Want to gather in-the-moment insights from your customers and prospects? In a diary study, participants record their behaviors, thoughts, and feelings over time, allowing researchers to gather detailed insights about an experience, product, or service. Instead of a one-off survey or interview, you get a play-by-play account over days, weeks, or even months. The result is richer, more timely insight into customer behavior, unfiltered by hindsight.
What Is a Diary Study?
A diary study is a qualitative research method in which participants record their thoughts and behaviors over time. Unlike many other qualitative methods, such as focus groups or moderated usability tests, diary studies are typically conducted asynchronously, allowing for gathering insights in various contexts without a researcher present.
For example, a researcher who wants to understand and improve the experience of shopping for and ultimately buying a car might conduct a diary study with car shoppers over the course of several weeks, to document the process of researching options, visiting dealers and test driving cars, and then ultimately making a purchase decision. Insights gathered could be used to identify the biggest pain points in this process, to ultimately inform the development of new products or services that address those pain points.
Researchers typically field diary studies using virtual platforms that allow them to create activities participants will complete either at set times (e.g., each evening) or when certain events happen (e.g., you visit a car dealership). Depending on the tool you use, these activities may require participants to answer close- and open-ended questions, upload audio or video, or screen record.
A good diary study pushes participants to reveal not just what they did, said, or observed during an experience, but how they felt during that experience. This makes diary studies especially powerful for understanding the emotions behind journeys that unfold over time.
What Are Diary Studies Useful For?
Diary studies have many use cases, but they’re particularly useful in certain scenarios. Let’s look at some common scenarios in which diary studies can deliver effective insights:
Marketing: Mapping the Customer Journey
Diary studies offer researchers a window into participants’ real, lived experiences, capturing thoughts, decisions, and emotions as they unfold. By tracking a journey over time, marketers can identify key moments to influence behavior and ensure their messaging truly resonates.
Example: A higher education institution might use a diary study to follow prospective students through the college research, application, and selection process. This reveals what information prospective students seek at each stage and what might motivate them to take action, helping shape more effective campaigns and content.
Customer Experience (CX) & User Experience (UX): Identifying & Addressing Pain Points
Diary studies capture how users experience a product or service over time, highlighting what’s working, what’s frustrating, and how emotions shift throughout the journey. By documenting the current state of an experience, teams can uncover pain points to fix and strengths to preserve, ultimately improving satisfaction and engagement.
Example: A casino might run a diary study to improve the customer experience to increase satisfaction and, therefore, frequency of visitation. Insights could inform improvements to wayfinding and playing, what gaming and dining options are available, player communications, and more.
Product Development: Validating & Improving Products
Diary studies help product teams see how product offerings perform in real-world settings. They reveal usability issues, surface opportunities for improvement, and generate feedback that can shape product design, packaging, and messaging.
Example: Campos applied this approach with Ebb, a startup behind a drug-free sleep aid. We conducted a series of in-home diary studies, sending prototypes to users nationwide. Participants logged daily feedback on the experience, from setup to sleep quality to comfort, over several weeks. These entries uncovered insights that interviews alone would have missed. The findings helped Ebb’s team fine-tune the product, highlight key benefits for marketing, and improve usability. The result was a stronger product and a $38 million acquisition in the sleep tech space.
How to Conduct a Diary Study in UX Step-by-Step
Ready to try a diary study for your own research project? Success lies in careful planning and smart execution. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to conduct a diary study from the early planning stages:
- What exactly do we want to learn? The first step in any research study is defining clear objectives. Diary studies are powerful, but they’re not the right tool for every question. Make sure this method aligns with what you want to learn and how you plan to use the insights. When your goals match the strengths of a diary study, the results can be incredibly rich and actionable.
- Whose experiences will help us answer our questions? Once you’ve defined your objectives and confirmed that a diary study is the right approach, the next step is selecting the right participants. This means aligning on how many people to include and establishing clear screening criteria to ensure you capture insights from the right audience—those whose experiences will best reflect the journey or behaviors you want to understand.
