grounded theory ux research

1250 pages of transcripts. Recognizing the different levels of themes can help you frame your approach to analysis. You should view a feature that only a few prospective users do not understand or deem unusable as an opportunity to improve the experience for everyone—even those who didn’t encounter the issue! It would be necessary to sort out the reasons why a participant would adopt the site or would not adopt it. These reasons seem quite different from one another. If you missed that column, you might want to read it before reading this column to ensure you’ll get the most out of this one. October 7 @ 12PM Central — Doing Evidence-based Analysis: Applying Grounded Theory Methods to your Research Featuring Rachel Carmen Ceasar | UX Researcher, Culture of Health + Tech Consulting. When shifting through tons of data, grounded theory methods can be a helpful tool to systematically organize and make sense of it. Researchers, designers, UXers, service designers, quant folks—whatever your role, you’ll learn how to conduct evidence-based analysis and use it as a tool to co-create insights with your team members and clients. Figure 4 shows that a couple of participants, who noticed that the search box accepts only ZIP codes, indicated that they might not know the ZIP code so wouldn’t be able to find a race. Be mindful of this distinction between findings and insights. For visual data collection (VDC), analysis techniques such as coding and comparative analysis are useful, while the principle of emergence may not play as well. Sociologists Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss popularized this method in the 1960s, which they and many others considered an antidote to the popularity of deductive theory, which is often speculative in nature, seemingly disconnected from the realities of social life, and may, in fact, go … (Note – the term ‘grounded theory’ can be used to label the methodology, but also to describe the outcome of GT research, i.e. You would perform the same recursive analysis for each set of data points to help answer the question about adoption. In 1960s, they made a research for medical personnel to deal with an imminent death of the patient’s field observation in a hospital, and then discovered and developed the grounded theory. #qualitative 1250 pages of transcripts. Photo below courtesy Sarah Scarsbrook: https://theartsjournal.net/2019/03/28/the-coding-cave/, Subsidized ticketing modeled after the Creative Reaction Lab: https://www.eventbrite.com/o/creative-reaction-lab-7907934748, Online Events It con - tains well defined procedures for analyzing empirical data, typically leading to middle range theories, i.e., theories that pertain to specific aspects of the phenomenon being studied, rather than broad, macro level theories. Typically, UX researchers do post-session coding while listening to recordings. A … Why we use constructivist grounded theory. Of course, you still might need to go back and review a session—especially if something was unclear during the session and you didn’t have time to correct it. You don’t want to miss anything. Is something that participants didn’t even mention during your research worth mentioning in your final report? Buy Grounded Theory for Qualitative Research: A Practical Guide 1 by Urquhart, Cathy (ISBN: 8601423338767) from Amazon's Book Store. Rachel is also a public health researcher at the USC School of Medicine. Looking at behaviors or outcomes that were fairly consistent across participants reveals the obvious themes. In this column, I’ll cover data analysis for a completed tally sheet, focusing on the following key areas: Once you’ve collected all the data from your individual, annotated discussion guides and have added the data to a tally sheet, it is time to start analyzing the data for findings and insights. For example, if you observe many participants taking a long time to find the Search button on a site when performing a search task, that is a finding, not an insight. Qualitative and quantitative data generation techniques can be used in a grounded theory study. Increasing Your Research Velocity with Visual Data Collection, Applying In-Depth Research and Analysis to Achieve Better Outcomes, Visual Data Collection: Making Sense of Tally Sheets, Collecting Data Is One Thing—Acting on It Is Another, Understanding Gender and Racial Bias in AI, Part 2, 10 Ecommerce Tips: Converting One-Time Buyers into Loyal Customers, Overcoming Design Challenges to Improve Conversion Rates. While grounded theory is inherently flexible, it is a complex … Post-session open coding might also be warranted, especially if you’re trying to unravel a set of data that has multiple layers and derive insights from your findings. Do we call this a failure? However the limitations associated with the sampling, validity, reliability and bias seem to raise concerns among scholars about the reliance on it as a tool of qualitative investigation. In Discovery, his quarterly column on UXmatters, Michael writes about the insights that derive from formative UX-research studies. At the end of the