The week 3 class of XD studied qualitative research methods including interviews and focus groups, and learned about the demographic and psychological characteristics of market research. I will also continue to share my thoughts and progress on assignment 1 and begin preparing to define research goals and questions for user research.
First of all, I would like to explain what qualitative research is based on the the course and my understanding. This also plays a key role in my follow-up research direction. Many times qualitative research involves collecting and analyzing non-digital data (such as text, video, or audio) to understand concepts, ideas or experiences. It can be used to gather insight into a problem or generate new ideas for research. Examples of qualitative research questions are often used to understand how people experience the world. While there are many qualitative research methods, they tend to be flexible and focus on preserving rich meaning when interpreting data.
Common approaches may include grounded theory, ethnography, action research, phenomenological research and narrative research. They have some similarities, but emphasize different goals and perspectives. The most usual qualitative methods are observation, interviews, focus groups, or secondary studies.
However, it also has some disadvantages. The real-world environment often makes qualitative research unreliable due to uncontrolled factors that influence data. And qualitative research also has certain subjectivity and limited universality. In general, qualitative research is usually used in the humanities and social sciences, such as anthropology, sociology, education, health science, history or others.
For the process of my assignment 1, I started some literature review of user experience and happiness, and also did my first case study in this week. I am going to share the work of my case study.
My first case study is an online shopping site called Amazon. People can buy goods from any country on it and have them delivered to their door through a delivery service, allowing us to experience the shopping experience anytime, anywhere without ever leaving home. As long as there is a network, its audience is infinite. This is also the user experience of digital products and services.
I also got to understand a user who was using online shopping, and created a persona to analyze user needs for this case study. It can be said that external factors affecting online shopping may be price, waiting time for delivery, transaction satisfaction, payment security and data protection, the validity and enforceability of electronic contracts, insufficient information disclosure, product quality and rights enforcement, and other psychological risks.
Finally, next week’s course will learn about the other method which is quantitative research. I will also continue my second case study, and determine which research method I might adopt for my user research.
