tail wags the dog: how small-scale user research can influence a large-scale corporation

Tail Wags the Dog: How small-scale user research can influence a large-scale corporation

Bennett King

UX New Zealand

This presentation is the outcome of a Qualcomm User Research project centered on bringing data services to underserved populations in emerging markets.

The project was geared toward the 1 billion users for which mobile devices will be the first and only computing devices.

The presentation outlines the research itself and provides takeaways for those interested in conducting user research to influence product direction in their own companies.

The Next Billion

The biggest emerging market population, and the location for participants in this research, live in rural India.

Since nationwide cabled internet access in India is unlikely, wireless data networks offer the solution for access to information, media, and data.

Designing the right interfaces and services for wireless/mobile access can bridge the technology gap in emerging markets.

but there are considerable challenges…

Rural India: 800 million (70% of India’s total population)

2000+ Ethnic Groups

150+ Major Languages

{All} Major Religions

Challenge 1: Indian Diversity The test bed for cross-cultural design

There is no one-size-fits-all design solution

India’s wireless data network rollout is happening at a slow pace.

Even in urban areas with data coverage, there is very little usage for a couple of main reasons:

− Data packages are expensive and the offerings are not worth while.

− Most users don’t have a use for what is offered or don’t know what to do with it.

Device adoption and data usage among rural users is projected to be even slower.

The right combination of devices and services can kickstart the growth process.

Challenge 2: Wireless Data in India

Idea: Data over a subsidized P2P Network

Data Backhaul

1. Managed content pushed to subsidized data devices.

2. Content is then spread wirelessly using a peer-to-peer network.

Added bonus: user-generated content

1. The P2P Network has the added benefit of becoming a UGC Platform.

2. Users can create, consume and share content (like audio and video) for free on the P2P Network.

Prototype

Experience

Engineering

Business

Idea to prototype…

Field Test

What are the ramifications of introducing new devices

How do we deal with illiteracy? Maybe they need Microbanking

How’s my hair look? Do they get Touch Screens?

They won’t create UGC

We should strip down the features

Surely they want Facebook

How is Ryan Gosling so impossibly handsome?

Are data “services” relevant to the user Text Input

Productivity Apps

Limited Web

Educational Tools

Media Social

Cross Cultural

The Other Thing The more we tried to design the experience, the more questions we had.

Very little secondary research from rural India added to the challenge.

When there is a lack of information we tend to fill in the blanks the best we can, but this can backfire with a new market, vertical or product.

Our direction became more muddled and opinions more varied until we realized…

Lots of Questions…

Microbanking Bollywood

We don’t even know what we don’t know. Robert Tartz, PhD Qualcomm Research

“ Forrest Gumpian knowledge bomber

We were making the mistake of overanalyzing the end user based on our beliefs and biases from our work in Western markets.

We found ourselves going down the same path of some before us designing for verticals which have shown very little promise so far.

We had no reference to whether this was the right path or if it would even work…in other words, we nearly screwed the project up before we started.

Nearly lost…

Don’t overthink the user. Go talk to them. (Watch any film with Keanu Reeves to stop thinking)

Takeaway 1

When beginning work in a new vertical, channel or product space, don’t rely solely on your intuition.

Get out and talk to the user rather than imposing your own will.

Find the (simple) ways to conduct exploratory research in new areas.

The plan quickly refocused on small-scale exploratory research.

We move away from verticals that have met limited success and broaden our research to core human needs – communication, social and family circles.

We get approval but now need a way to keep stakeholders involved.

Back on Track…

Promise surprise & intrigue. (You’ll be right 96.3% of the time)

Takeaway 2

When working with people who don’t understand the value of research design, you have to use every angle to sell the process.

Sometimes a solid plan and outlining the ROI are not enough.

Since our goal for research is discovery, promise your stakeholders surprises and better insight – appeal to their curiosity and even their ego.

