How to make a discovery abroad
Everything I wish I knew before doing research abroad
In July, this year, Akemi Russi (my team’s Product Manager) and I had the opportunity of being part of a discovery project in New York for Gympass. As soon as they gave me the news, my first feeling was enthusiasm... Wow! A chance to see and interact with our users abroad is priceless. After a while, a light feeling of distress came along… HOW? 😥Another language, another culture, an unknown place… My first action was to search online for articles that could guide me on the theme. Sad to say, I have found little to no content on the matter, thus, I decided to write about it myself. Our main output within this discovery project was “to design a new experience on bookings, that would add value to our users and make their lives easier.” The company’s expectation from you at this moment is very clear. The main challenge is on how will your path be until you reach it. In my case, which would be my path until I was able to draw this new booking experience? So let me break it down to you.
Pre-Discovery
The level of anxiety at this particular step is high. Well, before starting packing, it is important that we plan and understand, very clearly, everything that is involved in a discovery process.
🎯 Set your target
Primarily, we must have a clear aim. What do I need in order to draw this new experience? The key here is to understand the complete journey from our users that book classes trough Gympass. Their motivations, behavior and goals.
📈 Analyzing data and establishing hypotheses
Gympass is a global product, so why US? Culturally speaking, people in the US tend to pre-book multiple services. This is a rooted habit among the US population, moreover, most of the bookings made through our app comes from US.
We have also noted that 80% of our users used to make their bookings through the gym’s page. Why?
Another study showed us that a lot of users used to go to their profile so they could check out the latest classes they have been to. Why?
All those assessments lead us to consider a few hypotheses to better structure our research guide.
🔎 Stakeholders Research
A lot of issues our users face have been already registered by our CX department. Besides that, it is also important to understand which other departments may interfere in our research. All departments involved within the company should have an active voice at a discovery process. That said, we interviewed key-people from different departments and gathered other information that also contributed to our research guide structure.
📝 Structuring Our Research Guide
With our hypotheses and objectives clear, now it’s time to organize our script. A framework I really enjoy using is the CSD matrix. With that, we are able to organize all the information gathered as certainties, assumptions, and doubts. In that way, we are able to know exactly what we are investigating next. A tip would be to create this matrix with the help of the interviewed stakeholders. Besides gathering a much richer result, you will also make people who participated in the discovery process feel important as well as they are really a part of it. Here at Gympass we have a Design Ops area. Bruna Maia, our team researcher, gave me a lot of support during this whole phase. We decided to make two focus groups, with two different profiles: those who booked classes through the app, and those who did not have that habit. Our script was built in 5 parts: questions about using our app in general; questions about booking habits (not only at Gympass, but other platforms too) and which platform would then be used as a reference to it; dynamics to build the ideal booking journey; “picture that…” dynamics, where hypothetical scenarios would be given and people would tell us what each part, them, as users, Gympass, and Gyms should do; along with a design critique with a few screen drafts I took with me. At the end, we asked them to rate the current booking process and give us a general overview on what they thought about it.
📆 Plan Your Agenda
We planned the whole discovery process to happen in six days. Our focus groups would happen in two days. What about the others? Structuring the research schedule with users is essential, but we must remember that this is only part of the whole discovery process. Our purpose was to personally experience the american routine, culture and habits of those who used to book our services. You know, the old “put yourself in someone’s shoes”. With that in mind, our agenda was divided in two moments: Focus Group with users, and trying out other booking services. Planning your agenda ahead is very important, even for you to show the stakeholders what exactly is being done and justify your time abroad.
Discovery
Everything was properly planned and structured and we finished packing. Well, enough talking, let’s do it! Our agenda was like a guide, of course, we weren’t always on schedule, but that is ok! The important thing here is to keep whatever needs to be done in mind. In this section I’ll give you a few hints so things can go as smooth as possible.
👽 Get To Know Your Surroundings
A little discomfort while doing a discovery process in another language is normal. In our case, we chose focal groups that were facilitated by a native speaker. Not only to make the comprehension better but also so the users felt more comfortable. Still, you will be the one to guide this person along the entire process. The tip here is that you reserve some time to get to know your surroundings as in culture and language. We didn’t predict a day for that, and I actually missed it. On your first day, the ideal is to talk as much as possible to other people and practise, so your english will “lose its rustiness”.
⚽️ Kick-off
As soon as you are acquainted to it all, gather all people involved and set clear goals, explain how everything will be conducted, step by step. In our case, our native speaker searcher, Akemi (our Product Manager), a part of our Gympass US team, and I were the ones involved.
📝 Take notes
A little note pad and a backpack, always! Whenever you are doing a discovery, your investigator tools must be with you all times. Write down everything you see, specially when you are trying to put yourself in other people’s shoes.
📸 Record And Take Pictures
Don’t forget you are representing a company at this moment. Everything must be properly recorded so other people may understand exactly what has been done. Record the focus group is also necessary so other people may watch it and see the whole process. We had to sort this out after we arrived and it wasn’t that easy, so I would recommend you foresee it to save time. Ah! Don’t forget to ask people if they are ok with you recording them!
🍎 Snacks e room setup
Remember that people who agreed to participate in the focus group are dedicating that time to you. Make them feel as comfortable as possible. Get some snacks, tidy up the room and get whatever necessary tools they might need.
📺 Watch and observe
In our case, we weren’t able to rent those glass rooms, special for focus groups. What we did instead, was a different set up so they would be filmed and we would be watching and observing it from another room. The point here is: if you are not the facilitator of the focus group, the ideal is that you observe it from a distance, never in the same room.
🔎 Analyse
A super valued step for us was the day we took to analyse both focus groups. Take advantage of having the information fresh in you head and gather up with the team to analyse everything that has been said and done on the previous days. It is very interesting to get everyone’s perspectives on what happened. The intention here is that you collect basic information to serve as a foundation and analyse it more deeply later on. Try to get all key-points, always having your main goal in mind.
Post-discovery
Once we were back home, the process continued. Now it was time to make those experiences tangible, in a document that anyone would be able to read and understand. The mindset you should have here is: thinking about my main goal, which would be the best way to translate everything we found out abroad?
Remember Your Goal
Understanding the full journey of the users who book classes ahead. Their motivation, behavior and goals.
How?
Your material should answer your main goal questions through your lived experiences. In my case, it happened in two steps:
1 Focus Groups: through the focus groups we were able to identify behavior patterns that enabled us to assemble a full journey including our users motivations, touch points and feelings. From the moment they decide to attend a class to the moment they actually do it. It was like we took a picture of their actual path. With that, we are able to identify personalities and act strategically at their journey key-points.
2 Booking other services: by experiencing the booking journey from other platforms as users, we were able to track the low and high points of similar booking processes. I like to say that what we did was actually a “live benchmark”. By experiencing it, we gathered insights and were able to identify clearly what would the ideal booking experience look like.
Conclusion
When talking about a global product, going through a discovery process abroad is extremely important. We should always remember that we are not our users. At the end of the day, we work to solve their pain, not our own.
I really hope I’ve helped whoever intends to go through a similar project by sharing my own experience with you guys.
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