User Experience Mapping

Longitudinal research

Most user research types will give us in-the-moment results, or at best, a slice of the complete mental model. To create mental models, we need something that lasts for a longer time period, ideally days, if not weeks or months, to gain a better understanding of many behaviors and attitudes, even beyond the typical use-case scenarios of our solution. 

Longitudinal research covers a longer time period with the same test users. Longitudinal research can take a few days, or even months, depending on the research goal and budget. When creating a mental model map, the researchers focus on target behaviors in their larger context during the logging period, based on the recordings (logs), which can be in writing, audio, video ...