Planning the research

Gratuitous face-touching picture denoting emphasis

Despite our excitement for conducting research in a rural India, we realized how much our presence could influence the research – we have done research in developed areas of India and definitely influenced participants.

Live translation would also be a problem and we have definitely had problems with liberal interpretations/translations in the past.

At 6’3”, 250 lbs, my presence in rural India would probably result in some form of Bigfoot sightings

Hi I’m Kiran Hi I’m Padma

Our best solution was to have members of our own team fluent in Kannada & Hindi take part in the field research along with our local partners pepperSlate & HANSA Research

Research Plan

20 in-home or business interviews (2-3 hrs)

Identify uninfluenced towns & villages

Interviews with local officials

Field observation & store visits 4

Exploratory research: by recruiting a small sample, we sought indicative results rather than conclusive or representative for the entire segment.

Research Objectives

Will users in rural markets consume, create and share content? If so, how can we enable a rich experience over a limited network, creating the demand for more?

What information provides the most value to the user?

How integrated are mobile devices into the daily lives of users in rural India?

What are people doing on their mobile devices currently?

Are there design constraints around technology acceptance, literacy, and usage that we need to address.

Into the Field

Sidhauli Town Kasmanda Village

Bagepalli Town Gulur Village

Locations

About 50Km from Lucknow in the North

Population: 20,000

Well connected by rail and road; commercial center for the area

Cash-crop agricultural area

Active woman’s Self Help Group

HQ for local government

Sidhauli

Get to know Sidhauli

Participants:

Jack of all trades – odd jobber

Woman's rights activist

College Student

Housewife

Market owner

58KM from Lucknow in the North

Village of about 4000

Out of power for last 6 months; village runs on batteries for 2 hours of electricity at best

Because of lack of electricity/lights resentment against the Panchayat and government authorities for the lack of development in the village.

Kasmanda

Get to know Kasmanda

Participants:

• Local politician

• Local elementary teacher

• Small shop owner

• Local farmer

• Day laborer

Tier 3 town in the South with a population just over 20K

About 100 KM north of Bangalore on the national highway

Quarrying Mining , Subsistence Farming, Silk Farming, Rural Call Center

Multiple schools, 2 Graduate colleges

Multiple Self-Help Groups

Has the largest middle class of the 4

Bagepalli

Get to know Bagepalli

Participants:

• Aspiring teenager

• Math teacher and young mother

• Real estate agent

• Pharmacist

• Hometown reporter

93 km from Bangalore city

Population of the village is 3148

Subsistence agriculture

Local govt seat for surrounding villages

Limited education opportunities

Get to know Gulur

Participants:

• Govt. computer operator

• Housewife

• Farmer

• College student

• Mobile shop owner

Become a reality show producer. (Turns out not as many people listen to us as we think)

Takeaway 3

In a perfect world you would take your stakeholders in the field with you but schedules and budgets rarely allow this – find ways to keep them involved.

Even with a great plan and interesting research topics, you are competing for your stakeholders attention – find ways to grab their attention.

Grab them with headlines Meet Kajal Rai. She is Fighting for Women’s Rights in Northern India

Bollywood is Priority Number 1. Plus We Talk Education with a Local Teac…

Living with Only 2 Hours of Power. How Mobile Can Help Local Government.

Kiran Talks to Water Buffalos. Plus We Might Need to Rethink our Roadmap.

Heading South in the Monsoon. Takeaways from the Northern Towns.

Since our field team rarely had internet connection during the research most of our project updates with stakeholders was through email.

We needed a way stand out in their Inbox.

One of the easiest ways to do this was by creating tabloid headlines that drew people in to the updates.

Humanize the research

Another way to draw stakeholders in was by humanizing the research – putting faces to names.

We included pictures, names and stories for each of the participants. We talked about their surroundings and lifestyle; we outlined what made them happy and what hardships they encounter.

Harass random people. (but give them candy)

Takeaway 4

You should never rely on just one form of research when you are in the field. Whenever we go out we practice Anonymous Observation.

