How Use Memes Helps Companies to Communicate Your Research Findings Effectively
Using memes to summarize user research findings helped different teams in the startup that I work on, develop a growth mindset, which is essential in agile environments today.
Context:
I am a product designer at Elenas, a women-empowering direct-sales e-commerce company. When I joined Elenas, I noticed that the company needed to find a faster way to synthesize the user research findings. The team was under pressure to show quick results to investors, and they also had a difficult operational process. As a result, they did not have time to invest in improving their research process.
Personal experience:
In my last job before Elenas, I learned how a synthesis of research findings can help to share findings faster and provide an overview of a situation so that we can choose what to attack first. This tool allowed us to prioritize a team.
With a synthesis of the findings, we can show others what our problems are and what we can do about them. Without this tool, we do not have action items, and we cannot decide what to attack first.
Even though the synthesis process itself may not seem faster, it is faster in the long run because we can refer to our learning and the learning of other teams.
What is a synthesis:
Synthesis is the process of finding patterns and clustering qualitative and quantitative research data to gain insights. In small and medium-sized organizations, it is common to skip this step. However, this can lead to isolated facts and information that are difficult to understand. Without synthesis, organizations are essentially blind to the insights that their data can reveal in different research processes. As in science, synthesis is a tool that allows organizations to understand their problems and reformulate their hypotheses to jump to a solution.
Why memes:
In Elenas, employees love memes and often create memes to bond with other teammates. On the other hand, in the context of a startup, we do not have much time to read the research findings. Therefore, I thought that a good way to show some of these findings and engage people to read them would be to use memes.
How memes help startups with a growth mindset:
We started by using memes to summarize user research findings. Memes are a quick and easy way to communicate complex ideas and can be easily shared. Memes helped the team quickly and easily understand the user research findings, and they also helped to communicate the findings to investors and other stakeholders.
Using memes also helped the team to develop a growth mindset. Memes are an excellent way to share failures and successes, and they can help create a culture of learning and improvement. The team saw their mistakes as opportunities for growth and was more willing to take risks and try new things.
Example:
Indeed, memes can be powerful tools for summarizing user research findings and engaging people in reading them. For example, we found that intrapreneurs ( users) need to find one product to start with and perform well. Therefore, we created a meme that showed Shakira in her early days as a singer and then as a world-renowned artist.
The hard side:
I agree that memes do not always work. Sometimes, memes can be easily misinterpreted, and they can sometimes be offensive or discriminatory. It is important to use them carefully and be mindful of the audience you are trying to reach. In addition, memes are not a replacement for traditional methods of communication such as writing reports or giving presentations. However, they can be a valuable supplement to these methods, and can help make user research findings more accessible and engaging.
Conclusion:
Using memes to summarize user research findings was a win-win for Elenas. It helped the team to develop a growth mindset, and it also helped them to communicate their findings quickly and easily. I believe that other companies can benefit from using memes in this way, and I encourage you to give them a try.
If you want to learn more about synthesis, I would recommend the following sources:
