Observational Field Studies

POEMS Method

Heuristics:

• People – The demographics, roles, behavioral traits, and quantity of people in the environment
• Objects – The items the people are interacting with, including furniture, devices, machines, appliances, tools, etc.
• Environments – Observations about the architecture, lighting, furniture, temperature, atmosphere, etc.
• Messages – The tone of the language or commonly used phrases in tag lines, social/professional interactions, and/or environmental messages
• Services – All services, apps, tools, and frameworks used

AEIOU Framework 

Heuristics:

• Activities are goal-directed sets of actions—paths towards things people want to accomplish. What are the modes people work in, and the specific activities and processes they go through?
• Environments include the entire arena where activities take place. What is the character and function of the space overall, of each individual's spaces, and of shared spaces?
• Interactions are between a person and someone or something else; they are the building blocks of activities. What is the nature of routine and special interactions between people, between people and objects in their environment, and across distances?
• Objects are building blocks of the environment, key elements sometimes put to complex or unintended uses (thus changing their function, meaning and context). What are the objects and devices people have in their environments and how do they relate to their activities?
• Users are the people whose behaviors, preferences, and needs are being observed. Who is there? What are their roles and relationships? What are their values and prejudices?

Contextual Inquiry

A Contextual Inquiry (CI) aims to observe users in their environment as they interact with the system being evaluated. This helps determine what problems users are trying to solve and the pain points they encounter. This is a semi-structured interview in that fact that observers generally have a set of questions, but they also need to deviate from the script as the session unfolds to uncover rich nuggets of data. 

Here are some tips for conducting a CI:

1. Have a set of research questions and goals. This is a starting point to get to know this participant's background and their typical challenges and goals.
2. Have something for the participant(s) to do. In theory, you're watching people do their jobs and use the products as they normally would. But you may need to observe particular events or actions that don't happen frequently. Be sure the participant knows you want to see them do particular tasks.
3. Decide on the role of the observers. If people are there to observe, be sure they're not interrupting or helping participants with problems. 
4. Be sure this isn't some product demo or wish list. It's OK if a participant suggests features or improvements, but you don't want to spend the hour talking about feature requests.
5. Be sure you understand as much of the domain and product as possible. 
6. Let the participant do the talking and act as an expert guide. You generally want to treat this as a show and tell—where the participant is doing most of the showing and telling. You can rarely observe everything naturally; instead, when a participant references something, have them "show" it to you instead of just telling you about it.
7. Decide how many participants to observe. In general, the more common a behavior or attitude, the fewer participants you need.
8. Decide what to do with your notes. Take good notes and record the session if you're able (get permission first). You'll want to turn your raw notes into meaningful insights, themes, and visualizations like process maps, customer journeys, and affinity diagrams. 

Adapted from Jeff Sauro, MeauringU