How to conduct remote Design Research with just one hour of Internet connection per day

In my last article I mentioned the hassle of being an ill-connected remote worker. Now, I am going to let you know about how I am managing to carry out Design Research remotely.

Connection time goes along with attention time. After light has been made on Zoom fatigue, it is our responsibility as business partners, clients or providers to be respectful of everyone else’s time. Less online time could actually mean… more focused time.

In my extreme scenario, I only have one hour in the day when I can use online-based tools. Here is my plan to use these 60 minutes as wisely as possible.

20 min: discuss the Slidedoc you previously sent to the client

Basically, it means your clever “past self” has put together a self-supporting presentation — let’s say it is a research proposal. It might be more wordy than the pre-Covid impactful presentation you used to showcase when your charisma would do the magic and provide explanations along the way. As it is more difficult to “read the air” (空気読よめない, a Japanese expression that means picking up the vibe and non-verbal cues displayed by your interlocutors) remotely, you should aim for clarity.

Shifting communication mode: from in-presence, inspirational shows to remote, well-explained presentations

1. Write an enriched digital presentation, just like you would write a book. Include you — the narrator — in the proposal, may it be through comments or footnotes. Include users’ and experts’ voices — with audio and video extracts for instance. Make it well-explained, obvious, rather than inspirational.
2. Send your research proposal to the client before the actual meeting.
3. Ask them to carefully review it.
4. Save the precious meeting time to get the client’s insightful comments.

30 min: analyze users’ feedbacks

When it comes to collecting research material, you might not need to set up an appointment with your users. Asynchronous interviews or diary studies could be interesting options. These methods will let users elaborate more, in writing or recording audio notes, about a specific topic you are asking them about. Again, preparation is key.

1. Set up a space that users can act upon when they have time. It can be either interview questions sent via email or Whatsapp or a collaborative board with blanks to fill with notes and pictures. For questions, a semi-directive style can be mimicked, sending one question at a time and adapting questions as the conversation go. This gives you an opportunity to react and for instance ask more details about a specific habit mentioned by the user.
2. You might want to agree with users that they show up to the page once a day for instance. If needed, send a text alert to remind your users it’s time to do so. It also provides more flexibility to the people who take part in your study, who can then engage more — which is a good thing for research quality.
3. Data collection then turns into a kind of passive task. Obviously, you need to be reactive and relevant when building the canvas to fill or sent the next questions. However, for the most part, you can work on other topics while the users are documenting their life and providing data.

5 min: order books online

I believe any project — even the most “field-based” one — starts with good old desk research. When I get lost in too many scattered sources online and have a hard time framing my research topic, I rely on two or three carefully selected references that help me focus and save my energy.

Technically you can read only two pages in each book:

1. Table of contents: this is your “horizontal” analysis, to ensure you cover the main aspects of your topic. Table of contents can translate into a rough outline for a research plan, an exploratory topics list, or a shortlist of stakeholders you need to talk to
2. References: this is for the “vertical” analysis. Each reference is an opportunity to dig deeper into a specific topic. It may very well be a predictive shortlist of the next books you are going to purchase, too ;)

To select the books you want to use as your research fundamentals, rely on well-known publishing houses and authors and try to choose sources that complement each other, mainly because they make up two different visions — sometimes even contradictory.

5 min: unlock creative blocks

If you feel you missed something in your research analysis and cannot really grasp what it is... go outside, walk and explain the project you are working on to an imaginary friend. Or draw it on paper to imaginary students. Set the intention. Explaining your project out loud and changing physical location will help your mind building connections differently as your body moves. There must be a name for it, but that is my interpretation of the anthropology course I took, taught by Véronique Bénéï at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). It translates into: “Moving Bodies and Politics of Emotions”.

Well-done! Now how are you going to use the next 23 hours?

That’s all for today! I will be updating this list or write another article as my research and ill-connected remote practice go by.