Drawing and acting as user experience research tools

This paper discusses the use of participant-generated drawings and drama workshops as user experience research methods. In spite of the lack of background literature on how drawings can generate useful insights on HCI issues, drawings have been successfully used in other research fields. On the contrary, drama workshops seem to be increasingly popular in recent participatory design research. After briefly introducing such previous work, three case studies are presented, illustrating the use of drawing and drama workshops when investigating the relationship between media technology users and two specific devices, namely televisions and mobile phones. The paper focuses on the methods and discusses their benefits and the challenges associated with their application. In particular, the findings are compared to those collected through a quantitative cross-cultural survey. The experience gathered during the three case studies is very encouraging and calls for additional reports of UX evaluations involving drawing- and theatre-based exercises.