One of our classes was titled "Observing Users." This class was centered around many of the tenants of user research. I found Walt Dickie's "Seven Rules for Observational Research" to be a short and particularly helpful resource for getting a better handle on doing great research. Two of the best points were that "ordinary is what you are there to observe" and "whatever you saw could have happened differently."

My team and I focussed on observing oil change shops in Chicago. What interested us initially was that oil change shops are known for being less-than-honest because there is an imbalance of knowledge: the mechanic knows everything about your car and how much things cost and the owner of the vehicle knows almost nothing. We wanted to explore these interactions. The following is our final presentation and summarizing poster: