On the road in Pakistan: market context interviews
This is the second installment in a series of real-time articles about the early stages of developing a healthcare service for Pakistan. We’re conducting research across a variety of urban, peri-urban, rural, and feudal regions. I’m documenting my own research methods and processes for product development along the way.
Although healthcare is an industry that I know well, the context of Pakistan is new. To help close that gap of knowledge, I’m using a method I developed when going into markets that are foreign to me. I call it “market context interviews.” In this article, I’ll be detailing this method and describing how we’re applying it here in Pakistan.
It’s easy to waste time on research, and an early stage startup like Doctory can’t afford to waste time. We also can’t afford to waste time chasing the wrong MVPs, which this type of research is meant to reduce the risk of. My visa expires in 3.5 weeks, so the clock is ticking.
Market context interviews
This method developed from the need to obtain a rapid understanding of the current state of a culture and the context of the market. I first used it in South Korea to get past the clichéd differences of East vs. West tech behavior that we often hear about. I repeated this method in Japan and China, and used it again in South Africa when developing a health product for low-income communities.
Market context interviews are a type of formative research, used before product or service hypotheses exist or without their influence. They are not a replacement for user interviews, which are generative or evaluative forms of user research, used to uncover unmet needs or evaluate product or service concepts.
Market context interviews allow for the development of a complex and non-superficial understanding of a culture in its current state.
By “complex,” I mean an understanding that maintains contradictions and conflicting viewpoints and that avoids simplistic segmentations or majority opinions. The more conflicting information I have, the better questions I can ask, and the better answers I’ll get.
By “non-superficial,” I mean an understanding that moves substantially beyond our biases and what we hear from mainstream media, news, and industry articles until a new picture of Pakistan emerges on its own. I also use “non-superficial” because it’s impossible to gain a comprehensive understanding of any culture quickly.
This complex understanding of the market naturally results in MVPs, as well as brand and positioning hypotheses that are better aligned with the market. That’s well worth the investment of time for – in this case – just eight one-hour conversations.
The entire method consists of a recruiting framework, discussion guidelines, and an interview approach with people who offer a diverse set of unique perspectives on their culture. As with most of my work, I focus on being exposed to the broadest possible set of perspectives. This includes prioritizing people who may initially seem irrelevant and runs contrary to segmentation-based approaches; but when creating a mainstream product, you actually need to understand the complexity of cultures, not just simplistic demographic or behavioral user segments. One of my previous articles, “Segments of one,” covers this in more detail.
It’s important that the interviewees aren’t treated as customers or users during the interview. It’s more difficult to discover cultural insights after you’ve gone down that path. Customers or users are recruited specifically to better understand their needs as individuals. Participants in market context interviews are recruited specifically for their unique perspective on the contemporary culture and the market. Those different goals are best served by people and interview methods specific to those goals.
The recruiting framework
Here is the starting point I use. It’s a list of people who, out of necessity or the nature of their profession, reflect deeply on the human condition – including on uncomfortable topics that can too easily be avoided.
Activists
- Poverty
- LGBTQ+
- Religious
Public workers
- Caseworkers (social workers) for low-income groups
- Public school educators at different levels, K-12
- Community leaders at a local level
- Public health or emergency workers
- Community police, called “beat cops” in the US
Scholars and artists
- Working artists with a focus on social criticism
- Philosophy PhD students or professors
- History PhD students or professors
Finally, I hold open a category called “controversial,” which I fill in based on information from the other conversations. In South Korea, I chatted via text with the user of an anonymous online forum that people go to when they need an outlet for culturally taboo topics. In Pakistan, I requested an interview with a conservative religious leader, among others.
It’s not necessary to speak to all these people, and I prioritize the list before beginning recruiting. The point is to ensure that you speak to a large variety of people with different perspectives.
In the end, I had eight one-hour interviews and quickly moved past a superficial understanding of Pakistan’s culture, which was the point of the effort. For Doctory, these conversations happened via phone or video while I was still in Berlin. This saved time and allowed us to begin planning the in situ research before arriving in Pakistan.
Recruiting
Recruiting can happen in one of two ways: either by using professional recruiters, as was the case for the work I did through frog design in South Korea, Japan, and China; or through connections of my colleagues, as was the case for South Africa and here in Pakistan.
