Making Design Research Work in the Age of Virtual Collaboration
The pandemic has brought a variety of ups and downs to many aspects of life. Work, academics, lifestyles, the way people communicate…but as cliché as it may sound, it really opened up a world of exciting opportunities, leading me to where I am here in Sixty Two, a remote-based design consultancy as a design researcher. Despite the fact that conducting research remotely presents its own unique set of challenges, it has been a journey full of learnings and inspiration.
Design research is a wide subject, but it is key to untangling the complex uncertainties of any project. Back then, researchers typically relied on conducting field studies and maintaining close communication with research participants, usually meeting them in person to uncover contextual insights. However, as we know, the pandemic had put a limit to that and people couldn’t meet as freely anymore.
Personally, Covid had become a blessing in disguise, as this ‘new normal’, introduced me to new innovations, tools, and game-changers that have transformed the way people do things. This time period made me accustomed to communicating and collaborating with people virtually, gave me the opportunity to plan and design a virtual workshop, and enabled me to view design from a more holistic and strategic point of view, as compared to my previous experience in architecture and interior design (which was very applied, to say the least).
After finishing my graduate research project on collaborative virtual workspaces, I returned to Indonesia and began my career as a design researcher at Sixty Two. Joining a remote company has given me valuable learnings and insights into how to maximize research in a virtual environment, and how it can inspire people just as much, if not better than through doing research in-person. These 4 months have been an exciting and fulfilling journey for me so far, as I continue to explore the potential of virtual collaboration and how it can shape the future of design research.
The Big Shift
The rise of new innovations, tools, and game-changers that help people transition into the new normal.
As many times as we might hear it, the Covid-19 pandemic has truly had a profound impact on every industry. A survey by McKinsey showed that companies increased remote working and collaboration 43-fold faster than pre-pandemic predictions, while in Indonesia, the job market shifted from 68% on-site to only 46% during the pandemic, with remote and hybrid work seeing a significant increase of 22% (BCG & JobStreet, 2020).
The presence of collaboration technology as game-changers has been a critical factor in the success of remote working. Popular remote working tools such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Miro, all saw a significant surge in users during the pandemic and even as people begin returning to offices, it is unlikely that the usage of these platforms will decline to pre-pandemic levels. This innovation had enabled people to easily transition to the “new normal” of remote work. (Mitchell, 2021).
Research, then and now —
The pandemic has brought about unprecedented changes across various industries, including the field of design (Including UX) research. Usually, researchers could easily approach or engage with participants directly in-person through interviews, field observation or ethnography for primary research data. However, with social distancing measures in place, researchers had to pivot to remote methods for a significant duration of time.
As previously mentioned, the pandemic has opened up a gateway to opportunities related to research, particularly in virtual environments. However, it’s important to recognize that there are special benefits to conducting research in-person that could be incorporated into virtual methods to maximize insights.
In-person research methods can surely bring valuable nuances and insights that may be difficult to capture through remote research, such as observing one’s body language and facial expressions in interviews, and directly experiencing the environment in which people live in. It also enables us to reach a wider diversity of respondent demographics, as people from lower socio-economic backgrounds or older age groups can be included, without having to consider their level of tech-savviness and accessibility to the internet.
For specific projects, researchers may travel to specific locations to conduct observations or engage in participatory design workshops. In these situations, researchers also greatly rely on physical tools (such as paper canvases, stationary, post-its, etc.) when doing generative research. Overall, in-person research allows researchers to dive deep into participants’ specific contexts, leading to insights that are meaningful and in-depth.
As I wrote this article, I spoke with Manda, a senior design researcher in Sixty Two, who shared her experience of conducting research before the pandemic. She shared about the hassle of transferring physical data into digital format for data synthesis, including taking photos of post-its and stimuli canvases and manually retyping participant responses into Excel or other data processing platforms.
Now, with the emergence of technological advancements in the “new normal” of research, such pain points could be eliminated. Some examples include:
- virtual meeting platforms like Zoom enable automatic recording and transcription
- collaborative whiteboard platforms like Miro, Figjam, or even Google Slides to facilitate virtual workshops
- Post-it innovating an app that could scan photos of post-its and automatically turn them into a digital format.
— That being said, while there are limitations and advantages to both in-person and virtual research processes, our choice of approach is highly dependent on the specific context of each project. But again, we can’t deny the significant advancement in research tools that have emerged during the pandemic, as these tools have enabled researchers to achieve greater potential and seize new opportunities, and they are likely to remain an integral part of our research processes moving forward.
