Field Studies enable you to be a ‘fly on the wall’ and see first-hand where your system delights users and where it misses the mark.

There’s no better way to gain insight into how people use a system than by watching them in their normal environment. Sometimes there’s no other way to do it, like testing an in-car navigation system or setting up in-home mobile broadband.

Field Studies are a discovery process where we peek over the shoulder of users to assess task flows, inefficiencies and challenges. All this helps us to redesign a system to better meet users’ needs.

They can be undertaken at early stages of the user centred design process, and/or later in a project with working prototypes or before a full website or system is released.

Benefits

Observing users in their typical environment has some key advantages, including:

• richness – field studies are a great way to collect rich, detailed data and get the full view of how a system fits within a user’s life
• context – see first-hand how users work and behave, and what they need to support tasks
• comparative – identify any mismatches between the way users work and the tool and / or processes they use