Tijmen van Gurp

Ard Jacobs

QualitativeResearch Methods

3

IntroductionIn the module Qualitative Research Methods for Interaction Design, we’ve

explored methods for analysing, interpreting and acquiring qualitative

data, which may strategically serve as input for the design of innovative

products, services and systems. The module has mainly focussed on the

process of investigating new perspectives to a given design domain, but

has also delivered insights in how to identify design opportunities upon

these insights.

It’s the unusual perspective that may lead to radical innovation.

Jacobs G. J., s050518, g.j.jacobs@student.tue.nl

Gurp, T. M., van, s081936 t.m.v.gurp@student.tue.nl

4 5

Table of Contents DomainSleep. Sleep is considered a necessity for both body and brain. It is crucial that we rest in order to recharge for our daily activities. However, sleep is experienced quite differently among different people. And the causes for this are surely divers.

In this report, we present our research process and our findings on the in-vestigation of cause and effect of the sleep experience. We followed closely the methods provided by the lecturer, that delivered insights in the domain.

Introduction 4Domain 5

ITERATION #1 6Highlights, Affinity Diagram, Chunks 6Highlights, Affinity Diagram, Chunks 8Closed coding 10Conclusion & Discussion 10

ITERATION #2 12Annotations, Affinity Diagram, Chunks 12Interpretation 16Hypothesis 18Categories 19Closed Coding 20

Interview 22Interview Guide 23Annotations 24Opportunities for Design 26

Conclusion 28Discussion 29

After we’ve been provided with the results of a questionnaire (mostly sen-tence-completion method) on the quality of sleep, we started with highlight-ing the important comments and remarks. Upon that, we collected the high-lights in an affinity diagram.

6 7

ITERATION #1Highlights, Affinity Diagram, Chunks

After identifying one of the chunks (“stress”) as the biggest and most interest-ing, we continued with creating a short but vivid description (memos) of the two categories we defined:

OTHER STRESS:fears, lack of love, physical discomforts, energy fluctuations

Job/study related stress:workload, tasks, activities, responsi-bilities

Other stress:fears, lack of love, physical discom-forts, energy fluctuations

• I love it when my sleep comes quickly.• I have trouble sleeping-in.• I have a busy work schedule.• Sleeping could empty my mind.• Before I sleep, I worry about all the things I still need to do.• I tend to wake up at night be-cause of noises/sounds from inside or outside the house.• I wish for my family to be happy.• Sometimes I feel lonely.

• Temperature is important to the quality of my sleep.• I wake up a few times every night for a visit to the bathroom or because of pain/discomfort• I am depressed.• I worry about myself and others.•  I’d love to have a good night sleep and feel fit the next day.

JOB/STUDY RELATED STRESS:workload, tasks, activities, responsibilities

8 9Highlights, Affinity Diagram, Chunks

Cat 1 Cat 2 TotalCat 1 3 1 4Cat 2 2 7 9Total 5 8 13

Agreements 10Exp. Agreements 7,08K 0,49Intercoder Reliability 77%

Sometimes a participant fitted both categories.Differences between categories seemed too small.Described symptoms affect each other, therefore difficult to define origin.

CLOSED CODING #1

Closed codingConclusion & DiscussionFrom the closed coding, we figured that the category descriptions were not yet reliable enough, and should therefore be refined. Particular caus-es for this were that some of the participants fitted both categories equally, and were therefore subject to the coder’s judgement. Also, it was sometimes difficult to identify cause and effect within the answers of a sin-

gle participant. For example, one of the participants stated that she wor-ried about her family situation, but she also said she experienced stress at work; leaving no reference to what inclined the other. Therefore, we de-cided to review our data up to this point, in order to concretize and make more specific the two categories.

10 11

Annotations, Affinity Diagram, ChunksSince the chosen categories were both descriptively including, we figured that the distinctness of each of the categories would increase by defining one cat-egory (instead of two-) with including as well as excluding criteria.

In order to achieve this, we reviewed the data and recreated the affinity dia-gram out of post-its. This method resulted in a richer image of the domain and an increased understanding of the weight of the different topics discussed around quality of sleep, due to e.g. commonality of particular annotations.

12 13

ITERATION #2

14 15

InterpretationBy redoing the affinity diagram, we found that many of the annotations gave superficial insight in the actual causes for decreased quality of sleep. Implying that additional qualitative data should be gathered on specific chunks to generate more vivid de-scriptions.

As the scope of this module cov-ers only a week, we found ourselves compelled to choosing one of the chunks to do further investigation on. We chose temperature. Temperature appeared to be commonly discussed with regard to quality of sleep, how-ever little qualitative data on temper-ature (mostly subjective data like “not too hot, not too cold”) emerged from the questionnaire.

