Research plan

From ThesisWiki

In my research I will be studying how couples communicate when living at a distance in order to better understand the challenges and needs of people in this context. Because of the private nature of this communication I won’t be able to use observational techniques, but will instead make use of digital cultural probes. Cultural probes consist of artifacts and tasks that participants perform on their own and send back to the researcher in an incremental manner. In this case I will be using digital methods since some of the participants will be living far away and using the postal mail may be inconvenient or too slow.

I will be working with 5 different couples, 10 participants in total. Five of the people will live in the Pittsburgh area and 5 will live elsewhere. Each participant will use the cultural probes for a total of 10 days.

Digital Artifacts

• Daily email
• Personal, secured website for journal responses
  • Daily questions / activities
  • Ability to upload photos

Process

Before the research period initial interviews will be conducted with each participant. The interviews will be opened ended but certain consistent themes will be probed:

• The context and reasons for living at a distance from their partner.
• How often they are able to see their partner in person.
• Use of different technologies (what, why, when, where, opinions on).
• Communication breakdowns.
• Physical artifacts with significant meaning.

During a 10-day period certain things will happen every day:

• In the morning I will email each participant with that day’s question or activity and a link to the website.
  • The email acts as a reminder and will be customized to that day, not a generic repeating email.

• Anytime during the day participants can go to their personal, secure website and fill out the entry/activity for that day.
  • They can revise their entries at any time including those for the previous days.

• An optional section of the website will allow participants to upload photos with captions at any time.
  • This will be encouraged if they have a digital camera and know-how, but not required.

• After the 10-day period a short follow-up interview will be conducted. Core questions include:
  • General reflection on the study.
  • Communication with partner during the course of the study.
  • Problems / successes with communication technologies.
  • Blue-sky probing about design ideas.
  • Gauging of willingness to participate in the future.

• After a two week concept generation phase the participants will be sent a link to a website containing high-level concept scenarios. They will be asked to comment on and rate the various concepts.
  • Concept scenarios will be designed to illicit responses to specific themes more than acting as complete solutions.
  • Feedback from this session will be used to refine concepts.

IRB Approval

I am still waiting for IRB approval but should have it soon.