Recording interaction is a fundamental aspect of understanding how people think, learn, and get things done. Whatever you are studying, whether a new product or how your participants come to understand some aspect of the world, interactional data can provide the opportunity for valuable insights.
Here are some of many ways to record interaction.
- Paper and pencil observations — Recording observations with paper and pencil is one of the most important, yet often overlooked, ways to track what your participants are doing. Before getting started you will want to have some sense of what it is you want to study. Maybe you want to understand how people make their way through airports to help design a more efficient process or how people learn thermodynamics. Find a place to sit for a while and write like mad, it is a very simple and effective way to gather information. Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes is an excellent resource for getting started in this area.
- Daily journaling by participants — Maybe you want to find out something about what your participants are doing that you cannot always be present for, like when they run across science in their daily lives. Consider asking your participants to track basic aspects of what they have done throughout the day with an inexpensive notebook. Conventional wisdom is that you will get a more accurate representation of what your participants are doing than if you ask them to recall in a survey. Providing inexpensive cameras and asking them to photograph whatever it is you are after can be effective as well, just be certain to make time to have them explain to you why it is that they have photographed what they are doing.
- Audio recordings — While written descriptions can provide a general view of how it is your participants are interacting in the chosen situation, sometimes you may want a more accurate representation of their exact words and intonations in order to understand exactly where it is that breakdowns occur or how they have worked around specific situations. Audio recordings can provide valuable data in these situations and are generally a rather unobtrusive way to gather information.
- Video recordings — Video is the most comprehensive way to gather detailed interactional data. With well recorded video you can capture revealing gestures, movements, and expressions that are easily overlooked with the other methods. It is not uncommon for researchers to want the opportunity to record everything once they figured out how much video can tell about participants activities. While laudable, this can lead to a lot data that is simply not ever analyzed. If you find yourself in that position, try narrowing down what it is you are after.
- Screen capture — If you are interested in how your participants are using a website or some other software then it is essential that you find someway to capture on-screen activity. The last several years have led to several advances in this area, so it is difficult to assemble a definitive list of the best software for the job. With that in mind, here are some commonly used options.
- Morae
- Epiphan
- Synching on-screen recordings from an Epiphan or a standard video camera and off-screen recordings can be a challenge. One way to do this is to use video editing software. If you chose to go this route be certain to create “markers” while your participants are working. Pointing the off-screen camera at the screen for 30 seconds to a minute at regular intervals works quite well for this.
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