Observations of current or proposed website users in the context in which they will use a proposed website, such as at home, in the office, shop or factory, at customer premises or on the road.
A field study helps a website planner to
- identify needs that users find difficult to articulate
- understand the implications of the environment and context
- identify patterns of behaviour and clusters of requirements
- test assumptions about users and usage patterns
A field study provides useful background for developing personas, use cases and user scenarios, and designing how website interfaces behave.
Field studies are an observational form of user research. Related terms that are sometimes used instead are
- contextual enquiry, which combines observation and questioning
- ethnography, which draws on a broad range of social research methods to derive qualitative information from a user’s point of view
Another common form of observational user research is usability testing. Non-observational user research includes interviews, surveys and focus groups.
The overall aim of user research is to understand user goals and behaviours, by combining information about what people say they do with information about what they actually do.