Driving design research through virtual collaboration @ Sixtytwo
Collaborating across cities and place boundaries
As a remote company, our team members are spread out across different cities and even countries, but we still strive to maintain a strong sense of unity within Sixty Two. Here, collaboration is a cornerstone of our day-to-day activities, which usually involve activities such as daily check-ins, standups, syncs, brainstorm sessions, open sharing sessions, and 1-on-1 catch ups — all done virtually through collaboration technology such as Slack, Google Meet, Figma, and so on.
In the context of remote working and virtual collaboration, technology has definitely changed the way we produce, experience, and perceive space. The virtual collaboration technologies mentioned above have effectively moved the notion of ‘space’ from the physical into the digital realm, enabling the team to collaborate in real-time as if they’re located in one space, despite being physically located in different places (in support of Lefebvre’s Production of Space Theory) That being said, Sixty Two has been successful being a remote company for quite a long while now!
Our day to day research
From the beginning, working as a design researcher has reminded me of the design squiggle concept I learned about in university. In fact, working in a design consultancy has definitely highlighted the significance of the concept, as we work for different clients and each new project requires us to navigate through an entirely unique, tangled process. As illustrated in Daniel Newman’s original design squiggle diagram, research is a crucial tool for untangling uncertainty and providing a glimpse of clarity for the concept and design processes ahead. And to untangle every knot of the squiggle, we need specific tools and methods to do so.
Any design research project requires a holistic approach that acknowledges the complexity of design. This involves taking into consideration several key factors, including context, human needs, culture, technology, resources, and ethical considerations, while of course continuously engaging with stakeholders to ensure our research is aligned with their goals and values. Along the process, we need to constantly zoom in and out, and go back and forth to understand these areas to form meaningful design strategies to bring a shift in people’s lives for the better.
Below, I’ll explain how we navigate through the complexity of our research processes using various virtual collaboration technologies.
Exploring virtual collaboration technologies for our internal working process
The Power of Research Walls
One thing we make sure to include in our research process is the research wall. Basically, it’s like a meeting room with writable walls, post-its and information printed out scattered across the room, but it’s digital, no need to clean up the space for other people to use, and most importantly: instant documentation, no space limitations.
Infinite whiteboard platforms such as Figjam, Miro, Mural, etc. are the main key and enabler to these research walls. We have been able to maximize our insights thanks to the provision of infinite space and features such as post-its, shapes, section boards, and more that greatly aid us in collaboration and organization of findings.
For example, in a glimpse of one of our research walls below, you could see how we divide every activity into different sections. Literature study, data synthesizing, brainstorming, affinity diagramming, framework iterations, in-depth interview data processing, and more. We could also invite other teams and disciplines to jam together with us in this virtual space to exchange insights and learn from each other, leading to magical moments of creativity and innovation.
Research walls do sometimes have it’s limitations, especially when there’s too much data for even the page to load. However, even if we move to another Figjam board or another platform, the ability to keep our research process documented has been crucial. As a researcher, it’s important to value every piece of data we find along the way. Even if we didn’t use it in the end, it could still be valuable for future research or projects. Looking back at the documentation in our research wall to recall insights could help inform and guide our future work and ensure a continuous learning process.
Airtable to accelerate our data synthesis
In our last project, we experimented with using Airtable to manage our respondent recruitment and data synthesis processes. With its powerful tagging system, we could link multiple datasets across different tabs and ensure the credibility of our data records. Compared to using Google Sheets in the past, Airtable significantly sped up our workflow through its tagging and records system. Our process was also greatly helped by the views and filters that allowed us to iterate, refine, and extract more valuable insights from our data.
Exploring virtual collaboration technologies that could inspire insights and sense of presence
Stimuli exploration for generative design research
As previously mentioned, virtual interviews can be challenging due to the difficulty of communicating through a screen and the lack of social cues. Having to ask respondents direct questions like “What are your needs? What are your values? What are your hopes?” would be too abstract, and it might require time for them to think. So alas, we explored the use of stimuli for our in-depth interviews.
Stimuli have traditionally been used in offline workshops or in-person interviews, as generative tools and techniques to learn about people and their everyday experiences (Sanders, 2012). Back then, researchers had to manually transfer the collected data from physical materials into a digital format for data synthesis. This typically involves taking photos of the materials for documentation, and manually typing the data into Excel or similar platforms.
