What is diary research? Everything UX teams need to know

Not all UX insights come from a single research session. Some take shape slowly across moments, days, or even weeks.

UX diary studies help you catch what interviews and other usability tests often miss. From early discovery to post-launch feedback, they give you a view into the messy, contextual, day-to-day reality of product use.

In this article, we break down when to run a diary study, how to set one up, what to watch out for, and how to get the most from your data.

A UX diary study—also known as diary research—is a longitudinal (running over a period of time) UX research method used for qualitative data collection. Participants keep a diary to record their thoughts, feelings, and behavior while using a product. The study can range from days to a month or longer. During this time, users log specific information about their activities regarding the product being studied.

Diary studies give unique contextual insights about real-time user behavior and needs.

Unlike other research methods—such as usability tests or user interviews—diary studies provide qualitative data based on the reality of users interacting with products.

Product teams can use insights from diary studies to define UX features and requirements, creating a truly user-centered experience, without the guesswork.

Here are some of the benefits of diary studies in more detail:

One of the greatest benefits of diary studies is how they convey a product’s impact within a real-world context. Diary research requires study participants to interact with a product in their everyday life, and record data in-situ (or shortly after).

Where the majority of research methods ask participants questions outside a real-life scenario, diary studies do the opposite. As a result, you’ll receive far more reliable, honest, and contextualized data.

For example, say you’re making a travel maps app. During a usability test, users may find a few issues with the app. However, in the real world, users may discover that the app doesn’t work offline and makes navigation difficult. They may realize that some of the features they use most when actually navigating are ones they barely considered when sitting in a research room.

This contextual data is incredibly valuable and provides key feedback points to help product teams prioritize features and fixes.

Diary research offers designers and Product teams a real-world understanding of how users interact with a product, so they can focus on the micro-moments of user experience.

Where some research methods reveal broad strokes of user insights, diary studies focus on the details that build a bigger picture of the user experience.

For example, if you’re researching what makes users purchase a new product, simply asking them “What made you purchase this product?” might provide a different answer than observing their thoughts and frustrations while they use the product over the course of a week or longer. A longitudinal study, like a diary study, will surface micro moments that accumulate during the user experience.

By giving participants the opportunity to record their own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in the moments they happen—via a digital diary, mobile app, or diary study tool—you gain a deeper understanding of how your product impacts the user in real-world scenarios.

Some teams combine data from diary studies with experience sampling or quantitative data (like usage analytics) to complete the full UX picture.

Temporal dynamics refers to how perceptions and user behaviors change over time, and how those changes interact with and impact each other. For the sake of a product’s longevity, a diary study’s ability to reveal temporal dynamics is incredibly useful because it helps teams see how user needs evolve, where friction builds gradually, and which moments drive long-term adoption or abandonment.

Unlike many other UX research methods, diary research gives participants the opportunity to check in multiple times, record how their thoughts and feelings change over time, and reflect on their answers. It encourages self-discovery, providing you with a different perspective of insight to consider.

Diary research’s longitudinal approach means you can understand how different events, emotions, and moments impact user decisions and interactions with a product from day one, and right through to consistent usage.

Studying how user behavior changes over time can unlock unique insights such as:

User habits and usage scenarios:

Changes in behavior and perception:

Attitudes and motivations:

Gathering answers to these questions enables you to develop a richer understanding of your users and product, while also providing research questions, scenarios, and research goals for future tests. Diary studies can also help define what kind of follow-up survey questions or templates will be most effective for your next research project.

Even in carefully planned, unbiased research studies, participants are often influenced by the presence of observation. Whether a study is moderated or not, participants are aware they’re being watched—consciously or not—which can lead to altered behavior, known as the observer effect. This often results in participants acting more carefully, skipping over pain points, or changing how they interact with a product—all of which can distort the data and reduce its accuracy.

For example, consider a field study: even though participants are in their natural habitat and you can observe their day-to-day life as they use your product, they may still behave differently from how they do when truly alone.

Diary studies allow researchers to simulate a more personal relationship between the user and the study than other research methods. If the purpose of research is to truly uncover how participants interact with a product, then diary research captures this at its most natural.

Another benefit is that—if prepared in advance—diary studies can be self-run, removing some of the resources needed to run other UX research studies. Of course, diary research still needs to be monitored intermittently, but depending on how much you plan to communicate with participants, they can be fairly self-sufficient.

To support ongoing studies, many teams use tools that simplify transcription, anonymize self-reported data, and enable data analysis. Just be mindful of sample size and potential dropout rates as your study evolves.

There are two primary methods for conducting UX diary studies: open diary studies, which give participants the freedom to use the diary as they wish, and closed diary studies, which follow a tighter set of protocols.

