What is a diary study? Learn how to conduct a diary study

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Imagine seeing your consumers’ everyday lives to learn about their routines, inconveniences, and pleasures while interacting with your product. That’s just what you can accomplish with a diary study research.

Digging into your consumers’ everyday lives can reveal hidden patterns and expectations, making it a powerful tool for creating designs that genuinely connect with your target audience. But what is a diary study?

This Octet Design Journal blog will explain diary studies in UX and provide examples to help you understand. We will also discover how to conduct a diary study effectively.  

Meaning of diary study

In a diary study, participants needs to record their thoughts, feelings, and actions regularly for a predetermined time. Instead of relying on memory, participants record what they’re experiencing as it happens. This might involve jotting notes in a physical diary, using a smartphone app, or making voice recordings.

The main goal of a diary study is to get an accurate, everyday view of how people interact with products, services, or situations. By examining these daily entries, researchers can identify trends, learn about human behavior, and devise creative methods to enhance their offerings based on customer feedback.

Diary study examples

Tracking user interaction with a mobile app

Let’s say a business is creating a new fitness app and wants to know how people incorporate it into their everyday lives.

Participants may be requested to record their activities every time they use the app, including what they did before and after, why they used it, and any problems they encountered.

The company could make design adjustments and feature improvements by using this diary study to pinpoint when users found the app particularly beneficial or challenging to use.

Understanding the customer journey in retail

A retail company may conduct diary research to learn about in-store purchasing encounters. Participants might be asked to record their ideas and behaviors from the moment they enter a store until they make a purchase.

This could involve documenting their objectives for visiting, difficulties they had navigating the store, their encounters with the personnel, and their level of pleasure with the purchases they made.

The knowledge acquired might enhance customer service, store design, and shopping experience.

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Main types of diary studies

Time-based diary studies

Participants record their experiences or activities regularly, such as every hour or the end of each day. This technique helps document regular habits and changes over time.

Event-based diary studies

Participants record their feelings, ideas, or behaviors every time a particular event occurs, such as purchasing or encountering a problem. This method focuses on comprehending experiences associated with specific stimuli.

Open-ended diary studies

Participants are free to record any observations or experiences they consider relevant. This enables the participant’s perspective to provide rich, in-depth insights.

Structured diary studies

Specific questions or prompts are given to participants to ensure that the information gathered is reliable and closely related to the study’s goals.

Digital diary studies

Participants log their entries using digital tools like apps or web platforms. This convenient method allows real-time data gathering and supports multimedia entries (such as images and videos).

Paper-based diary studies

Participants record their experiences on paper forms or notebooks. Although this strategy is traditional, some participants find it more approachable and intimate.

Cultural probe diary studies

This approach involves giving participants creative tools or prompts (like postcards, cameras, or maps) to inspire them to document their daily lives. It’s often used in exploratory research to uncover cultural and social insights.

Retrospective diary studies

Participants reflect on and document past experiences rather than recording them in real-time. This method is proper when immediate data collection isn’t possible, though it relies on the participant’s memory.

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Importance of diary studies in UX

Capturing real-life context

Participants in diary studies can document their experiences in their natural settings, giving researchers genuine insights into how people use things in everyday life.

Longitudinal insights

Diary studies gather data to show how user experiences vary over time, highlighting behavioral, preference, and challenge changes that may not be seen in one-time tests.

You should read about: What is longitudinal study?

Flexibility in research

Diary studies are flexible tools in UX research because they can be customized to meet various research needs, such as examining particular events, everyday routines, or open-ended comments.

Enhanced empathy

Reviewing diary entries helps UX researchers and  UI UX designers understand people deeper, promoting empathy and influencing the creation of user-centered solutions.

Reducing recall bias

Diary studies produce more accurate data than methods that rely on memory because they reduce the possibility of false recollections. Participants record their experiences as they happen.

When to conduct a diary study?

Understanding daily routines

Diary studies are perfect for investigating how consumers utilize products or services daily. They help identify patterns, routines, and trouble spots in practical settings.

Exploring long-term user experience 

Diary research offers valuable longitudinal insights if you want to comprehend how user experiences vary over time, such as how they adjust to a new product or how their needs change.

Researching complex processes

Diary studies record every stage and the difficulties users encounter when handling complex tasks that develop over time (such as managing health issues or integrating new software), providing a comprehensive picture of the complete process.

Complementing other research methods

Surveys and interviews are two techniques that can be combined with diary studies to give a deeper, more thorough insight into user behavior. They support the validity of conclusions and deepen the understanding gained from alternative methods.

How to conduct a diary study?

Define research objectives

Start by identifying what you learn from this diary study. Then, determine the key questions you must answer and how the insights will inform your UX design decisions.

Select participants

Select a set of participants most closely representing the demographic you wish to reach. Ensure they demonstrate the traits or actions related to your study’s goals.

