Here’s what I did when I did a contextual research project around mobile usage and habits two years ago:
First, I interviewed people. A lot of people. 30 people in three different states. I asked them about how they used their phones, what they liked, what they disliked, their pain points, what they wanted in the next phone they bought, etc. Then I asked everyone I interviewed if they would be interested in logging thier mobile usage for a full week in a daily diary, as well as fill-out a daily “report”. 20 of them agreed, and 18 of them lived up to thier commitment.
I had designed and had printed up small pocket-sized notebooks, with areas for comments as well as checkboxes that the participant could use to indicate what the activity was (“Game”, “Call”, “Text Message”, “Web”, etc.) and also created a standard questionaire for the daily reports. As the participants were in different states, I also gave them a self-addressed stamped envelope for them to send back the diaries to me.
All the participants were given VISA gift cards – one card for the interview time, and another card was mailed to them when they completed and returned the diaries.
After all the data was recieved, I typed it into excel and analyzed it to identify usage patterns and form mobile personas, which our mobile design team use to this very day…
The genesis for this approach came from a panel on mobile testing and research I attended at a UX conference – my article on that panel and additional context on the above idea is here: https://www.josephdickerson.com/b…