diary study research tool

•   [email protected]
•   0117 9210 008
• CASE STUDIES
• GUEST BLOGS

10 diary study tools to try in your next qualitative research project

28th July 2020

Diary studies help you understand how people experience and behave in context and in the moment, allowing you to collect qualitative information by having participants record entries about their everyday lives or specific actions. Not only do they glean a lot more insight than a survey or a 60-minute interview , the data they generate can be extremely comprehensive. A diary study is the perfect research method for contextual product testing, emotional feedback, situational experiences and fluctuations in individuals’ responses to questions.

A traditional diary study can be split into five stages:

+ Planning and strategy + Briefing and tools + Study period + Post-study finalisation + Data analysis

This blog focuses on the second area in this process: briefing and tools. Specifically we’re looking at ten tools you can use to implement a long-term diary study and the benefits and potential pitfalls of each.

After you’ve set your strategy, one of the next steps in a diary study is defining the platforms and technology to use, so we did some research around ten tools that will help in the implementation, tracking, reporting and insight from your diary studies.

A diary study tool and remote research platform that allows you to design, recruit, field and analyse diary studies in one place. This end-to-end diary study tool offers ‘missions’ for the participants to complete.

👍  Pros: A flexible and easy-to-use research tool with simple stages and an end-to-end process in one place. The usability is great and their customer service comes highly recommended. The integration of tools is easy to manage.

👎  Cons: Pricing on individual projects can be expensive compared to other tools on this list. Dscout don’t delete their data, so if your account is active, your data will remain on the platform. There is no scheduling tools on the platform currently, meaning you can either release your tasks all at once or have a reminder set up to launch weekly tasks. The final note with dscout is that the app is only available on Android or iOS and there is no availability through non-mobile devices.

📣  What the professionals think:

“Dscout offers a variety of services and levels of involvement so they’re easy to work with no matter what I need. I can run the whole thing myself and just use their tools, or they can consult and do the initial set-up, or they can do a high-level report for me, or they can run the whole thing through their Studio. They’re flexible and happy to adjust as needed. However, some parts of the tool are still a mystery to me. It does a lot, but it’s not always obvious and I think I end up doing some things manually that I didn’t need to.” Kelly Moran, Senior User Researcher at Google

“As a researcher, I’m constantly looking for the most effective and user-friendly tools for collecting accurate, illustrative, and in-the-moment data. dscout checks every box and is always improving, which is great. There are currently some limitations in the survey tools that don’t let us drill down as specifically as we need. And, sometimes scouts don’t follow directions as perfectly as we could get using a moderated method, but it’s the best option available when it comes to unmoderated methods.” Meagan Hart, User Experience Researcher at Facebook

Diary app | Indeemo is a smartphone app for mobile interactions and qualitative research with a simple interface for participants and clients to understand. It allows users to add photos, videos, text and record their screens which is handy for software testing.

👍  Pros: Indeemo allow you to schedule tasks to diary participants and their project managers give you feedback based on their experience of the app in the past. Most users find their interface to be quite intuitive, but there are still thorough training and tutorials available.

👎  Cons: There is no real self-service option here, and the project management model is great if it’s your first time using it, but can get a bit tiresome. Also, some users report that the platform tends to run more slowly as the data collected increases (for example, videos can take a while to load).

“Indeemo is a simple tool, easy to use, with strong project support. Great for mobile ethnography projects and for getting quick qualitative feedback from individuals and small groups of participants.” Mike Stevens, founder of What Next Strategy & Planning

“I love that Indeemo offers simple, intuitive user interface to organise and sort through qualitative interview data. However, I wish there were a more simple way to give respondents pseudonyms in the platform for easy reference in subsequent coding and analysis. It would also be great to be able to use pseudonyms when commenting or probing respondents.” Jessica Shakespeare, Senior User Research Manager at Join the Dots

SurveySignal  

SMS data collection tool | SurveySignal allows you to send participants surveys either with a unique ID code. These texts can be scheduled and flexible with a mix of measurements.

👍  Pros: Can be scheduled and follow up messages can be automated if individuals don’t fill out time sensitive surveys. Participants can remain anonymous with data being assigned to a pseudonym.

👎  Cons: Unclear on the targeting or segmentation. There is a lack of transparency on pricing and how often participants are contacted. The strength is distribution, you build the survey and analyse the results through external tools.

“SurveySignal integrates the idea of using SMS messages as signals and reminders, according to fixed or random schedules and of linking these signals to mobile surveys designed with common online survey software.” Wilhelm Hofmann, Assistant Professor of Behavioural Science at the Chicago University

“We have been using SurveySignal for a while, and really like some aspects of it. It integrates with Qualtrics, so the survey look and feel is really top notch. Downside is that survey data can’t feed forward across surveys, but that hasn’t been a big issue for our work.” Kevin M. King, Associate Professor at the University of Washington’s Department of Psychology

LifeData is an experience sampling tool that allows you to capture individuals’ experiences in real-time, with a focus on the healthcare market. The data feeds into clinical trials, allowing researchers to monitor participants through the platform’s dashboards and evaluate their outcomes.

👍  Pros: The real-time data dashboard is a nice feature. This tool also offers flexible scheduling options and the ability to create multiple question/schedule combinations, which is great for complex study designs.

👎  Cons: It’s specifically tailored to clinical trials and the healthcare industry, so you may find some of the features to be too niche.

“We’re [using] the LifeData app to collect daily ESM /EMA data in a study. Good ability to customise, integrate with smartphones, push notifications, etc. Pretty cool!” Matthew P. Ithurburn, Assistant Professor at University of Alabama

Ilumivu is another academic tool used for remote studies with a focus on healthcare and the medical industry. It integrates with wearable devices and sensors to generate and collect data that isn’t just subjective and can match physical symptoms with other factors, like the time when the user completes the survey, to align the user’s mental state and other factors like stress with the information collected.

👍  Pros: Not only does this tool developed by researchers allows you to capture self-reported data, but the phone/wearable integration makes it possible to collect objective biometric information.

👎  Cons: Used mostly in academia and healthcare, so similarly to other tools on this list you may find some of the features and language to be a bit niche. Aesthetically speaking, the interface is quite basic and looks a bit old-school.

“mEMA [by Ilumivu] is a complete EMA solution that uses a mobile application to perform measurements. Furthermore, Ilumivu provides options to enrich an EMA data set with physiological sensor data, as measured from the mobile phone sensors or wearable sensors.” F.J.   Blaauw, CEO at Researchable B.V.  (et al, Journal of Biomedical Informatics)

iFormBuilder by Zerion Software

iFormBuilder is an online form builder that allows users to update forms and submit information beyond what a traditional survey offers. For example, the user is able to scan barcodes to track users weekly shopping, capturing photos and tracking inventory.

👍  Pros: The ability to work offline and upload later means participants don’t need a stable internet connection. Additional integrations and APIs allow for easy integration with other tools. Some users also mention how easy it is to use the platform’s interface, from creating the forms to assigning them to other users.

👎  Cons: The pricing can be a bit steep and the Zerion platform does not provide direct access to participants, so you will need to recruit through other means.

“This application offers a very simple data structure that can be adapted to any user that needs to use it. It also offers good capabilities when it is not connected to the internet, and the general support with this application has been excellent. On the other side, the price is a little high and is oversaturated with options to compensate for its value.” Valentina G., freelance web designer

“iFormBuilder looks like it could be a great product, but the form building interface is clunky and confusing.” Daryl Vogan, Application Architect at Michael Baker

MetricWire helps analyse, engage your audience and manage compliance. The technology allows researchers to adapt to their participants’ individual behaviours and real-world context to identify the mechanisms for change faster.

👍  Pros: Enables questions to be sent to users based on their location, which is great if you want to target users who are leaving a specific place or only when they’re at home, for example. The studies can be adapted to everyone, with tailored questions based on past answers. The reporting element is quite sophisticated.

👎  Cons: Their website can feel a bit overwhelming at first, but most users report that this is not reflected on the (simpler) research portal. Still, MetricWire is more of a data entry platform than a complete solution for diary studies. Also, you will need to source your participants externally.

“[Although] their homepage is not very helpful and has a lot of useless graphics, their research portal is much better. Normally, with a custom app-based program, it’s difficult to get into participants’ phones, especially iPhones. This is a nice workaround. We’ve even done remote recruitment and participant self-installs and it works. But, it’s not perfect and like all it has downsides.” Aidan Wright, Associate Professor of Psychology at University of Pittsburgh

“MetricWire’s mobile data collection feature has lots of cool applications in medicine and beyond.” Jan Kulinski, Software Designer/Developer at Ground News

SurveyAnyplace

Although not exactly an end-to-end diary study tool, SurveyAnyplace allows you to distribute surveys to individual users and create reports for each of them based on their answers.

👍  Pros: User-friendly interface and versatile survey-building options, especially if you are already familiar with other similar tools. The many customisation features make it easy to brand your surveys.

👎  Cons: You have to source your own participants and some users report there is not enough documentation and training resources. Question logic is quite complex and needs to be worked out in advance: the software doesn’t intuitively update  the logic if the user makes changes to the survey design (like Survey Monkey, for example). Some users have also reported the occasional bug when saving changes.

“As a customer success manager, I use SurveyAnyplace to gather customer satisfaction and feedback. Next to that we implemented it on some of our clients websites to allow site visitors to request detailed pricing offers based on their product preferences.” Jasper Steyaert, Customer Success Manager at De Websters

“I used SurveyAnyplace to build a learning campaign. It was interactive, personalised, automated a lot of functions I normally have to do manually and looked awesome. Getting feedback from stakeholders is much easier. The impact on our audience (who are using the platform to learn products that they then sell to customers) has been extraordinary.” Kelly Vogler, Senior Manager Learning Design at Super Retail Group

QuestionPro

Create surveys, polls and forms to distribute and measure data. QuestionPro also has access to a participant pool with transparent pricing, but it’s unfortunately restricted to the US. You can start an account for free, but there is a cost associated to setting up campaigns and projects.

👍  Pros: Finding users through the platform is fairly straightforward and the platform offers a free trial to help you kick-off your first project. There are a lot of customisation options, from the welcome page to the thank you message. A lot of users also rate their effective customer support.

👎  Cons: Not a lot of integrations with other parties, especially when it comes to reporting and data analysis. The platform does not offer the ability to schedule campaigns, and there is limited functionality on the distribution front (for example, you can’t A/B test different subject lines or messages). Some users also mentioned using QuestionPro can be expensive.

“QuestionPro is good for small and medium-sized companies as it enables a company to create online surveys in a fast and secure way, but I don’t think it’s a good fit for big companies. It’s easy to use and has high response rates, but the conditional logic should be more flexible.” Asia Kwiatkowska, Project Manager at BKMPL

“The tool adapts to mobile use incredibly well, although we create the surveys on computers. It also permits multiple users to access the data while the survey is active. The downside is a somewhat outdated and visually unappealing interface. While I appreciate the prioritisation of functionality, I would like to see more energy devoted to aesthetics.” Alicia Meyer, Resident Director at Soutwest Baptist University

Teamscope has built a case management collection method that is perfectly suited to diary studies. You can build your own forms, schedule reminders for participants and your team can see the results in real-time. The company originated for medical research, but the precision and privacy that is important in this industry, has made Teamscope useful across all fields of research.

👍  Pros: It saves time and improves data quality because it removes the need to re-enter baseline data in studies that require multiple assessments of subjects. The experience is user-friendly and allows for offline data collection which is unique to Teamscope. Their medical background makes data security a top priority for your research too.

👎  Cons: Currently the platform is only in English so it’s best to give clear or simple instructions if dealing with non-English speaking participants. Other issues with the platform, such as limited question types, can be resolved quickly by the customer support team.

Using Teamscope has been a game changer for me. It has turned the difficult and stressful process of data collection in the field (and being paramedics – a challenging and often chaotic field at that) into a painless process. Aidan Baron, Paramedic Researcher

All ten tools listed above have their limitations and advantages. However, the area where most of these platforms fall short is when it comes to assisting the researchers and users with recruiting the right users to take part in the diary studies and qualitative research. If you are struggling with participant recruitment, find out more about our services here or get in touch on [email protected] .

If you would like to find out more about our in-house participant recruitment service for user research or usability testing get in touch on  0117 921 0008  or  [email protected] .

At People for Research, we recruit participants for UX and usability testing and market research. We work with award winning UX agencies across the UK and partner up with a number of end clients who are leading the way with in-house user experience and insight.

Suite 302 QC30 Queen Charlotte St.

Bristol BS1 4HJ

Privacy policy

© People for Research 2024

Integrations

What's new?

Prototype Testing

Live Website Testing

Feedback Surveys

Interview Studies

Card Sorting

Tree Testing

In-Product Prompts

Participant Management

Automated Reports

Templates Gallery

Choose from our library of pre-built mazes to copy, customize, and share with your own users

Browse all templates

Financial Services

Tech & Software

Product Designers

Product Managers

User Researchers

By use case

Concept & Idea Validation

Wireframe & Usability Test

Content & Copy Testing

Feedback & Satisfaction

Content Hub

Educational resources for product, research and design teams

Explore all resources

Question Bank

Research Maturity Model

Guides & Reports

Help Center

Future of User Research Report

The Optimal Path Podcast

Maze Guides | Resources Hub

What is UX Research: The Ultimate Guide for UX Researchers

0% complete

Diary research: Understanding UX in context

Diary research is a research method which provides a deep level of intimate insight into your target user and focus area. Read on to learn how to plan, prepare, and conduct diary studies.

What is diary research?

Diary research—also known as a diary study—is a longitudinal (running over a period of time) UX research method used to collect qualitative data , through participants keeping a diary to record their thoughts, feelings, and behavior, while they use a product.

A diary study entails participants self-reporting data over an extended period of time—ranging from days to a month or longer. During this time, they’ll log specific information about activities regarding the product being studied.

Diary studies allow us to better understand the complexity of the user experience, which changes so drastically based on the use cases experienced by users, and the evolution of the product in their hands.

Matthieu Dixte , Product Researcher @ Maze

The purpose of diary studies

The main value of diary studies are their unique ability to give contextual insights about real-time user behavior and needs . Unlike other research methods—such as usability tests or user interviews, which provide observational data gathered in a lab-based situation, removed from a product’s everyday application—diary studies offer a window into the reality of users interacting with products .

Product teams can then use these organic insights to define UX features and requirements, creating a truly user-centered experience, without the guesswork.

Methods for conducting diary research

There are several methods of diary study, ranging from open diary studies which give participants freedom to use the diary as they wish, and closed diary studies which follow a tighter set of protocols. Depending on your research objectives, you’ll want to choose between the two:

• Freeform/open diary study: Similar to a personal journal, this type of study gives participants a lot of freedom in how and when they record their thoughts. You’ll still want to give subjects some initial guidance, but the diary is more free-form. This style enables less-experienced participants to take part, and people are likely to provide information you may not think to ask for, making it ideal for generative research. However, the downside is participants may not include the details you need, or include too little—or too much—information.
• Structured/closed diary study: A closed diary study uses pre-set focuses and closed-ended questions to uncover information. Structured diaries may include a page per study day, concluding questions, and explicit instructions. They are typically easier to analyze as the data will be pre-formatted across all participants. They also ensure you receive the information that’s most relevant to your study, so it’s perfect for evaluative research. The downside of this study type is that you may miss out on additional insights that don’t fit into the structure provided.

Most researchers find that the ideal method sits somewhere between freeform and structured, providing participants with a decent amount of guidance and reminders throughout the study, without overcrowding them.

The different types of diary studies

Along with deciding between an open or closed diary study, you also need to determine the type of diary you’ll be using.

There are an increasing number of ways to record diary entries, all of which broadly fall under the bracket of digital or paper. Unlike other research methods, the research tool you use for a diary study does not significantly impact the results, so the decision mostly comes down to the resources you have available (whether you can pay for an online tool or physical diaries) or personal preferences.

