October 15, 2010

Qualitative Data Analysis – exercise

In class, we’re going to practice doing some analysis of your interview data — from your assignment and/or your project.  You’ll work with people who did interviews related to yours, so most likely people in your project group.  If your interviews have nothing to do with anyone else’s interviews, bring the following anyway.

1. Bring transcriptions or detailed notes, if you have them.

2. Spend some time reviewing your interview notes (and your memory) and list major topics or themes.  These can be at varying levels of specificity, but, as with the observation exercise, be careful of getting too general, too far from your data.  Go for as long a list as makes sense, given your data.

3. Write these topic areas on large post-its  (3×3 is good) or index cards or pieces of paper cut to 3×3 or 3×5 and bring to class.

* Filed by Nancy Van House at 12:21 pm under Card Sorting,Data analysis,Interviewing,Methods,Qualitative Data Analysis
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September 16, 2010

Interviewing

Usability Testing Interviewing

Usability testing interviewing is simpler than ethnographic interviewing, but shares many principles.

Rubin, Jeffrey, Handbook of Usability Testing: How to Plan, Design, and Conduct Effective Tests. Wiley, 1994   Chapter 7, Chapter 8.  If you have the book, read ch.9, too.

(This book is worth buying — a classic — get the new edition, 2008.)

The new edition out and  sample forms and scripts are online:

Chapter 08: Session Forms
Session Script: Example A Session Script		 12.78 KB HTTP | FTP
Chapter 08: Session Forms
Pre-Test Forms: Guidelines for Observers		 7.56 KB HTTP | FTP
Chapter 08: Session Forms
Consent Form: Recording Permission		 7.13 KB HTTP | FTP
Chapter 09: Test Preparation
Testing Preparation Checklists		 3.94 KB HTTP | FTP

Interviewing, General

Slides from Spring, 2010 — Very thorough; we’re not going to go over all this in class but you MUST know this material to be a good interviewer.

Video Getting People to Talk: An Ethnography & Interviewing Primer: very useful. Well worth the time.

Done by IIT Institute of Design.  Interviews with people who do ethnographic interviews for human-centered design.  You have to get past the intro on-the street interviews  — I can’t imagine anyone in Berkeley being willing to do these interviews, given how many people on the street here want money, signatures on petitions, and the like.

Note also the variability in sound quality and where and how they place some interviewees.  They make some pretty basic mistakes.

I don’t recommend making people sing and cry.

Irving Seidman, Interviewing as Qualitative Research: ch. 6, Technique Isn’t Everything, But It Is a Lot. This is a good reading to start with. Basics.

Robert S. Weiss, Learning from Strangers – The Art and Method of Qualitative Interview Studies, New York: The Free Press, 1994.  Readings are long because they include long excerpts from interview transcripts.

Chapter 3 – Preparation for Interviewing
Chapter 4 – Interviewing – Part 1
Chapter 4 – Interviewing – Part 2 – Examples of Interviewing
Chapter 5 – Issues in Interviewing

* Filed by Nancy Van House at 11:01 am under Interviewing,Methods
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