However, advancements in collaboration technologies have enabled the leverage of the effectiveness of these stimuli. In virtual interviews, data could be documented through stimuli at the same time as we talk with the respondent, which later on could be validated through rewatching the recording. Virtual meeting platforms such as Zoom have also played a big part in increasing research effectiveness, as it allows interview recordings to be saved automatically to the cloud, and virtual meetings tend to have fewer noise interruptions, which usually pose to be quite a challenge for in-person interviews.
From our past in-depth interview sessions, we found that stimuli could also draw out more enthusiastic responses from our respondents. One time, one of our respondents who went through our Life Aspect Wheel stimuli, asked for a copy of it for themself as it helped them realize and learn more about themself during the interview. Additionally, studies have shown that people’s favorite topic of communication is themselves, thus it’s necessary to emphasize the importance of creating an environment that focuses on their needs and perspectives.
Without stimuli, verbal communication alone wouldn’t have produced the same level of engagement and depth of understanding. Sure, the effort to craft one usually requires much time and iterations, but the potential benefits to it are endless.
Creating alignment and fostering informal interactions in online/hybrid workshops
Our experience in hosting a hybrid workshop had been a challenge, as we had to consider the constraints of both physical and virtual. Although we set up the activity to be mostly done virtually through Figjam, we still had to find a suitable physical space to conduct our workshop, make sure the sound system is set up properly, ensure the online participants could see what is happening offline so they won’t feel left behind, and assign on-site team members to coordinate the online teams.
Running a successful workshop requires constant engagement and participation from all participants. While it was relatively straightforward enough to achieve in offline workshops, virtual workshops pose a unique challenge, as we can’t know what the participants are doing behind the screen.
To address this issue, the concept of “sense of presence” re-emerged in the midst of the pandemic. Our experimentations show that a sense of presence could be achieved through familiar, informal interactions or, in the case of hybrid workshops, ensuring that both online and offline parties have equal opportunities to voice their opinions, and connect with one another.
Figjam’s ability to enhance sense of presence truly helped in this instance, with the movement of live cursors that can indicate the participants’ active engagement, and the ability to react to other participants synchronously (through reaction emotes) or asynchronously (through post-its comments or stickers). These features have the ability to enhance the sense of presence by innovating beyond standard video calls, and moving towards creating experiences as authentic and genuine as it was with in-person interactions.
With everything being said, the key to maximizing insights and engagement in any type of workshop, or even in daily meetings or routine interaction; lies in fostering interaction that ensures an equal sense of presence for everyone involved, which results in a safe and comfortable space to cultivate effective teamwork and communication.
Key learnings
So far, my experience as a design researcher in Sixty Two has been an exciting journey full of valuable insights and discoveries. I’ve been lucky enough to work on two projects that gave me the chance to try out some new research approaches and dive headfirst into the world of virtual collaboration, especially after learning all those theories back in university.
Overall, my key learnings throughout this journey would be:
- Context is everything; the first step of the research process is to gain a thorough understanding of the context to determine the most appropriate direction of research. Whether it should be in-person methods, virtual, or a mix of both, it should be tailored to the unique context and project brief!
- Be open-minded for innovation, as our decision to move to Airtable from Google Sheets has been a lifesaver. As we look to the future, there will undeniably be more advancements in research tools that can support our day-to-day work, and I’d suggest looking through this great map of research tools to maybe discover something that could become a game-changer for your work.
- Stimuli definitely played a crucial role in the success of our in-depth interviews, as they enabled us to achieve a level of engagement and understanding verbal communication alone couldn’t have achieved, especially in a virtual setting. In the future, I’d hope for an opportunity to experience creating stimuli for in-person interviews, and personally get to know its benefits and challenges.
- Documentation is an essential aspect of virtual research. From all the methods and tools I’ve mentioned above, every one of them still remains documented in the cloud and could be looked back at any given time. The research process could be convoluted, requiring multiple iterations to untangle each knot within the squiggle. That’s why research walls have become one of the pillars of our virtual research process, as we’re able to track our progress, revisit past decisions, and maintain a clear understanding of the research journey, no matter how complex it may be.
Moving forward, as the field of research continues to evolve, so will our research team. I intend to always keep an eye out to learn about new innovations in virtual collaborations, discover new tools and techniques that could help us unlock even greater insights and bring a more positive shift to the world!
If you’re curious to see more on how our research and design process unfolds in Sixty Two, you can take a look at our projects or shoot us an email!