Paper diaries are a good, simple format for respondents, but there are big advantages to digital diary studies. You can ask follow-up questions, and have the ability to make sure respondents answer in the way you want them to. It’s also a big plus to be able to collect results little-by-little, and progress at the same pace as the analysis of results (even if sometimes it’s too early to draw conclusions.

Digital/online

• Digital tool e.g. dscout
• Online platform e.g. GoogleDocs
• Mobile app e.g. Indeemo
• Digital communication platform e.g. Whatsapp

Paper/offline

• A physical diary (provided by researcher or participant)
• Question sheet
• Video/audio log

Tip: The only main differentiator, other than cost, is that some digital research tools may analyze the results for you.

The benefits of diary research

There’s many reasons to opt for diary studies as your choice of research method , from a focus on micro-moments to providing real-life context to data. Let’s cover the perks of diary research.

Provides data with real-world context

One of the stand-out points of diary studies are how they convey a product’s impact within real-world context.

Diary research requires study participants to actually interact with a product in their everyday life, and record data in-situ (or shortly after). Where the majority of research methods ask participants questions outside a real-life scenario, diary studies do the opposite.

As a result, you’ll receive far more reliable, honest, and contextualized data. For example, say you’re making a travel maps app, during a usability test, users may find few issues with the app. However, in the real world, users may discover that the app doesn’t work offline and makes navigation difficult. They may realize that some of the features they use most when actually navigating, are ones they barely considered when sat in a research room.

Gaining this data is incredibly valuable, and provides key feedback points and priority for product teams, where previously they may have missed it.

Allows for a deep level of insight and micro-moments

Where some research methods reveal broad strokes of insight, diary studies scope in on the detail that builds the bigger picture.

If you want to focus on the micro-moments of user experience, diary research offers designers an incredibly detailed understanding of the users and product in question.

The purpose of a diary study is to understand long-term behaviors such as habits, changes in behavior or perception (especially if your product is evolving), motivations, customer journeys, etc.

One example is if you’re researching what makes users purchase a new product—asking them the question outright will likely provide a different answer than observing their thoughts and frustrations over the course of a week or longer. A longitudinal study like this will surface those micro-moments that build up, pushing someone towards a major choice.

By giving participants the opportunity to record thoughts, feelings and behaviors in the moment they happen, you also gain a deeper understanding of how your product works and impacts the user. This sort of nuance typically fades from our mind over time—where other UX research methods are a snapshot of user experience, diary research is like an HD video.

Captures how behaviors change over time

Temporal dynamics refers to how perceptions and behaviors change over time, and how they interact with and impact each other. For the sake of a product’s longevity, diary studies’ ability to reveal temporal dynamics is incredibly useful.

Diary research is one of the few research methodologies that provides respondents with autonomy, as well as a way to track their progress over time. This inherently means data is less likely to be biased in terms of the evolution of the results.

For a majority of UX research methods, users respond in the moment. Decisions are made on the spot, and thoughts are recorded during the test or afterwards. The perks of this is that you get gut reactions without users overthinking. However, it means your insight only goes so many levels deep.

Diary research, on the other hand, gives participants the opportunity to check in multiple times, record how their thoughts and feelings change over time, and reflect on their answers. It encourages self-discovery, providing you with a different lens of insight to consider.

Diary research’s longitudinal approach means you can understand how different events, emotions, and moments impact decisions and interactions with a product at the start of their relationship right through to consistent usage.

This view can unlock unique insights such as:

User habits and usage scenarios:

• What does a typical day look like for users; when do they engage with the product?
• What behaviors are spontaneous vs. pre-planned?
• What behaviors are sporadic, or habitual?
• When, why, and how does life interrupt usage of the product?
• What do users do before/after using the product?
• What are their workflows for completing these tasks?

Changes in behavior and perception:

• How learnable is a product?
• Do users share the product or results of using the product with others?
• Does using the product become part of their routine?
• What are users’ primary motivations for using the product—does this change?
• What are their main tasks with the product—does this change?

Attitudes and motivations:

• How do users feel before and after engaging with the product?
• How do they feel when they complete a task?
• Why do they make certain decisions?
• How do feelings and perceptions about the product change over time?
• What points of delight or friction are there?

Gathering answers to these questions enables you to develop a richer understanding of your users, and product, while also providing questions, scenarios, and research goals for future tests.

Minimize bias and the impact of observation

Even in the most carefully planned, unbiased research studies, participants are somewhat influenced by the presence of observation. Regardless of whether a study is moderated or not, participants know they are being observed—as a result, data will always be somewhat biased, however much we mitigate that.

Consider a field study; even though participants are in their natural habitat and you’re able to observe their day-to-day life, the participant will still act differently to how they do when truly alone.

Diary studies allow researchers to simulate a more personal relationship between user and study than other research methods. If the purpose of research is to truly uncover how participants interact with a product, then diary research captures this at its most natural.

The other plus side of a lack-of-observer is that—if prepared in advance—diary studies can self-run, removing some of the resources needed. Of course they still need to be monitored intermittently, but depending on how much you plan to communicate with participants, they can be fairly self-sufficient.

When should you conduct diary research?

There’s many circumstances where you may want to use diary research. Depending on your focus, the time you’ll want to conduct your study may vary.

Diary study objectives

The focus of a diary study can range from extremely specific (e.g. understanding all interactions with a specific section of a web page) to very broad (e.g. gathering general information about when people use a smartphone).

The Nielsen Norman Group suggests there are broadly four categories of diary study topics: 1. Product or website: Understanding all interactions with a product or site (e.g. a retail site) over the course of a month 2. Behavior: Gathering general information about user behavior (e.g. smartphone usage) 3. General activity: Understanding how people complete general activities (e.g. sharing information via social tools or shopping online) 4. A specific activity: Understanding how people complete specific activities (e.g. buying a new car)

The best time to conduct diary research

Diary studies can be conducted at any stage in the design process, but are typically most useful at the beginning, middle, and end:

When you’re in the discovery phase , diary research can reveal how users currently solve the problem in question, giving you valuable context to plan your own solution. Discovery-phase diary research can also be conducted on existing products or competitors, to set benchmarks or better understand the way users interact with similar products.

Testing early-stage prototypes can be done with diary research to gather information on the current success of your design, and identify any issues to address in future iterations.

At the end of development , a diary study can delve into user experience in the closest simulation to real life. This is a chance to see whether users are interacting with your product as expected, and uncover any missed opportunities for improvement.

After launch , diary research is helpful as a form of post-study interview to assess the success of a product and analyze performance in the real world; is it meeting expectations, what changes should be implemented in updates?

Diary research doesn’t necessarily take more time than other quantitative research methods. While there’s passive time of the study to take into account, it’s the analysis that is time-consuming. You’re analyzing evolutions of behavior and in-depth patterns, each focused on a different respondent’s perspective. The insight is well worth the time, but it helps to do this analysis in bits and pieces as you progress through the study.

Things to consider before conducting your diary study

Like most research methods, planning a diary study involves a lot of preparation. The added element of diary research being fairly hands-off, and taking place over a significant course of time, means it’s even more important to ensure you’ve not missed anything.

To help, here’s some things to consider before your study gets underway:

What type of diary are you using?

Determine what type of study you want to conduct, and the kind of diary your participants will be using.

• Open or closed: As we saw earlier in the chapter, open diaries are ideal for generative research, and closed for evaluative research. Take a look at the section above for a full rundown on the pros and cons of each, and remember to consider your research goals while deciding.
• Online or offline: Decide on the type of diary you want filled in. Consider your users—are they tech-savvy and would gel with electronic diaries? What activities are they logging—if you’re researching the durability of camping equipment, an offline diary users can travel with may work best. However, if you’re studying cosmetic preferences, then maybe a video log where participants can record their usage would make sense.

What equipment do you need?

If you’re asking participants to use a certain product, have they received a physical item, product, or prototype? Do they need instructions for it? If you’re testing a website or app, do participants have access to the platform and a copy of instructions for logging in?

What kind of logging are you doing?

Before you can begin your study, it’s crucial to think about how you’ll ensure diary entries are logged. There are several approaches to logging:

• In-situ logging (also called event-contingent protocol): Participants log when a relevant event occurs

When to use: Since this method asks participants to log information as it happens, it’s best for research where you don’t expect high volumes of entries, as this could disrupt the participant’s usual activities, and would be difficult to analyze later. For example, if you’re researching fashion retail websites, one of the events you’d ask participants to log may be each time they think about or browse clothing websites.

• Interval-contingent protocol: Participants are given predetermined intervals to report into, e.g. asking for entries to be logged every three hours

When to use: This technique is effective if the research you’re conducting isn’t situation-dependent, if you want a broader picture of daily life, or if you’re unsure when the event may occur. E.g. If you're researching the use of infant toys, interval-contingent protocol may be useful, as it’s hard to predict the play patterns of young children.

• Signal-contingent protocol: Participants receive notification to log. These may be manually sent or set up to automatically notify participants at regular or pre-planned intervals.

When to use: This method ensures you’ll receive an adequate amount of entries (typically one per day, or more if you’re doing in-situ logging), and reduces the possibility of participants forgetting to log entries, however it requires a notification tool and participants with some flexibility (unless you tailor notifications to their schedule).

• Snippet technique: Participants report events in-the-moment in a quick way (e.g. a couple of words on a post-it or phone note), then use time set-aside later to expand on the snippet. This technique is less intrusive than others, while still ensuring immediate responses are captured.

When to use: Snippets are particularly effective if your participants have busy schedules, or the events you’re researching are likely to occur randomly or in different locations.

Preparing participants for a diary study

Selecting participants for any UX research is a daunting task, but this step is particularly tentative for diary research—not only do you need participants who can answer your questions, but you need users who are understanding of (and willing to adhere to) the demands of a longer-term study.

Why your research participants matter

Just as the materials you build with matter, the participants you research with matter. These are the people who represent your target user group, they’re the people who will be using your product first-hand, so their opinion matters .

Participants will inform so much of your product; from the shape of an icon or the color of a button, to the most core functionality, research participants’ feedback will influence any and all decisions. That means, it’s imperative that they fit the bill.

When recruiting participants, don't hesitate to mention the reasons for this choice of method; this is also an opportunity to explain what they gain from being involved with this method.

How to select diary study participants

Selecting participants for a diary study doesn’t have to be complicated. Here’s our formula for the perfect participants.

Participant profile + screening criteria x recruitment tool = great candidates

First, you want to build your participant profile (what your dream participant looks like) and consider any screening criteria (boxes they must tick). This will be heavily influenced by your target audience and research objectives—for instance, if you’re researching products for newborns, you want to ensure participants are new parents. Categories to consider include:

• Basic demographics (age, gender, marital status, nationality)
• Lifestyle (employment, hobbies, finances)
• Habits (schedule, interaction with products, type of customer)

Once you’ve narrowed down your ideal participant, use a recruitment tool with a built in screening survey for the most efficiency when gathering participants, and filter down to the best candidates. Bear in mind that few testers of more accurate profiles are better.

In terms of numbers, your study may require as few as three, or as many as 30 participants—this number will shift depending on the scope and budget of your research. For a typical diary study, we suggest aiming to recruit 10-15 participants, with a couple of back-ups.

One tactic for recruiting participants is to incentivize them, to ensure follow-through with the entire study. You can also consider working with existing customers; this is particularly valuable if you're researching changes or new features for an existing product.

Take a look at our article on recruiting research participants for more advice.

Reach the ideal diary study participants

Reach by Maze allows you to send targeted campaigns to candidate segments based on past research and engagement, so you never have to spend unnecessary time searching for the perfect participants again

How to conduct a diary study

While diary studies can be left somewhat unattended, if you want them to be a success and gather useful data, you need to prepare them well, to ensure everything ticks over without a hitch. In this section, we’ll get into five steps for planning and conducting your diary research.

I always follow ‘KISS’: keep it simple and smart. Your study needs to be quick and easy for users to complete, with clear and detailed instructions, to ensure they complete it regularly and accurately.

1. Plan your study

First up, it’s time to get organized and sketch out the parameters for your research.

Determine your objectives Start by reviewing your main objectives—are you researching an existing product, or a new one? Do you want to understand specific interactions, or broad behavioral information?

You can research multiple topics at once, but it will lead to more data to analyze, so ensure you link back any study objectives to broader research goals, to avoid being inundated with unnecessary information.

Select your diary type By this stage, you should already have considered what type of diary (online/offline etc.) you’re using. But before you can prep your research or participants, you also need to determine the style of diary and entries. Choose from a freeform or structured diary, or even a combination, depending on your objectives.

Write your research questions Now it’s time to collate the questions you’re hoping to answer, and put together any specific questions you’re asking participants—either as part of a structured diary, in general briefing documents, or follow-up surveys.

Some potential questions to consider are:

• Describe your day
• What were you doing before [event]?
• What was the hardest thing about achieving [task]?
• How did you feel before using [product]?
• What could have made [task] easier?
• How did you find using [product] today compared to last week?

Get 350+ examples of research questions in our research question bank 💡

Set your start and end dates Some studies may only need a few days, while others can continue for weeks, or even months. The study length depends on your research goals, product and topic—will the data you gather in a short period of time likely be the same as that collected over several weeks or months? If not, it may be worth continuing the study for longer to ensure you capture any temporal dynamics and a consistent, median data set.

Work with participants to plan the best time for the study to take place—for example, if you need their full attention, is there a period with more free time? Or if you want to see how they interact with your product in everyday life, what period is their routine most stable?

2. Prepare participants

Next, it’s time to introduce your participants and prepare them for the study. Bear in mind that for maximum efficiency and quality of results, you won’t want to communicate with participants once the study is underway (unless you’re providing manual notifications).

Education is key: take the time to explain the format to your respondents. Try to be transparent about the pace and format of answers; this will improve engagement and response rates over time from users.

Now’s the time to make sure participants are fully briefed and understand the assignment.

• Create a ‘cheat sheet’ to guide participants (include key info about the study and how-tos, emergency contacts etc.)
• Provide any props needed
• Plan any rewards or incentives
• Walkthrough entry logging method
• Share any pre-study surveys

3. Progress with the research

Now onto the bit you’ve been waiting for—it’s time to start researching!

Unlike with other research methods, this is the time where you’re the most hands off. This means now’s the perfect time to plan your follow-up and data analysis, or work on other research simultaneously.

While your study is running, you may want to communicate more or less with participants, depending on your diary and logging type. Keep any reminders or notifications consistent, and remember to be human. Recognize the input of engaged participants, and check in on those who appear to be struggling. Participants are opening up a vulnerable part of themselves with the study, so respect their boundaries and provide guidance where needed.

If you’ve arranged for entries to be sent to you as they’re logged then you may find yourself overwhelmed by the amount of data coming in. Organization is everything, so take notes and process as you go—it will save a lot of time in the long run. For video or audio logs, either use a diary study tool that transcribes, or send entries for transcription.

Note: If you're already using Maze for your UX research , here's how it can help with diary studies, too.

4. Post-study follow-up

After your study comes to an end, it’s worth meeting with each participant as a chance to discuss entries in detail. If this isn’t possible, an asynchronous interview or survey works well, too.

Once you’ve read all the entries, you can use this time to conduct a post-study interview and ask participants to expand on information where needed, and ask any follow-up questions you remembered part way through or off the back of entries.

Tip: After the study is also the time to ask for feedback from participants—what went well, what could be improved next time, what did they learn? Use this information to improve future research.

5. Process the data and analyze

If you’ve been using a diary research tool, your data may already be sorted. However, if you’re using other methods of diary submission, the work starts now. Once your diaries are transcribed, it’s time to sift through the data and begin to identify patterns, synthesize hypotheses, and track trends.

