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References 151

3. Why are diaries good for collecting data on user-defined events?
4. What aspects of hand-held or mobile devices make them appropriate for diary studies?
5. Why is strict random sampling not necessary in diary studies?
6. What is the main difference between feedback diaries and elicitation diaries?

7. Why is it important to clearly define appropriate definitions of terminology for
diary participants?
8. Why do you not want to pay participants for each diary entry?

9. What is generally considered to be the longest appropriate time period for a
diary study?

RESEARCH DESIGN EXERCISE
Imagine designing a research study to learn more about the use of genealogy (the
study of family history) websites, applications, and databases. Not much is previ-
ously known about the user habits for this type of work. What types of participants
might be appropriate for a research study? What characteristics might they have?
Why might a diary study be superior to a survey or observation study? Specifically,
provide information on how a feedback diary and an elicitation diary might be imple-
mented for this study. If the diary was relatively structured, what types of questions
should be asked? Would time be an important consideration in this type of diary?
Would random sampling of time be appropriate?

REFERENCES
Adler, A., Gujar, A., Harrison, B., O’Hara, K., Sellen, A., 1998. A diary study of work- related
reading: design implications for digital reading devices. In: Proceedings of the ACM
Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 241–248.
Alaszewski, A., 2006. Using Diaries for Social Research. Sage Publications, London.
Brandt, J., Weiss, N., Klemmer, S., 2007. txt 4 l8r: lowering the burden for diary studies under
mobile conditions. In: Proceedings of the 2007 ACM Conference on Human Factors in
Computing Systems, pp. 2303–2308.
Brown, B., Sellen, A., O’Hara, K., 2000. A diary study of information capture in working life.
In: Proceedings of the 2000 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems,
pp. 438–445.
Carter, S., Mankoff, J., 2005. When participants do the capturing: the role of media in diary
studies. In: Proceedings of the 2005 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems, pp. 899–908.
Ceaparu, I., Lazar, J., Bessiere, K., Robinson, J., Shneiderman, B., 2004. Determining causes
and severity of end-user frustration. International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction
17 (3), 333–356.