Choose diary format

Select if the study will be conducted on paper or digitally, utilizing apps or internet resources. The format should align with your participants’ preferences and the kind of information you want to get.

Design diary tasks

Provide participants with targeted questions or prompts to respond to in their diaries. The assignments must be simple for participants to perform regularly, prominent, and relevant to your study objectives.

Pilot the study

Conduct a small-scale experiment with a few people to test the diary format, tasks, and instructions. Before launching the study with the entire participant group, make necessary revisions based on feedback.

Onboard participants

Give precise directions on how to fill out the journal entries, how often they should be made, and any additional requirements. Ascertain that participants comprehend the study’s goal and are at ease with the procedure.

Monitor progress

Check in with participants periodically to ensure they complete their entries and address any issues or questions. This helps maintain engagement and data quality throughout the study.

Collect diary entries

All of the participant diaries will be collected after the study. To facilitate analysis, ensure that the data is complete and well-organized.

Analyze the data

Examine the journal entries to find trends, ideas, and revelations that connect to your study goals. Use approaches from qualitative analysis to understand the data.

Report findings

Write a report outlining the key findings drawn from the diary study. Emphasize how these results help with UX design choices and enhance the user experience.

Debrief with participants

Consider having debriefing meetings with study participants to gain more context for their entries and clarify their answers. You may also use this to express your gratitude for their involvement.

Apply insights

Utilize the knowledge from the diary study to guide your decision-making throughout the UX design process. These insights can help improve goods, services, or user interfaces to satisfy customer wants.

Best diary study tools

Dscout

Dscout is a platform created especially for qualitative research and diary studies. It allows participants to record text, video, and photo comments and gives researchers the tools they need to manage and evaluate data effectively.

Recollective

Recollective is a digital platform for conducting diary studies and other qualitative research. It has tools for setting up activities, gathering information from various sources, and evaluating participant feedback.

EthnoHub

A diary study-supporting ethnographic research tool. EthnoHub allows participants to document their experiences through multimedia entries and gives academics access to tools for cooperation and data analysis.

Airtable

Data from diary studies can be managed and organized using Airtable, an adaptable database application. Researchers can track participant progress, create custom forms for diary entries, and analyze data using a variety of views and filters.

Google forms

A quick and easy way to make surveys and get answers for free. It can be modified for diary studies by creating forms that participants must complete regularly or following particular occasions.

ExperienceFellow

ExperienceFellow is a diary study tool for gathering user opinions via experience sampling and diary research. It offers analytical tools and supports multimedia entries to assist researchers in comprehending user experiences.

Evernote

Evernote allows users to document their journal entries. It is adaptable to various diary study formats because it can accommodate text, photos, and audio notes.

Zoom (for video diaries)

A video diary session can also be conducted using zoom, a video-conferencing application, can also be used to perform a video diary session. Participants can capture their ideas and feelings through video, which researchers can evaluate and analyze.

Notion

A diary study tool used to enhance productivity that may also be customized for diary studies, Notion allows researchers to arrange and handle diary entries and data by allowing the construction of databases, task lists, and notes.

Voice memos (for audio diaries)

A straightforward system for taking voice notes. It gives participants a quick and easy way to record journal entries by allowing them to record their experiences verbally.

Conclusion

To sum up, a diary study is an effective qualitative research technique that offers an in-depth understanding of users’ experiences and actions over an extended period. 

Diary studies in UX help identify patterns, obstacles, and possibilities that might not be apparent through other research approaches by gathering comprehensive, context-rich data.

Diary studies offer flexibility and depth that make them essential for UX research, whether you want to understand daily routines, study long-term user experiences, or investigate complex processes.

At Octet, we use diary studies to improve user experience design. Our experts help you create and carry out successful diary studies suited to your research goals. We ensure your diary study is comprehensive and valuable, from choosing the best instruments to evaluating information and using findings. 

By incorporating dairy research results into your design process, we help develop user-centered solutions that address practical demands and foster participation.

Frequently asked questions

What is a diary study?

A diary study is a qualitative research method where participants record their thoughts, feelings, and experiences over a specific period. This approach allows researchers to gather rich, contextual insights into users’ interactions with products or services in real-life situations, helping to identify patterns and uncover user needs that may not be visible through traditional research methods.

What is the purpose of a diary study?

A diary research aims to collect comprehensive, real-time data about users’ experiences, interactions, and behaviors over time. Exposing trends and difficulties that might not be discovered using other techniques aids researchers in understanding how people interact with a good or service in their daily lives.

How long is a diary study?

The length of a diary study can vary depending on the investigation’s goals. It might last from a few days to many weeks or even months, but the requirement to gather enough data and track changes over time dictates the duration.

What are the disadvantages of a diary study?

One drawback of diary study is that it may take participants time to complete the required entries regularly. Furthermore, recall bias and differing participant engagement levels can lead to inconsistent data quality. Organizing and evaluating a sizable number of diary entries might be difficult for academics. 

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