research Can you guess what the what-didn’t-happen theme is? Codebook development, coding, and analysis. Let’s say the product stakeholders hypothesized that users would never want to save their credit-card information on Middlepacker.com because of the threat of hackers’ getting access to their valuable personal information. The grounded theory difference The choice of any research design is determined by the aims of the particular study. We’ll let you know when new articles appear on UXmatters. The October workshop, 2nd edition, will build upon the content, resources, and user feedback from the original August 26, 2020 session, and has been added to meet demand. Always dig a little deeper until you get down to the essence of the experience. Absolutely! A structured framework for planning your study is proposed, along with guidelines to assist you in using essential grounded theory methods in diverse research designs. If you’re not able to attend the live workshops sessions, please email Rachel at hello@cultureofhealthtech.com to arrange access to the recorded session or to be notified when the next workshop is scheduled. See their responses in Figure 2. 75 hours of recorded interviews. Unless you’ve left something off a tally sheet, there is little reason to go back and revisit an individual participant discussion guide for a finding. Glaser and Strauss originally created these grounded-theory techniques in 1967. The concept of grounded theory is from the Glaser and Strauss’ research in 1967. Online Classes Anchors are identified to collect the key points of data What Makes a Good Research Insight Great? This is where using aspects of a grounded-theory technique called constant comparative analysis comes in handy. Do not ignore less-obvious findings that have serious consequences for your intended audience—consequences such as site abandonment. In fact, one could interpret their response as a wholehearted Yes. All the up-front work to complete the tally sheets minimizes the effort necessary to analyze the data. But, since we’re only using the technique—not adhering to the grounded-theory methodology—let’s call this generating relationships, which is the ultimate goal. This approach refers to theory that is “grounded in or developed inductively from a set of data” Grounded theory works in opposite way to traditional research and it may even appear to contradict scientific method. The workshop will be conducted online via Zoom. We chose the constructivist approach to grounded theory as our guide for data analysis. Doing Evidence-Based Analysis: Grounded Theory for UX Researchers (3rd ed), Analysing interview and focus group data with NVivo, Communication & Alignment Remote Workshop - British Summer Time, Communication & Alignment Remote Workshop - Eastern Daylight Time, Communication & Alignment Remote Workshop - Eastern Daylight Time. Rachel will introduce you to a powerful analytical method for documenting research decisions in a way that is transparent, reflexive, and rigorous. UX researchers typically borrow research techniques from grounded theory—whether knowingly or not—when analyzing data from studies. A skeptical stakeholder might ask: How do you know it wasn’t in their mental models to look in the lower-left corner to find the Search button? You might say: Most participants initially looked for a Search button in the upper-right corner of the Web site. 9. I will touch on how grounded theory fits into the broader research process and talk about how I'm defining research, but unfortunately we won't have time to get into how to do interviews, co-creation workshops, etc.--the fun stuff that comes before and after analysis. A classic example might be the one thing that all or most participants did—or did not do. #analysis Since 2014, Rachel has been sharing her experiences using grounded theory with clients, design teams, and students as an inclusive, co-creative analytical method. Research evaluation and reflection. 75 hours of recorded interviews. A key question you should ask in these situations is: How important is this issue to the success of the product? a grounded theory.) Your stakeholders might have had a hypothesis about something that simply never emerged during the research sessions. The particular issues that arise could also vary greatly across participants, making them more challenging to analyze. “The postmodern critique of qualitative research had weakened its legitimacy and narrative analysts criticized grounded theory methodology for fragmenting participants’ stories. The first thing you may notice is that there is no clear response to the question: What are the driving factors for adopting this Web site? Defining Grounded Theory 2 Dey 1999, Cresswell 1998 4. A case study of how to use grounded theory methods based on real client project. But don’t get bogged down trying to be precise about this. Rachel will introduce you to a powerful analytical method for documenting research decisions in a way that is transparent, reflexive, and rigorous. Product teams have time-to-market pressures to deliver functionality. Since your sample size is