05 · Diary study + in-depth interviews
Visual daily information needs
Two-phase behavioral research on how people use images to search
- Status
- Shipped.
- Service
- Behavioral research
- Scope
- Visual search and daily information needs
- Markets
- US and India
- Studio
- THEFT Studio
A major search client needed a behavior-led account of how people actually use images to meet daily information needs, not another feature-led survey of visual search.
The studio ran a two-phase study: a seven-day remote digital diary with 30 participants across the US and India captured behavior in context, followed by 16 sixty-minute depth interviews grounded in the diary entries.
The work surfaced six mental-model archetypes, three journey types, and an eight-step behavioral map, reframing visual search as a behavior-specific mode with image collection treated as load-bearing to shopping decisions.
Method · effort by phase
01 · Diary study
Seven-day remote digital diary with 30 participants across the US and India captured visual information needs in the moment.
02 · Synthesis pass
Clustered diary entries into mental-model archetypes and journey types and flagged the highest-signal entries for follow-up.
03 · Depth interviews
Sixteen sixty-minute depth interviews grounded in each participant own diary entries pushed on mental models, decision moments, and image collection.
04 · Framework build
Produced six mental-model archetypes, three journey types, and an eight-step behavioral map with implications for product direction.
What the work surfaced
Six mental-model archetypes shape visual search
Text-based searcher, image-collector, image-sharer, feedback-finder, reverse-image searcher, and true visual searcher each carry a distinct expectation of the tool.
Visual search is not a default behavior
It is reached for in specific moments rather than used as a daily query mode, which reshapes how and where visual search surfaces should appear.
Image collection is load-bearing for shopping decisions
Saving, grouping, and revisiting images is how many participants move through shopping and planning, a real and repeated behavior worth direct support.
Three journey types, one eight-step map
Image-initiated, text-initiated, and exploratory journeys all fit a shared eight-step behavioral map; the journey type, not the step list, drives design choices.
Cross-market differences show up in triggers, not shape
US and India participants differed in what started a visual information need more than in how it resolved: the shape is stable, the entry conditions are market-specific.
Delivered
- Diary study readout across US and India
- Depth-interview readout grounded in participant diaries
- Six mental-model archetype framework
- Three journey types across an eight-step behavioral map
- Cross-market trigger analysis
- Implications deck for product and design teams
Outcome
Visual search reframed from a feature to a behavior-specific mode with six distinct user archetypes.
The research gives the product team a behavior-led framework for where visual search belongs and how it should show up. Product decisions move from feature-led framing to archetype-led framing, with image collection treated as a load-bearing behavior rather than an adjacent nicety.
- Framework
- Six archetypes · three journeys
- Sample
- 30 diaries · 16 sixty-minute IDIs
- Coverage
- US + India
- Reframe
- Feature to behavior-led mode