How We Understand People
There are three major tools that developers and marketers use to understand their markets: Surveys, Focus Groups and Observational Research. Surveys and Focus groups are primary research tools for most developers and marketers since they are the most convenient ways to gather data. Observational Research is not a common mode of research because it’s expensive, time-consuming and requires experts to administer and analyze. At Funderstanding we use them all but…
We use Observational Research to drive our empathic design process.
With Observational Research, people share their lives with you; they show you who they are. In a survey or a focus group, you don’t get past a person’s persona.
The deeper and more substantial insights that come from Observational Research give us an extreme knowledge that enables us to build our product to better meet the needs and desires of people.
Here are some ways to observe:
- as people interact with their peers, parents and teachers.
- in different environments – classrooms and at home – while playing games, doing work and describing/demonstrating their likes and dislikes. We record this info and catalogue it.
- ask your subjects to keep a diary of their activities, places they go, thoughts they have and things they like.
- We interview them and ask them about their likes, dislikes, their friends and their community.
- We study their conceptual maps of their favorite placesand their community.
- We document and study videotapes as short as 5 seconds, examine fieldnotes, analyze conceptual maps, correlate photostories and diaries and listen to what they have told us in interviews.
- We hold weekly analysis sessions in which we discuss and refine themes, keywords, and topics, compare notes and finally we develop models that are based on real data and are testable.
Our research has helped us understand that people’s activities, likes, and dislikes are driven (controlled) by measurable and testable factors.
Add a Comment No CommentsDifferent Types of Observational Research
Observational Research is the process of watching people in context — in their natural environment, doing routine activities.
The major tool of Observational Research is videotaping. With Observational Research, depending on the goals and needs of the study, researchers can gather anywhere from ten to hundreds of hours of documented observations.
Researchers then work together to systematically analyze and interpret the gathered data.
The goal of observational research is to capture the embodied knowledge – tacit, nonscientific knowledge – the type of findings that cannot be uncovered in surveys and focus groups. To that end, researchers can pay attention to minute details that can often be overlooked.
Pros
- The data gathered is not mediated by the subject.
- Results are not defined by the design of the method.
- The results are supported by verifiable evidence.
- Research is done in context.
- Uncovers embodied knowledge.
- Uncovers problems for which the subjects have developed workarounds.
- Uncovers problems and behaviors that people didn’t know they had.
Cons
- More costly.
- Difficult to do and administer.
- Time-consuming.
- Uses very small study groups.
- Results are more subjective.
At Funderstanding, we have technology and experience that mitigate the risk and allows us to use this method to generate actionable insight.
Add a Comment No CommentsStoryboards and Diaries
In this self-directed study, we give kids a disposable camera and a notebook for a week and ask them to document the most important things in their lives.
Data gathered this way is original, raw, and full of surprises. Kids love to talk about themselves. In the storyboards, they fully demonstrate their unarticulated interests, likes and dislikes. Diaries, in which they jot freely about issues that concern them, are windows to their world and their thinking. Together, diaries and storyboards form a comprehensive bank of information that helps us understand kids’ world.
This child methodically illustrates important people and objects in his life with his storyboards.
Home Tours
We ask kids to give us a tour of their home as if we were a guest. We videotape this tour while we pepper the kids with questions. We find out tons of information. After all, home is where the heart is.
Home tours provide the greatest insight to kids’ life. By walking us through their house, they truly let us in their physical environment and highlights of their world. Because of their natural ego-centerism, kids almost always demonstrate their likes and dislikes and share their thoughts.
| Maria loves the Animorph books. She likes to do community service like raking the leaves for her elderly neighbors. |  |
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Micheal likes machines – both real and virtual. He flies toy rockets, likes flight sims and train sims. He also loves the book The Way Things Work. |
| Laura has every inch of her bedroom covered with posters, magazine clippings, art work, postcards and photographs. |  |
Interactions
We observe kids ages 8-18 as they interact with their friends, parents, teachers, in different environments such as classroom and home, while playing games, doing homework, and describing their likes and dislikes.
Here are some examples:
| A kid’s life is put into perspective when you spend a day with them. Here is an example of a summer day with Johnnie. |  A little skateboarding. |
 An urban, public school class. |
Watching kids as they maneuver through school, which is a highly social and yet educational environment, gives us in-depth understanding of their social interactions, as well as their achievements and frustrations. |
| We videotape kids working at the non-play things that interest them. This research helps us understand the ways that kids go about learning and improving. |  Kathy practices her violin. |
Conceptual Maps
We videotape kids as they draw a conceptual map of their world and specific places. We encourage them to talk about what they are doing and we ask them questions as they make the map.
Conceptual maps are demonstrations of how one perceives his/her environment. Often, conceptual maps are adequate representations of real environments. However, the ways by which people draw these maps tells us about their likes/dislikes, interests and focal points in their lives. Examining kids conceptual maps provides insight to their world as they see it being constructed.
| Laura’s map is full of creativity. |  |
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Ray’s map is an outline showing only the facts. |
Process
At Funderstanding, we have developed a well-defined process to assure the value and validity of our data and findings. Here’s how it works.
Target
Before we start any observation we set the objectives and methods. We inform this process by reviewing the research of others, as well as doing quick primary research in the form of Focus Groups, Surveys, Interviews, and preliminary reconnaissance.
Observe
Observation always takes place in a natural context. It is most often done by videotaping but can also involve still photography, field notes and even having the subject do a self-documentation study.
