Surprise Differences
newsletter #23 | 18-Apr-2017
When I give workshops or short talks about researching the problem space, there are three things that audiences have a hard time wrapping their minds around. Each audience is different, and they all don’t react to the same concept. But here are the three concepts that consistently generate the most thinking and questions:
In problem-space research:
- No users
- No note taking
- Not a part of a development cycle
The last one is actually the hardest to understand. People listen to my explanation of the difference between the problem space and the solution space, then ask me, “So, how does this research fit it into our development cycle?” The idea of starting up a separate research process meets with wide-eyed stares. The hesitation is along the lines of, “Wow, that would require a fundamental change to the way we plan and budget our work process.” And then people wonder how they could make that happen within their own organization. The key to making that happen is for well-known companies and agencies to extol the value of it. (For example, an agency can use this understanding, accumulated in small sets over time, as a way to differentiate themselves in their market. Deeper understanding leads to more successful solutions and attracts more clients in that market.)
I think the hardest part to understand about this is that problem-space research is a background thing, evergreen, that you add to over time. It’s about developing empathy and meaning, not about solving anything. That’s hard for designers to come to grips with. It’s hard for designers and product managers to stop thinking about solving the problem — everything is tied to the product for them. Ideas are how you get cred.
The second point, no note taking, is easier to grasp. You record a listening session (my term for an interview, to emphasize the important difference). Recording allows you to focus intently on what the participant is saying, constantly checking if you understand or are making assumptions, and constantly diving into any shallow areas like opinions and explanations. You can certainly jot down a concept that comes up in passing, so you can remember to get back to it later when this part of the conversation seems played out. But, if you have more than about 10 of these concepts jotted down in one listening session, you’re not paying enough attention to the participant.
The push-back that I hear from my audiences goes along the lines of, “But the act of note-taking helps me make sense of things.” During a listening session, you aren’t trying to make sense. You’re not analyzing, comparing, or solving problems. Instead, you’re simply following the direction of the always-shifting conversation. True note-taking steals your attention away from the person you’re listening to. (Note: If no recording is allowed, then have a second person in the background type up the transcript as it is uttered, like a stenographer. First-person point of view, from the participant, is key to developing empathy when doing analysis with this transcript later on.)
No users is not hard to grasp either. When you say “user,” you might be muddying the conversation for your collaborators and stakeholders. A user is a person with a relationship to your organization. You can substitute many other words for user: customer, member, passenger, patron, consumer, client, citizen, etc. All of these words still have the meaning of a person with a relationship to your organization. When you speak about someone who has a relationship to your organization, you are speaking about the solution space.
There’s nothing wrong with talking about the solution space — it’s just that organizations are that trying to explore the problem space need a different set of vocabulary. When you focus on the purposes a person has and their thinking to achieve that purpose, you are not looking through the lens of your organization. The problem space gets muddied when you think of it through the lens of your organization. To clarify your thinking, try saying “person” instead. A person is a human with agency and a purposes.
Here’s an example. A bank wants to understand customers in order to innovate. But innovation will be restricted to the existing framework the bank uses to engage its customers. In the consumer realm, this framework is: checking, savings, credit, loans. To get out of the rut, the bank embarks on problem space research — accidentally asking existing customers about their checking, savings, and credit needs. These are framed exactly how the organization thinks. Instead, the bank employees might pretend they are employees of a research think tank, pursuing studies across the finance industry to understand the purposes people have in mind when they’ve done certain transactions. They could study buying a house with a loan, preparations to renovate a home, preparations for an expensive life event, like sending kids to college, or the thinking behind group efforts like going on a vacation together or eating a meal together. There are myriad scenarios to explore over time, and the purpose-related explorations will produce a deeper understanding of the inner reasoning that goes on in people’s minds. Their reasoning is not tied to the framework of checking, savings, and credit. This deeper understanding, from a multilateral exploration yields fertile ground for innovative solutions outside the existing checking, savings, credit framework.
When you say the word “user” (or it’s relations), check in with yourself to be sure you mean to be speaking about the solution space. And if instead you mean to be discussing the problem space, substitute the word “person.” It will help un-muddy your discussions and free you from the framework that binds your thinking.