Most researchers find that the ideal diary study method sits somewhere between open and closed, providing participants with a decent amount of guidance and reminders throughout the study, without overcrowding them. The method you choose will depend on your research objectives.

Similar to a personal journal, this type of diary research method gives participants a lot of freedom to decide how and when they record their diary entries. You’ll still need to give study participants some initial guidance or a lightweight template, but the diary itself is more free-form.

This method enables less-experienced respondents to take part, and people are likely to provide information you may not think to ask for, making it ideal for generative research. However, participants may not always include the details you need, and might include too little or too much information.

This can result in missing data, more complex data analysis, and the need for additional follow-up questions or even a follow-up interview.

A closed diary study uses pre-set research questions, prompts, and questionnaires, including closed-ended questions, to uncover user insights. Structured diaries may feature one page per study day, concluding questions, and explicit instructions on what to log and when to check in.

This method is ideal when you’re conducting evaluative research, testing specific functionality, or comparing entries across demographics and contexts, because the data is easier to analyze since it’s pre-formatted across all participants. This diary research method also ensures you collect the information that’s most relevant to your study.

The downside of this study type is that you may miss out on additional insights that don’t fit into the structure provided.

Along with deciding between an open or closed diary study, you also need to determine the type of diary format you’ll use for your research.

Most diary study formats broadly fall within the categories of digital or paper. Unlike other research methods, the research tool you use for a diary study does not significantly impact the results, so the decision mostly comes down to the resources you have available or your team’s preferences.

The main difference between formats, besides cost, is that some digital research tools may analyze the results for you.

Digital or online diary studies use tools like mobile apps, online forms, or messaging platforms (e.g., Maze, Google Docs, WhatsApp) to collect participant entries. These formats work best when your audience is tech-savvy and comfortable logging thoughts on their phone or laptop. They're ideal for capturing multimedia entries—like photos, videos, or screen recordings—and for running studies remotely across locations and time zones. Digital tools also make it easier to automate reminders, standardize input, and simplify data analysis.

Paper or offline diary studies involve participants using a physical notebook, printed question sheet, or even an audio/video recorder to log their experiences. This format works well when you're researching offline products, running studies in low-connectivity environments, or working with participants who are less comfortable with or have limited access to digital tools.

It’s especially useful for in-the-field studies—for example, like testing outdoor gear—where carrying a notebook is simpler than using a phone. While these studies can be harder to collect and analyze, they often feel more natural and accessible for specific audiences.

There are many circumstances when you may want to use diary studies, depending on your research objectives and the resources you have available. Depending on your focus, the period of time you’ll want to conduct your study may also vary.

The focus of a UX diary study can range from extremely specific (e.g., understanding all interactions within a specific section of a web page) to very broad (e.g., gathering general information about when people use a smartphone).

The Nielsen Norman Group suggests there are broadly four categories of diary study topics:

While diary studies can be conducted at any stage in the design process, they’re especially valuable at four key moments: during discovery, while testing early prototypes, at the end of development, and after launch.

Like other research methods, planning a diary study involves a lot of preparation. But the added element of diary research being fairly hands-off and taking place over a significant period of time means it’s even more important to ensure you’ve not missed anything.

To help, here are some things to consider before you begin your study:

Determine what type of study you want to conduct and the kind of diary study tool your participants will be using.

If you’re asking participants to use a certain product, have they received a physical item, product, or prototype? Do they need instructions for it? If you’re testing a website or app, do participants have access to the platform and clear instructions for logging in?

Before you can begin your study, think about how you’ll ensure diary entries are logged. There are several approaches to logging:

When to use: Since this method asks participants to log information as it happens, it’s best for research where you don’t expect high volumes of log entries, as this could disrupt the participants’ usual activities and would be difficult to analyze later. For example, if you’re researching fashion retail websites, one of the events you’d ask participants to log may be each time they think about or browse clothing websites.

When to use: This technique is effective if the research you’re conducting isn’t situation-dependent, if you want a broader picture of daily life, or if you’re unsure when the event may occur. For example, if you're researching the use of infant toys, an interval-contingent protocol may be useful, as it’s hard to predict the play patterns of young children.

When to use: This method ensures you’ll receive an adequate amount of self-reported data (typically one per day, or more if you’re doing in-situ logging), and reduces the possibility of participants forgetting to log entries, however it requires a notification tool and research participants with some flexibility (unless you tailor notifications to their schedule).

When to use: Snippets are particularly effective if your participants have busy schedules, or the events you’re researching are likely to occur randomly or in different locations.

