Benjamin Basseches - Ethnographic Diary Studies: Value & Best-practices (
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In the age where seemingly everyone carries a smartphone, you can now conduct some forms of ethnographic research without the logistical challenges of field work! Imagine the value of viewing your users’ snapchat stories and other social media profiles to gain a window into their daily lives. Ethnographic diary studies leverage similar mobile platforms, and enable you to send participants specific prompts to gain insights into their lifestyle factors and behaviors that might influence the design of your future product or service.
Ethnographic diary studies share several similarities with typical diary studies aimed at collecting extended product-usage feedback, but their broader research objectives warrant special considerations. For example, the diary prompts must be clear and straightforward, but open-ended enough to encourage participants to report anything they consider significant. Furthermore, you should select a diary platform that facilitates communication with participants, enabling you to provide encouragement and ask follow-up questions throughout the study. If designed and conducted thoughtfully with an appropriate mobile diary platform, ethnographic diary studies offer economical access to rich, in-context data that used to be obtainable only through extended field observations and interviews.
In this 10-minute talk, I will summarize the value of, and best-practices for, conducting ethnographic diary studies. I will offer specific guidance by citing examples from a recent study to understand the lives of individuals with chronic medical conditions. Attendees will leave with the knowledge and confidence to start planning an ethnographic diary study.
Maggie Foley - Lessons Learned: Designing for Augmented Reality (
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Designing for augmented reality today can feel like the wild wild west — everyone’s talking about it, brands are starting to experiment with it, but there aren’t a lot of successful case studies or established standards to lean on. This talk covers notable interaction models and key considerations when for designing in AR, helping you to avoid pitfalls in new territory.
During this session you’ll learn:
Three key interaction models in AR
Eight considerations when designing in AR
Low-cost ways to get started today
Tania Schlatter, Julian Gautier, and Derek Murphy - Gut-check: the Boston UX community and the current tech backlash (
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According to the
New York Times, these are serious times to be involved in digital product design. In the past ten months, the Times has published over six articles about a backlash against the technology sector, covering topics ranging from the negative effects of new devices on kids (1) to the addictive nature of smartphones (2).
One article (1) reports that two primary shareholders are asking Apple to “study the health effects of its products.” Another (2) asks an expert on addiction, “Do the designers of the new technologies understand what they’re doing?”
Facebook and Twitter have recently faced controversy over the spread of misinformation on their platforms by hackers and bots. Graduate students in this presenter’s class are concerned about topics such as dark UI patterns, how to avoid creating them, and the negative effects of too much technology use.
We are wondering if these kinds of concerns are on the minds’ of the Boston UX community members. This talk will present findings from a survey of the Boston UX community about their perception of the potential dangers of digital products and their role in creating them.
1) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/08/business/apple-investors-children.html?action=click&contentCollection=Technology&module=RelatedCoverage®ion=EndOfArticle&pgtype=article2) https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/science/technology-addiction-irresistible-by-adam-alter.html
