Creative and playful ways for collecting user data

Capturing data ‘in the wild’ (non-lab based environments) is always a challenge, as attracting participants for short interviews or data capture is extremely difficult.

Associate research members of the ‘Behaviours that Stick’ have though found a most engaging way to attracting people in participating in a series of small data capture and short interview studies ‘in the wild’

Using arts and crafts material (i.e. coloured stickers, hand drawings of real-world objects, etc) a collage of electronic appliances and a list of questions were created (see images). These were deployed in real environments where the indented audience of the study (e.g. families, professionals, older people, etc) can be usually found (i.e. in supermarkets, the market and other public spaces). Driven by curiosity and the creative designs people were attracted and voluntary participated in the study using coloured stickers to respond to the set questions (see images).

In a second study the generative probe toolkits were enhance through the creation of life-like Lego models. This increased further user participation and data collection process. The Lego made the study material more tangible and sparked people’s curiosity across ages.