Recruiting and selecting participants for any UX research is a daunting task, but this step is particularly challenging for diary research—not only do you need participants who can answer your questions, but you need users who can understand and adhere to the demands of a long-term study.

Since participants are logging entries over time, you’re not just looking for demographic alignment—you need individuals who can consistently engage, reflect on their experiences, and communicate them clearly.

If your participants don’t represent your real users, the insights you get can give you the wrong idea about how people actually use your product. And if they’re not suited to the diary format—maybe they don’t have time or aren’t comfortable with logging entries—you could end up with incomplete data or dropouts halfway through.

Take time to define who you're recruiting and why. The better the fit, the more useful your results will be.

Selecting participants for a diary study doesn’t have to be complicated. Here’s our formula for the perfect participants.

Participant profile + screening criteria x recruitment tool = great candidates

First, you want to build your participant profile (what your dream participant looks like) and consider any screening criteria (boxes they must tick). This will be heavily influenced by your target audience and research objectives—for instance, if you’re researching products for newborns, you want to ensure participants are new parents. Categories to consider include:

Once you’ve narrowed down your ideal participant, use a recruitment tool with a built in screening survey for the most efficiency when gathering participants, and filter down to the best candidates. Bear in mind that having fewer testers with more accurate profiles is better than having a lot of testers with profiles that don’t always match your criteria.

In terms of numbers, your study may require as few as three, or as many as 30 participants—this number will shift depending on the scope and budget of your research. For a typical diary study, we suggest aiming to recruit 10–15 participants, with a couple of back-ups.

One tactic for recruiting participants is to incentivize them, to ensure follow-through with the entire study. You can also consider working with existing customers; this is particularly valuable if you're researching changes or new features for an existing product.

Take a look at our article on recruiting research participants for more advice.

While diary studies can run semi-independently, they only succeed with reliable data and minimal hiccups if you plan and prepare thoroughly from the start. In this section, we discuss five steps for planning and conducting your diary research.

First up, it’s time to get organized and sketch out the parameters for your research.

Start by reviewing your main objectives. Are you researching an existing product or a new one? Do you want to understand specific interactions or broad behavioral information?

You can research multiple topics at once, but that will lead to more data to analyze, so ensure you link back any study objectives to broader research goals to avoid being inundated with unnecessary information.

By this stage, you should already have considered what type of diary (online, offline, etc.) you’re using. But before you can prep your research or participants, you also need to determine the style of diary and entries. Choose from a freeform or structured diary, or even a combination, depending on your objectives.

Now it’s time to define the core questions your study is trying to answer and decide how to present them to participants. In structured diaries, you’ll include specific questions for participants to answer with each log entry. In open or hybrid studies, you might share guiding questions in a briefing document at the start. You can also save some questions for follow-up surveys or interviews to clarify or expand on participant responses.

Some potential questions to consider are:

Some studies may only need a few days, while others can continue for weeks, or even months. The study length depends on your research goals, product, and topic—will the data you gather in a short period of time likely be the same as that collected over several weeks or months? If not, it may be worth continuing the study for longer to ensure you capture any temporal dynamics and a consistent, median dataset.

Work with participants to plan the best time for the study to take place—for example, if you need their full attention, is there a period when they have more free time? Or if you want to see how they interact with your product in everyday life, when is their routine most stable?

Next, it’s time to onboard participants and prepare them for the study. Bear in mind that for maximum efficiency and quality of results, you won’t want to communicate with participants once the study is underway (unless you’re providing manual notifications to remind them to log their entries).

Make sure participants are fully briefed and understand the assignment:

Now it’s time to start researching!

Once participants begin logging their entries, this becomes the most hands-off phase for you as the researcher. While they’re busy with their part of the study, it’s a great time to prep your follow-up plan, organize your tagging system, or run other research in parallel.

While your study is running, you may want to communicate more or less with participants, depending on your diary and logging type. Keep any reminders or notifications consistent, and remember to be human. Recognize the input of engaged participants, and check in on those who appear to be struggling. Participants are opening up a vulnerable part of themselves with the study, so respect their boundaries and provide guidance where needed.

If you’ve arranged for entries to be sent to you as they’re logged, then you may find yourself overwhelmed by the amount of data coming in. Organization is everything, so take notes and process user input as you go—it will save a lot of time in the long run. For video or audio logs, either use a diary study tool that transcribes, or send entries for transcription.

Note: If you're already using Maze for your UX research, here's how Maze can help with diary studies, too.

When the UX diary study comes to an end, consider meeting with each participant to discuss their entries in detail. If this isn’t possible, an async interview or follow-up survey works well, too.

This is also a good moment to gather feedback on the study itself. Asking participants what worked (and what didn’t) will help you refine your approach for next time.

