User Research: Field Studies
Field studies, also known as contextual inquiry, task analysis or ethnography, involve going where your users are to understand first-hand how they actually do things. Studying your customers in action creates opportunities to improve your current products and drive innovation – you may discover that your customers need products and services that you hadn’t thought of before.
A field study is a good method to choose when:
- You’re primarily interested in seeing what users do, in addition to hearing their attitudes and opinions
- You have a successful product, but you’re not sure how customers are actually using it, or how to make it better
- You want to define a vision for the next generation of your product or service
- You’re looking for new ways to serve your current customers
- You want to identify market opportunities among new types of customers
How do field studies work?
In a field study, we go into users’ homes or workplaces and observe them using a product to perform their job or other activity. The focus of a field study is on context: we analyze the user’s overall task or process and how a given product fits into that process. Often, this involves observing several people at a work site, such as spending time with supervisors and line staff, or following an order from sales to fulfillment.
Field studies are most effective when the activity you want to study unfolds within a relatively short period of time (i.e., a few minutes to few hours), enabling us to observe the process from start to finish. To explore longer processes, we combine field studies with in-depth retrospective interviews and artifact analyses.
We use the information gathered in the field to develop models of the user’s experience. These models might include personas, which illustrate the goals and needs of different types of users, and/or process flows, that outline the actions required and information needed at each step to complete a task. We use these models to identify opportunities for enhancing an existing product and to develop innovative concepts that guide future product development.
Is a field study the right approach for me?
We’d be happy to talk with you about your goals and help you determine the best method or combination of methods to meet your needs.