To make the task a little easier, we recommend breaking it into two stages:

• Identify your top participants: Who stands out, with either a particularly robust set of data, or significant patterns? It’s much easier to find evidence for an existing pattern, so use these individuals for leading takeaways and other entries to support your theory.
• Tag your data correctly: While tagging data isn’t always necessary, it proves valuable for diary research. Go through responses and assign descriptive tags (e.g. activity types, like ‘housework’, ‘fitness’, ‘relaxation’). Next, work with teammates to create thematic tags (e.g. ‘fun’, ‘interesting’, ‘boring’). Finally, consider which tags commonly overlap to start identifying patterns.

With the right analysis, your raw data can turn into valuable insights which are ready to inform your design.

Alternatives to diary research

Of course, diary studies won’t always be the perfect fit for your research project. It has its downfalls—self-reported data may be unreliable, and keeping a diary requires significant dedication from participants. So, if you’re looking for immediate results, have a very limited budget, or are focused on a simple usability question, then diary research probably isn’t for you.

Some alternatives to diary research include:

• Surveys and questionnaires
• User analytics
• Focus groups

Diary studies can also be combined with other methods as a way to gather more data or expand the reach of your research while keeping to a budget. What’s more, opting for a second, quantitative data research method can provide more well-rounded results in combination with diary research.

Learn more about other UX research methods

Here's our ultimate guide to UX research 🔍

Frequently asked questions about diary research

How do you write a diary study?

To write a diary study, you first need to determine the type of diary you plan to use. For an open/freeform diary, participants have freedom to write what they want when they want. For a closed/structured diary, you may want to write a set of clear instructions, provide questions for each day of the study, and write follow-up questions.

How long should a diary study last?

The length of a diary study depends on your objectives and research area. Diary studies can last anything from a few days to a few months.

When should you do a diary study?

You should consider running a diary study if you want to:

• Gather data with real-world context
• Understand micro-moments that build a big picture
• Capture temporal dynamics and how behaviors change over time
• Give participants time to think deeply about answers
• Minimize the impact of observation

Five-Second Testing: Step-by-Step Process + Example

Skip navigation

• Log in to UX Certification

World Leaders in Research-Based User Experience

Diary studies: understanding long-term user behavior and experiences.

June 5, 2016 2016-06-05

• Email article
• Share on LinkedIn
• Share on Twitter

A diary study is a research method used to collect qualitative data about user behaviors, activities, and experiences over time. In a diary study, data is self-reported by participants longitudinally — that is, over an extended period of time that can range from a few days to even a month or longer. During the defined reporting period, study participants are asked to keep a diary and log specific information about activities being studied. To help participants remember to fill in their diary, sometimes they are periodically prompted (for example, through a notification received daily or at select times during the day).

The context and time period in which data is collected for a diary study make them unlike other common user-research methods, such as surveys (which are designed to collect self-reported information about a user’s habits and experiences outside of the context of the scenarios being studied), or usability tests (which yield observational information about a specific moment or planned set of confined interactions in a lab setting). They are the “poor man’s field study”: they are unlikely to provide observations that are as rich or detailed as a true field study, but they can serve as a decent approximation.

In This Article:

When to conduct a diary study, methodology, more tips for diary studies.

If you’re looking for a contextual understanding of user behaviors and experiences over time, it can be very difficult to appropriately create scenarios in a lab setting to gather these kind of insights. Diary studies are useful for understanding long-term behaviors such as:

• Habits — What time of day do users engage with a product? If and how they choose to share content with others?
• Usage scenarios — In what capacity do users engage with a product? What are their primary tasks? What are their workflows for completing longer-term tasks? (These scenarios can be used for user testing later in the process.)
• Attitudes and motivations — What motivates people to perform specific tasks? How are users feeling and thinking?
• Changes in behaviors and perceptions — How learnable is a system? How loyal are customers over time? How do they perceive a brand after engaging with the corresponding organization?
• Customer journeys — What is the typical customer journey and cross-channel user experience as customers interact with your organization using different devices and channels such as, email, phone, websites, mobile applications, kiosks, social media, and online chat? What is the cumulative effect of multiple service touchpoints?

The focus of a diary study can range from very broad to extremely targeted, depending on the topic being studied. Diary studies are often structured to focus on one of the following topic scopes:

• Product or Website — Understanding all interactions with a site (e.g., an intranet) over the course of a month.
• Behavior — Gathering general information about user behavior (e.g., smartphone usage, college-student web-visitation patterns)
• General activity — Understanding how people complete general activities (e.g., sharing information via social tools or shopping online)
• A specific activity — Understanding how people complete specific activities (e.g., buying a new car or planning a vacation)

A diary study is typically composed of five phases:

• Planning and Preparation . Define the focus of the study and the long-term behaviors that you need to understand. Define a timeline, select tools for participants to report data, recruit participants, and prepare instructions or support materials.
• Prestudy brief . Take time up front to get participants ready to log. Schedule a face-to-face meeting or phone call with each participant to discuss the details of the study. Walk through the schedule or calendar for the reporting period and discuss expectations. Discuss the tools they will be using and be sure each participant has familiarized themselves with the technology; answer any questions they may have before beginning.
• In-Situ Logging — This method is the most straightforward method to collect data. Participants are asked to log information about relevant activities in the situation they occur (or in situ). When participants engage in a relevant activity, they must report all important details about that activity right away. Since this technique requires participants to take the time to report this information at the time of the event, this technique is best reserved for situations when you don’t foresee a large volume of diary entries occurring or if the context is such that participant’s daily activities will not be adversely effected by logging in situ. In-situ logging is best supported by channels and devices that can handle structured long-form text entry such as, email, web-form questionnaires, traditional paper diaries, or digital customer-insight tools such as FocusVision or 7daysinmylife. Audio or video diaries are also great tools for participants, but the output may need to be transcribed for analysis.
• Snippet Technique — Another popular, less intrusive method for logging activities is the snippet technique. With this technique, participants only record short snippets of information about activities as they occur. Then, at the end of each day, or when participants have time, they elaborate on each snippet by providing additional details about the activity. This 2-step technique ensures that relevant information is captured in situ, before being forgotten but without requiring participants to provide extensive detail at the time of capture, which can be intrusive and unnatural in certain situations. Common channels for study participants to report snippets to researchers include email, text message, Twitter, or Facebook. These channels are widely familiar for short-form communication. Participants are encouraged to use their mobile phones to report events as they happen, since these devices are accessible. Expanding upon reported snippets can be accomplished with the channels and tools mentioned above for more in-depth reporting. Consider asking participants to expand on their snippets by filling out a questionnaire about each of them. This will enable you to get specific and consistent insights about each snippet.
• Post-study interview . After the study, evaluate all the information provided by each participant. Plan a follow-up interview to discuss logs in detail. Ask probing questions to uncover specific details needed to complete the story and clarify as needed. Ask for feedback from the participant about their experience participating in the study, so you can adjust your processes for the next time.
• Data Analysis . Because diary studies are longitudinal, they generate a large amount of qualitative data. Revisit your research questions, then take a deep breath and dig into all of the rich insights you’ve collected to find the answers. Evaluate the behaviors you’ve targeted throughout the study. How do they evolve and change over time? What influences these behaviors? If the focus of your study is around a particular product or service relationship, look at the entire customer journey. Construct a customer journey map to help you understand the end-to-end user experience from the perspective of your customers.

Motivating participants

Getting the insights you need will take some involvement with participants throughout the study. Plan to check in with participants or give periodic reminders as needed (each day or every few days). For participants that are engaged and creating appropriate snippets, recognize their efforts and ask them to keep up the good work. For participants that are less engaged, give encouragement or offer to answer any questions they may have to get them on track. Let participants know up front that you will be reaching out throughout the study and agree on a means of contacting them, so you can give encouragement or ask for clarification without being overly intrusive.

Diary studies require time and dedication from participants. To ensure you get the level of involvement you need from participants, provide an incentive that will keep them engaged. This compensation is typically much more than what you would offer for a 60-minute usability test. Align the incentive with the amount of work required over the period of the study. Consider breaking apart the total incentive and offering smaller installments as participants reach specific milestones (e.g., 3 days of logging), to keep them motivated throughout the duration of the study.

In a recent diary study with college-educated participants from various different regions across the United States, we paid each participant $275. Users had to complete a pre-assignment to install software on several personal devices before the logging period, log snippets for 2 weeks, fill out a web-form questionnaire for each snippet, and participate in two phone calls (a pre-study brief and post-study interview). The incentive was dispersed in 3 phases as users reached specific milestones throughout the study, to keep participants engaged throughout. This study had a completion rate of 90%.

• Plan for an appropriate reporting period. Make sure your study is long enough to gather the information you need, but be cautious about designing a very lengthy study. If your study is too long, participants may become less engaged as the study progresses, which could result in less accurate data.
• Recruit dedicated users . Since diary studies require more involvement over a longer period of time, be extra prudent in the recruiting process. Let users know what is involved and expected of them up front. Ask screening questions that will help you gauge the level of commitment you will get from them during the study, and be sure to confirm they will be available for the entire study period.
• Be on top of the data as it comes in . If you are getting data digitally or immediately as it comes in, evaluate it right away. This allows you to ask follow-up questions and prompt for additional detail as necessary, while the activity is still fresh in the minds of the participants
• Conduct a pilot study. Diary studies can take quite a bit of time to plan and conduct, so it’s helpful to conduct a short pilot study first. The pilot study does not need to be as long as the real study and it is not meant to garner data for analysis. Its purpose is to test your study design and related materials. Practice the process of briefing and debriefing pilot participants. Try out your logging materials to be sure they’re understandable. Tweak your instructions and approach to ensure you get the data you need. Ask pilot participants for feedback about materials and the diary study experience, and adjust accordingly.

While diary studies can require more time and effort to conduct than other user-research methods, they yield invaluable information about customers’ real-time real-life behaviors and experiences. If you’re looking for organic behavioral insights and you can’t create a valid scenario in the lab or you can’t get the data you need from a single survey, don’t force-fit the research into these methodologies. Diary studies allow you to get a contextual understanding of users’ behavior and experiences over time.

Related Courses

Customer-journey management.

Establish and operationalize journey-level experience design work across functional groups for continuous improvement

Omnichannel Journeys and Customer Experience

Create a usable and cohesive cross-channel experience by following guidelines to resolve common user pain points in a multi-channel landscape

Interaction

Usability Testing

Learn how to plan, conduct, and analyze your own studies, whether in person or remote

Related Topics

• Research Methods Research Methods

Learn More:

Please accept marketing cookies to view the embedded video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euc_KvEoV_k

5 Steps for Effective Diary Studies in Customer Journey Research

Card Sorting: Why & When

Samhita Tankala · 3 min

Frequency ≠ Importance in Qualitative Data

Tanner Kohler · 3 min

Research Repositories for UX Benchmarking Studies

Raluca Budiu · 6 min

Related Articles:

Customer Journeys and Omnichannel User Experience

Kim Salazar · 6 min

User-Feedback Requests: 5 Guidelines

Anna Kaley · 10 min

UX Mapping Methods: Study Guide

Kate Kaplan · 5 min

Service Blueprints: Definition

Sarah Gibbons · 6 min

User Experience vs. Customer Experience: What’s The Difference?

Kim Salazar · 5 min

Apps Within Apps: UX Lessons from WeChat Mini Programs

Feifei Liu · 9 min

News: Teamscope joins StudyPages 🎉

Data collection in the fight against COVID-19

Data Collection

Mobile diary studies: the complete researcher's guide.

Mobile diaries can give researchers valuable qualitative and in-the-moment data. Learn when and how to use this powerful data collection method.

Dear Diary, I have been struggling with an eating disorder for the past few years. I am afraid to eat and afraid I will gain weight. The fear is unjustified as I was never overweight. I have weighed the same since I was 12 years old, and I am currently nearing my 25th birthday. Yet, when I see my reflection, I see somebody who is much larger than reality. ‍ I told my therapist that I thought I was fat. She said it was 'body dysmorphia'. She explained this as a mental health condition where a person is apprehensive about their appearance and suggested I visit a nutritionist. She also told me that this condition was associated with other anxiety disorders and eating disorders. I did not understand what she was saying as I was in denial; I had a problem, to begin with. I wanted a solution without having to address my issues. Upon visiting my nutritionist, he conducted an in-body scan and told me my body weight was dangerously low. I disagreed with him. ‍ I felt he was speaking about a different person than the person I saw in the mirror. I felt like the elephant in the room- both literally and figuratively. He then made the simple but revolutionary suggestion to keep a food diary to track what I was eating. This was a clever way for my nutritionist and me to be on the same page. By recording all my meals, drinks, and snacks, I was able to see what I was eating versus what I was supposed to be eating. Keeping a meal diary was a powerful and non-invasive way for my nutritionist to walk in my shoes for a specific time and understand my eating (and thinking) habits. No other methodology would have allowed my nutritionist to capture so much contextual and behavioural information on my eating patterns other than a daily detailed food diary. However, by using a paper and pen, I often forgot (or intentionally did not enter my food entries) as I felt guilty reading what I had eaten or that I had eaten at all. I also did not have the visual flexibility to express myself through using photos, videos, voice recordings, and screen recordings. The usage of multiple media sources would have allowed my nutritionist to observe my behaviour in real-time and gain a holistic view of my physical and emotional needs. I confessed to my therapist my deliberate dishonesty in completing the physical food diary and why I had been reluctant to participate in the exercise. My therapist then suggested to my nutritionist and me to transition to a mobile diary study. Whilst I used a physical diary (paper and pen), a mobile diary study app would have helped my nutritionist and me reach a common ground (and to be on the same page) sooner rather than later. As a millennial, I wanted to feel like journaling was as easy as Tweeting or posting a picture on Instagram. But at the same time, I wanted to know that the information I  provided in a digital diary would be as safe and private as it would have been as my handwritten diary locked in my bedroom cabinet. Further, a digital food diary study platform with push notifications would have served as a constant reminder to log in my food entries as I constantly check my phone. It would have also made the task of writing a food diary less momentous by transforming my journaling into micro-journaling by allowing me to enter one bite at a time rather than the whole day's worth of meals at once. Mainly, the digital food diary could help collect the evidence that I was not the elephant in the room, but rather that the elephant in the room was my denied eating disorder. Sincerely, The elephant in the room

What is a Mobile Diary Study?

A mobile diary study , similar to a physical diary, is a way to collect thoughts and feelings (qualitative information) about specific actions or daily life.

This is an excellent research method for understanding situational experiences, emotional feedback and fluctuations in participants' answers to questions.

This practical tool to collect information is not exclusive to health care professionals. A diary study platform can be equally powerful for professions ranging from academia to qualitative researchers to media, finance, and food.

Whereas a survey, an interview, or a quick doctor's interview could help a researcher know 'what' happened, a qualitative research tool such as a mobile diary study allows a researcher to know 'why' something happened and 'how something happened'.

The power mobile diary studies have in capturing data lies in collecting data longitudinally (over time). By prompting participants to respond by multiple entries, researchers can capture repetitive behaviours. Once data patterns start to arise, the data results can be trusted.

Compared to a detailed interview or a focus group discussion where a researcher gathers information from a subject or several subjects, a mobile diary study offers a richer and more organic insight by providing real-time responses rather than relying on the limitations of the limitations relaying recall.

Such an agile tool and research methodology yields accurate and contextual information that can be translated into tailor-made solutions for users. These solutions can range from medical treatment plans, workout routines, food options, or customized products that a user would likely purchase by understanding what matters to them.

Possible Uses of a Mobile Diary Study

The qualitative information captured by a digital diary study can be utilized in medical research such as mental health, pharmaceutical follow up, and nutrition tracking. It can also be used for broader purposes, such as helping to define and understand user feature requirements and marketing research to analyze consumption patterns.

1. Medical Research

The uses of a mobile diary study for medical research are broad. Overall, researchers can use the information provided by their subjects during clinical and behavioural trials or disease treatment and management.  

The benefits of this digitalized and real-time experience sampling method in medical research are:

• Providing clinical and research staff with real-time patient information.
• Ensuring patients enrolled in a clinical trial are compliant to assessment filling regimens.
• Sending patients timely and scheduled alerts (push notifications) for completing their assessments.
• Catering to patient diversity through leveraging the ability of mobile technology to enable the collection of data in multiple languages.
• Allowing patient empowerment through immersing them in the data collection process.
• Utilizing data visualizations to show treatment progression or regression.
• Putting patients in charge of their health.

