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Member-only story
Why and how to conduct a diary study for a customer journey?
Avoid biases and collect rich and specific data
Just like life, choosing a research method involves tradeoffs. And this story is about the tradeoffs we experienced while using interviews with users vs. a diary study for a customer journey map of an art supplies* webstore. The little bit more effort and time that we needed for the diary study gave us much more specific, rich, and actionable insights. We learned about the actual challenges that users faced when they ordered supplies during the diary study. For example*, one of the users was not sure if a paintbrush was soft enough for their purposes. They were looking for a video or a scale or a chart to compare the softness of brushes that could them decide.
“I want a soft brush with a pointed end for thin lines, this one looks pointed but am not sure if it is soft enough. I wish they had, like, some scale or video something to show the softness…now I will just have to order and see . . . hope it’s the right one, hate returning things.”
So, what is a diary study? In a diary study, participants record their thoughts and experiences about a product or activity in their everyday life. The records could be text, video, audio or images, etc. The research team may send reminders or tasks to the participants during the study.
The project goal & why I chose a diary study
We were asked to conduct user research to inform the customer journey of an online art supplies store*. The goal was to find out what do people do when buying art supplies, and what do they want, need, like, wish for, find painful, etc. in this process.
Interviews, workshops with users, and analytical research are common approaches for mapping customer journeys as mentioned by Paul Boag. But I wanted to get as close to the users’ real world experience as possible and what came to mind was my previous work with heart patients*.
Several years ago, I had conducted a diary study for heart patients’ journey. The study was of immense value in shaping the project direction. For example, before the diary study, the team was focused on the data visualizations to show survival rates for each treatment. The team…
