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144 CHAPTER 6 Diaries

beeper goes off (at random times) (Robinson and Godbey, 1997), although smart-
phones are often now used for this purpose.
Just as surveys can be very structured or very unstructured, diaries can have
different levels of structure. For instance, diaries can be set up like a structured
survey, with Likert scales (e.g., “on a scale of 1–7, with 1 being strongly dis-
agree and 7 being strongly agree”), multiple-choice questions, and closed-ended
questions. If the diary has a time focus, it can be set up where individuals must
record all events within their day in 15-minute increments. Very structured dia-
ries could include predefined categories, checkboxes, counts of how often things
occurred such as events, and time stamps. On the other hand, a time diary could
be set up in such a manner that it encourages general reflection (“how are you
feeling right now about your computer?”) (Hyldegard, 2006). Other common
questions in an unstructured diary could include “how do you think an activity
could be improved?” or “what is notable?” (Palen and Salzman, 2002). The most
unstructured diaries would be similar to blogs, where users are not actually being
solicited to take part in a study, but they are just recording their general thoughts
on a topic. While blogs are not solicited or structured by researchers and may
have issues with validity, there are many blogs on the web where users record
their feelings about new technologies. It might be useful for you to examine any
blogs that document user experience with the technology that is of interest to you
as a researcher.

6.4.2 ELICITATION DIARY
The goal of an elicitation diary is to have users record only basic information
about the important events occurring in their day. These data points are used as
prompts to encourage users to expand the explanation during an interview at
a later time. Typically, the data points recorded in elicitation diaries are very
quick and simple. In many cases, for elicitation diaries, users simply record
pictures, short audio clips, short snippets of text, or a combination (Brandt et al.,
2007; Carter and Mankoff, 2005). By using digital cameras and smartphones,
the number of diary entries might be higher. The trade-off is that a user taking
many different photos and being asked to recall why they took all of those pho-
tos may not be able to remember why they made those diary entries (Carter and
Mankoff, 2005). After the recordings are made, users are later asked to expand
upon these recordings. For instance, in one study related to the development of
a new handheld document scanner, 22 users were asked to record their diaries
over 7 days by taking photos using a digital camera. Half of the users were
asked to take a digital photo any time they felt that there was a paper document
that they wanted to capture electronically and half of them were asked to take
a digital photo any time there was any information that they wanted to capture
electronically (e.g., audio or video). The pictures were then used during a series
of semistructured interviews to prompt users to expand upon the photos that
they took. Over the 7 days, the 22 users made 381 diary entries (Brown et al.,