The interviews themselves can be a tool for recruiting additional people, but I avoid speaking to close friends of the interviewees, and instead look for people they know of but do not know personally. This helps prevent my perspective from developing inside a cultural bubble.
I begin recruiting as soon as the need is identified, as early as possible in a project, because it can inform all downstream efforts. The conversations begin as soon as the first three people have been recruited. The conversations don’t block any other progress on the project, as long as I believe that I’ve developed enough perspective to continue.
Preparation
To prepare, I review each person’s background to inform the creation of a unique discussion guide.
I plan for each interview to last for about 45–60 minutes. If interpretation is involved, they will last for about 90 minutes or longer because of the back-and-forth involved. Consecutive interpretation and simultaneous interpretation both have their advantages and disadvantages, but I’ve nearly always used the former because it’s easier to set up with less lead time.
Interview style
For in-person interviews, a casual setting with some degree of privacy is best: often the person’s home, a private corner of a café, or a long walk. That way, they can feel more free to discuss topics that are personally sensitive or culturally taboo. Because of this, one-on-one interviews are best.
For some people, it’s important for them to know that they won’t be quoted on anything, so I never record those conversations, and I don’t even take notes. In some cultures, some groups’ perspectives are critical, but they can be persecuted for their opinions (e.g., the LGBTQ+ community). I protect the privacy of such interviewees by asking permission to take notes if the need arises, such as references I want to look up later. I also ensure that their name doesn’t appear in the notes.
Discussion guide
In contrast to in-home visits, the conversation format that I use is more fluid. It’s a combination of open-ended personal perspectives on culture. This goes both ways and includes answering questions about my own culture, as this helps establish the type of subjective and objective data I’m seeking.
Introduction
- Mutual introductions
- Description of the project
- The goal of the conversation
- A list of the other types of people I’ll be speaking with
Most important has been to tell interviewees that I’m speaking to a wide variety of people, including people with conflicting viewpoints. That one point has a major impact. It focuses interviewees on their personal opinions, and how their personal opinions contrast with those of other people. This helps develop the complex perspective described earlier.
The last part of the conversation is reserved for more specific questions about where they see themselves in the landscape they’ve described. The moderation technique is to continually ask them to meta-reflect on various points they raise, often asking “why” and encouraging them to explain the rationale of perspectives that they disagree with.
As with most formative or generative interview methods, the ultimate goal is to have the questions in your discussion guide answered, but without asking the questions directly. The ideal approach is to manage the context of the conversation, so a conversation unfolds that naturally covers the topics you need. In this way, the information given to you is more authentic and has greater context to it.
Using the findings
The market context interviews are a type of formative research. They provide a background of information that will be used to define the direction of all our efforts, and create an essential foundation of knowledge about the complexity of Pakistan’s culture and market that will be used throughout our work. This knowledge is never really complete, and further development of this knowledge is not so much about adding data, but about adding depth and layers. This complex set of information allows for faster and more accurate decision-making throughout the rest of our work.
We’ve used the findings to identify which types of regions to go to for our in situ research: seven regions in total, including urban, peri-urban, rural, and feudal. The findings have also been used to determine what type of people to speak with, based on an understanding of Pakistan’s unique social structures. These are some of the factors of diversity in Doctory’s user spectrum (again, see “Segments of one” for more on this). The findings are also used to populate the entities of our systems map. All of these methods will be upcoming topics in this series.
I’ve begun to learn how people in Pakistan define “health,” about trust and lack thereof in institutions, about patriarchy and hierarchy, and how Islam affects people’s relationship with poverty and wealth. A critical point for me has been to understand how Pakistanis might feel about me, a foreigner from the US, participating in developing a company in their country.
Most practically, after discussions with my team, it’s given us some great hypotheses for the MVPs to test, as well as a much better ability to describe the opportunity to potential investors who may never be exposed to Pakistan.
What’s next
Next up is the in situ research into the seven different regions in Pakistan, where we’ll test and iterate MVPs live in the field. I hope you’ll continue on the journey with us.
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Cofounder of Doctory and Das Dach, former cofounder and CPO of Clue, and CD of frog design. You can follow me @MikeLaVigne, find me on LinkedIn, and contact me at mike@dasdach.berlin.