We look for trends, watch how people use technology, and observe social interactions

Kiran observed two teens interacting with their phones and stopped to talk with them.

They were pairing using Bluetooth and sharing music despite the difficulty of the task. The benefit outweighed the limitations. After further research we found this to be common.

Based on our assumptions of Bluetooth usage in western markets (headset, cars) there had been talks of removing Bluetooth from lower-end chips to save cost.

Some tangents are worth following. (You might find a precious snowflake)

Takeaway 5

Managing a conversation is one of the most difficult parts of research – you need to know when to let people run and when to bring them back.

Sometimes it is worth it to just let a conversational tangent run – not only can it help you build the relationship with you participant but it can also lead to some of your best findings.

A tangential conversation with a local government employee led to how he distributed information to local villages – surprisingly it was via a town crier

By letting the conversation run with this participant we had discovered a societal artifact that surprised all of us. Coincidentally, it also proved to be the perfect data delivery system for our local peer-to-peer networks ftw.

Concept Evolution

Processing your research, what we call Concept Evolution, easily takes as much or more time than the research itself.

This is where the surprises you promised will materialize. Use workshops, brainstorming and visualizing techniques, and be sure to involve your whole team.

Defining Concept Evolution is a talk in itself and, at the end of the day, you have to find the process that will work for your team…so I’ll just show some post it porn and move on.

Make room for personas. (They’re the warm fuzzy side of research)

Takeaway 6

I am not always the biggest fan of personas but if your team is working in a new vertical, product area, or market they can be a useful tool.

In cross-functional teams with differing opinions, they are a way to ground the project and tie it to potential users.

Keep personas simple and approachable.

Focus on elements related to the project – e.g. social circles, technology use, goals and needs.

Even if you are jaded about personas (like myself), keep in mind that they may prove more important to your stakeholders and team than they are to you.

Taunt your developers (or clients, boss, etc.) (and by taunt I mean involve)

Takeaway 7

You need to keep your stakeholders and team involved through the entire process.

One way to do this is to find activities where they can have fun and learn.

Know your audience too. Find the right tools for the people you are working with. Here’s an example…

Role Play

Role Play is an activity that we include specifically for our developers.

Right after we create our personas, each developer studies a persona and creates an interpretation that they bring to the activity.

The rest of the team asks them questions (start with a set list) and they answer as they think the persona would.

Findings

Technology is pervasive and the people are ingeniously resourceful.

Surprise & Intrigue

Technology use is far more sophisticated than we originally thought

Local leaders estimate mobile phones in 80-85% of households – we came away thinking it might actually be higher.

Low end smart phones are already entering the market.

Phones are becoming the “Swiss army knife” device.

Things that we deemed as barriers to use are already being overcome.

Because there is limited electricity we thought battery life would be an issue but local entrepreneurs have already created charging stations out of 12v batteries and inverters.

They are already creating and consuming user-generated content.

Surprise & Intrigue

Content sharing, especially around music, is happening on a large scale.

Many people are finding ingenious workarounds to the limitations of their phones.

Side loading content is prolific and content creation is starting to gain ground.

Video phone

One example of content creation is the participant who uses his phone as a DVR. Because of the limited power, he has his wife record TV shows on his phone while he is at work and the power is on. He then watches them later when there is no power and shares them with his neighbors so they can watch too.

Illiteracy wasn’t the problem we thought it would be (but there’s still an issue).

Surprise & Intrigue

Most are reading and writing at a 2nd and 3rd grade level but only in their native language. Changes in the Indian education system mean that younger generations will be much higher.

…But almost all phone interfaces are in English.

Numeracy is nearly at 100%. Most households have ledgers that contain contact phone numbers, often without names.

This is a preferred method over cumbersome (English) phone entry.

There are also interesting IA challenges based on local mental models – e.g., time based interactions and contact navigation based on head of the family.

Family purchases are typically value driven rather than cost driven.

Surprise & Intrigue

This is a huge shift from the way we look at other markets.

