Design Research during Lockdown

With the global environment changing in the blink of an eye, it becomes all the more important to face up the challenges in order to thrive and not just survive.

At TinkerLabs, we believe that in a world becoming increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, design thinking has helped us navigate through and comply with the new realities.

It’s been more than a month since the team has been working from home and our projects have continued, new equities have come in and we have adapted. Uncertainty has become an opportunity for innovation!

Here we have Vaibhavi Joshi, our Business Design Strategist and Meru Vashisht, our Design Researcher who have been leading projects through these uncertain times, with an ever-increasing pace of change.

Vaibhavi’s team is helping an E-Commerce giant redesign its internal customer experience when it comes to interacting with the Commercial Team.

Meru and her team have begun work on a family planning project for which they were to travel to Bihar for primary research.

Through this conversation, we want to understand what have been some of the challenges they have faced, how they tackled them and what are some of their takeaways, from their experiences while designing and conducting remote research.

Welcome to what we call a TinkerChat!

Vaibhavi, I have heard you completely turned around your research remotely. How did you decide to do so?

Vaibhavi: Our team of two Tinkerers was to fly to conduct in-person interviews but the plans came withering down. With rigid project timelines, we had to ensure that our project continued. Only the method had to change, the approach and core of the design research still remains. As our stakeholders were digitally equipped, it was an easy decision for us to switch to remote research.

I like how you didn’t wait for things to fall into place and were fluid with the method of research.

Meru, since your users are based out of rural Bihar, how did you continue with your research?

Meru: Unlike Vaibhavi’s project, we knew our users aren’t digitally equipped for us to meet them remotely. Moreover, for a gender-sensitive topic, it is important to speak to women and men separately and ensure the privacy they need to feel comfortable talking about their experiences. The lockdown however left our users confined in houses which don’t guarantee privacy.

So we stepped out from where we were and took a macro view. We thought, how might we learn more about the topic and the context before we head out to the field? This gave us our North Star and from that emerged two separate research plans- one for secondary research and another for expert interviews.

Uncertain times do bring out the non-linear attributes of the design thinking process.

Vaibhavi, how did you adapt your in-person interviews for a remote environment? What were some challenges you faced?

Vaibhavi: Although people have isolated themselves in their respective spaces of comfort, they aren’t really in their comfort zones. When almost everyone is adapting to a remote working environment, it might not be the right time to ask them to block a considerable amount of their schedule for our research. And, for someone yet not introduced to the Design Thinking mindset, this exercise might seem trivial.

Instead, we designed a discussion guide for a shorter interview, to learn about the process through their experiences. We had to ensure that we get as many stories and anecdotes as possible. This would help us further understand the nuances of the ecosystem as well as unearth best possible insights.

Remote research has its own set of challenges — aligning interview slots with various stakeholders in these dynamic times and ensuring that we are able to establish a rapport with the respondent in whatever little time and bandwidth we have with us.

What did you do for the respondents to open up over a video call?

Vaibhavi: Our only form of introduction to each other had been a meeting invite, which may be one amongst the various emails my respondent was receiving.

A set up where we are separated quite literally by a screen, building a rapport with the respondent before we begin the conversation becomes crucial.

While the pandemic isolated us, it gave us a natural bond to connect with just about anyone and became a social currency. #WeAreInThisTogether

Hahaha…it’s interesting how you built an opportunity out of the pandemic.

Meru, expert interviews are usually conducted remotely, were there still any unique challenges you faced as well?

Meru: Although the term expert interview may bring to mind people with PhDs, which many of our experts are, it also includes people working directly on the field such as ASHAs and Block Health Managers as they truly are the experts of the ground reality.

We did ride the Corona wave of uncertainties with them where challenges could range from- “Incoming calls have been suspended on this number, and will begin only after recharge” to “Madam, abhi toh corona ka survey chal raha hai, koi aur kaam ke liye samay kahaan hai.” After recharging phones or following up for an hour in between their tight schedules, we would take a while to bring our expert away from the hustle of her work into a comfort zone for the detailed conversation to follow.

How are these conversations with experts different from those with users?

Meru: Unlike user interviews which are driven by researchers, expert interviews are led by the experts themselves. Often you will note that by the time the expert has given her/his views on the research objective, very little of the discussion guide is left uncovered. However there it is important to keep to the expert’s experiences and facts while filtering opinions which may be biased after years of exposure.

That definitely broadened the horizon of experts and highlighted some key differences between interviewing experts and users.

Vaibhavi, your users were employees of a corporate setup, how were they responding? What were some things you were mindful of during the user interviews?

Vaibhavi: With limited or sometimes no knowledge around the purpose of the call, I found the stakeholders quite sceptical initially. They have known you only through a meeting invite in their inbox from a ‘foreign’ email address, and then virtually meeting you — it is a different ball game altogether.

We never termed the entire exercise as an interview — be it while sending a meeting invite or briefing them before the conversation navigates into the research. We did not want them to feel that they are being interrogated or questioned, it was more about encouraging a dialogue, a free flowing conversation.

Those are some vital points you made to keep away from letting the respondent feel that they are part of a survey or market research.

Meru, you had spoken about secondary research. Your team would have conducted secondary research even before designing your initial research plan. How was this round of secondary research different?

Meru: You are right, we did begin the project with secondary research to build a basic knowledge of the domain of study.

With the virus dictating our itineraries, we decided to use existing literature to answer some of the questions we were to pose to our users. We streamlined our secondary research into those areas of inquiry- borrowing the behavioural lens to find feelings and emotions that were driving actions. With so much good work happening in sexual and reproductive health (SRH) around the world, we came across behavioural patterns which even resonated with some of our previous findings from SRH projects.

To conclude, as strategist and researcher, what would you two take away from the times of COVID19?

Vaibhavi: In a nutshell, here are my 3 takeaways -

• Refrain from a mindset that this format will not be as fruitful
• Readiness to conduct interviews as and when they come
• Get to know your respondent to the best of your abilities. P.S : We followed LinkedIn while people were busy posting Dalgona coffee snaps and dancing to TikTok challenges.

Meru: We may not ask if we do not know. User interviews are driven by the questions we ask and there may remain some untouched areas we may not even know existed. There are ways to uncover the breadth of the domain before we dive deep and that can be done remotely.

That ended on quite a note! I am looking forward to how projects from the times of COVID unfurl and to what future projects in the Post-COVID world will borrow from these times.