Week 7 (June 13-17)

Week 7 marked the beginning of the diary study. Starting on Monday, I began to conduct the initial interviews for the study - I completed 7 interviews this week with 8 more to go next week. The interviews themselves were intended to collect the user data (age, occupation, etc) as well as get the participant's baseline perceptions of the IIS's that we are interested in looking at. The participants are instructed to begin the diary study (ie filling in the web questionnaire) the day after the interview, so we are already getting some good data.

Between interviews, I have been transcribing the completed interviews. Since they are recorded, it is necessary to go back and type them all out, which can be very tedious. Transcription is definitely not my favorite task!

Next week, I will finish up the interviews and continue with transcribing. I will also begin moving the data from the database to a spreadsheet so we can analyze it more easily.

Week 6 (June 6-10)

In week 6, I did a pilot run of the questionnaire with a couple of people in the lab, just to make sure everything works the way it should, and see if there were any bugs or issues that should be fixed before the actual study. Only 1 bug was found, the use of single quotes or apostrophes in the text input areas through off the code, so I had to encode all strings before trying to insert the data into the database.

While the pilot was running, I began recruiting for the study. I printed out a poster advertising the study, and posted it up all over campus, except in the Computer Science building (we don't want any experts, just average computer users). Since it's a field study lasting 2 weeks, we are offering a $100 gift certificate for participation, and I think this factored quite a bit into the fact that I got quite a few responses in the 24 hours after the posters were put up.

I also began doing the write up of the experimental method for this study, which basically includes what kind of study we are doing, how we are running it, how we are recruiting. Pretty much, everything that I can write up without having any data. This study is going to be turned into a paper to be submitted to the International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces, so having it written up early will help with making the paper as solid as possible.

Next week, I will be starting the initial interviews of subjects, and the study will begin!

Week 5 (May 30 - June 3)

I have completely finished the webpage (barring any unfound bugs), and I am super excited about that! I added a bit of color to the page, but it's still fairly plain. Anyone wanting to see it can go here, but PLEASE do not enter any information unless you are part of the study.

The pre-interview script is also completely finished, and the post-interview script is as finished as it can be without seeing any data. So that is what I did in Week 5. As you can see, I didn't have the busiest week, but the next few weeks to come will be full with interviews and transcriptions, so I enjoy the slow times while I can :)