DIARY STUDIES

Julia:
What are Diary Studies?
“A diary study is a research method collecting qualitative data about user behaviours and
actions over time.”

A diary study is a research method used to collect qualitative data about user behaviors,
activities, and experiences over time. In a diary study, data is self-reported by participants 
over an extended period of time that can range from a few days to even a month or longer.
During the defined reporting period, study participants are asked to keep a diary and log
specific information about activities being studied. To help participants remember to fill in
their diary, sometimes they are periodically prompted (for example, through a notification
received daily or at select times during the day).

The context and time period in which data is collected for a diary study make them unlike
other common user-research methods, such as surveys or usability tests. They are unlikely to
provide observations that are as rich or detailed as a true field study, but they can serve as a
decent approximation.

Diary studies are useful for understanding long-term behaviors such as:
 Habits — What time of day do users engage with a product? If and how they choose
to share content with others?
 Usage scenarios — In what capacity do users engage with a product? What are their
primary tasks? What are their workflows for completing longer-term tasks?
(These scenarios can be used for user testing later in the process.)
 Attitudes and motivations — What motivates people to perform specific tasks? How
are users feeling and thinking?
 Changes in behaviors and perceptions — How learnable is a system? How loyal are
customers over time? How do they perceive a brand after engaging with the
corresponding organization?
 Customer journeys — What is the typical customer journey and cross-channel user
experience as customers interact with your organization using different devices and
channels such as, email, phone, websites, mobile applications, kiosks, social media,
and online chat? What is the cumulative effect of multiple service touchpoints?

The focus of a diary study can range from very broad to extremely targeted, depending on
the topic being studied. Diary studies are often structured to focus on one of the following
topic scopes:
 Product or Website — Understanding all interactions with a site over the course of a
month.
  Behavior — Gathering general information about user behavior
 General activity — Understanding how people complete general activities
 A specific activity — Understanding how people complete specific activities

Zuza:
Methodology
A diary study is typically composed of five phases:
1. Planning and Preparation. Define the focus of the study and the long-term behaviors
that you need to understand. Define a timeline, select tools for participants to report
data, recruit participants, and prepare instructions or support materials.
2. Prestudy brief. Take time up front to get participants ready to log. Schedule a face-to-
face meeting or phone call with each participant to discuss the details of the study.
Walk through the schedule or calendar for the reporting period and discuss
expectations. Discuss the tools they will be using and be sure each participant has
familiarized themselves with the technology; answer any questions they may have
before beginning.
3. Logging period. To support effective activity logging, provide a simple framework. Be
as specific as possible about what information you need participants to log, without
stifling natural variability and differences that you cannot plan for. (Discovering the
unexpected is after all one of the primary reasons to do user research.) Create clear
and detailed instructions for logging. Give users example log entries to help them
understand the level of detail you need from them. (But make sure you don’t bias
participants toward those types of entries that you happened to provide as
examples.)
Post-study interview. After the study, evaluate all the information provided by each
participant. Plan a follow-up interview to discuss logs in detail. Ask probing questions
to uncover specific details needed to complete the story and clarify as needed. Ask
for feedback from the participant about their experience participating in the study,
so you can adjust your processes for the next time.
5. Data Analysis. Because diary studies are longitudinal, they generate a large amount
of qualitative data. Revisit your research questions, then take a deep breath and dig
into all of the rich insights you’ve collected to find the answers. Evaluate the
behaviors you’ve targeted throughout the study. How do they evolve and change
over time? What influences these behaviors? If the focus of your study is around a
particular product or service relationship, look at the entire customer journey.
Construct a customer journey map to help you understand the end-to-end user
experience from the perspective of your customers.

 
More Tips for Diary Studies
 Plan for an appropriate reporting period. Make sure your study is long enough to
gather the information you need, but be cautious about designing a very lengthy
study. If your study is too long, participants may become less engaged as the study
progresses, which could result in less accurate data.
 Recruit dedicated users. Since diary studies require more involvement over a longer
period of time, be extra prudent in the recruiting process. Let users know what is
involved and expected of them up front. Ask screening questions that will help you
gauge the level of commitment you will get from them during the study, and be sure
to confirm they will be available for the entire study period.
 Be on top of the data as it comes in. If you are getting data digitally or immediately as
it comes in, evaluate it right away. This allows you to ask follow-up questions and
prompt for additional detail as necessary, while the activity is still fresh in the minds
of the participants
 Conduct a pilot study. Diary studies can take quite a bit of time to plan and conduct,
so it’s helpful to conduct a short pilot study first. The pilot study does not need to be
as long as the real study and it is not meant to garner data for analysis. Its purpose is
to test your study design and related materials. Practice the process of briefing and
debriefing pilot participants. Try out your logging materials to be sure they’re
understandable. Tweak your instructions and approach to ensure you get the data
you need. Ask pilot participants for feedback about materials and the diary study
experience, and adjust accordingly.

Marta:
The Benefi ts of Diary Studies
1. Frequent, real-time research records more precise data
Ensuring your participants record their experiences as and when they happen, instead of
asking them to recall their feelings at a later date of time, reflects a far more natural
experience.
2. Recording in a natural environment delivers more realistic results
Understanding why and where your participants carry out their actions will paint a far more
authentic picture of their operation. For example, creating lab or sterile testing
environments takes the participant away from an authentic experience. While this can focus
the participant solely on the product, it removes the outside interactions they’re typically
faced with, affecting their interactions with the product.
3. An extended timescale exposes changes over time
Monitoring each participant’s behaviour over longer periods delivers far more insight than
studies providing a mere snapshot in time. Ongoing diary studies show changes to
behaviours, actions and provide patterns according to duration, interactions, and how their
opinion of the product changes or develops during extended use.
 4. Capturing external influencing factors
A further key area of diary study is understanding which external influences affect your
users’ actions and how. Without long-term testing, you won’t achieve as accurate data about
when and where your participants engage with your product, what causes them to pick up
and turn them on, and how different situations affect how they behave.
5. They produce far more in-depth opinions
The longer your participants engage with your product, the more consideration they’ll apply.
Naturally, this changes their opinions over time—sometimes for the better, sometimes
worse—but all documented so you can learn from them and enhance the experience you
deliver.
The Limitations of Diary Studies
But it isn’t all upside as you can imagine. Here are some of the potential pitfalls.
1. Poor planning could lead to poor-quality data
Without reviewing what you really hope to achieve, it’s unlikely you’ll put together a study
capable of pushing participants into exposing truly beneficial information. Therefore, when
planning a diary study, you need to know what you want from each participant and how to
get them to deliver; that means holding brainstorming and fact-finding missions to uncover
the essential areas.
2. Picking the wrong participants can lead to inaccurate information
Explaining precisely what you want from your ‘diarists’ is only part of the battle. A lot of
people are drawn to trying to tell people what they think they want to hear or what they
should say.
3. Vast pools of data leads to longer analysis periods
Without the neatly gathered data a questionnaire or other method might supply, the mass
of information, in many formats, requires a great deal of processing to uncover the real gold.
4. You may need ongoing motivation to keep participants involved and interested
With long-term analysis, participants tend to lose interest and drop out of the system. It’s
often nothing to do with your product or project but more to do with human behaviour and
priorities.

Conclusion
While diary studies can require more time and effort to conduct than other user-research
methods, they yield invaluable information about customers’ real-time real-life behaviors
and experiences. If you’re looking for organic behavioral insights and you can’t create a valid
scenario in the lab or you can’t get the data you need from a single survey, don’t force-fit the
research into these methodologies. Diary studies allow you to get a contextual
understanding of users’ behavior and experiences over time.