Three medical fields in which a daily diary app could prove beneficial are Mental Health, Pharmaceutical follow-up, and Nutrition.

A) Mental health

Among the most common health conditions affecting adults are mental health disorders. In middle income and high-income countries, over 50% of the general population is estimated to suffer from at least one mental health disorder in their lifespan. In parallel, smartphone ownership has been increasing in the developed world, with as much as 84% of any developed country citizens having access to this technology.

Daily diary study apps can be a powerful and accessible tool to evaluate the patterns and progress of mental health patients effectively and efficiently. Such a non-invasive technology is an easy and accessible way for a clinician to walk in a patients' shoes for a defined period to assess participants and measure intervention effects in clinical research and routine care.

Further, a daily diary study app for mental health patients can only venture beyond the traditional collection of written information. Smartphone technology has facilitated collecting data in eclectic ways such as videos, photos, and voice recordings using the click of a button. Speech patterns can provide critical insights into a patient's health status. Similarly, video analysis can provide valuable health insights. This particularly stands true for a mental disorder such as depression associated with a flattening of positive emotional responses.

A daily diary study app through prompting a user to interact and describe how they are feeling emotionally and physically can have multiple benefits. Initially, these user inputs can help enable self-assessment by comparing data and video entries over time. Also, the analysis of facial expression, voice acoustics, and voice sentiments collected using an app in consolidation with other contextual data can help researchers and clinicians to extract possible health outcome measures for mental health patients.

Overall, a mobile diary study for a mental health patient is a cost-efficient and effective methodology through understanding their context and factors that influence how they act, think, and feel in a particular moment. This empathetic tool of collecting qualitative information adds depth to clinical data and metrics, thereby empowering patients and improving compliance with treatment plans.

While such software would need advanced cloud analytics and a crucial feature of data protection, it would have the benefits of collecting versatile data and providing a tailored treatment plan. ‍

B) Clinical trials and pharmaceutical follow-up

Daily diary study apps can be powerful tools in providing valuable insights into a treatment plan.

They can further help healthcare professionals and clinicians make critical decisions on a diagnosis or treatment regimen. With the multiple distractions of life, a daily diary study app can help simultaneously remind patients to adhere to their treatment protocol by setting alerts and entering data on how they feel prompted by push notifications.

For patients, daily diary study apps can be empowering and can lead to enhancing medical self-management. This allows patients to visualize and track how their symptoms change over time, identify patterns that may emerge to treatment protocols, and notify their physicians of the subtle nuances between different medications. Thus, the benefit of the application would be allowing patients to be in the driving seat of their treatment protocol.  

C) Nutrition

A physical food diary is limited in measuring with accuracy an individual's food consumption. Daily diary study app usage offers a novel dietary assessment method by prompting a subject to capture real-time food intake and analyze other contextual patterns regarding eating habits.

This application would serve as a 24/7 on-call dietician to efficiently track food intake throughout a period regardless of your nutritional goal. Such an interactive tool would also have the unique advantage of collecting authentic everyday food patterns through videos, photos, screen recordings or text.

For eating disorders (both overeating and undereating), a mobile food diary study can have the unique advantage of interacting in real-time with participants. This would be possible through an app questioning and probing dietary entries using comments and push notifications. The rich interaction of collecting data through multiple modalities can help a researcher or a clinician understand user nutritional behaviours, eating habits, and emotional experiences whilst maximizing respondent engagement.

2. User Experience (UX) Research

To enable researchers to understand how users and customers experience products and services, longitudinally (over some time) mobile diary studies can be used. Unlike product surveys that collect user perspectives and experiences cross-sectionally (in one point of time), diary studies provide more prosperous and more detailed data.

Diary studies can contextually understand user behaviour over time by providing organic behavioural insights and valuable information on customers' real-time and real-life behaviours and experiences. Although a diary study can't provide rich or detailed data on user experience as an actual field study, the information provided can be a close approximation.

If appropriately used in the 21st century, data could save us from lots of failed interventions and enable us to provide evidence-based solutions towards tackling malaria globally. This is also part of what makes the ALMA scorecard generated by the African Leaders Malaria Alliance an essential tool for tracking malaria intervention globally. ‍ If we are able to know the financial resources deployed to fight malaria in an endemic country and equate it to the coverage and impact, it would be easier to strengthen accountability for malaria control and also track progress in malaria elimination across the continent of Africa and beyond.

Odinaka Kingsley Obeta

West African Lead, ALMA Youth Advisory Council/Zero Malaria Champion

There is a smarter way to do research.

Build fully customizable data capture forms, collect data wherever you are and analyze it with a few clicks — without any training required.

ESM/EMA data collection, made unbelievable easy.

Build customisable mobile forms, create flexible reminders and invite participants with a few clicks — without any training required.

3. Marketing Research – Consumption Diaries

Marketing research can benefit from diary studies by getting customers repeatedly to enter what they buy or consume, thereby enabling researchers to prove actual daily behaviours. Consumption diaries are helpful to unlock patterns such as what time of day users engage with a product.

Other long-term behaviours such as what motivates people to buy certain items and how buyers feel upon purchasing something can also be understood through diary studies. Understanding what users are thinking while buying a product or a service can be estimated through information logged during a diary study.

The extended period of diary studies and the immersive information collected is a way of ethnographic research. This is a qualitative method where researchers interact with participants in their real-life environment. Thus, enabling marketeers to design far better solutions for their customers' needs. ‍

Challenges of Collecting Daily Data from Participants

While diary studies provide a contextual understanding of user behaviours and experiences over time, this insightful information comes with challenges.

The main challenges of collecting daily data from participants are:

• Alert fatigue is when a user receives too many alerts or notifications from the data diary leading to desensitization. When a system sends too many alarms to gather detailed data, it may be counterintuitive. A user may experience alert fatigue and start ignoring all notifications-thus providing no data at all.
• Surveys that are too long , leading to a high participant dropout rate (high attrition).
• Participants that don't feel comfortable sharing their data on an unknown platform .
• Lack of compliance in participation due to little or no incentives (particularly in marketing diaries).

Solutions to Challenges of Collecting Daily Diary Data from Participants

Mobile diary study apps are powerful tools to longitudinally and remotely collect research data on human needs, habits, experiences and emotions.

Diary studies are most helpful in understanding long-term behaviours such as attitudes and motivations, changes in behaviours and perceptions, and understanding habits. The best way to avoid the challenges of using this tool is to employ the device correctly. Before you use a diary study app, make sure that you use the tool for the proper purpose. ‍

Some ways to avoid the above challenges of daily diary data are as follows:

Conduct a pilot study

Before launching a full-fledged diary study on a specific research or subject, it is best to test the study design and related materials through a pilot. The purpose of the pilot will not be to yield data for analysis but rather to get feedback about the research materials and the diary study experiences and to adjust accordingly.

Plan an appropriate study time

A diary study can range from a few days to a few weeks. While data collected over a more extended period may better enable researchers to unlock user behaviour patterns and understand habits, this does not justify having an excessively long diary study.

If a study is too long, participants will experience fatigue, and the attrition rates will be high, resulting in less accurate data. On the other hand, a diary study that is too short will defeat the purpose of the study as information will not generate the necessary depth and detail. A pilot can help determine the appropriate study time depending on the research purpose.

Incentivize users

Diary studies require more involvement from users over some time. Before a diary study, explain to users what is expected from them, what is involved in the data collection process, and how the data collected will be used. For medical research, many users will be self-incentivized as it is easy to connect between data provided and improved treatment plans and treatment outcomes. For marketing purposes, users may need to be financially incentivized to ensure commitment to the entire study.

Take data privacy seriously

Do your research before using a diary study or journaling app to ensure that there are provisions for data protection. This is particularly of importance for health data diaries. An easy thing to look for is whether an app has passcode locking to generate access to information. Another thing to look for is how the data is stored. Ideally, data stored should be locally encrypted to avoid unlawful access to information if a mobile is lost.

With the rampant use of smartphones (mainly in developed countries), a powerful data collection tool of mobile data diaries is available at the tip of your fingers. This is the equivalent of having an incognito diary that could be used anywhere and anytime. Additionally, through the usage of data intelligence features such as push notifications, a data diary will ensure entries are not missed.

With a data diary, researchers can make better decisions to improve the experiences of their clients through understanding their habits better. For medical professionals and patients, data diaries can help ultimately develop the ideal patient-specific treatment.  A data diary can help users understand and avoid specific triggers through organic information offered in moments of truth.

Finally, a daily diary will be a loyal and trustworthy companion. This tool will keep your information secure, provide you with visual representations of your thoughts. Over and above, a data diary can help you track your symptoms, habits, and experiences to unlock patterns and possibly improve your physical and mental health.

Dear Digital Diary, ‍ I realized that there is an unquestionable comfort in being misunderstood. For to be understood, one must peel off all the emotional layers and be exposed. This requires both vulnerability and strength. I guess by using a physical diary (a paper and a pen), I never felt like what I was saying was analyzed or judged. But I also never thought I was understood. ‍ Paper does not talk back.Using a daily digital diary has required emotional strength. It has required the need to trust and the need to provide information to be helped and understood. Using a daily diary has needed less time and effort than a physical diary as I am prompted to interact through mobile notifications. I also no longer relay information from memory, but rather the medical or personal insights I enter are real-time behaviours and experiences. ‍ The interaction is more organic. I also must confess this technology has allowed me to see patterns in my behaviour that I would have otherwise never noticed. I trust that the data I enter is safe as it is password protected. I also trust that I am safe because my doctor and nutritionist can view my records in real-time. ‍ Also, with the data entered being more objective and diverse through pictures and voice recordings, my treatment plan has been better suited to my needs. Sincerely, No more elephants in this room

Rawan is a PRINCE2-certified project manager and a Public Health professional with 3 years of experience managing development projects. She recently served as a Programme Analyst with UNDP in Zambia providing project support across topics such as Inclusive Cities, Climate Action, and Economic Growth. She was part of the inaugural cohort of a 16-month fellowship titled the African Young Women Leaders . Rawan aspires to rise as a development expert with the United Nations.

More articles on

Digital health and human rights: the 3 challenges we face.

Research Authorship: The Complete Guide for Young Researchers

Home-Based Care: The Top 3 Challenges and Solutions

Since this is a remote method of testing , users are prompted several times to help them remember to fill in their diary.

Diary studies are defined by two factors: the context and the time spent in gathering data. These factors are what make this methodology different from the rest of the user-research methods that we know.

This method is also known as the "poor man's field study" as they are unlikely to provide information that is detailed and complete compared to field studies. However, diary studies have some advantages that are important in specific cases.

What are the advantages of running diary studies when conducting user research?

There are several benefits to using diary studies when it comes to understanding user experience behavior. This research method often surfaces topics that the UX team does not know exist.

Like for example, in a more controlled type of research, participants may not provide information or phenomenon in an interview or survey, simply because these data do not come to mind at that particular moment or time.

Since diary studies are longitudinal, they are likely to get different information from participants that did not surface in other study methods. 

Another advantage of conducting diary studies is its ability to collect data in its natural form. Since it is minimally intrusive, participants can provide more accurate diary entries on their behavior.

Diary studies are efficient as you can conduct the experiment to 20, 30, or even more participants at the same time. On top of this, it does not need a team to commit to a very intensive kind of research.  

This type of user behavior study is beneficial in terms of getting to know the market first before conducting more extensive and in-depth research. 

Diary studies prepare the UX team to get prepared and to know their respondents first before heading out for a face-to-face observation, which can help them gain helpful insights and come up with more meaningful observations.

When to conduct diary studies

While going out to participant locations and observing them first hand is typically my first choice when striving to study and understand behaviors, there are several reasons why diary studies can sometimes be a more appropriate choice. For instance:

We already discussed the importance of diary studies, specifically why this method is more appropriate than the other user research methods that use direct observation.

In addition, diary studies are essential in the following instances:

When you want to know about the moments and actions that affect the decision-making process.

If you are curious about how people make a decision or take an action on something as big as moving to a new home or buying a car, then diary studies can show you how these daily moments lead to a major decision or action.

If you are curious about the different experiences, behaviors, and perceptions of users and how these factors change over time.

Observing the same participants over a period of time lets you track the different events, moments, and moods that can have an impact on their decisions.

It can also show how participants learn a new system or product, which can teach you something about customer loyalty.

Overall, this study method exposes users' habits on a daily basis rather than just a particular moment or time.

If direct observation can affect user behavior.

This is true for activities that are private or sensitive to talk about. Having a barrier between the researcher and the participant can influence data and can hinder you from getting more transparent answers. These personal topics are more appropriate in the diary studies setting.

When you want to know what motivates the user to act.

For example, why would someone prefer to ride the Uber than the train? The diary study method can get you with closer behavioral data and depending on the length of the study, you can get good answers about the users' thoughts that impact their decisions.

When you want to know the behaviors that happen occasionally.

Not all behaviors happen on schedule. The best way to know occasional activities is to conduct diary studies. For instance, you want to make sure when parents worry about their kids or when people look for decor inspiration.

A survey method or an interview method will only get you with a glimpse of these experiences. A diary study method, however, will get you more contextual diary entries like "once in a while" or "10x a day".  

When direct observation is not an option in observing the sensitive market.

This has something to do with access, privacy, and location. A diary study, for instance, is a more viable option for teenage participants who prefer to record their activities on their mobile phones rather than talking to an observer.

When there is not enough time for you to conduct the research.

Sometimes things get so busy that you do not have time to conduct your study. Diary studies are the easiest option. Just set-up the parameters and you can work on a more immediate task first. Then after a few weeks, you may get back to check the results.

When you need to impress investors with real and more personal data.

If you want to make a good impression, then a diary study method can help you collect "human moments" such as videos of your participants showing their thoughts and feelings. This type of qualitative data is a straightforward way of making an impact in front of your investors.

What are the topic scopes covered in this methodology?

Depending on the topic, the focus of a diary study ranges from broad to targeted. Below are the topic scopes often covered in diary studies method:

• Product/Website - understanding the interactions with a site over a period of time. Example: Intranet
• Behavior - gathering of information about user behavior. Example: use of smartphones, student web visitation patterns
• General activity - understanding how users complete general activities. Example: online shopping, social media shares
• A specific activity - understanding how users complete specific activities. Example: buying a new house, planning a vacation

How do you set up a diary study?

Rather than giving you a list of tips on running your own diary studies, we at Userpeek came up with a sample case and a step-by-step study process that you can use as reference in conducting your diary study.

SAMPLE DIARY STUDY PROCESS FROM NNGROUP

One of our clients runs a news application that collects, aggregates, and distributes the news.

The UX team is tasked to plot new features based on what the user needs. We decided to run a study that gives us some broad, accurate idea of how our target users stay up-to-date with the current events.

However, the team needs to travel across the country to trail the participants until they click on a headline.

Since this is not a viable option, we decided to conduct a diary study. This method is cost-efficient in understanding better ways the news app may provide more value in their services that can easily fit into the participants day to day needs.  

The step-by-step guide

Step 1: The preparation

Here's a checklist of what you need to prepare:

• Define your research questions to suit the diary studies structure

There are two factors to consider here: the "in-the-moment" and "immediacy" factors.

You need to create questions that take advantage of the diary study structure. because your goal is to capture the "insights" of that moment.

Getting participants to log their responses as soon as they read or take action unveils the new, the interesting, and the nuances of those actions and in return, you will get a closer understanding of their behaviors.  

Additionally, when you write your research questions or hypothesis, you need to decide on a corresponding trigger that tells your participants when to document. 

• Set your start and end dates

Ask yourself these questions: "how long should I run this study?" "how much time do I need to get valuable information?" You do not want your participants to lose interest in logging in for some time.

