Triangulation in UX studies: Learning from Experience. Triangulating Cognitive Styles with Open Question Survey Responses

Triangulation of qualitative with quantitative data presents challenges. Does triangulation risk putting off reviewers by intimately mixing quantitative with qualitative data and does it add value? We pose these questions for the workshop in the context of a recently completed and published study. We investigated whether and why people giving feedback on interior designs would enjoy expressing their emotions using images compared with text. We measured participants' cognitive styles and their reported engagement for the feedback formats and then correlated the two measures. We also gathered their insightful views using open survey questions but we decided against triangulating these directly with the cognitive styles after considering the risks and benefits of triangulation.