users of their products. We are often reminded of the power of intuitive design (e.g., Moggridge, 2007), but when the design team cannot have good intuitions about their users, they need other means to put themselves in the user’s shoes. Rich qualitative studies describing people, technology and work have a valuable role to play in HCI: in particular, for the design and evaluation of technology, agenda setting, theory creation and critique of predominant design paradigms.
Figure 2.2: Planning and preparation is of paramount importance to ensure that decisions about direction, sampling, editing, etc., result in a coherent and achievable project.
2.2 PLANNING AND PREPARATION
One way to think about the planning of a study is in terms of the PRET A Rapporter (PRETAR) framework (Blandford et al., 2008a). This is a basic structure for designing, conducting and reporting studies:
• Purpose: every study has a purpose, which may be more or less precisely defined; methods should be selected to address the purpose of the study. The purpose of a study may change as understanding develops, but few people are able to conduct an effective study without some idea of why they are doing it.
• Resources and constraints: all studies must be conducted with the available resources, also taking account of existing constraints that may limit what is possible.
• Ethical considerations often shape what is possible, particularly in terms of how data can be gathered and results reported.
• Techniques for data gathering need to be determined (working with the available resources to address the purpose of the study).
• Analysis techniques need to be appropriate to the data and the purpose of the study.
• Reporting needs to address the purpose of the study, and communicate it effectively to the intended audiences. In some cases, this will include an account of how and why the purpose has evolved, as well as the methods, results, etc.
To tackle a project competently you will need to build up relevant expertise in qualitative research and in the study domain. There is no shortcut to acquiring that expertise. Courses, textbooks and research papers provide essential foundations, and different resources resonate with (and are therefore most useful to) different people. Corbin and Strauss (2015) emphasise the importance of planning and practice: “Persons sometimes think that they can go out into the field and conduct interviews or observations with no training or preparation. Often these persons are disappointed when the data they are able to gather are sparse” (p. 37). Kidder and Fine (1987) describe the evolving focus of qualitative research: that one of the researcher’s frequent tasks is “deciding which question to ask next of whom” (p. 60). There is no substitute for planning, practice and reflecting on what can be learnt from each interview or observation session.
It is tempting to want to apply a precisely defined method (Yardley, 2000). But, in all probability, you will be faced by complexity that demands some improvisation along the way (Furniss et al., 2011a; Woolrych et al., 2011). We provide a series of checklists to help focus on particular decisions when designing, conducting and reporting a study.
As well as expertise in qualitative methods, the level of expertise in the study context can have a huge influence over the quality and kind of study conducted. When the study focuses on a widely used technology or an activity that most people engage in, such as time management (e.g., Kamsin et al., 2012) or in-car navigation (e.g., Curzon et al., 2002), any disparity in expertise between researcher and participants is unlikely to be critical. Where the study is of a highly specialised device, or in a specialist context, the expertise of the researcher(s) can have a significant effect on both the conduct and the outcomes of a study. At times, naiveté can be an asset, allowing one to ask simple but important questions that would be overlooked by someone with more domain expertise. At other times, naiveté can result in the researcher failing to note or interpret important features of the study context. In preparing to conduct a study, it is important to consider the effects of expertise and to determine whether or not specific training in the technology or work being studied is required before data-gathering starts.
Rather than trying to anticipate every possible eventuality, it is often best to do enough preparation, where what constitutes enough is likely to vary from one individual to another as well as from one study question to another. So, as a starting point, we summarise an idealised shape of a qualitative study (Figure 2.3): you start with a purpose (a research question), then you gather and analyse data, to yield results that are then reported (in a dissertation, paper or client report); the study is shaped by various factors, including the expertise of the research team (discussed above), resources and constraints, the role of theory and ethical considerations (all discussed below).
Figure 2.3: An idealised shape of a qualitative study.
Although we first present steps sequentially and simply, you should be aware that this is an over-simplification: it is hardly ever possible to separate the components of a study and treat them independently. The style of data gathering influences what analysis can be performed; the relationship established with early participants may influence the recruitment of later participants; ethical considerations may influence what kinds of data can be gathered, etc. Managing these interdependencies can make qualitative research particularly challenging at times, but successfully juggling and trading them off also makes qualitative research interesting and rewarding. We return to this topic of interdependencies later.
2.3 BEING REALISTIC: RESOURCES AND CONSTRAINTS
Every study has to be designed to work with the available resources. Where resources are limited it is necessary to “cut your coat according to your cloth.” For example, if you have three months to conduct a Master’s project you will need to fit ambitions, and hence purpose, to what is possible with the available resources. Here are some things to consider when thinking about the time involved for a qualitative study:
• Time to obtain ethical clearance will depend on how sensitive the study is and which review board is assessing it; you can often get local knowledge to help you plan this.
• Time to recruit participants also depends on their situations and how interesting the topic is to them. Recruiting through a general subject pool can often be quick, but if you are seeking participants with specialist skills or knowledge, you should factor in significant time for this.
• The mean duration of an interview is under an hour, depending on the scope of the interviews. Few interviews are much longer than that because attention drifts. Observations can be longer (several hours per session with comfort breaks).
• Transcribing audio data typically takes 4–6 times as long as the recording, depending on data quality, lengths of silences and the transcriber’s typing speed. Transcribing video data takes significantly longer, depending on the level of detail being transcribed.
• Analysis time can vary, depending on the quality of the data and the depth and focus of analysis, but is likely to take at least 2–3 days per hour of data.
In total, a Master’s dissertation of three months (typical in the U.K.) is likely to involve 10–15 hours of audio data, or equivalent. That does not sound like much, but
