Jan Chipchase Live at PeepalDesign!
A gathering of design folks is a common affair in India; meet-ups, workshops, talks, conferences and what not. But how often does the sorority of User Researchers gather? That rare occasion happened a few days back in ‘Namma Bengaluru’ when PeepalDesign proudly hosted Jan for the first of its ‘UX Talk Live’ series.
Jan Chipchase is the founder of Studio D Radiodurans which is a research, design and strategy consultancy specialises in understanding the consumer behaviour in emerging markets. Jan is known for his immersive research among hard to reach communities in high-risk geographies.
We absolutely loved every moment of the 45-minute talk. Here are some ideas that we couldn’t shake off.
‘I have no office, I operate anywhere’
Jan’s research assignments take him to different hard to access, high-risk locations across the globe. He travels light and even has his own set of equipment which is custom made to suit his travel needs.
Less is more! How do we go from heavy checked-in luggage to a piece of hand baggage without missing anything critical?
‘International team + local fixers get the job done’
Surprisingly, Jan depends on the local fixers and not researchers to assist on his international projects. He calls these locals as ‘fixers’ who help him to set up the study, recruit participants, translate and provide the local cultural context.
Do our own cultural biases affect the outcome of the studies we do!!
‘Sojourns in Pop Up Studios’
Jan and his team usually stay in ‘Pop-up studios’ which are houses (not hotels) situated in or just outside the communities they wish to understand. He reckons such houses bring them closer to the people they study. Having the local food and staying amidst the locals gets them closer to its people.
Do we stay in five-star hotels or stay with the locals? Do we conduct the study in labs or where participants are most comfortable? What is noise and what is data?
‘Trust building & the upside-down approach’
In Jan’s pop-up studios, the youngest member of the team gets to choose the best room. Jan quips that as the senior-most member of the team he sometimes sleeps on the couch. According to Jan, this upside-down approach signals that every voice on the team matters and creates trust.
How can this be applied in a hierarchical organisation?
‘Unstructured and Structured time’
Jan differentiates time into structured time which includes all the planned activities and an unstructured time spent in the presence of data where all the remarkable things happen.
How much unstructured time can we afford? What can we do with the unstructured time during our field study?
‘The trust experiment’
Jan narrated a few experiments he had conducted in China to test how trusting people are in general.
In one of the experiments, 60% of participants had completed the task of passing a certain amount of money to an anonymous person, in return for a small percentage of the money as a fee. This surprised Jan since he considered China as a low-trust country.
“Humans turn out to be trustworthy even though it might be for selfish reasons” concludes Jan
When Jan had suggested talking about ‘trust’, we presumed it was the trust with clients to secure their data, maintaining the confidentiality or delivering quality work. It turned out to be about the trust he placed on his ‘fixers’, his team and above all the ‘participants’ to a great extent.
The first of the UX talk live series turned out to be thought-provoking and insightful, thanks to Jan.
To those who missed it, stay tuned for we have more such talks coming up this year!
