Friday, 10:30am, Continental Ballroom
As technology becomes increasingly portable, mobile, and ubiquitous, new challenges to traditional ethnographic user research arise. When it comes to observing how users behave with cell phones, GPS devices, and in-car displays, how does one maintain a natural usage context, while preserving the benefits of lab testing, such as video recording and stakeholder observation? Using an automotive ethnography as a case study, this paper discusses the challenges and pragmatics of using new technologies and web services to document, broadcast, and involve stakeholders in mobile research as it is ongoing. Additionally, it identifies and addresses the key considerations and challenges of designing a mobile ethnographic study, and indicates how technological developments in the future might be used to improve upon current methods.
INSTRUCTORS
Nate Bolt
After pioneering and directing the User Experience department at Clear Ink in 1999, Nate Bolt co-founded Bolt | Peters. He now serves as the CEO, where he has overseen hundreds of user research studies for Sony, Oracle, HP, Greenpeace, Electronic Arts, and others. Beginning in 2003, he led the creation of the first moderated remote user research software, Ethnio, which is being used around the world to recruit hundreds of thousands of live participants for research. Nate regularly gives presentations on native environment research methods in both commercial and academic settings, and is currently co-authoring Remote Research, a book on remote testing, published by Rosenfeld Media.