Field Studies

https://medium.com/@ZipRecruiter_Design/user-research-101-224fe73989a2#.2usl0w91s

During a task analysis session, the participant is asked to perform his/her usual tasks on the site. Through a task analysis, the researcher learns about how the participants perform various tasks in order to achieve their intended goals. The goal of a task analysis is to understand the structure, flow, and attributes of completing a task. Task analysis helps to identify which features the site must support in order meet the user’s goals. A task analysis represents the actual behavior of the user, and can often unveil new findings that were not in the scope of the study. Task prompts and questions are kept at a minimum to ensure that the study is not swayed by the guidance of the researcher. Task analysis can be done in the field or in lab. Research done in the field can generate a behavior that is more true to what the users actually do, but there are more unknown variables with field study. The goal here is to have little to no mediation and see the user’s true behavior through the site.