Over the past three years I have been involved with hundreds of team meetings, stakeholder meetings, stakeholder and user interviews, and design review sessions. A common theme in these meetings are for the majority of the attendees to bring their laptops with them. Many bring them in order to continue working, keep in touch with coworkers, take notes, keep on top of email or use it as a distraction during the ’slow’ portions of the meetings. All of these things really only accomplish one thing, it distracts them from whats going on around them.
I have always seen the monitor of a laptop as a ‘wall’ that gets put up between the owner and other people in the room. Even though you are all in the same room, and maybe sitting across from each other, there is a definite barrier between the person on the laptop and you. This ‘wall’ becomes more apparent when you are performing user experience activities such as user interviews, heuristic evaluations, ethnographic interviews, and usability studies. Participants can easily be put off by someone staring into a computer screen rather than giving them their devoted attention.
An argument for taking notes on a laptop for any type of interview is to have the ability to take notes verbatium and so you don’t need to transcribe the notes later. However, if the quality of information you are getting is effected by the use of a laptop, are you really gaining anything? Yes, taking the time to transcribe short hand notes into detailed notes can be time consuming, but the benefit of having higher quality data from the participant is worth it.
Last year was when all this really dawned on me, and since then I have tried to leave my laptop at my desk as much as possible. The only time I bring my laptop along is if I am required to present something, or if the projector is down and the group needs to view the same documentation. If a laptop isn’t required, my trustee moleskin notebook and water bottle are all I need. With these simple tools, I can ensure that distractions are keep to a minimum and the focus of the meeting or interview has my devoted attention.
