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Observation frameworks made simple

These frameworks help designers evaluate and classify their findings, prioritise specific discovery questions, and create a more rounded evidence-based ethnographic note to share with stakeholders.

UX/UI Design
·
3 minute read 

Imagine this; you are super excited to begin your first ethnographic research project, and you start by dumping assumptions into a document to make discovery-related questions about the user. "How does the user interact with X, Y, and Z devices? When does the user interact the most with the X feature? Is the user making its shortcuts?" and more... You are thrilled to learn about how they function in their environment.

The day of the research comes, and you prepare yourself to do some "fly on the wall" techniques. By the end of the day, you have over 50 photos, ten videos, and endless voice notes. Now you might ask yourself, "How will I condense this information into a report?!"

UX Designers may struggle with this question when they engage in observation research because not all resources out there will point out frameworks for decompressing highly qualitative behavioural data. These frameworks help designers evaluate and classify their findings, prioritise specific discovery questions, and create a more rounded evidence-based ethnographic note to share with stakeholders.

AEIOU and POEMS frameworks

There are two observation frameworks you can use to decompress your findings:

  1. AEIOU:
  • Activities: the actions and behaviours people take to reach their goals.
  • Environments: The architecture, lighting, furniture, temperature, atmosphere, and anything related to the space.
  • Interactions: how people interact to achieve goals and how activities and the environment are affected by people.
  • Objects: The tools, software, or anything the user handles.
  • Users: The type of user or participant and how they communicate.
  1. POEMS:
  • People: Demographics, roles, behaviour, and quantity.
  • Objects: Anything people interact with, such as furniture, devices, machines, appliances, and tools.
  • Environments: The architecture, lighting, furniture, temperature, atmosphere, and anything related to the place.
  • Messages: Tone of voice, social or professional interactions, and environmental messages.
  • Services: Software, apps, tools, and frameworks.

Both of these frameworks have labels where you can identify and mark your user, their environment, and the tools they use, but depending on the goal of your research, you need to use one or the other.

The AEIOU framework is excellent for:

  1. Getting to know more about the user journey.
  2. Learning how the user navigates or communicates in their environment.
  3. Understanding which user interacts with which particular objects.

The POEMS framework is ideal for:

  1. Discovering who your user is based on their demographics and behavioural traits.
  2. Learning what services or other tools they have around them.
  3. Finding out how they express themselves or communicate in their environment.

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Using observation frameworks

To prepare these frameworks, all you need is any tool where you can create a table. Dovetail, Notion, Confluence, or Excel would be perfect. You can also use design tools like Figma or Worksheets from Strategyzer, but keep in mind that your work will become a little more manual in terms of tagging, counting, and linking patterns.

Example of the AEIOU framework in Notion using placeholders.

Once you have the tables for the framework ready, gather the images you've collated during your research and classify them using the corresponding tags attached to the framework you are using. If you encounter exact replicas of interactions or labels, you can mark them as counters of evidence for patterns by linking the cell to the image database.

You can also make extra cells to insert:

  • Date, time, and researcher name.
  • A description for context or scenario summary.
  • Sound recordings for environmental evidence.
  • Pain points or opportunities.

After classifying the pictures and videos you've taken, congrats! You've finished your observation framework and now have a highly effective source for quantifying key insights of your research. You can use this to summarize your findings in an executive report as well as use nuggets of information from these tables to explain the insights to stakeholders.

In other uses, you can also turn this into a database to check in with areas of improvement, discovery, or growth. As well as data, you can link with your user persona database to empathise with them on a deeper level.

Final thoughts and recommendations

We hope you'll try these frameworks in your next observation research.

If you are planning to decompress your observation research, don't forget to:

  1. Choose an observation framework based on:
  2. Discover who your user is.
  3. Get to know more about journeys and interactions.
  4. Pick a tool that will make it easier for you to share your findings with stakeholders and link it with other research databases.
  5. Make a table, grid, or frame where you can annotate your research insights.
  6. Share some of these tables as evidence when making an executive or research report to get a more impactful result.