[SOUND] Welcome to User Experience Design. Today we will discuss naturalistic observation and detail. We'll discuss the goal of naturalistic observation, the kind of data we can gather, as well as advantages and shortcomings of this technique. The goal of naturalistic observation is to watch the user in action in their own environment. Rather than asking the user what, when, and where she accomplishes a given task, the designer goes out to where the task takes place and observes the user. Most naturalistic observations take place in the field rather than the lab, because we want to get a sense of the environment where the task takes place. While it's true that in most cases, there is no interaction between the designer and the user during this observation, the designer must have a plan for the observation session. At this point, I want to remind you that we already had a lesson on how to come up with this plan. During the naturalistic observation session, the data collected can be either qualitative, or quantitative. Qualitative data may be a set of notes written by the designer as he observes the user. Quantitative data may be collected during a naturalistic observation session as well. These may be a set of counts for events the designer expects to see. For example, if a secondary stakeholder is expected to be in the field as well, we may have to keep track of how many times these two users interact. All of the techniques we will discuss have advantages and shortcomings. Among the advantage of naturalistic observation is that we're able to see what the user is doing directly. We can collect data anywhere and at any time. Perhaps the most important is that the user is simply engaging in their normal behavior. And this might mean that they're not changing it based on what they expect the designer might ask or might want. However, the major shortcoming of this technique includes that the designers' data are limited to his or her own collection technique and interpretation. There's no way to verify if the assumptions that the designer made are correct. We actually don't know why the user is completing a given task in a certain way. This is the main reason why naturalistic observations are usually first steps in the requirements gathering process. Good design involves interaction with the user. There are ethical considerations when we conduct naturalistic observations. Paramount is the fact that we must safeguard the privacy of the individual. We must maintain the anonymity of the user. This means we should not collect identifying information about the people we observe, not pictures, not other identifying information without asking their permission. And again, naturalistic observation data is really useful, but it is best thought of as a platform for future data collection. What I mean is that the designer can take the qualitative data from this session and come up with a set of questions to ask during a direct interaction with the user. For example, let's say that during our naturalistic observation we notice that there are three prominent ways the user is completing the task. We can then develop a survey where we find out where these preferences for using a given task comes from. Then we can host a focus group or do a set of interviews to further clarify the findings from the survey data. I just gave you an example of using the entire design cycle. We could just as easily have developed an interview following the naturalistic observation. The point is to conduct the technique that provides us with the information we need. In this lesson, we reviewed naturalistic observation. I look forward to seeing you in our next lesson where we go over surveys. [SOUND]