Submitted by Steve on Thu, 2009-03-26 19:47.

Activities are a key concept and feature in Revelation-based studies. Activities serve as the conduit for getting the information you want from your participants, understanding participant behaviors, experiences and emotions. The more engaging and efficient you can make your activities, the more you gain from you participants. Every month we feature useful activity to use in Revelation projects.

This month we are going to focus on Designer activities. In these activities, we ask participants to step into the role of a designer and create their ideal phone, computer, shopping experience or whatever makes sense for the objective of the study. Often with designer activities, the take away for the research team  isn't  the specific ideas submitted by participants (some of which may be nonviable), but to tease out the underlying motivations for the suggestions. As the folks at Ideas to Go say, "We are looking for what people are for." 

The trick with designer activities is to set them up so that participants are free from most constraints (budget, space, time), yet give them a good amount of structure to guide them through the exercise. Here's an example of a store designer exercise (the blanks are where you would put the item being shopped for):

 Today, we are going to be doing something a little different. I am going to be giving you a new job -store designer. You are going to design your ideal store, and you don't have to worry about budget, location or anything. You have a free hand.

I'm going to ask you to use your imagination to create your personal fantasy of your ideal store and post it below. You'll see that I have provided the key areas for you to describe, so you don't have to start completely from scratch. Now, the important thing to keep in mind is that in the world of fantasy, you are not constrained by reality or limits of any kind. Let's get started!

Where is your store located? Does your store sell just phones or does it sell other things as well? What does it look like from the outside?

What do people see first when enter the store? Is the store big or small? What does it look like inside the store? What is the atmosphere like? How do you people find what they want? How do they get help?

What ________ does your store offer? How are the ________ displayed? What accessories does your store offer? How are they displayed? How is the information displayed so that it makes shopping easy? How do you people try out the ________ How do they figure out which ________ will be best?

What role do employees play in your store? How do they shape the experience? Do they approach people to see if they can help or do they wait to be asked? Does the staff offer any extra services like technical support or personal shopping?

How do people make their purchase? Who helps them check out? If your store offers any special deals, what kind of deals does it offer? How do people find out?

From the time they arrive until they check out, how long does it take customers to find and buy their  ________ in your store?

Revelation is especially adept at this type of activity, because it enables you to create specific answer areas for each set of questions. Participants won't lose track of what they need to respond to within the activity, and reporting is easy since you can report on each set of questions.