Our research will first start with a survey aiming to figure out end-users’ current perceptions of their ad preferences. The survey will be distributed and formed on Google Forms so that it will be more efficient and easier to get a large number of responses. The purpose of the survey is to discover who our end user is for the project, as well as give us a broad understanding of who they are and their awareness of the Facebook ad preference setting. Conducting an online survey has many benefits that will help our research. First, online surveys have a very small cost per participant, which makes it more likely that people will respond to the survey. Second, data collection is much easier with online surveys, making data more easy to be analyzed. Lastly, an online survey allows us to reach a large sample of  participants because it can easily be distributed. This ensures a more accurate sample in which to draw conclusions. 

 

After our survey has been conducted and we have analyzed the results, we will move onto conducting interviews. We will reach out to respondents of the first survey to see if they will participate in the focus group. We plan on having 6-8 interview participants. An advantage of an interview is that it will allow us to further investigate the participants' responses to the survey. The goal of the interview is to obtain detailed information about personal feelings, perceptions, and opinions about Facebook ad settings and privacy, and online privacy and safety. Also, we want to hear participants’ thoughts on how Facebook could improve interaction with ad preference settings and make it easier for users to find it. Overall, the interviews will give us a more in depth understanding of people’s thoughts on these topics.

 

Once the interviews have been completed, we will move on to think aloud-testing. We will conduct think aloud-testing with the same participants that we interviewed. The think aloud testing will happen right after the participants are interviewed. Each testing will be done with members individually. We will ask participants to perform one task and ask them to think-aloud as they complete them. An example of a task given is asking participants to login into their Facebook account and to attempt at finding their ad preference settings. We will record the time it takes for them to do each task and take notes on their processes.

 

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Research Schedule

 

Survey

• Survey questions completed by March 4th

• Survey distributed through March 5th-8th

• Survey data analyzation completed by March 9th

 

Interview and Think-Aloud Testing

• Focus group questions and think-aloud testing completed by March 11th

• Focus group and think-aloud testing participants selected by March 11th

• Focus group and think-aloud testing conducted on March 12th

• Focus group and think-aloud testing data analyzed by March 15th