I ran a study on Mechanical Turk, a crowdsourcing marketplace, where I surveyed over 600 individuals to better understand how a diverse group of people living in the United States thinks about intimate relationships and the conversations they have when in an intimate relationship.
In total, I asked five different questions, each question designed to invoke a response that could inform the concepts developed in the generative phase. The following is a list of those questions.
Mechanical Turk divided the larger study into multiple studies; each study was made up of one single question. If a research participant agreed to participate in a study, they were given one question and asked to answer that question to the best of their ability. Some participants ended up answering more than one question, by agreeing to participate in several different studies under the larger study.
Individuals partaking in studies on Mechanical Turk receive a nominal return for their participation and, because of this, provided me with responses that were occasionally less than adequate. To overcome this, I separated those answers that displayed little care from the more thoughtful answers. Also because the study was on Mechanical Turk, I was unable to see the demographics of my participants and how representative they are of intimate couples.
In total, I received over 600 responses to the five questions asked. Participants often described intimate relationships as a relationship "where love is expressed mutually and equally" and as a relationship that "consists of people who respect each other's boundaries and needs." They saw a positive conversation as one without "yelling," or when partners are not saying "negative or rude comments" like "no or not." Participants often said, they "just divert the conversation, skip to another topic" or "designate one night a week" when asked about dealing with tough conversations.
The responses I received from the Mechanical Turk study provided me with many insights. One such insight revealed there was little difference in how an individual defines an intimate relationship from a healthy intimate relationship, implying for the most part that individuals believe intimate relationships should be healthy. The study also validated findings from the Bot as Research Tool study, namely that users often lack awareness of relationship frameworks, tips, and strategies. It also provided me insight into the conversations that couples typically have and how they often focus on intimacy, expectations, communication, health, family, finances, and the past and result in feelings of loyalty, honesty, mutual understanding, trust, openness, and intimacy. These insights informed the interfaces and scenarios I designed in the generative phase.