- How long, how often, and when? With participants in place, the next step is defining the study structure: how long it will run, how many diary entries (or “engagements”) are expected, and how they’ll be triggered. Diary studies can last anywhere from a week to a year, and engagements can be event-based (e.g., log an entry after completing a task), time-based (e.g., nightly check-ins), or prompted by a researcher at key moments. The length and frequency of participation should also inform your incentive strategy, ensuring it’s appropriate and motivating for the level of effort required.
- Which platform or tool should we use? Select a tool that fits your audience, study goals, and budget. The easier it is for participants to submit entries, the better your data quality. Options include:
- Old school pen-and-paper journals
- Platforms specifically designed for diary study research
- Survey tools
- Bulletin board tools
- What should participants share in each entry? Finally, it’s time to draft the diary prompts or “engagements.” These should align with your research objectives and be clear, thoughtful, and easy for participants to respond to. For longer studies, you may not need to draft every prompt upfront. Keeping later engagements flexible allows you to adjust based on early findings, digging deeper into emerging themes or unexpected behaviors as the study unfolds. This adaptive approach helps ensure you’re capturing the most relevant and valuable insights as they arise.
Recruiting, Onboarding & Fielding the Diary Study
Strong study design is just the beginning. Successful diary studies also depend on keeping participants engaged from start to finish. Here are some tips to help your diary study stay on track during the recruiting and fielding phases:
- Recruit with Intention: Be upfront about the commitment required. Let participants know how long the study will last and how often they must submit entries. Transparency helps people self-select; those unwilling or unable to commit can opt out early, saving you time. Because diary studies, especially longer ones, typically experience higher attrition, recruit more participants than needed to ensure you have enough quality data.
- Onboard & Train Thoughtfully: Before the study begins in earnest, carefully onboard participants to ensure they understand the study’s goals, how to use the diary platform, and what makes a good entry. Use this time to answer questions and build confidence, setting each participant up for success from day one.
- Keep Engagement High: Diary studies work best when you stay actively involved during fielding. Thoughtful, timely probes from the research team can keep participants engaged and improve the quality of insights. Here are a few types of responses to consider:
- Friendly nudges for missed entries: “Just a quick nudge to log yesterday’s entry—let us know if you ran into any issues!”
- Positive reinforcement to encourage continued effort: “Thanks for the thoughtful feedback. Really helpful!”
- Follow-up questions to deepen insights: “You mentioned something was difficult to figure out… Was it the layout, the instructions, or something else?”
Turning Diary Study Data Into Insights
Once your diary study wraps and you’re staring at a (digital) mountain of entries, the real work begins: making sense of the data. Diary studies often yield rich, complex datasets—multiple entries per person filled with comments, ratings, photos, videos, and timestamps. Here’s how to tackle diary study analysis and reporting:
- Recenter on your study’s original goals to guide your analysis and stay focused.
- Export and review all entries to immerse yourself in the data and spot early patterns.
- Tag and group entries by theme or timeline to uncover key patterns and shifts.
- Pull in direct quotes and example audio/video/photos to bring your findings to life.
- Craft a narrative that focuses on key learnings (don’t just data dump!) and what they mean, given your objectives and how you plan to use the research.
Finding a Diary Study Research Partner
By now, you might think, “Diary studies sound incredibly useful but also like a lot of work!” You’re not wrong. A successful diary study takes thoughtful planning, hands-on management, and careful analysis. Not every team has the time or expertise to handle it all, especially on their first go. That’s where partnering with an experienced research firm can make all the difference.
Campos helps organizations unlock the full potential of diary studies without the guesswork. From quick-turn exercises to year-long engagements, we’ve seen how this method reveals real-world behaviors and rich, actionable insights that other approaches often miss. If you’re ready to explore complex journeys with a trusted, experienced partner, we’re here to help. Let’s get started.