typically small when doing these kinds of studies, an issue might have been apparent in a few sessions, but not in others. While one could argue that users could easily find the ZIP code by opening a new browser window and using Google to search for a city’s ZIP code, little inconveniences such as these can make or break a great design! During this stage of research, it’s important to be mindful of the difference between findings—those things you’ve observed during the research—and insights—your interpretation of what you’ve observed. You must be able to assure that stakeholder that you’ve based your insights on findings, not pulled them out of thin air. He has a B.A. In this essay, I will evaluate the grounded theory in 5 parts. Eventbrite, and certain approved third parties, use functional, analytical and tracking cookies (or similar technologies) to understand your event preferences and provide you with a customized experience. When shifting through tons of data, grounded theory methods can be a helpful tool to systematically organize and make sense of it. Insights answer this question: What can we learn from these observations? Use these insights as an indicator you need to do more research to see whether the not-so-obvious issues become more obvious. 2. Grounded theory is considered as a research tool that enables one to conceptualize and learn the suppressed social structures and patterns of any area that suits your interest. Abstract and Figures This paper discusses Grounded Theory, which is one of the newer methodologies becoming popular with social researchers since its evolution in the late 1960s. Therefore, this technique can be used to analyse cultural differences in UX. #inclusion He has written on UX topics such as research methodology, UX strategy, and innovation for industry publications that include UXmatters, UX Mastery, Boxes and Arrows, UX Planet, and UX Collective. Grounded theory is well supported as a qualitative research method that historically responded to the epistemological challenges of defining knowledge and determining how it has been acquired. in Human-Computer Interaction from Iowa State University. Based on the research objectives, a review of UX methods for data collection was done to help with selection. Please download ahead of time the Atlas.ti software—it’s free and is a software tool we’ll be using to code and memo transcripts. Within each set, look for factors that would motivate users to form an opinion about the site. UX for the Win Karine Larose @karinenrose & Andrew Preater @preater present 13 June 2015 at #citymash 2. The first part is the characteristics of grounded theory; the second part is the procedure of grounded theory; the third part is comparison with other types of research methods and th… Pace’s model of flow experience, 2004). Read More. To keep things consistent, I’ll continue using the same example Web site, Middlepacker.com, as for my previous column. Online Science & Tech Classes It is also useful to study a process, an action, or an interaction. This type of research is used in social science. However, UX researchers use only what techniques they find helpful to their analysis. At the beginning, you will be using a preparatory approach to accomplish substantive codes from the desired data. Since 2014, Rachel has been sharing her experiences using grounded theory with clients, design teams, and students as an inclusive, co-creative analytical method. Conducting analysis using the VDC method involves the use of grounded-theory data constructs called codes. Ultimately, the goal is to develop distinct categories, or codes, with different sets of common properties. They are based ideas developed by Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss (1967) in their classic (and arguably classical, read on…) The discovery of grounded theory. However, since VDC typically occurs at the design-concept phase of the product development lifecycle, teams might come to the table with lots of assumptions that researchers need to validate or refute. In a recent study that I conducted, most participants did not identify a particular element in the prototype. Allow Facebook friends to see your upcoming events? A live workshop on how to conduct evidence-based data analysis using guided grounded theory methods. You could then use these comments to generate an insight about factors for adoption, as follows: Participant responses indicate the following potential factors for adopting Middlepacker.com: cost and the usefulness of running content. Events are social. As such, grounded theory can be described as an inductive method, or a form of inductive reasoning. Ideally, findings will outnumber your insights. “Investigating the Use of Grounded Theory in Information Systems Research.” Proceedings of the 2008 Annual Research Conference of the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists (SAICSIT), October 6–8, 2008. I can’t make the workshop. Matavire, Rangarirai, and Irwin Brown. Answer to the question about Figure 3: Most participants were not sure what we meant by a middle-packer. #design If the answer is