A Diary Study Can be a Priceless Experience

When I can't go visit my customers in person, my favorite "get-to-know-you" technique is a diary study. A diary study is a fantastic way to get to know your users' personalities, what's important to them, and how they think. I once implemented a highly successful diary study to analyze the users of a commercial software product. The product had evolved over many years and the company was out of touch with the current customer. They were stuck on the needs of customers past and weren't comfortable with the market research that demonstrated this change.

I created an activity booklet with several activities from a "Who am I?" collage to a 30 day product use diary. Because the software targeted customers with creative interests, stickers, markers, and colored pencils were provided with the booklet.Twenty people completed the study, most very thoroughly detailing their personal interests, their artistic passions, and their abilities both with the software and with PC-use in general.

With identifying information removed, copies of the completed booklets were distributed in the break room, on the goody table, and on the desks of those who expressed an interest. Software and QA engineers, product managers, marketing staff, and VPs read these booklets and told me how much they had learned about the "new" customer. They finally understood that it was time for a change and were inspired to develop amazing new features better suited to the user.

While it was not statistically significant, the results from the diary study led to a stronger understanding of the user, not just by the user experience team, but by the entire development team. That is a priceless experience that I would recommend for almost any product.