Nearly every home, regardless of income, has a television and paid channels because of the perceived value.

Mobile phones have an even higher perceived value because of their multiple use.

People are reaching well beyond where you or I would to buy phones – often spending more than a month’s pay.

The access to information and contacts that the phone brings provides status for the individual and family.

Providing increased and focused value trumps any plan of lowering chip cost and decreased functionality to make cheaper phones.

Big data isn’t always right.

Surprise & Intrigue

(just don’t tell Google I said that).

We have access to reams and reams of data – sales reports, market reports, projections – and we have very smart people making decisions base on that data, but sometimes it provides an incomplete view.

User research can provide the additional data needed for a more complete view.

While projections and reports showed little smartphone uptake, we found them everywhere in the field.

One of the reasons is the large Black Market in India which skews any sales numbers.

Bootleg smartphones like the one above are making it into the rural markets and their numbers are not tracked. These are our competition and we didn’t know about them.

One of my favorite outcomes from our research was the creation of Spy Teams in our Bangalore office. They had been involved in our project from the beginning but we had heard very little from them. After the research was finished they told us it had inspired them to create what they called “Spy Teams” that go out and visit rural areas. They practice anonymous observation, talk with people, and check in with mobile shop owners. Their new research is now feeding in to our product roadmap for India.

Creating Spy Teams

Design Areas While our research provided valuable information on our specific project, there was a considerable amount of information gathered that can be used elsewhere. The following areas where left on the table because they were not immediately valuable to our interests, but they are valuable to the market nonetheless.

If you are looking to enter the app or mobile market in India (or even other emerging markets), these are can be good starting points. The need is definitely there.

Social circles can be as small as the block

Closed group networks – neighbors, youth, women’s group

Exchange of info/gossip within cliques is a favorite activity

Extended family networks

Create a micro-social content application

Micro-Social

Return to the small world

Personal Privacy is nonexistent – family knows all

One shared mobile device per family is common

Lack of personal space is expected

Family reputation is paramount

Create a secure and partitioned digital space

Secure space or app provides a platform for Self Help Groups and NGOs.

Personal Privacy

The case for digital personal space

Business app transactions should be social rather than technical (bookkeeping)

Tie digital transactions directly to the contact

Most business owners are managing massive contact lists

Need ways to easily create/collect contact data

Need ways to classify contacts

− Identify businessmen over other contacts

− Manage “satisfaction ratings” of contacts

Create a contact-centered business app

Mobile Business

All business is social

Want to learn English is universal

Parents see mobile devices as a surrogate helping with kids education

Knowledge of latest news/politics is a social currency

Self-help groups are looking for info pipeline

Religious leaders/political parties are too

Create a sharable learning platform

Education / Information

Knowledge is influence

Become a reality show producer during the research.

Don’t overthink the user. Go talk to them.

Promise surprise & intrigue to your stakeholders.

Harass random people to collect more information. 4

Some conversation tangents are worth following 5

Make room for personas. 6

Taunt (involve) your developers, clients, bosses, etc. 7

It's Our Research: Getting Stakeholder Buy-in for User Experience Research Projects by Tomer Sharon

Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights by Steve Portigal

Designing the Conversation: Techniques for Successful Facilitation by Russ Unger, Brad Nunnally and Dan Willis

Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner's Guide to User Research by Elizabeth Goodman, Mike Kuniavsky and Andrea Moed

The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons

Qualcomm is a trademark of Qualcomm Incorporated, registered in the United States and other countries. Other products and brand names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners

Thank you Special thanks to:

Qualcomm Research Team:

- Kiran Chikkappa

- Padma Jagannathan

- Anne Konertz

India Partners:

- Pepperslate

- Hansa Research

skunkwUrX

bking@qti.qualcomm.com *

tail wags the dog: how small-scale user research can influence a large-scale corporation

practice anonymous

reality show

harass random

promise surprise

surprise amp

p2p network

local government

make room

Design

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