very important, reporting out the not-so-obvious issue is worth the time. A grounded theory design is a set of procedures used to generate systematically a theory that explains, at a broad conceptual level, a process about a substantive topic. It is an ongoing process with constant comparison. A frustrated user might simply abandon your site for that of a competitor with a more effective site-search design that supports searching by city. Data analysis can be intensive and, at times, tedious work. Participant 3 emphasizes low cost: “As long as it’s free!” Are these reasons the same or different? It’s important that you not ignore these less-obvious findings. This insight is an interpretation of the findings. Grounded theory is most often derived from data sources of a qualitative (interpre- tive) nature. In the last edition of Discovery, I explained how to collect data during your early-phase prototype research using tally sheets. Can you guess what the theme was? Sometimes a Post-it-note analysis just doesn’t cut it. This technique involves assessing various instances of data to identify their relationships to one another. If you’ve read my earlier column “Sensemaking with Annotations,” you’ll recognize that annotations are essentially a set of selective codes for use in future analysis. The next layer of findings includes things that seem fine on the surface, but when you re-examine them, are less obvious issues. Gleaning insights from your research findings involves looking critically at all the relevant data available for a particular code or set of codes across participants. Welcome to the wonderful, gray world of UX research! When gathering data from research sessions onto tally sheets, you might have a mixture of both findings and insights. Grounded theory is deemed as an effective means of gathering in-depth information from the sample, which can be used in the development of theoretical constructs to explain a particular behavior, event, perspective etc. Grounded theory is a well-known methodology employed in many research studies. The researcher has to set aside theoretical ideas in order to let the substantive theory emerge. Even though only a couple of participants mentioned this limitation of site search, that didn’t mean we could ignore this issue. There might be some hidden gold in the dataset that suggests a next step. It is used to uncover such things as One research goal for Middlepacker.com was to identify the factors that would motivate users to adopt the Web site. Grounded Theory (GT) is a research method concerned with the generation of theory, (Glaser and Strauss, 1967) which is ‘grounded’ in data that has been systematically collected and analysed (Strauss and Corbin 1994). Quant methods integrated with QDA software and data. Introduction Grounded Theory is a type of methodology where data is thoroughly analyzed in a series of steps or procedures. Defining Grounded Theory 1 Dey 1999, Cresswell 1998 1. Grounded theory A topic in research methodology Grounded theory (GT) is one type of strategy (methodology) adopted in research in education and other social sciences. Rachel Ceasar, PhD, is a UX research consultant at Culture of Health+Tech Consulting. issues relating to planning in grounded theory research. Qualitative data analysis (QDA) software specifics. So collect your stakeholders’ hypotheses—that is, theories—up front, then use your research time to develop questions and apply research methods to refute or validate their hypotheses. Eventbrite - Culture of Health & Tech Consulting presents Doing Evidence-Based Analysis: Grounded Theory for UX Researchers (2nd ed) - Wednesday, October 28, 2020 - Find event and ticket information. 50 users. (You shouldn’t prompt the participants to save their credit-card information because you want to observe their behavior when they come across this option.) Glaser and Strauss originally created these grounded-theory techniques in 1967. Burlington, Massachusetts: Elsevier Science, 2012. The entire rink gets resurfaced! Anyone who participates in design and research, and has ever had to pour over loads of qualitative data and try to make sense of it all. When we asked participants to answer this question—which was especially difficult after their seeing the Web site for the first time and not being able to play with it over a longer period of time—they indicated an array of opinions and perspectives. Grounded theory is a general methodology, a way of thinking about and conceptualizing data. Robust, involved research projects can still yield little to no research impact. So researchers need to balance an emergent approach toward what they’re seeing with a more brute-force, less time-intensive approach to generating theory. Figure 1 shows some selective codes. Grounded Theory method. The theme was so obvious that it ended up being a key finding in my final report. Your stakeholders might question an insight when you present it in your final report. Cost and useful content on running are two factors that would motivate users to adopt the site as as! 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