Cross-Cultural Research

There’s no substitute for directly observing someone using (or, trying to use) your product. For many startups, a base in the West forgets the rest of the world — that’s billions of people!

At my previous company, Couchsurfing, we always made an attempt to break out of the American lens. As a Product Designer at Couchsurfing I shadowed visitors to San Francisco, ran community events for an international crowd, and conducted usability testing on-site in Barcelona while facilitating a company-wide design sprint.

When analytics revealed cross-cultural disparities for international roommate-finding app Roomi, I knew we’d have to go straight to the source and talk to people in the affected populations.

Problem

While performing data analysis for Roomi (a roommate-finding app), we discovered that their platform had an onboarding non-completion problem.

The fist steps of Roomi’s onboarding flow

Boosting user acquisition is incredibly important for Roomi‘s’ business. Roomi needs to fill both sides of their marketplace with members in order to reach critical mass.

Digging into the data helped us to isolate the issue to mobile-web users in India.

Role

I worked on this project with Roomi as a UX Research Consultant. Roomi was a partner company of my employer, GlobaliD.

My team narrowed down the onboarding problem using quantitative data then conducted usability tests with people in India.

Finally, I presented a report to Roomi detailing our findings and solutions.

Problem Discovery

Defining the problem came first. Using Google Analytics and event tracking, we discovered that the drop-off problem was most significantly pronounced among mobile-web users in India.

Usability Testing

Next, we set up video interviews with people who fit into Roomi’s target demographic in India.

During our calls we screen-shared: observing our interviewees as they went through Roomi’s mobile-web onboarding while voicing their thoughts out loud.

1. Email vs Mobile Phones

There’s no replacement for directly observing the actions users take, and we were surprised when interviewees were stumped by an email confirmation requirement. Some even had to go to another room to find a computer, then log in to use their email.

Unlike Americans, Indians don’t typically use their email and are more accustomed to phone number confirmation or WhatsApp.

2. Onboarding Funnel Entrance

We also discovered that interviewees jumped straight to performing searches and sending messages. On these search and messaging screens, “Join” CTAs were difficult to see.

It turns out the start of the user-acquisition funnel we’d so carefully studied in our problem discovery phase wasn’t the most intuitive at all.

Seeing profiles without images (or with inappropriate images) before sign-up also deterred potential members

3. Attitudes Toward Photo-Sharing

Roomi Onboarding’s profile photo upload screen made some Indian women we interviewed feel uncomfortable. One interviewee told us that “girls in India don’t like to put [their] photographs in a public space like this.”

Tightening Our Scope

After discovering issues that affected prospective users in India, we ranked each problem by it’s:

1. Frequency: How often does this issue come up?
2. Impact: What is the severity of the problem? Does it prevent a user from completing a key action?
3. Cost-to-Fix: What level of resources would the company need to address this issue?

This ranking system is useful for startups which have limited resources and want to prioritize “quick wins.” A similar system is used to great success at Riot Games.

We then presented these well-defined problems to Roomi’s designers as well as their CEO. Data, quotes, and video recordings were cited as supporting evidence. By employing direct interviewee quotes, we were able to center users in the conversation.

Conclusion

Narrowing the drop-off problem down to the populations where it was most pronounced allowed us to quickly schedule important usability tests.

By observing people as they perform key tasks, we avoided the communication problems of a traditional interview. Instead we were able to see how people actually used the product.

Finally, when presenting the problems we discovered, ranking “quick wins” helped the Roomi team prioritize and execute fixes efficiently.

Only by having meaningful cross-cultural conversations can we bridge communication gaps and build accessible apps that empower people worldwide.

I’m excited to work on more projects that allow me to serve large audiences and learn firsthand about cultures worldwide.