• Choose the right tool based on your goals, budget, and timeframe

The tool used matters a lot in your research because the right tool will help you properly collect data. You have the following options:

The manual method

You can send a diary to your participants and they can send the diary back to you.

The downside is, it's surely going to be a challenge to read and sort all information from each of the participants. Plus, it can be hard to read that awful handwriting. 

Everything will be done manually including waiting for that mail to arrive and manually importing the data.

There's also a possibility that the participants may misinterpret your instructions if they are unclear. If this happens, you can end up with unusable data.

Having said that, we do not recommend you to use this method unless you have a very small budget to start with.

The DIY method

This is doable for platforms that your participants are already familiar with such as email, Facebook, SMS, Whatsapp, and the likes.

Depending on the platform you use, you may collect multimedia data and you can also send reminders. You may have an automatic search feature as well.

This approach is not that perfect and may leave you some challenges like data import can be a problem and some of your participants may be wary of giving their information over social. Still, if you have a limited budget, this is a viable option.

• Use the available paid tools for research

These tools may not be free but they offer all the nice features that you need to run a successful dairy studies research.

Some of the features for paid research tools include digital diary features with the option to login multimedia entries, set reminders for participants to log their entries, and it works on mobile too.

When choosing the right tool, look for something that allows easy sorting, tagging, and exporting.

• Recruit quality participants

Whatever your research needs are, always get solid recruits. This means you should aim for fewer but better participants.

Screen and segment your participants carefully, considering the conclusions that you want to make.

Do not worry about having only several recruits. Even with a few but quality and engaging participants, you will still be able to get a truckload of information. 

• Choose the right props or stimuli

Remember that props can be mental. If you have an item or product for your participants, get that in the mail as well.

Decide how you want your participants to log in their entries

You can check below some techniques as a guide:

• Interval-contingent protocol :  predetermined intervals for the participants to report. Example: The participants can take notes every 3 hours throughout the day. Where to apply: This is best suited for behaviors that are not situation- dependent, for situations that do not occur on specified moment and time, or for day-to-day activities.
• Event-contingent protocol /in-situation logging: whenever an event occurs, the participant reports. Example: When a participant gets distracted or anxious, he logs in and answers a set of questions.
• Signal-contingent protocol: a set alert or alarm that tells the participants to report.

Our preparation

Our research team considered these factors in coming up with our questions and set-up for our remote study:

We considered the length of time a person would be willing to try the news app before it falls out of habit.

We spent time on research about our target market's use pattern, schedule, and daily activities.

We considered the best times our participants will interact with the app.

After looking at the factors above, we have decided to put our participants on a single workweek timeline for logging.  

We have set some days for any potential post-study reflection sessions.

We have enabled participants to send in multimedia files so we can show these to our stakeholders.

We have decided to use a diary study tool as deemed suited for our needs above.

We have set a single trigger for the participants: They should log right after any active steps taken in using our news app.

We have set reminders in the diary study tool so test subjects are prompted throughout the day. In addition, they are prompted every 7 p.m. to reflect on how informed they feel and how many times they have tuned in to the app.

Step 2: The Process

Congratulations! You made it to the application stage. This is where your planning stage comes to life. 

Here are the questions that may arise once you are already running your study research:

How often should I communicate with the participants?

As often as needed. There is no hard rule here but you should have an idea of what you expect. Do not forget to send them reminders, guidance, and acknowledge their entries.

You should sincerely talk to your participants by being human first, and researcher second.  

Giving your participants frequent feedback will also encourage them to provide better and more detailed responses.      

Be understanding all the time. Your participants deserve more than just "thank you". Saying something like "we are sorry to hear that and we sincerely appreciate your response" whenever they are having a bad day will go a long way.   

What should I do when there is a lot of data coming in?

Do not procrastinate. Take notes as data comes in. And by doing this, you will have a good idea about your follow-up questions. You will also be able to see the participants that need more pushing and encouragement on their digital diary entries.    

Our process

We have assigned members of our team to spend at least several minutes a day reading the participants' entries, responding to them, and reminding them if they missed an entry. 

We also bookmarked all insights that we thought are good so we can pull them easily anytime for synthesis. 

For also take note of all engaged responses as well and flag them as a focal point for our analysis. 

We also spent time responding to test subjects who were upset by the sad news story. We took empathy with them and sincerely thank them for providing their honest feedback. 

Step 3: The follow-up

In this step, you must have already known your participants and you have a good idea of what they have submitted. 

But once you get to know more about them, most likely you still want to know more insights that you like to dive deeper.

In this case, here are our suggestions:

Schedule a follow-up interview with your most engaged participants or users that have unique insights

This helps you confirm your haunch, close a gap, or provide you with the needed insights. With just a 30-minute debriefing after the diary studies research can go a long way with your research.

Ask for feedback

You can ask your participants questions like: Did the study go well? What did you learn from this experience? What are your suggestions that you think can contribute to better study research?

All these questions can lead to exposing biases and improving your future study.

Improve your qualitative data with quantitative data

You can make a chart analysis or run A/B testing with the data you have gathered. Quantitative data may show better and clearer study data that can be used for new hypotheses. 

Our follow up

As our team completed the data, we realized that many of the participants' engagement with the news is passive --- they usually just check the news links sent to them by their family or colleague, or they just click the headline they see on their news feed.

Few people check the app or newsletter for news. Only a few people stay loyal to a particular news source.

We have also found out there are 12 participants who consistently provide engaging insights. We have picked our top 3 from these participants for follow-up questions.

Step 4: The analysis

After you have gathered and completed your data, you need to set a time to sit with the data, track possible patterns, and synthesize everything.

Here are several data analysis tips to take note:

Identify your star participants

These are participants that represent a larger pattern or have given you particular insights. You can tag them as "star participants" and use them as leads in your synthesis and presentations.

You can add quotes and videos from other participating members, which are your supporting cast.

Share insights with investors

You can schedule your presentation and discuss the results to anyone who you know can benefit from an in-depth user insight. This means going beyond just the design or product team.

If your research goals and diary study design were successful, then you can use these data for your company to present results that help investors make sound decisions.

Our analysis

Our team gathered together for a brief synthesis. We looked at the raw data to discuss the possible conclusions.

We have decided on a few important ways that these data can be used.

We recommend new integrations that can work with other discovery mechanisms that the existing market already uses.

We also enlist some jobs to be done based on the motivations and pain points that we have gathered from the study.

To sum it up!

We've learned that there is a wide range of situations where we can use a diary studies method. This method does not have to be any more difficult or time-consuming than other usability tests .  

Even without experience, you can try to set-up your DIY diary studies using the manual method or with the help of the right automation tool.

Have you done any diary studies before? Did you find it extremely useful in terms of gathering data? Share your experience with us. We love to know 🙂  

Related Posts:

Mary Ann Dalangin

About the author

A content marketing strategist and a UX writer with years of experience in the digital marketing industry.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Stop guessing, start knowing. Today.

Advisory boards aren’t only for executives. Join the LogRocket Content Advisory Board today →

• Product Management
• Solve User-Reported Issues
• Find Issues Faster
• Optimize Conversion and Adoption

Conducting a diary study to understand user behavior

Considering using a diary study to get to know your users, their goals, preferences, and behavior better? Then look no further.

In this article, we’ll run you through everything you need to know about this handy UX research methodology, including a hands-on guide to conducting your first one.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

What is a diary study?

Why use a diary study, types of diary studies, how to conduct a diary study, planning your diary study.

• Commencing your diary study

Data collection and analysis

Best practices for diary study analysis.

Ready to get started? Then let’s go!

A diary study is a popular methodology used by UX teams that provides a record of the thoughts, experiences, ideas, and activities of users over a specific time period. Asking users to self-report in this way provides UX designers and researchers with a longitudinal record of users’ preferences and behaviors. This log can then be analyzed by the team for a more accurate understanding of their users’ overall experiences with a product, feature, or service.

There are numerous advantages to conducting a diary study. As well as being an option that requires fewer resources than other UX methodologies, diary research provides real-life context to the problem you are trying to solve. It does this because your users are giving you specific details in their own words about how they are trying to solve the problem posed.

Diary studies offer UX researchers a flexible research methodology that can be used to help solve a variety of different issues. Whether you’re investigating what your competitors are up to, looking to improve your existing products, or simply hoping to better understand your current users, diary studies will provide valuable insights straight from the source.

Diary study research can also be a useful tool when your first early-stage prototypes are ready to be tested. You can assess the current popularity and success of the design with your users, as well as swiftly pinpoint any challenges they face, even at this early stage. They may even express in their diary entries their own ideas about how the design could be improved.

When your product has been developed, a diary study offers valuable insights into the user’s experience with your product in its final form. You can assess how well user expectations are met, uncover previously unseen issues, and identify any opportunities to improve the product based on this detailed user feedback.

Post-product launch, your users’ diary entries can be used to understand how well the product is functioning in a real-world setting and if any further adjustments or improvements could or should be made to future versions.

Before you start your diary study research, you’ll need to choose which type of diary study works best for the issue you are trying to get more data on.

Over 200k developers and product managers use LogRocket to create better digital experiences

Open diary study

As a free-form type of journal, an open diary study offers users a good amount of flexibility and freedom in how they record their experiences. Users can use the diary as they see fit, recording the thoughts or interactions with the product that they consider to be useful or of greatest importance.

While the UX team will provide some initial guidance in terms of, for example, how often to write in the diary and what information or thoughts users should consider including, generally the open diary format seeks to inspire free-flowing thought and expression.

Pros of an open diary study

An open diary study is a great way of introducing less-experienced users to a UX research study because it requires very little knowledge of UX or product development from those taking part.

In addition, users are likely to record information about their experiences with the product, feature, or service that the UX team have not previously considered, which is a great way for the UX team to learn more about the user’s experience and how they might improve it.

Cons of an open diary study

One of the disadvantages of conducting an open diary study is that the UX team may not get all the information or details they actually need from participants. Additionally, they may get a lot of information that they don’t need at all. This can mean that time is taken up reading through diary entries as the team looks for the entries which are relevant to the study.

Closed diary study

In contrast to an open diary study, a closed diary study is a more structured approach to this research method, providing users with a fixed set of questions to answer every day (or however regularly they are required to write in it). A closed diary study may also include specific instructions from the UX research team that the user needs to follow.

Pros of a closed diary study:

Data collected during a closed diary study is significantly easier to analyze and assess than the data from an open diary study. The preformatted questions and instructions of a closed study mean the team is only getting information that is relevant to the research.

Because the data received from participants is also in response to the same set of questions, the UX team can also much more easily compare and contrast answers between different users.

Cons of a closed diary study

Unlike an open diary study, the fixed nature of a closed diary study often means that researchers miss out on hearing about challenges or insights which the user hasn’t been specifically asked to comment upon.

While one of the advantages of conducting a diary study over other kinds of UX research is that it can be a fairly hands-off process for the UX team, there are still some key elements you’ll want to have in place in order to ensure it runs successfully.

Let’s take a look at what you need to plan and manage a diary study in order to get results.

For the UX team, most of the work that goes into a diary study is in the planning of it. When you begin your first diary study, you’ll need to determine your objectives, decide which type of diary study you’d like to conduct, write your users’ questions, and plan a start and end date.

1. What are your objectives?

In order to determine the goals of the research, you’ll first need to decide what sort of information you’re hoping to extract from your diary study participants:

• Do you want to understand how specific interactions with your product or service occur?
• Or do you want to know how the user feels while performing those interactions?
• Is there a new feature you want to test with users?
• Are you wondering why so many users abandon their shopping carts before making a purchase?

Establishing clear objectives now will guide and inform the research questions you’ll need to prepare. You’ll also want to think about whether you cover multiple topics in this diary study or focus on just one area.

2. Which type of diary research?

Next up in the planning phase is deciding which type of diary research you’d like to conduct. Are you hoping to get a more general feel of your product from an outside perspective, or do you need specific questions answered regarding a challenge or recurring issue?

Depending on these variables, you’ll want to choose either a closed diary study or an open diary study. (Some UX teams opt for a combined approach in order to get the most out of the research.)

Quantitative vs. qualitative data

When considering which type of diary study to conduct, it’s worth taking into account the specific type of data you’d like to collect; quantitative data or qualitative data (or both).

Quantitative data is measurable, numerical data, which can be used to identify the statistical significance in your findings. This type of data can be collected using close-ended questions, a Likert scale (where a user chooses a number on a scale to represent their answer, e.g,, 1=very bad and 5=very good), or questions with multiple-choice answers.

If you’re looking to gather quantitative data and get clear, measurable answers to specific questions, then a closed diary study is probably the best fit for your needs.

Qualitative data , on the other hand, provides researchers with more context and information around user behavior. It is non-numerical data that provides deeper insights into individuals’ beliefs, preferences, and understandings of a particular situation.

If qualitative data describes the sort of information and insights you need from your research, then it would be advisable to go for an open diary study.

3. Write your research questions

With your objectives pinned down and your diary style chosen, writing your research questions should be a fairly straightforward process at this stage in the planning process. Open diary study questions you might consider including are:

• How did it feel interacting with [product name]?
• What was your favorite thing about using [product name]?
• What was the biggest challenge you faced using [product name]?
• What would you change about [product name]?
• Describe your interaction with [product name] from start to end
• How did using [product name] compare with when you used it yesterday/last week/last month? Was it easier or harder?
• How did [product name] compare to similar products you have used? Was it better or worse?

Closed diary study questions might look more like this:

1=Very difficult; 2=Difficult; 3=Not easy or difficult; 4=Easy; 5=Very easy

• Using the scale, how would you describe your overall interaction with [product name]?
• Using the scale, how would you describe navigation between your cart and the checkout?
• Using the scale, how difficult or easy to understand was the on-page text?
• Using the scale, how difficult or easy was it to complete a purchase?
• Using the scale, compared with yesterday, how easy or difficult was it to change your profile picture?

4. Decide on a timeframe

The timeframe of your study will really depend on your overarching goals for the research as well as how much interaction with the product is required to get the data you need.

While some diary studies might take place over the course of a few days, others can take months. You’ll also need to gauge how much time a participant will need to set aside each day in order to complete the diary entries.

5. Select and recruit participants

Selecting and recruiting the right participants for your diary study will be a determining factor in its overall success.

You’ll be looking for individuals who can and will respond promptly to communication from the UX researchers and answer questions with the amount of detail you need to understand their perspective fully. Your participants will therefore need to be people who are keen to express their thoughts and happy to share them.

As we have seen, there can be a considerable and sometimes long-term time commitment involved in becoming a participant in a diary study. It’s important that you communicate this with potential participants before they agree to take part so they can see if this works with their own schedules.

In addition, the UX team will need to be clear with interested parties about what exactly will be expected of them on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis so that all expectations are aligned before the study begins and those who cannot commit can opt out in advance.

Another aspect to consider when recruiting for your diary study is the format by which users might be asked to give their responses. Some participants might prefer to write down their answers by hand, others might wish to log theirs online, and others might be used to recording video-based responses.

If your team has a preference for how they wish to collate data, express this to interested participants during the recruitment process; if an individual is only comfortable writing their answers by hand, but you need them logged in an online format, then you might have to reconsider recruiting them.

Some UX teams choose to interview potential participants as part of the recruitment process to assess their suitability for the study. This can be useful for gauging an individual’s commitment to the project and ensuring that they have a thorough understanding of expectations before signing up.

If you’re hoping for participants to contribute their answers to the study via video, an interview can also go some way toward informing the team of how clearly or thoughtfully the potential participant expresses their opinions.

If you plan on using incentives to motivate participants, don’t forget to be explicit from the start of the recruitment process about what these will be and when the participants can expect to receive them.

Commencing the diary study

So you’ve decided on your objectives, chosen a type of diary study, written your research questions, nailed down a timeframe, and, finally, selected and recruited your participants: it looks like you’re good to go!

Once you’ve sent out the questions along with some guidelines regarding what you’re expecting from the diary entries, you’re going to be pretty hands off during this research study.

