How we conduct user research with rural farmers in the COVID-19 era
By Kripa Pattabiraman, a Senior UX Researcher working on smallholder farmer-centric products.
Fading fast are the days of being able to sit across your user to observe them in their own space, intently listening to them speak, or hovering next to them while they navigate through your app.
As people learn new ways of moving through their pandemic-informed lives, researchers too are adapting to a world where access to users is not as easily available, advisable, or even permissible as it used to be.
Lab-testing, focus group discussions, in-depth interviews, ethnographies — all of them had one thing in common. They allowed for those precious face-to-face conversations. Observable body language and the invaluable opportunity to be in the moment with our user added dollops of rich context to the insights.
Hopefully, we will find opportunities to return to these “old ways”. But, in the meantime, we continue to also evolve our approach and methodologies to account for the new normal. COVID-19 is currently the biggest blocker to our research and has impacted not only timelines but also our modus operandi of conducting research.
The rise of remote research
While remote research tools have been around for a while, they are now finding more and more takers. They have emerged as a potential answer to COVID-19’s limitations. But none of them are perfect. Good design entails reducing the number of steps a user must take to achieve a task. Similarly, good research aims to cut down the effort needed for a user to share their thoughts.
Many remote research tools, such as uxarmy, UzerZoom or Lookback, require the users to download an app, complete on-boarding, and then log in each time they participate in an interview. This is a big ask, especially when the pay-off of giving invaluable feedback is almost never immediate or obvious to the participant.
Remote research tools also pose challenges to us as researchers. When we onboard each new user, we also need to walk them through the set-up process before each interview can be conducted.
Impact on research with smallholders
At Digital Ag Solutions, our researchers deal with an added layer of complexity given the profile of our target demographic.
We work with smallholder farmers, which brings a unique set of challenges unlikely to be encountered with an urban market. With rural smallholder farmers, we cannot take for granted the familiarity with digital devices and tech-savviness we are so used to seeing in people. While we are used to seeing urbanites navigate around apps intuitively — we often do not see this with our rural users.
Understandably, user researchers are at a disadvantage as it means that they are unable to completely rely on tools or platforms built for remote user research. And let us not even talk about all the network and connectivity and data limit issues.
All of this leaves us with one critical question: When we cannot meet our users in person and they do not always find it easy to connect with us on digital platforms, how do we reach them?
Combining innovation and ingenuity
While we explore new solutions for remote research, we are innovating with existing resources, and finding ways to adapt tried-and-tested methods to get around limitations imposed by COVID-19.
Leading the way here is our UX Research Ops’ Farmittee Project — a panel of farmers who have voluntarily signed up to participate in research projects.
The trial is still in its recruitment phase, but we already see its immense potential. When fully up and running, the panel will offer a database of willing and informed participants who match the user criteria for smallholder research projects. Farmittee is scalable, and can grow to accommodate multiple crops, various regions and languages, and different products.
Another solution that has shown quite a bit of success is “opt-in research”. What does “opt-in research” mean? When users complete an online or in-app survey on a topic, they are asked if they would like to give more detailed feedback. If they opt in, they are then asked to select a suitable time and date for an interview. Putting the choice in the user’s hands empowers them and makes them feel respected. Simultaneously, it removes the uncertainty and discomfort many researchers experience when they have to cold call users for interviews.
Another method is to seek help from the well-networked team of Yara Agronomists. While this might not always lead us directly to a farmer who uses our app, it is a great way to find smallholder farmers to speak with. Yara’s agronomists have built a great reputation on the ground and are trusted by farmers because of the value they bring. As researchers, we can leverage that trust to find willing participants for crucial studies.
Discover, Evaluate, Test, and Adopt
The methods described are all at different stages of maturity. As exciting as they are, we must temper our enthusiasm with caution to ensure the validity and credibility of the work we are engaged in.
This might mean having a standard operating procedure in place to ensure due process and diligence where required, and critically evaluating any solution we are considering by testing it thoroughly and documenting its use-cases.
As we shake off the COVID-19 limitations, it is not just important that we, as user researchers, do our best to move on and build on the work we are doing. It is also important that we do it right.
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