Summary: How do people declutter their possessions, both physical and digital? In this mixed-methods study, I used contextual interviews and a survey to map people’s decluttering strategies based on urgency and items considered. Then, my team used this mapping to identify key opportunities for improving existing tools (for example, by visualizing common decluttering criteria).
My role as a researcher
- I was the main researcher on the project, leading all phases end-to-end.
- I chose research methods, recruited participants, wrote the interview guide, designed the survey, collected and analyzed data.
- I wrote a report based on the results of the study, that we used to inform future projects.
Team: I worked on the project with Dr. William Odom and Dr. Joanna McGrenere, professors in HCI.
Research goals and questions
How could we provide better support for digital decluttering? What are the main experience gaps in existing tools?
Most people have many possessions, whether digital or physical, that they do not want to keep. But how they do go about decluttering and getting rid of stuff? What differences are there between decluttering physical vs. digital possessions? And how might we better support digital decluttering?
To answer these questions and identify key design opportunities for digital decluttering, we decided to take a look at user practices for both physical and digital possessions, and then compare the two domains.
Our study research questions focused on specific strategies and habits for decluttering:
- When and how do people declutter their possessions?
- What are their strategies and habits?
- What are the key differences between physical and digital possessions?
- For digital possessions, what different types of data do people consider and how do they approach different types?
A mixed-methods approach
We used contextual interviews and an online survey to understand how people declutter their possessions
To answer the study research questions, we decided to take a mixed-methods approach and use both contextual interviews (with 7 participants) and an online survey (349 participants in total).
The goal of the interviews was to capture user behaviors in context, understanding specific decluttering practices and strategies. The survey, instead, was useful to quantify some of the behaviors from the interviews and also gather a wider range of decluttering examples from users so that we could map and prioritize different needs.
The interviews helped us capture concrete examples of decluttering behaviours
With these different goals in mind, I decided to loosely structure the interview sessions in three parts:
- A home tour where participants showed how they managed and decluttered physical possessions. This was useful to later contrast digital possessions.
- A digital device tour: this time focusing on digital possessions. This section was key to capture specific episodes and strategies, and also probe on differences between digital and physical possessions.
- A set of broader contextualizing questions where participants talked about their experience with existing tools for decluttering.
The online survey helped us generalize the frequency of key decluttering behaviours
In the survey I asked participants about their decluttering habits, using a mix of closed and open-ended responses:
- How often they decluttered both physical and digital possessions (closed-ended).
- When was the last time they decluttered some of their possessions, both physical and digital (closed-ended).
- A description of what they did the last time they decluttered their possessions, both physical and digital (short, open-ended).
Key insights
Participants decluttered physical possessions more often than digital possessions
Using data from the survey, we found that participants decluttered physical possessions more often than digital possessions.
Most participants said they last decluttered physical possessions within the previous week (33%) and digital possessions within the previous month (30%). In terms of frequency, most reported decluttering multiple times a year both physical (37%) and digital items (33%). But a relatively high percentage of respondents reported rarely decluttering digital items (21%).
Decluttering digital possessions felt more difficult because of poor support in technology products
Data from the interviews helped us contextualize the results from the survey: participants often said that they found decluttering physical possessions easier than decluttering digital possessions. They felt this way for several reasons. For example, some participants said that digital decluttering felt less urgent and never-ending. Others complained about the poor support in technology products for easily finding items to declutter. Whereas with physical items they could easily assess how old an item was or how often they used it, the same was more difficult to do with digital possessions.
“To be honest, I don’t think I’m quite as good with digital things […] I find the digital stuff more taxing than the physical.”
P7
Strategies for decluttering varied based on urgency and items considered
No matter the degree of difficulty, participants still tried to declutter their possessions, that we categorized into a taxonomy of data types based on their content. The key decluttering strategies we identified through thematic coding varied based on their urgency and the number of items considered. In our analysis, we identified three key strategies for decluttering:
Routine decluttering
Regular habit to mark the passage of time. Frequent but not urgent.
Triggered decluttering
Infrequent event caused by an urgent need to free up space.
Serendipitous decluttering
Unexpected event occurring in the context of another activity.
Participants also reported decluttering items inspecting them one by one or as part of large categories and groups. The support of different digital tools for different strategies was not always optimal. For example, participants reported often struggling when they needed to quickly identify digital items to declutter under pressure.
In the studies that came after this project, the taxonomy of data types and the set of decluttering strategies helped us prioritize what solutions to design and what data types to focus on.
Design opportunities
Based on the results of the study, we identified several key design opportunities for new products or solutions, that we used to generate and brainstorm ideas:
How might we… visualize decluttering criteria for digital possessions?
For example, by showing how old a file is or how frequently it is used. Participants used similar criteria to decide what digital possessions to declutter but they reported that it was hard to easily get a sense of them in digital items compared to physical possessions.
How might we… proactively find items to declutter?
Participants wanted more concrete and proactive help from digital tools: systems that automatically suggest what data to declutter might help users.
How might we… prevent unwanted accumulation of digital data?
Participants often reacted to data coming their way, citing, for example, photos shared by others. Can we imagine ways of preventing unwanted data from clogging their devices in the first place?
How might we… make decluttering more fun and engaging?
Participants complained that decluttering often feels boring or tedious. Can we make it more fun? This will help users enjoying the process more and feel more connected to their tools and platforms.
Research impact
The insights from this study informed a set of design concepts and an interactive prototype for a new data management tool
After the project was over, we used the insights on user behaviors and the design directions generated from the study to explore a set of four possible product concepts which reflected the different behaviours we saw from participants.
Later on, we also used these insights and the mapping of different data types mentioned by participants to develop a prototype system for a new data management tool that we tested with more users.
In retrospect, using a mixed-methods approach was essential for gaining both depth and breadth, helping us ground possible design solutions into key user behaviors and common habits.
