My students will be doing field research over the next week or two, and I need to show them how to transform their observations into design principles.
I looked through the ID methods wiki trying to think of what analysis framework would be most appropriate for undergrad students who are being made explicitly aware of a structured research->analysis->prototyping process for the first time. I think there are a couple that could work (needs cluster matrix, concept matrix, "Grounded Theory Analysis" i.e. observation coding), but each of these required several weeks for me to barely understand! I cringe at the thought of trying to explain how the axes or column names are supposed to emerge based on the content, and I fear we would have to abandon any of these methods before the students played with it enough to make it work.
But I noticed one method is missing: Post-it clustering! I'm thinking this is the obvious best choice - and really the only choice for first-time design-analysts - for the following reasons:
- the question "which of these belong together?" doesn't require explanation*
- it's tangible (in cogsci terms: it takes advantage of innate spatial reasoning skills)
- it's colorful and fun, which helps keep even the most skeptical/bored participants engaged
Based on this, I'm planning to use it wherever the students have research to analyze. Has anyone found any other way?
*(i.e. it leaves out difficult questions like "*why* do these belong together?", and "what other groups do we get if we continue in the same perspective?" - whereas the other methods appear to put them first)
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