At home coffee — Taylor Rosenfeld

The Ideal Experience of At Home Coffee

After 10 weeks of Contextual Research my group and I created a magazine where we explore high frequency data from users about their ideal at home coffee experience. During the time period of our class, our goal was to collect data from a variety of users about their coffee machines, environments and processes. We employed a variety of data collecting methods.

What is Contextual Research?

Contextual research is the research of specific topics to discover unarticulated needs of the consumer. It is the gathering of human centered thick data as opposed to big data. It gathers valuable insights from the consumer for a client. It explains the wants and needs of the consumer and presents interested parties, such as companies, designers, and services, with market relevant opportunities.

Research Methods We Conducted

Observations

To begin our research process, we collected a total of 15 observations. In these observations, we documented participants' current coffee process. These were pure observation; we did not interfere with the process or ask any interview questions.

Interviews

For the interview process we interviewed two experts in the field of coffee, and fourteen users. The interviews were conducted based on a discussion guide written from preliminary data gathered via our observations.

Cultural Probe

Based on cursory data analysis, we created a cultural probe to collect data from the general public. The cultural probe is a series of activities for the public we assembled onto an interactive exhibition board. Each activity was based in the feedback we received from early interviews and our observations.

Affinitization

Through the process of affinization, we analyzed all the data we collected. The process of affinization has 4 color coded steps based on physical sticky notes. The steps are as follows:

One

Write every data point on an individual yellow sticky note, these are then grouped as 8 per group. The groups are created by collecting data points with the same message together.

Three

The groups of blue sticky notes are consolidated into pink sticky notes, which are grouped as 5 per group, and are more generalized ideas.

Two

The groups of yellows are represented by a blue sticky note, which are grouped as 6 per group, similarly to step 1. Blue sticky notes represent every yellow in their group, no distinction is buried.

Four

Finally, the green sticky notes are written, these make up our final framework that visualizes the high frequency data results.

Framework

To make our data client friendly, and useable, we’ve compiled our analyzed high frequency data in this magazine. Shown below is our framework that represents the data.