Although a diary study involves considerably less involvement than other types of UX research, there will still be some small administrative tasks to attend to while the study is running.

For example, you may choose to set up reminder emails or notifications for your participants to ensure they stay on track with their diary contributions. Additionally, it’s probably wise to check in with them every now and then to make sure everything is running smoothly. Finally, you should be prepared to answer incoming queries from participants who may need clarification of what’s expected of them, or are having technical issues.

It’s important to recognize the effort and contribution your participants are making to be a part of the study, so be sure that any communication you have with them is friendly and appreciative. Keep an eye on individuals who are struggling and respect each person’s boundaries.

Have you chosen to have entries be sent to you as they are logged, or will you receive everything from participants at the end of the dedicated time period? If you’ve selected the former, take notes and process the entries as you go, so as not to get overwhelmed.

If you’ve selected the latter, consider using a smart diary study tool to help you organize entries. These can often assist in other areas too, such as sending reminders, and recruiting participants. My favorites are: dscout , Indeemo , SurveySignal , MetricWire , and QuestionPro .

After the study

After the study has concluded, ask participants for their feedback on the process. You may also want to conduct post-study interviews to get more detail on top of their diary entries or to clarify specific points.

If you’re manually collecting and analyzing data rather than using a diary study tool, your first step will be transcribing your diaries and logging entries in one place, such as a spreadsheet.

Once all of your entries are in one accessible place, you’ll need to start sifting through the data and looking out for patterns and trends. From here, you can begin to put together your first hypotheses.

At this stage, it can help to pinpoint strong participants who have submitted data that is particularly thoughtful, detailed, or thorough. This is because the more robust the information from one candidate is, the easier it will be to identify patterns within their entries. Once identified, these patterns can then be supported with evidence from other participants whose entries might be slightly less detailed.

Tagging your data with the correct labels is another important aspect of data collection and analysis. This will save you a considerable amount of time when trying to locate key pieces of information later on and make it much easier to spot patterns and trends.

Consider using a tool

While one of the benefits of a diary study is that it requires relatively few resources when compared to other types of UX research methods, it’s not a bad idea to consider using a free or paid-for diary study tool.

These days, digital diary study tools can assist throughout the entire process, from helping you define your objectives and write your questions to recruiting participants and organizing and analyzing your data.

Although analog is always an option, digitizing the process will streamline activities and save you time and stress in the long run.

Onboard participants

If you want to ensure the success of your diary study, onboard your participants properly! This can be done with a short briefing document that is sent to participants along with the questions, or, even better, done via a short video call. The more prepared your participants are, the higher the quality of answers will be that you’ll receive.

Stay in touch with participants throughout

It should go without saying, but you’ll want to check in on your participants over the course of the diary study. Depending on their preferred method of communication, make sure they know you’re available to help out if there are any hiccups or if they simply have a question about the process.

Consider using incentives

For some shorter studies, participants are happy to help out without being incentivized, but for longer studies it makes sense to offer participants incentives to keep them motivated and to encourage high quality contributions. This UX research incentives calculator is a useful tool for calculating exactly what to offer.

We hope you’ve enjoyed learning about diary studies in this article! I’ve covered what a diary study is and why it’s a valuable UX research method as well as provided you with the steps you need to plan and conduct one successfully.

Want to know my top tips? Here they are!

• Make sure you select the diary study type that best suits your needs; if you need detailed, nuanced insights about the user’s experience with your product, opt for an open diary study. If you need measurable, comparable stats or figures, a closed diary study will better serve your needs.
• Finally, keep the lines of communication open between the UX team and your participants; you may need to tweak the process along the way, and the more available you are to participants the easier that will be. Good luck!

Header image source : IconScout

LogRocket : Analytics that give you UX insights without the need for interviews

LogRocket lets you replay users' product experiences to visualize struggle, see issues affecting adoption, and combine qualitative and quantitative data so you can create amazing digital experiences.

See how design choices, interactions, and issues affect your users — get a demo of LogRocket today .

Share this:

• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• #ux research

Stop guessing about your digital experience with LogRocket

Recent posts:.

Creating design specs for smoother developer handoff

Designers and developers sometimes have hiccups during a project. These guidelines can help avoid roadblocks and improve communication.

What is cognitive overload in UX and how can you prevent it?

Explore the psychology behind cognitive overload and learn UX strategies to help reduce it, with a focus on crafting user-centric solutions.

Figma Dev Mode: What it can and can’t do for a UX designer

Figma Dev Mode has an easy-to-work-with UI and layout and makes collaboration with other team members far easier.

Creating user friendly support documents that relieve customer support strain

Ideally, UX designers should collaborate with customer support agents more often to improve user experience. Here’s how they can start.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

User Diary Studies - An Effective Research Method for Evaluating User Behavior Long-Term

One interesting UX research method to keep in your toolbox is user diary studies. This method is beneficial if you aim to collect data over a certain period of time. It’s also a handy research method when direct observation is impossible.

In this article, you’ll learn about the basics of user diary studies as a UX research method. You'll see when it works best, and where it has its limitations. I’ll walk you through all the steps to successfully conduct a diary study along with a real-world example from a past study.

I've also included a template for user diary studies at the end.

What Is a User Diary? 📔

Advantages and when to conduct diary studies 👍, limitations and pitfalls of user diary studies 🙅, how to run your user diary study from a-z 🎯, step 1: prepare the diary study, step 2: design the study, step 3: recruit the participants, step 4: launch and follow-up, step 5: end the study and get the diaries back, step 6: analyze the data, step 7: follow up with the users, step 8: sharing the research results, real-world example: user diary study for the rebuilding of an internal enterprise tool 💡, spreadsheet template 🖇.

User diaries, or user diary studies, are a self-reporting research method. Research participants log their experiences, behaviors, activities, and thoughts over a certain period of time . Hence the name "diary."

Over time, researchers conduct diary research by collecting the diary entries of engaged participants. Researchers may also ask participants to take pictures or videos to better understand their environment. The diary data collected is primarily qualitative. But depending on your research goal, you can also collect some quantitative data.

Diary studies are a discovery phase research method: Used at the beginning of the user research process when you are trying to frame and understand user problems.

Researchers can also use diary studies for validation purposes. This helps when you want to make sure your design works and solves the users' problems. Diary studies are often conducted after the first phase of interviews or contextual inquiries.

I use diary studies in my projects in order to understand if content is missing from the beta version we already shipped. More on this later in the article.

The main advantage of a diary study is the ability to collect data over time . Also known as " longitudinal information ." This allows researchers to understand temporal dynamics : How user behavior and experience might change over time. It's an excellent method to collect information about habits and processes .

Additionally, this method helps to understand the events' flow and successions over time. This method also lets you capture unplanned or hard-to-plan tasks and activities . It is an excellent way to gather data about user behavior or tasks that happen sporadically.

It's also possible to learn about tasks or activities that occur at a specific time and can’t be replicated by asking research participants to do them in front of you.

For example, if you're working on a period tracking app, a user diary study can cover varying cycles over a certain period of time. Every cycle can be different and they can be very unpredictable. So observing users filling in data when their cycle starts might be hard to plan.

As a user diary study is a self-reporting method, users input the data themselves without a researcher’s help. This makes the collection of data less intrusive than other user research methods that require more direct observation or over-the-shoulder shadowing.

For example, it’s particularly suitable for situations where researchers need to collect qualitative data on matters that are more sensitive, or from populations that can't be observed directly.

In comparison to other qualitative research methods, it's also more likely to stave off biases during observation. This makes the data collection more natural in its context . And diary study participants can report influential external factors from their natural environment .

For example, during a project to monitor cranes on construction sites, crane operators used our tablet app in various different environments. Such as under bright sunlight, in dark spaces, and in very dusty environments. The results from this diary study taught us that contrast was super crucial for that app.

The main advantage of user diary studies can also be a significant limitation. This method follows users over a period of time. So if the allotted time for your research is relatively short, then conducting a diary study is likely not a suitable method for your current project.

It also requires a lot of commitment from the users. Which often results in the need for bigger incentives and bigger budgets . In other words, this is not a "quick and dirty" method. People might also forget about completing the diary study. So follow-ups and reminders are essential (more on that in the next part ).

It's also important to be aware that self-reported data may not be 100% accurate and is often biased. People are not always good at reporting their own emotions, for example.

If possible, keep your journey task-oriented and factual. Don’t ask people to imagine their future. Don't ask them to remember a past event that happened a long time ago. Don't ask things like “how much would you pay to use this tool in the future?” or “what other tools did you install in the last year to accomplish that task?” A year is a long period of time.

Another limitation is missing data. It's possible that user diary entries will miss out on data that could be of interest to you because the users didn't think to report it. You can mitigate this by giving them clear and detailed instructions during a good kick-off session.

Also, keep in mind that you will gather a LOT of data through diary studies. So prepare yourself for long data analysis sessions.

Like most research methods, the first step is to prepare your study. Here’s how:

Start with your research questions/goals : What are you trying to learn or understand? What data do you want to collect? Good research is about asking the right questions, to the right people, at the right time.

You need to define a clear scope and user group: Who will you send the diary to?

Tip: Document the answers in a user research plan .

How to create a practical user research plan

Then, decide on the trigger : When do people need to log something in the diary?

The type of trigger depends on your research questions and what you are trying to understand. As mentioned above, this can be an event, a specific interval of time, or a prompt .

For example:

"people log whenever they use a specific tool" (event trigger)

"people log every week, on Sunday afternoons" (interval of time trigger)

“people log whenever we send a prompt” - In case the stimulus is a prompt, you need to decide when you want to prompt people. And how you will prompt them.

You also need to decide how long the study will run for . You can't expect people to fill in a diary every day for six months. How much data you need depends on your study. But don't be greedy.

Do you need THAT much data? Usually, 2 weeks to 2 months is a good time frame for a typical diary study. But again, this depends on the type of study you are conducting.

Next, decide on what to capture and how : This could be in the form of text, audio, video, or photos. The kind of content that you want to capture may influence the research tool that your study participants use to collect diary entries.

In the end, go for the tool that makes the most sense for your users. Choosing a diary study tool they are comfortable with can be crucial for the success of the study.

Here are a few options:

Old school written diaries : cheap, but handwriting can be hard to read

Electronic diaries in a digital file: like a Word document, or Excel sheets. If they are supposed to add photos, PowerPoint or Keynote could do the trick. You can ask people to fill one slide per trigger.

Online survey tools : people fill the same survey, again and again, for each trigger.

Communication tools : emails, Slack, WhatsApp, etc. are great tools if you need to use prompts. Exporting data might be tricky though.

Some UX research tools offer specific diary study options.

Diaries often have two parts: instructions and the actual data collection part.

Even if you have a kick-off meeting, reminding users of some information about the diary is essential. Here is a checklist of what you can put in the instructions :

• The goal of the research to help them understand the context
• When to log a diary entry (trigger)
• How long they will need to fill in the diary
• Who they can contact (and how) in case of questions, issues, etc.
• Specific instructions depending on what you want to collect
• An example of an entry

With each entry, the diary becomes a more complete collection of the data you are requesting from users.

You can have a very open format with one big, generic field where users record an entry however they want. Or, you can have a closed format with predefined, closed-ended questions .

After you’ve created your diary and your instructions (incl. prompts and questions), don't forget to pilot test it . Run a version with your colleagues, and double-check to make sure that you don't miss any typos.

Also, pilot the prompt system if you need one. For example, test the tool you will use to send emails to ask people to complete their entries. Make sure the email arrives and is readable.

You recruit users for user diary studies like you would for any other UX research study. But, there are a few specific details you need to be aware of when you conduct diary studies:

Diary studies require commitment over time. Make this clear when you are recruiting participants.

The higher the commitment, the higher the incentive you should provide.

You will have dropouts, so plan ahead by scheduling extra participants.

You've designed a very nice diary study. Great! But, you can't just send it out to users and expect them to fill it in.

When you conduct a diary study, you should start with an onboarding session for your users. It can be a 1-on-1 session or a smaller group session. I tend to prefer 1-on-1s so that I can answer specific questions that they have.

Explain what is expected of them and how long the study will run for. Also, explain the trigger, especially if it is an event trigger . Answer all the questions they have. And more importantly, ensure that they know how to contact you if they have more follow up questions.

Go through the diary with them. If it's a digital file, make sure they can open it. If it's a survey, make sure that it works in their browser. The goal of this session is to remove every friction that could occur once they are on their own.

During the study, don't leave participants alone if you want them to stay engaged. Check-in with them and send them reminders , even if it is not a prompt-based survey. It can be a short email, or a quick call. The format is up to you.

If some people drop out, following up with them is a good way to see if you can bring them back into the study and understand why they dropped out.

Give your participants a heads up a few days before they reach the end of the study. If the tool wasn't synchronous, like a Word or Excel sheet, it's now time to collect the files . Don't forget to back them up somewhere, just in case.

And of course, thank the users for their time and explain how they can receive their incentive for participating in the study.

I usually do a first run of "quick analysis" by reviewing the files and answers to get a basic idea of the data that was collected.

If you use a tool that lets you get the raw data in real-time, you can start a pre-analysis before the study is completed and get started on tagging the data, noticing patterns, etc. Be careful not to draw any conclusions yet, though!

How you analyze the diary's content depends on your research question and scope. Since you’ll get a lot of open content, this may take some time. I recommend doing this step with your team. I am a big fan of excel sheets for such work.

I always start by cleaning up the data. Are there any diaries that have been completed poorly? Remove them if the information quality won't bring anything to the study.

You can make use of dedicated tools for both qualitative and quantitative data analysis. Qualitative data (open content, audio transcripts, long texts, ...) can be a bit tricky to work with, but there are plenty of methods you can use to analyze it.

I find techniques like thematic analysis and rainbow sheets to be helpful research methods.

Depending on the study, you'll want to debrief with your diary study participants once you have finished analyzing the data. Maybe you have some follow up questions you'd like to ask about one of the topics. Perhaps there is a specific entry you don't quite understand. You can schedule short follow-up sessions with the users if needed.

Scheduling a post study interview is also a good opportunity to thank your participant again. You can also ask for additional feedback about the diary, which can be especially helpful if you think you might run the study again. Was it too long? Too difficult? Were the questions clear? Did you have some people drop out?

Following up and finishing the analysis brings you to the next step: Sharing the results with your team(s).

The format, again, depends on the data collected and the study. It can be a report. Or you could build customer journey maps, empathy maps, etc. The format is up to your specific needs.

Creating an engaging user research presentation

As a general rule, investment banks are often a bit behind the curve when it comes to technology.

I recently worked on a project updating an internal tool for just such an organization. The platform was intended to help employees from different departments create and follow financial projects. The interface we were tasked to improve was 15 years old and required a complete rebuild!

To gain a better understanding of user behavior and how the existing tool was being used, we conducted user interviews. We collected data on their tasks and activities to ensure we migrated the right content and features.

Since we work in an agile way, we had already created pages and features that were available for users to try out in a beta version. After the interviews, we gave our early adopters access to that beta version.

We then conducted a diary study to understand the user migration and usage of our new version over the course of a month . We wanted to understand a few things:

How was the adoption going for new users?

Was there anything that stopped them from doing their daily tasks and activities with the new tool (missing content, features)?

Were there things we migrated but users couldn't find in the new tool (usability or information architecture issues)?

Did they have any improvement suggestions?

The diary study started with a one-hour kick-off session with the users. We gave them access to the new tool and observed them performing their daily tasks on the latest version.

Next, we explained the concept of the user diary. We asked them to use the new tool on a daily basis and provided them with an excel sheet to be completed over the next month.

Finally, we explained the trigger : Log an entry whenever you need to do something, but aren't able to with the new tool (and need to go back to the old one).

After a month (and some follow-ups), we collected the diaries and merged them into one extensive document. In this document, we added a few extra columns to help us analyze the data:

Type (usability issue, improvement, new feature, new content, bug): Color-coded for faster identification within the file.