Here are some example questions to ask during post-study follow-up:

If you’ve been using a digital diary research tool like Maze, your data may already be transcribed and organized, ready for tagging and analysis. If not, you can still upload video or audio files manually into Maze Interview Studies. Once uploaded, Maze uses Rev AI to generate transcripts in over 30 languages, helping you identify key themes and insights without starting from scratch.

Once your diaries are transcribed, it’s time to analyze and sort the data to identify patterns, synthesize research hypotheses, and track trends.

To make the task a little easier, we recommend breaking it into two stages:

With the right analysis, your raw user data can turn into valuable insights. These insights help you understand how people use your product in real-life settings—what’s working, where they struggle, and how their needs evolve—so you can make smarter, user-informed design decisions.

Like any UX research method, diary studies aren’t perfect, and it’s important to know where things can go wrong before you start.

Here’s a quick summary of the most common challenges before we get into the details:

One of the most common challenges in diary studies is participant fatigue. Logging experiences over time—especially in longitudinal studies—requires sustained effort and attention to detail. What starts out as a novel task can quickly become repetitive, especially if participants don’t understand the purpose or don’t see the value in their contributions.

Fatigue can also contribute to higher dropout rates, which impacts your sample size and forces you to either over-recruit up front or run additional follow-up rounds. While using digital diary tools or sending friendly check-ins can help maintain momentum, they’re not a cure-all. The best ways to reduce fatigue are to keep the logging format simple, be transparent about time commitment, and offer incentives that reflect the effort involved.

As mentioned earlier, diary research relies on self-reported entries, which introduces bias. Participants may unintentionally misreport what happened, delay their logging, or shape responses based on what they think you want to hear. This is especially risky in experience sampling methods, where the goal is to capture raw, in-the-moment impressions. Even with structured questionnaires or follow-ups, the data depends heavily on participant accuracy and honesty.

Even the most honest participants don’t log everything. Some moments feel too small to mention, others get forgotten, and some might not seem relevant from their point of view. But these “missing” details can include habits, reactions, or problems that matter to your research. You could miss out on small frustrations, unexpected behaviors, or everyday workarounds that don’t get logged, but still shape the user experience.
To reduce these gaps, add short follow-up questions or check-ins to remind participants of what to include. If you’re running a structured study, make sure your prompts are clear and specific so participants know what kind of details you’re looking for.

Qualitative research produces a lot of unstructured information, and diary studies are no exception. Reviewing entries, transcribing (if needed), tagging, and synthesizing data into themes creates a lot of work for researchers. While diary study tools with built-in transcription or tagging features help, they still require manual effort to group responses, analyze sentiment, and align logs to your research goals.

Before the study even begins, you need to define your study design, create templates, develop logging protocols, test your tools, recruit participants, and ensure everyone understands how to participate. This preparation is critical, but time-consuming. You'll also need to troubleshoot any issues with the research tool, especially if participants aren’t tech-savvy or are using different devices.

If your study uses digital tools, apps, survey platforms, or chat-based prompts, be mindful of the experience you're asking users to adopt. Participants might struggle with the interface, use outdated devices, or misunderstand the process entirely. A confusing or clunky tool increases drop-off and degrades the quality of responses. Test your tools ahead of time, offer walkthroughs, and keep things lightweight.

Diary studies work best when you're tracking evolving behavior, emotions, or usage patterns over time. But they aren’t the right fit for short-term or one-off interactions. If you’re testing specific functionality or need to observe physical interaction, a field study or in-person user interview may be more efficient. Similarly, if your research window is just a day or two, the overhead of a diary format may not be worth it.

Of course, diary studies won’t always be the perfect fit for your research project. It has its downfalls—self-reported data may be unreliable, and keeping a diary requires significant dedication from participants. So, if you’re looking for immediate results, have a very limited budget, or are focused on a simple usability question, then diary research probably isn’t for you.

Some alternatives to diary research include:

Diary studies can also be combined with other methods as a way to gather more data or expand the reach of your research while keeping to a budget. What’s more, opting for a second, quantitative data research method can provide more well-rounded results in combination with diary research.

Diary studies in UX research are key for getting insights into how your product performs in the real world. It gives research participants the freedom to share their thoughts and feelings without the pressure of a standard research environment.

Use diary studies to uncover user motivations, behavior, and needs that inform your product design and development. All you need to do is plan your study, recruit users, and provide a structured or unstructured diary.

The hardest part of diary studies is finding the right participants—but Maze can help. Maze Panel gives you access to pre-screened, ready-to-go research participants that you can filter and recruit as per your needs.

Start getting better insights today to build better products for your users.