving or getting worse.
So I invited my UX colleagues to an appointment to hear their opinion and also to get feedback on my specific implementation plans.
How useful is it to test this and how do we create acceptance in the company?
As a first step, talk to UXR colleagues about what they think of the method and the idea of introducing it in the company. Maybe they have use cases where the method makes sense and you can extend it.
I think it's also important as a senior, even if you know how to implement the method, to just get a second opinion and discuss the research topic. Often things come up that you may not have thought of.
My implementation in this particular case is more of a POC/MVP. I'm going to run my diary study with a Slackbot and thus also test with little effort if it's worthwhile, how the feedback is and if I can derive something from it for my research question.
I'm lucky enough to be able to test this diary study internally for now to get a feel for it. Of course, it's also important to coordinate and work closely with the product owner. So I asked for possible participants in a group and then personally contacted those who I know work with it a lot and can also give me feedback.
Together with PO and my feature team, we agreed to do some kind of sentiment measurement for our sub-product in the software to see how the enhancements are reflected in user satisfaction.
The questionnaire for this has been created and will be sent out regularly, every two weeks. It contains 4 questions about the mood of the product, one field for open feedback and one for hints, questions, wishes.
tbd. How did the POC work? Was it useful and how was the feedback?
Update 10.10.2023
Feedback from team members and supervisors:
They liked the motivation to take new approaches. As well as being proactive and sharing knowledge about the new method in the internal Confluence. Team members and supervisors emphasized as positive to increase knowledge about UX Research and to try new things and methods.
Participant feedback:
Participants were happy to give anonymous and standardized feedback. They like that UX Chapter wants to improve and work together with everyone on the product.
Feedback Content/Product:
The open-ended questions I asked at the end of the survey brought up a lot of general feedback on various topics that came up when using the product - it brought up some new topics, and generally led to new ideas and thoughts.