Gravity (trivial/minor/moderate/major/critical): Helpful for prioritization.

UXD comment : A column for extra information, like how we could improve it, or "have a follow-up interview with a user for this topic."

Story : To link to the user story.

Status : To show the status of the story.

Tag : The main topic of the entry. This was used for quantitative purposes to see which main issues we needed to tackle in the subsequent releases.

Here’s what that looked like for our project on internal tool migration:

Once our data was combined into a single spreadsheet, we went through each diary entry and began our analysis. We discussed each task that users could not complete using the new version of the tool, determined the gravity of the task, and if/how we would incorporate this into the future tool.

Our diary entries were very task-oriented. For example, people reported specific tasks they were trying to accomplish with the search and said precisely who/what and how they went about searching for this information. This helped us gather feedback and plan improvements.

This also allowed us to identify usability issues for features or content that might not have been clear in the new tool. For example, if a user logged content as missing, but we had already migrated it, this could be considered an issue.

All that data also helped with training and building our FAQ, which our enterprise users expected as part of change management.

As a result of conducting the user diary study, we were able to ensure that the new tool offered all of the original functionalities while incorporating some desperately needed updates.

The users played an integral role in the success of the new tool by allowing us to see what components were essential for them to do their jobs effectively. It also helped us evaluate what was missing by giving us a sneak peek into their daily tasks.

More Content on the Topic

Dear Diary: Using Diaries to Study User Experience

Diary Studies: Understanding Long-Term User Behavior and Experiences

Use a Diary Study to Extend Your UX research

If you choose to go with an excel sheet, you can use my template here:

The first sheet is the instruction sheet. Input all the instructions for your users: When to log, how much information to enter, contact information, etc.

Then ask your users to log entries into the second sheet, the “Log here”-sheet. This sheet is for data collection. You need to adapt the columns to your specific needs.

In the next step, you can build a consolidated sheet with all the data you collected from all the diaries.

User diary studies are a self-reporting research method: users fill in diary entries on their own.

Diaries are a great tool for collecting data over time. They can be especially helpful in situations where you can’t observe participants directly, for unplanned tasks, and for tasks that can’t be replicated.

It requires a time commitment from the participants and the data might not always be perfectly collected.

There are 3 types of triggers for a diary: event, prompt, and interval.

Choose the trigger and format for your diary study upfront.

When recruiting participants, make them aware of the amount of time it'll take.

Schedule onboarding sessions and follow-ups if you want the method to work.

You can collect both quantitative and qualitative data.

Schedule follow-up sessions with participants to discuss entries, get more information, and thank them.

Stéphanie is a UX Researcher & Designer based in Luxembourg. She has 12+ years of experience and specializes in enterprise UX and mobile. She teaches, speaks, and writes about design, UX research, accessibility, cognitive biases, design-dev relationship, etc. Besides that Stéphanie enjoys good tea, bike rides, and drawing illustrations. She says about herself: "My D&D alignment is chaotic neutral and I am better at keeping my teammates alive in video games than my plants."

Don't hesitate to reach out to her for questions about research and design!

• Search Menu
• Browse content in Arts and Humanities
• Browse content in Archaeology
• Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Archaeology
• Archaeological Methodology and Techniques
• Archaeology by Region
• Archaeology of Religion
• Archaeology of Trade and Exchange
• Biblical Archaeology
• Contemporary and Public Archaeology
• Environmental Archaeology
• Historical Archaeology
• History and Theory of Archaeology
• Industrial Archaeology
• Landscape Archaeology
• Mortuary Archaeology
• Prehistoric Archaeology
• Underwater Archaeology
• Urban Archaeology
• Zooarchaeology
• Browse content in Architecture
• Architectural Structure and Design
• History of Architecture
• Residential and Domestic Buildings
• Theory of Architecture
• Browse content in Art
• Art Subjects and Themes
• History of Art
• Industrial and Commercial Art
• Theory of Art
• Biographical Studies
• Byzantine Studies
• Browse content in Classical Studies
• Classical Literature
• Classical Reception
• Classical History
• Classical Philosophy
• Classical Mythology
• Classical Art and Architecture
• Classical Oratory and Rhetoric
• Greek and Roman Papyrology
• Greek and Roman Archaeology
• Greek and Roman Epigraphy
• Greek and Roman Law
• Late Antiquity
• Religion in the Ancient World
• Digital Humanities
• Browse content in History
• Colonialism and Imperialism
• Diplomatic History
• Environmental History
• Genealogy, Heraldry, Names, and Honours
• Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
• Historical Geography
• History by Period
• History of Emotions
• History of Agriculture
• History of Education
• History of Gender and Sexuality
• Industrial History
• Intellectual History
• International History
• Labour History
• Legal and Constitutional History
• Local and Family History
• Maritime History
• Military History
• National Liberation and Post-Colonialism
• Oral History
• Political History
• Public History
• Regional and National History
• Revolutions and Rebellions
• Slavery and Abolition of Slavery
• Social and Cultural History
• Theory, Methods, and Historiography
• Urban History
• World History
• Browse content in Language Teaching and Learning
• Language Learning (Specific Skills)
• Language Teaching Theory and Methods
• Browse content in Linguistics
• Applied Linguistics
• Cognitive Linguistics
• Computational Linguistics
• Forensic Linguistics
• Grammar, Syntax and Morphology
• Historical and Diachronic Linguistics
• History of English
• Language Evolution
• Language Reference
• Language Variation
• Language Families
• Language Acquisition
• Lexicography
• Linguistic Anthropology
• Linguistic Theories
• Linguistic Typology
• Phonetics and Phonology
• Psycholinguistics
• Sociolinguistics
• Translation and Interpretation
• Writing Systems
• Browse content in Literature
• Bibliography
• Children's Literature Studies
• Literary Studies (Romanticism)
• Literary Studies (American)
• Literary Studies (Modernism)
• Literary Studies (Asian)
• Literary Studies (European)
• Literary Studies (Eco-criticism)
• Literary Studies - World
• Literary Studies (1500 to 1800)
• Literary Studies (19th Century)
• Literary Studies (20th Century onwards)
• Literary Studies (African American Literature)
• Literary Studies (British and Irish)
• Literary Studies (Early and Medieval)
• Literary Studies (Fiction, Novelists, and Prose Writers)
• Literary Studies (Gender Studies)
• Literary Studies (Graphic Novels)
• Literary Studies (History of the Book)
• Literary Studies (Plays and Playwrights)
• Literary Studies (Poetry and Poets)
• Literary Studies (Postcolonial Literature)
• Literary Studies (Queer Studies)
• Literary Studies (Science Fiction)
• Literary Studies (Travel Literature)
• Literary Studies (War Literature)
• Literary Studies (Women's Writing)
• Literary Theory and Cultural Studies
• Mythology and Folklore
• Shakespeare Studies and Criticism
• Browse content in Media Studies
• Browse content in Music
• Applied Music
• Dance and Music
• Ethics in Music
• Ethnomusicology
• Gender and Sexuality in Music
• Medicine and Music
• Music Cultures
• Music and Media
• Music and Culture
• Music and Religion
• Music Education and Pedagogy
• Music Theory and Analysis
• Musical Scores, Lyrics, and Libretti
• Musical Structures, Styles, and Techniques
• Musicology and Music History
• Performance Practice and Studies
• Race and Ethnicity in Music
• Sound Studies
• Browse content in Performing Arts
• Browse content in Philosophy
• Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art
• Epistemology
• Feminist Philosophy
• History of Western Philosophy
• Metaphysics
• Moral Philosophy
• Non-Western Philosophy
• Philosophy of Language
• Philosophy of Mind
• Philosophy of Perception
• Philosophy of Action
• Philosophy of Law
• Philosophy of Religion
• Philosophy of Science
• Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic
• Practical Ethics
• Social and Political Philosophy
• Browse content in Religion
• Biblical Studies
• Christianity
• East Asian Religions
• History of Religion
• Judaism and Jewish Studies
• Qumran Studies
• Religion and Education
• Religion and Health
• Religion and Politics
• Religion and Science
• Religion and Law
• Religion and Art, Literature, and Music
• Religious Studies
• Browse content in Society and Culture
• Cookery, Food, and Drink
• Cultural Studies
• Customs and Traditions
• Ethical Issues and Debates
• Hobbies, Games, Arts and Crafts
• Lifestyle, Home, and Garden
• Natural world, Country Life, and Pets
• Popular Beliefs and Controversial Knowledge
• Sports and Outdoor Recreation
• Technology and Society
• Travel and Holiday
• Visual Culture
• Browse content in Law
• Arbitration
• Browse content in Company and Commercial Law
• Commercial Law
• Company Law
• Browse content in Comparative Law
• Systems of Law
• Competition Law
• Browse content in Constitutional and Administrative Law
• Government Powers
• Judicial Review
• Local Government Law
• Military and Defence Law
• Parliamentary and Legislative Practice
• Construction Law
• Contract Law
• Browse content in Criminal Law
• Criminal Procedure
• Criminal Evidence Law
• Sentencing and Punishment
• Employment and Labour Law
• Environment and Energy Law
• Browse content in Financial Law
• Banking Law
• Insolvency Law
• History of Law
• Human Rights and Immigration
• Intellectual Property Law
• Browse content in International Law
• Private International Law and Conflict of Laws
• Public International Law
• IT and Communications Law
• Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law
• Law and Society
• Law and Politics
• Browse content in Legal System and Practice
• Courts and Procedure
• Legal Skills and Practice
• Primary Sources of Law
• Regulation of Legal Profession
• Medical and Healthcare Law
• Browse content in Policing
• Criminal Investigation and Detection
• Police and Security Services
• Police Procedure and Law
• Police Regional Planning
• Browse content in Property Law
• Personal Property Law
• Study and Revision
• Terrorism and National Security Law
• Browse content in Trusts Law
• Wills and Probate or Succession
• Browse content in Medicine and Health
• Browse content in Allied Health Professions
• Arts Therapies
• Clinical Science
• Dietetics and Nutrition
• Occupational Therapy
• Operating Department Practice
• Physiotherapy
• Radiography
• Speech and Language Therapy
• Browse content in Anaesthetics
• General Anaesthesia
• Neuroanaesthesia
• Clinical Neuroscience
• Browse content in Clinical Medicine
• Acute Medicine
• Cardiovascular Medicine
• Clinical Genetics
• Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics
• Dermatology
• Endocrinology and Diabetes
• Gastroenterology
• Genito-urinary Medicine
• Geriatric Medicine
• Infectious Diseases
• Medical Toxicology
• Medical Oncology
• Pain Medicine
• Palliative Medicine
• Rehabilitation Medicine
• Respiratory Medicine and Pulmonology
• Rheumatology
• Sleep Medicine
• Sports and Exercise Medicine
• Community Medical Services
• Critical Care
• Emergency Medicine
• Forensic Medicine
• Haematology
• History of Medicine
• Browse content in Medical Skills
• Clinical Skills
• Communication Skills
• Nursing Skills
• Surgical Skills
• Medical Ethics
• Browse content in Medical Dentistry
• Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
• Paediatric Dentistry
• Restorative Dentistry and Orthodontics
• Surgical Dentistry
• Medical Statistics and Methodology
• Browse content in Neurology
• Clinical Neurophysiology
• Neuropathology
• Nursing Studies
• Browse content in Obstetrics and Gynaecology
• Gynaecology
• Occupational Medicine
• Ophthalmology
• Otolaryngology (ENT)
• Browse content in Paediatrics
• Neonatology
• Browse content in Pathology
• Chemical Pathology
• Clinical Cytogenetics and Molecular Genetics
• Histopathology
• Medical Microbiology and Virology
• Patient Education and Information
• Browse content in Pharmacology
• Psychopharmacology
• Browse content in Popular Health
• Caring for Others
• Complementary and Alternative Medicine
• Self-help and Personal Development
• Browse content in Preclinical Medicine
• Cell Biology
• Molecular Biology and Genetics
• Reproduction, Growth and Development
• Primary Care
• Professional Development in Medicine
• Browse content in Psychiatry
• Addiction Medicine
• Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
• Forensic Psychiatry
• Learning Disabilities
• Old Age Psychiatry
• Psychotherapy
• Browse content in Public Health and Epidemiology
• Epidemiology
• Public Health
• Browse content in Radiology
• Clinical Radiology
• Interventional Radiology
• Nuclear Medicine
• Radiation Oncology
• Reproductive Medicine
• Browse content in Surgery
• Cardiothoracic Surgery
• Gastro-intestinal and Colorectal Surgery
• General Surgery
• Neurosurgery
• Paediatric Surgery
• Peri-operative Care
• Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
• Surgical Oncology
• Transplant Surgery
• Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery
• Vascular Surgery
• Browse content in Science and Mathematics
• Browse content in Biological Sciences
• Aquatic Biology
• Biochemistry
• Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
• Developmental Biology
• Ecology and Conservation
• Evolutionary Biology
• Genetics and Genomics
• Microbiology
• Molecular and Cell Biology
• Natural History
• Plant Sciences and Forestry
• Research Methods in Life Sciences
• Structural Biology
• Systems Biology
• Zoology and Animal Sciences
• Browse content in Chemistry
• Analytical Chemistry
• Computational Chemistry
• Crystallography
• Environmental Chemistry
• Industrial Chemistry
• Inorganic Chemistry
• Materials Chemistry
• Medicinal Chemistry
• Mineralogy and Gems
• Organic Chemistry
• Physical Chemistry
• Polymer Chemistry
• Study and Communication Skills in Chemistry
• Theoretical Chemistry
• Browse content in Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Architecture and Logic Design
• Game Studies
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Mathematical Theory of Computation
• Programming Languages
• Software Engineering
• Systems Analysis and Design
• Virtual Reality
• Browse content in Computing
• Business Applications
• Computer Games
• Computer Security
• Computer Networking and Communications
• Digital Lifestyle
• Graphical and Digital Media Applications
• Operating Systems
• Browse content in Earth Sciences and Geography
• Atmospheric Sciences
• Environmental Geography
• Geology and the Lithosphere
• Maps and Map-making
• Meteorology and Climatology
• Oceanography and Hydrology
• Palaeontology
• Physical Geography and Topography
• Regional Geography
• Soil Science
• Urban Geography
• Browse content in Engineering and Technology
• Agriculture and Farming
• Biological Engineering
• Civil Engineering, Surveying, and Building
• Electronics and Communications Engineering
• Energy Technology
• Engineering (General)
• Environmental Science, Engineering, and Technology
• History of Engineering and Technology
• Mechanical Engineering and Materials
• Technology of Industrial Chemistry
• Transport Technology and Trades
• Browse content in Environmental Science
• Applied Ecology (Environmental Science)
• Conservation of the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Environmental Sustainability
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Environmental Science)
• Management of Land and Natural Resources (Environmental Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environmental Science)
• Nuclear Issues (Environmental Science)
• Pollution and Threats to the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Environmental Science)
• History of Science and Technology
• Browse content in Materials Science
• Ceramics and Glasses
• Composite Materials
• Metals, Alloying, and Corrosion
• Nanotechnology
• Browse content in Mathematics
• Applied Mathematics
• Biomathematics and Statistics
• History of Mathematics
• Mathematical Education
• Mathematical Finance
• Mathematical Analysis
• Numerical and Computational Mathematics
• Probability and Statistics
• Pure Mathematics
• Browse content in Neuroscience
• Cognition and Behavioural Neuroscience
• Development of the Nervous System
• Disorders of the Nervous System
• History of Neuroscience
• Invertebrate Neurobiology
• Molecular and Cellular Systems
• Neuroendocrinology and Autonomic Nervous System
• Neuroscientific Techniques
• Sensory and Motor Systems
• Browse content in Physics
• Astronomy and Astrophysics
• Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
• Biological and Medical Physics
• Classical Mechanics
• Computational Physics
• Condensed Matter Physics
• Electromagnetism, Optics, and Acoustics
• History of Physics
• Mathematical and Statistical Physics
• Measurement Science
• Nuclear Physics
• Particles and Fields
• Plasma Physics
• Quantum Physics
• Relativity and Gravitation
• Semiconductor and Mesoscopic Physics
• Browse content in Psychology
• Affective Sciences
• Clinical Psychology
• Cognitive Psychology
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Criminal and Forensic Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Educational Psychology
• Evolutionary Psychology
• Health Psychology
• History and Systems in Psychology
• Music Psychology
• Neuropsychology
• Organizational Psychology
• Psychological Assessment and Testing
• Psychology of Human-Technology Interaction
• Psychology Professional Development and Training
• Research Methods in Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Browse content in Social Sciences
• Browse content in Anthropology
• Anthropology of Religion
• Human Evolution
• Medical Anthropology
• Physical Anthropology
• Regional Anthropology
• Social and Cultural Anthropology
• Theory and Practice of Anthropology
• Browse content in Business and Management
• Business Ethics
• Business History
• Business Strategy
• Business and Technology
• Business and Government
• Business and the Environment
• Comparative Management
• Corporate Governance
• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Entrepreneurship
• Health Management
• Human Resource Management
• Industrial and Employment Relations
• Industry Studies
• Information and Communication Technologies
• International Business
• Knowledge Management
• Management and Management Techniques
• Operations Management
• Organizational Theory and Behaviour
• Pensions and Pension Management
• Public and Nonprofit Management
• Strategic Management
• Supply Chain Management
• Browse content in Criminology and Criminal Justice
• Criminal Justice
• Criminology
• Forms of Crime
• International and Comparative Criminology
• Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice
• Development Studies
• Browse content in Economics
• Agricultural, Environmental, and Natural Resource Economics
• Asian Economics
• Behavioural Finance
• Behavioural Economics and Neuroeconomics
• Econometrics and Mathematical Economics
• Economic History
• Economic Methodology
• Economic Systems
• Economic Development and Growth
• Financial Markets
• Financial Institutions and Services
• General Economics and Teaching
• Health, Education, and Welfare
• History of Economic Thought
• International Economics
• Labour and Demographic Economics
• Law and Economics
• Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics
• Microeconomics
• Public Economics
• Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics
• Welfare Economics
• Browse content in Education
• Adult Education and Continuous Learning
• Care and Counselling of Students
• Early Childhood and Elementary Education
• Educational Equipment and Technology
• Educational Strategies and Policy
• Higher and Further Education
• Organization and Management of Education
• Philosophy and Theory of Education
• Schools Studies
• Secondary Education
• Teaching of a Specific Subject
• Teaching of Specific Groups and Special Educational Needs
• Teaching Skills and Techniques
• Browse content in Environment
• Applied Ecology (Social Science)
• Climate Change
• Conservation of the Environment (Social Science)
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Social Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environment)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Social Science)
• Browse content in Human Geography
• Cultural Geography
• Economic Geography
• Political Geography
• Browse content in Interdisciplinary Studies
• Communication Studies
• Museums, Libraries, and Information Sciences
• Browse content in Politics
• African Politics
• Asian Politics
• Chinese Politics
• Comparative Politics
• Conflict Politics
• Elections and Electoral Studies
• Environmental Politics
• European Union
• Foreign Policy
• Gender and Politics
• Human Rights and Politics
• Indian Politics
• International Relations
• International Organization (Politics)
• International Political Economy
• Irish Politics
• Latin American Politics
• Middle Eastern Politics
• Political Behaviour
• Political Economy
• Political Institutions
• Political Theory
• Political Methodology
• Political Communication
• Political Philosophy
• Political Sociology
• Politics and Law
• Public Policy
• Public Administration
• Quantitative Political Methodology
• Regional Political Studies
• Russian Politics
• Security Studies
• State and Local Government
• UK Politics
• US Politics
• Browse content in Regional and Area Studies
• African Studies
• Asian Studies
• East Asian Studies
• Japanese Studies
• Latin American Studies
• Middle Eastern Studies
• Native American Studies
• Scottish Studies
• Browse content in Research and Information
• Research Methods
• Browse content in Social Work
• Addictions and Substance Misuse
• Adoption and Fostering
• Care of the Elderly
• Child and Adolescent Social Work
• Couple and Family Social Work
• Developmental and Physical Disabilities Social Work
• Direct Practice and Clinical Social Work
• Emergency Services
• Human Behaviour and the Social Environment
• International and Global Issues in Social Work
• Mental and Behavioural Health
• Social Justice and Human Rights
• Social Policy and Advocacy
• Social Work and Crime and Justice
• Social Work Macro Practice
• Social Work Practice Settings
• Social Work Research and Evidence-based Practice
• Welfare and Benefit Systems
• Browse content in Sociology
• Childhood Studies
• Community Development
• Comparative and Historical Sociology
• Economic Sociology
• Gender and Sexuality
• Gerontology and Ageing
• Health, Illness, and Medicine
• Marriage and the Family
• Migration Studies
• Occupations, Professions, and Work
• Organizations
• Population and Demography
• Race and Ethnicity
• Social Theory
• Social Movements and Social Change
• Social Research and Statistics
• Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility
• Sociology of Religion
• Sociology of Education
• Sport and Leisure
• Urban and Rural Studies
• Browse content in Warfare and Defence
• Defence Strategy, Planning, and Research
• Land Forces and Warfare
• Military Administration
• Military Life and Institutions
• Naval Forces and Warfare
• Other Warfare and Defence Issues
• Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution
• Weapons and Equipment

