he Context of Product Use
The third distinction has to do with how and whether participants in the study are using the product or service in question. This can be described as:
Natural or near-natural use of the product
Scripted use of the product
Not using the product during the study
A hybrid of the above
When studying natural use of the product, the goal is to minimize interference from the study in order to understand behavior or attitudes as close to reality as possible. This provides greater validity but less control over what topics you learn about. Many ethnographic field studies attempt to do this, though there are always some observation biases. Intercept surveys and data mining or other analytic techniques are quantitative examples of this.
A scripted study of product usage is done in order to focus the insights on specific usage aspects, such as on a newly redesigned flow. The degree of scripting can vary quite a bit, depending on the study goals. For example, a benchmarking study is usually very tightly scripted and more quantitative in nature, so that it can produce reliable usability metrics.
Studies where the product is not used are conducted to examine issues that are broader than usage and usability, such as a study of the brand or larger cultural behaviors.
Hybrid methods use a creative form of product usage to meet their goals. For example, participatory-design methods allows users to interact with and rearrange design elements that could be part of a product experience, in order discuss how their proposed solutions would better meet their needs and why they made certain choices. Concept-testing methods employ a rough approximation of a product or service that gets at the heart of what it would provide (and not at the details of the experience) in order to understand if users would want or need such a product or service.
Most of the methods in the chart can move along one or more dimensions, and some do so even in the same study, usually to satisfy multiple goals. For example, field studies can focus on what people say (ethnographic interviews) or what they do (extended observations); desirability studies and card sorting have both qualitative and quantitative versions; and eyetracking can be scripted or unscripted.