UX Camp Winter 2021
Remote Digital Ethnography: Understand Online Dating Behaviors Within the Digital Environment
Observing participants can present several challenges, yet still turns out invaluable data that informs our designs—so how in the heck can we observe thoroughly while still maintaining a remote posture? The digital layers of a users’ ecosystem interact to impact their experiences in user experience research today, ethnography should combine the physical and digital planes to understand multiple influences on any one interaction.
In online dating, there are many contextual elements to consider, including: virtual profiles, messaging, filters to find appropriate matches, use of multiple competitor apps, and geolocation, which create the user’s online environment. The UX digital landscape combines the context of the physical world plus in-app environment and connected ecosystems. The user’s environment is primarily digital. The surrounding world is just one plane/layer of consideration in these interactions and digital ethnography can help us understand how to design for these different layers of experience.
