Moving into the unknown; when UX leads the way
It is safe to assume that most of us have had to move houses from one place to another. If I could take you back to that memory, how did you prepare? What did you consider when you were planning for your move? I’m sure that you probably thought about the potential cost of the move, the area that you’d like to move to, how accessible it is, the distance to & from your place of work & or town etc… I think that in layman’s terms, that would be the closest description of the Twiga National Expansion project. Just to provide context, Twiga Foods is a Kenyan food distribution company that through its digital platform and logistics network, links retailers with farmers and food manufacturers, offering a convenient and reliable service. You can learn more about us here but let’s finish the article first!
Over time, when a company has established its niche market & has had a go-over of things for a while, it is only natural for it to ‘grow’. With growth, there comes the opportunity to redefine the mode of operation, seek out new opportunities as well as branch out into new markets or uncharted territories. Back to the house-moving analogy, there’s some work that goes into understanding these uncharted territories. Just like what you do before you go house hunting, you do your due diligence & research. So, as you might know, various companies invest in extensive research before they enter new markets. This includes Market Research & User Experience (UX) research. The key difference between the two put quite simply, is that Market Research focuses on what people want i.e whether you’re selling what people want to buy while UX focuses on what is useful to people, what are their needs & how to solve them. So now that we have an understanding of what it is, let’s get into the practicality of it.
The Approach
Team Dynamics
With the communication of an impending National Expansion, it was quite obvious that by virtue of us having a permanent internal UX team (although lean), we would need to put together a Research Team. The team consisted of a variety of people under the roles of Researchers as well as Assistant Researchers, offering a wide range of skillsets; Design Research, Product Design, Software Development as well as Visual design.
The advantage of this is that you get to have people out on the field with different perspectives and rule out the element of having information bias & even the proverbial ‘process rigidity’ (being so used to doing things one way that you’re literally blind to any other way, trust me, it happens a lot!).
The only disadvantage was that there was some significant time spent towards up-skilling the team to be conversant with UX research methodologies & approaches such as Design Thinking, interview etiquette etc. The other underside of this was that we were heading out in the midst of an international pandemic, meaning that even as we worked we needed to observe the set Covid-19 guidelines in order to protect each other as well as our end-users while in the field.
Having a very dynamic and now up-skilled team, we strapped our research boots (or sneakers if you’d like) & set out on our adventure. Our journey would take us from Kisumu to the towns of Eldoret, Nakuru, Meru as well as Karatina. Our work was pretty much cut out when it came to the distance we had to travel but more importantly, there were the people that we were going to meet. Now comes the question, who were we going to meet? Were they expecting us? Should we just walk into their shop? Do we walk up to people’s homes & knock on the door? To be honest, no one wants to be arrested for loitering & more so suffer the embarrassment of being chased away, I know I don’t!
Crunch time!
Moving into a new territory, if you’re not a local then you’re a stranger and no local wants to give information to a stranger.
This is where the different research methodologies come to play, which put quite simply are the ways in which data or information can be gathered. In this particular scenario, it is imperative to get someone with local entrance to connect you with people, they are normally referred to as ‘fixers’. They typically are someone who the end-users know or can easily relate to & most importantly trust. When it comes to UX Research, one of the key mantras that we have is that ‘You do whatever it takes’, we partnered with the Market Research team to connect with some of the vendors who they had already formed a rapport with to be the key participants who we would interview. This meant that our main approach towards gathering information would be to hold contextual interviews which is a highly informative way to gather information. It is specifically designed to provide insight into the environment or context in which a design will be used.
The advantages to this approach were that there were set interview times so we wouldn’t have to rush through information gathering, we get rich & relevant data because we get to talk to the ‘right people’ and it allows us to plan our time well. A ‘right-person’ is someone who fits our defined criteria of an interview participant which in this case, was any vendor who deals in fresh fruits and vegetables (FFVs) or fast moving consumer goods (FMCGs).
However, the most advantageous aspect of contextual interviews is the fact that you get to interact with the end-user in their natural environment. There is a profound richness to be able to observe their behaviours, facial expressions when they’re answering a question and even getting a sense of their personality & innately who they are as people.
Moving from one town to the next, more than the insightful data that we got on consumer habits was the distinct difference in the socio-cultural aspects & influences. This had a great impact on how we interacted with the vendors (how we presented ourselves to them) & even how we structured the themes around certain information that we probed for. For example, if a certain area is well known for growing their own produce, it is inevitable that they would have a different view & interest in consuming certain products. Their consumer habits were heavily influenced by their cultural norms. This meant that an adequate response on the Research team’s part was to improvise & tailor our interview questions to suit their context in a way that we would still be able to gather useful data. In instances where formal language proved to be a hinderance, we gave room for our interviewees to speak in the language that they could best express themselves. After all, it was what they had to say that we had an interest in.
We have all this information, now what?
Time spent in the field usually gives rise to very insightful data from the get-go & sometimes not so insightful data. Well, that’s usually the nature of raw data, it doesn’t normally make sense as a single unit. This is where the Synthesis process/stage comes in, which simply means sense-making. This is a very crucial stage which might take days or even weeks (and a lot of caffeine!). When we begun to look at all the data that we got from talking to different users with respect to their towns, we started to see patterns stemming from recurring sets of information. This either cut across the different segments of our user bases or were very unique to certain users or areas. The insights built from this gave rise to the possible solutions or approaches which the business can apply.
But Twiga already has products, does this mean that we are building new solutions?
I wouldn’t answer with a yes, neither with a no. I’ll settle with a maybe, a strong maybe? The beauty of the outcome of UX research, especially with it being a user-driven process is that there are very many possibilities. The results of the research we did gave rise to recommendations that touched on solutions such as digital product improvement, brand awareness, process improvement & more. As you can see, the recommended solutions didn’t necessarily touch on creation of new products rather, how we can tailor our products & services to suit the needs of our end-users in these areas. This is a tip by one of the UX designers whom I find very knowledgeable, which attempts to address the core of this:
“Use a data-informed approach rather than being solely data-driven…”
William Ntim, author of 101 Random UX Tips.
I love this UX Tip because it’s really centred on how we are able to use the Insights that we get from data to build meaningful solutions. This means that we’re going beyond delivering what exactly the data says & building solutions that answer to user problems & even considering the ‘hidden issues’ that may not be said but implied. This is the value of contextual design.
In conclusion, when we consider the nature of business that is Twiga and the scale of impact it has on its customer base, any type of solution that is designed out of context is a gamble. Twiga IS its customers. It is the Mama mboga (neighbourhood grocer) along the road as well as the Shop owner faithfully serving their residential clientele everyday. We acknowledge our customer’s differences socially, economically & even culturally and strive to build solutions, improving those that already exist in this sense. UX serves as the ship that sails into uncharted territories. Who knows where where going next?!
See you on our next voyage!