16 17

Hypothesis

By elaborating on the annotations relating to temperature and quality of sleep, we defined an early hypothesis regarding temperature related condi-tions for increased quality of sleep.

“A warm bed and a cold(er), well ventilated room will allow the body to relieve its heat through the head (which is supposed to be uncovered, while the rest of the body is covered), amplifying the experience of emptying the mind and processing the events of the day, allowing the body to move into a state of rest.”

Categories

Based on the annotations and early hypothesis, we divided one chunk into two categories; 1) people how appear to be saying that the criteria said forth below positively influence the quality of their sleep, and 2)

those who’ve put forth contrasting criteria, and 3) those who don’t men-tion the influence of temperature to be relevant to the quality of their sleep.

Temperature conditions: A

Temperature conditions: B

Temperature condi-tions: N

• warm-up body before sleep (shower, heating, etc.)• bed should feel warm• wrap with blanket while in bed• window open• heating turned low/off

•  window closed/none•  heating high / warm room•  using socks / gloves

18 19

Closed Coding

Cat 1 Cat 2 TotalCat 1 11 1 11Cat 2 1 4 5Total 12 4 16

Agreements 15Exp. Agreements 9,5K 0,85Intercoder Reliability 94%

CLOSED CODING #2The returned numbers show a signifi-cant increase in reliability over the formerly chosen categories, imply-ing clear descriptions of criteria. The categories at this point form a reliable basis for further qualitative research on temperature with respect to qual-ity of sleep. So far, design opportuni-ties have not yet emerged. Richer

data should be gathered to uncover nuances within the defined catego-ries, which could lead to opportuni-ties for design. So far, the opportu-nities found relate to the design of a ‘responsive environment’, but we believe a more subtle approach can potentially be taken.

20 21

Interview Interview GuideThe interview guide is phrased around the topic of temperature in relation to quality of sleep. It is loosely structured according to the provided frame-work. The adjective “loosely” describes the level of anticipated divergence throughout the interview, allowing the interviewee to explain further his/her response. The interview guide includes introductory and general questions to ease-in the subject, questions aiming at enriching and concretizing the already found criteria, and questions elaborating on particular contexts in which tem-perature and sleep are more heavily connected (such as ‘camping outdoors’).

Interviewees

6 people, both men and women, generally good sleep-ers

6 x mind-map:JochemJoostMarwienMarie JoseLaurieBrigitta

22 23

Annotations

With the data collected from the interviews we did another iteration of an-notating to see if there were commonalities within the data. As it was not that much data this analysis was done by printing out all the data and laying it out on the table. While discussing our findings we highlighted the most important data on our insights.

24 25

Although the research process was short, we already saw some design opportunities for in the sleeping environment. We can think of a situ-ation whereby the skin temperature is measured to adapt the room tem-perature towards the perfect tem-perature. Regulating the temperature by central heating or classic air-con-ditioning was not preferred by our in-terviewees. Therefore we think there

is an opportunity to look for different ways of regulating the environmental temperatures. As it is known that the body temperature has its own cycles in sleeping, and it effects the sleep we see an opportunity in measuring this cycles and adapting the environment to support the cycles also in the faces before sleeping and while waking up.

Opportunities

for Design

26 27

Conclusion DiscussionThe data we found out of our interviews asked for further literature research. We had found qualitative data about how temperature can effect people. We looked for how the environmental temperature effects the sleeping pattern.

The body temperature has a natural cycle during day and night. While sleep-ing the body temperature continuous to decline and reaches its daily low at around 4.00AM.1

Before you go to sleep it can help to be in a warm temperature before you sleep.2

While sleeping the environmental temperature and condition of the air flow effects the sleeper. A cooler environment than the body temperature is need-ed to cool down the body temperature. For sleeping a skin temperature be-tween 34 and 35 degrees is needed for a comfortable sleep.

1 Morin MD ( Relief from Insomnia: Getting the Sleep of Your Dreams) 1996

2 Raymann RJ (Skin deep: enhanced sleep depth by cutaneous temperature manipulation.) 2008

The process that we followed was highly effective to find new directions and opportunities. Key in our process was that we looked into the chunks of data that was lacking in qualitative data. We saw that temperature was for a lot of people an important aspect in sleeping. But we did not know more than too warm or too cold. Looking into what people already did to control their body temperature combined with what we learned from a quick literature research we can conclude that the environmental temperature is a key aspect for a good sleeping experience..

Further research is needed to see how people from different ethnic back-grounds do to control their body temperature. As our interviewees were mainly situated in the Netherlands cultural aspects can influence our findings.

28 29