• < Previous chapter
• Next chapter >

2 Diary Data Collection as a Qualitative Research Method

• Published: January 2018
• Cite Icon Cite
• Permissions Icon Permissions

This chapter discusses the use of the diary in qualitative research, the role of the researcher and the diarist, the format of the entries, the epistemological orientations underlying diary designs, and various types of diary studies. The diary has always been among the options in the qualitative methodological repertoire and actually predates other more common contemporary methods for data collection. Diary studies involve the standard tasks of any research project: reviewing the literature and identifying research questions; designing and carrying out a data collection protocol; and analyzing and discussing the data. The style of analysis depends upon the type of study conducted. This chapter will discuss the use of diaries in several types Descriptive, Constructionist, and Applied Research designs.

Signed in as

Institutional accounts.

• GoogleCrawler [DO NOT DELETE]
• Google Scholar Indexing

Personal account

• Sign in with email/username & password
• Get email alerts
• Save searches
• Purchase content
• Activate your purchase/trial code

Institutional access

• Sign in with a library card Sign in with username/password Recommend to your librarian
• Institutional account management
• Get help with access

Access to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases. If you are a member of an institution with an active account, you may be able to access content in one of the following ways:

IP based access

Typically, access is provided across an institutional network to a range of IP addresses. This authentication occurs automatically, and it is not possible to sign out of an IP authenticated account.

Sign in through your institution

Choose this option to get remote access when outside your institution. Shibboleth/Open Athens technology is used to provide single sign-on between your institution’s website and Oxford Academic.

• Click Sign in through your institution.
• Select your institution from the list provided, which will take you to your institution's website to sign in.
• When on the institution site, please use the credentials provided by your institution. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.
• Following successful sign in, you will be returned to Oxford Academic.

If your institution is not listed or you cannot sign in to your institution’s website, please contact your librarian or administrator.

Sign in with a library card

Enter your library card number to sign in. If you cannot sign in, please contact your librarian.

Society Members

Society member access to a journal is achieved in one of the following ways:

Sign in through society site

Many societies offer single sign-on between the society website and Oxford Academic. If you see ‘Sign in through society site’ in the sign in pane within a journal:

• Click Sign in through society site.
• When on the society site, please use the credentials provided by that society. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.

If you do not have a society account or have forgotten your username or password, please contact your society.

Sign in using a personal account

Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members. See below.

A personal account can be used to get email alerts, save searches, purchase content, and activate subscriptions.

Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members.

Viewing your signed in accounts

Click the account icon in the top right to:

• View your signed in personal account and access account management features.
• View the institutional accounts that are providing access.

Signed in but can't access content

Oxford Academic is home to a wide variety of products. The institutional subscription may not cover the content that you are trying to access. If you believe you should have access to that content, please contact your librarian.

For librarians and administrators, your personal account also provides access to institutional account management. Here you will find options to view and activate subscriptions, manage institutional settings and access options, access usage statistics, and more.

Our books are available by subscription or purchase to libraries and institutions.

• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Rights and permissions
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Join thousands of product people at Insight Out Conf on April 11. Register free.

Insights hub solutions

Analyze data

Uncover deep customer insights with fast, powerful features, store insights, curate and manage insights in one searchable platform, scale research, unlock the potential of customer insights at enterprise scale.

Featured reads

Inspiration

Three things to look forward to at Insight Out

Tips and tricks

Make magic with your customer data in Dovetail

Four ways Dovetail helps Product Managers master continuous product discovery

Events and videos

© Dovetail Research Pty. Ltd.

Diary study templates

Get actionable insights every time

Analyze participant entries from a diary study to understand user behavior and experiences, and to identify patterns and themes in the data.

Last updated

10 April 2023

Reviewed by

Create actionable insights from your diary studies

If you’re looking for a useful and interesting way to uncover how your users feel about something and their behaviors over time, consider diary studies. 

There are several reasons to consider a diary study, such as it is more of a "hands-off" method for collecting data. Your users can do it from anywhere, which can be cost-effective. 

Of course, having the right template for your diary study is essential to its success. You can customize templates for multiple studies, allowing the researcher to create studies without starting from scratch each time.

What is a diary study?

Diary studies or user diaries are a way to study users' habits, behaviors, activities, and experiences of a product or service. You usually do this study toward the beginning or discovery stage of your research, and it can last for a specific period of time. The participants of a diary study keep a log or diary of their user experience for that time frame. It can last a few days or several weeks. 

Diary studies are a cost-effective alternative to field surveys or studies, where you bring participants to a site for observation. With diary studies, participants can record or log their experiences when and where they occur. Generally, diary studies are qualitative in nature and help you understand the users' experiences with day-to-day documentation.

Why should I run a diary study?

Since diary studies take place when a participant logs their experience, it can happen without a major disruption in their day—or yours. In fact, it can happen when they want to make a note about a thought or an issue when it happens. You can review the responses in real time or whenever it is convenient for you. This differs from field studies, as you don't have to arrange schedules, plan travel, or hire outside help to fulfill your on-site requirements. 

Some studies may require a study sample from a large geographic area. With a diary study, geographic location doesn’t limit you. In a global business environment, you are able to include representative participants from anywhere.

Diary studies also allow users to be more open and less likely to modify their thoughts and responses than when someone is watching them. Logging responses as the experience occurs also gives the participant a more intimate, self-discovering relationship with the study.

 Advantages of a diary study

There are various advantages to a diary study:

Cost-effective : Diary studies offer cost savings by being able to perform the studies at the participant’s location without additional expense of travel, moderators, and location rentals.

Habitual responses : Because of the data collection happening over time, respondents can record responses as they happen instead of having to remember what happened earlier in the day.

Behavior in natural environment : Diary studies also allow for testing to occur in a natural environment, that is the place where people use the product, revealing very real and intimate moments of someone’s daily life. 

Disadvantages of a diary study

As with any research, there are pros and cons to the methods. Though diary studies have the advantage of collecting data over a period of time, if the defined time is too lengthy, respondents either forget to complete it or don’t want to commit to the time it takes to do the study for that long. Further disadvantages include: 

Budget for incentives : Incentives for participants may eat into your study cost savings. This is particularly true if the study is lengthy or complex. For you to get a high success rate of completion, incentives will have to correspond to the time spent.

Measuring emotions and behaviors : Recording emotions and behaviors is great for some studies, but you may not get all the data you need without observing the respondents. It’s easy to veer off-course at times when a diary study allows emotional responses without moderation.

Keeping focus on the task: It’s important to keep your study focused on the task in order to get all the information you need without the participants giving answers they think you want. You must design diary studies to not only get complete data but to do so in a way that keeps respondents on point while giving them the opportunity for self-expression.

Bulk of data: You may gather lots of data! That’s great, but that also means lots of analysis. You may have to hire help to analyze the piles of data you receive.

Methodology 

In order for diary studies to be successful, there are some things that you should consider. If you need answers fast, diary studies may not be your method. If you have a short, yes or no study question, a diary study is not what you want. Or if you don’t have the staff or ability to staff for analysis, you may want to try something other than a diary study. But if you want to collect data over time, where the user is, and you want to work through logs for user activities, experiences, and behaviors, a diary study may be for you.  

Who are your participants?

Recruiting participants is an important step in setting up your diary study. Look for engaging, committed respondents. Ask straightforward and to-the-point screener questions. Offer an incentive that correlates to the size and length of the study. If the participant seems disengaged, uninterested, or uncommitted, move on. If your study is lengthy, expect some participants to drop out before it is complete, so recruit a few extras.

Introductions expectations

Once you’ve determined that the participants meet your qualifications, the recruitment process must include information to the participants on the amount of time and commitment that’s required. The best and most effective way is with one-to-one onboarding, where respondents are more likely to ask questions. Be firm about what you expect of participants. Go through the diary, so they are familiar with it, and if digital, check they can access it with their browser. Leave contact information in case issues or questions come up.

Feedback & follow up 

Check in on participants on a regular basis. Ask if they are having problems and if they are currently working on their diary study. Send them reminders. Call them. Whatever works for you. Your respondents are more likely to remain engaged and active if you send friendly reminders or follow-up calls.

You must be clear on what you expect for your diary study. The users should log the specific activities in the time frame you designate. Users should do logging, transmission of data, video, or any other required activities as close to real time as possible.  

You will have to monitor your participants. The amount of monitoring depends on the length and complexity of the study. If you see that a participant isn’t responsive or if you aren’t receiving feedback when requested, spend extra time to determine if the respondent is still active. Remind them a few days before the end of the survey so they can complete the study on time.

Analysis and wrap up

When the diary study is complete, remind participants to return diary study materials in a specified time frame. Participants should know that incentives are paid upon completion, which can help get data submitted.

Have a policy in place for following up on respondents that haven’t returned or finished the study. Determine the best way to follow up, either by phone or email. If someone does not complete the study, try to determine why and find out if there is a way to get them to finish.

Analysis, depending on the size of the study and the size of the sample, can be daunting. Expect to spend some time on analysis before sharing the insights. If there are incomplete or unclear entries, contact the respondent for clarity. Always send a thank you email or call to let the study participants know you appreciate their help.

Setting up your diary study templates can be done in a number of ways. For some smaller studies, you can actually put together a diary and mail it to them. This may work for small, local diary studies, but most people won't want to write everything down and carry the diary with them.  

Then there’s the handwriting! Unclear handwriting can lead you to misread, misinterpret, or disregard diary entries.  

And then there’s the post office. Counting on speedy delivery or even getting respondents to put them in the mailbox just seems to welcome problems.

There is also online access like email, Facebook, or whatever platform your participants may be familiar with. This makes it easier for your users, but retrieving and sorting data can be excruciating.  

You can build your own digital diary study if you’re on a limited budget for research, but some researchers would rather use parameters that have already been defined.

How many participants do you need for a diary study?

While some researchers say 10–15 respondents is optimal, the number of participants depends on the complexity and scope of the study. It’s always a good idea to recruit extra participants in case of drop-outs, particularly in long studies.

How long should a diary study be?

Diary studies can go on for a few days to several months. Each study is different and depends on the data needed and the nature of your study.

What is an example of a diary study method?

You can use diary methods to record user experiences either by using a diary, a video, or online or app-based entries. The user notes their experience, behaviors, and emotions when using a product or service. 

Editor’s picks

Last updated: 21 December 2023

Last updated: 16 December 2023

Last updated: 17 February 2024

Last updated: 19 November 2023

Last updated: 5 March 2024

Last updated: 15 February 2024

Last updated: 11 March 2024

Last updated: 12 December 2023

Last updated: 6 March 2024

Last updated: 10 April 2023

Last updated: 20 December 2023

Latest articles

Related topics, log in or sign up.

Get started for free