Organize
Materials are labeled and logged into our proprietary database program. A time-code track that can be read by the database is laid down on the videotape. Field notes are entered and photographs are scanned into the database. This allows us to cross-reference the observation to our findings.
Harvest
This iterative cycle is the key that allows us to see patterns and derive crucial insights. This process is made possible by our database program that allows us a multitude of ways to classify and categorize many disparate pieces of data. It is through this grouping and regrouping of the data that our insights are refined.
Documenting/Logging
All raw data are reviewed and observations are entered into the database. As the videotape is reviewed specific segments are logged into the database. This process includes creating the topics, keywords, frameworks, and collections by which the observations are classified and categorized.
Interpreting
This is the process of understanding and refining the logs made during documentation. Multiple sorts are made on the database, Classifiers and categories are refined. Data is reclassified and recategorized. We start to generate hypotheses and models and refine them in further iterations.
Documenting/Interpreting
All insights and interpretations are documented so they are constantly before us as we continue with the process.
Review
The main researchers review the process among themselves and colleagues. We tell each other stories and test our theories to see if they hold water. We determine if further raw data needs to be obtained. We determine whether we should continue the Harvest or if we are ready to report our findings.
Report
Findings are documented in writing in a standard research report format. The report will contain any additional research, primary and secondary, that was part of the overall research process. The story is also told with a compilation video made from the raw data. These videos are extremely powerful and convincing as they allow everyone to see what the researchers saw.
Add a Comment No CommentsDriving Results
We’ve all done it. We’re using our computer, or trying to program our VCR, maybe even doing something simple, like backing the car out of the driveway. And it’s just not happening. The function we’re looking for doesn’t seem to exist in the software and we can’t get the VCR to agree to tape our favorite show. The mirror in the car isn’t wide enough to show us the garbage cans, piled on the side of the road, which we’re about to hit. So what do most of us do? We find ways to get around these problems without necessarily solving them. We don’t even necessarily contemplate ways to make these products work in our favor. But what should a company whose interest is in creating, improving or redesigning better products, learn from this kind of information?
Market research has been the traditional approach for companies trying to discover which product innovations are the ones people really want. But while traditional market research remains highly important to companies in their efforts to create new product lines or services, it fails to address the customer’s inability to perceive possibilities for innovation and their limitations in guiding the development of new products. The products offered need to meet the expressed as well as the tacit desires of the consumer in order to be successful. Since the needs of the customer are often unrealized or unexpressed, companies are obligated to find other research methods to collect the kind of information they can use to meet such needs.
Add a Comment No CommentsWhat kind of research model is Empathic Design?
Empathic design, a form of observational research, has come to the attention of many corporations and companies as a valid and useful method addressing the tacit needs and wants of a set of customers. Employing the process of watching without interfering as a phenomenon occurs in the natural environment, empathic research bypasses the traditional focus group and survey method and instead concentrates on viewing the user doing her everyday activities in her own environment. It works on the governing principle that knowledge of how customers use products tells companies more than the customer themselves can.
For example, imagine a Hewlett Packard product developer is observing a surgeon in an operating room who is performing an intricate surgery by using a television screen to guide his scalpel. As personnel move about the operating room, the surgeon’s view of the screen periodically is obscured, but he does not complain. Although the surgeon has not asked for an improved product, the developer comes up with the idea for a helmet with a suspended screen that has the potential to substantially increase the accuracy of the surgeon’s work.1
1 Leonard, Dorothy and Jeffrey F. Rayport. Spark Innovation Through Empathic Design. Boston: Harvard Business Review Nov-Dec 1997. Reprint #97606, page 107. Add a Comment No Comments
Why use Empathic Design research techniques?
Companies like Apple, Motorola, Xerox and Intel have integrated anthropologists into their corporate personnel. Their goal is to apply ethnographic skills, employed by anthropologists, to watch, interview and videotape consumers. Analysis of these collective observations provides the insight required to define new product concepts what will be valued by the consumer.
“The context is really critical,” says Jean Canavan, an anthropologist who is the manager of culture and technology initiatives at Motorola. “If we want to develop technologies that really fit into the way people live their day-to-day lives, then we have to understand how people really live.”2 Many anthropologists work with a concept called embodied knowledge — tacit, nonscientific knowledge — and look for ways to incorporate such information into product design. Embodied knowledge is “basically the intelligence in your muscles.”3
Anthropologists and empathic design teams are trained to pay attention to minute details that can often be overlooked. Paying attention to such “embodied knowledge” helped Matsushita build a better bread maker in 1987. The company sent a team of engineers to be apprenticed for several months to a master bread chef at the Osaka International Hotel in Japan. The magic ingredient turned out to be a special maneuver the chef executed with his hand while kneading the dough, so the engineers figured out how to mimic the movement with the machine.4
Canon introduces color printers for consumers’ household use. Sales were not as high as expected: the consumer was unsure how they could use such a product. Canon sent empathic design teams into customer’s homes to observe how printed materials were used. They looked at refrigerator doors and bedroom walls. The result was the highly successful “Canon Creative”, bundled software that creates greeting cards, t-shirts and posters, the items observed by the teams as predominant in homes.5
2 Hafner, Katie. Coming of Age in Palo Alto. New York Times On The Web. June 10, 1999.
3 Hafner, Katie. Coming of Age in Palo Alto. New York Times On The Web. June 10, 1999.
4 Hafner, Katie. Coming of Age in Palo Alto. New York Times On The Web. June 10, 1999.
5 Hafner, Katie. Coming of Age in Palo Alto. New York Times On The Web. June 10, 1999.
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