How to approach research projects to maximize the output
Part 1 of the Research Tips & Tricks article series by Xeno Co-lab
When planning for a research project, there is a constant pursuit for optimizing and maximizing the output. We follow the standard prescribed methods and practices that help us guarantee project success and overall deliverables quality. But, using these universal methods and tools to achieve research goals doesn’t always work. There is a need to localize and contextualize your research approach to the market and target audience that you are looking at.
Understanding the nuances of the market along with the specific needs & behaviors of the user profiles and taking them into consideration while building your research plan, can ensure project success which will also reflect in the quality of insights and findings. To ensure that your research project is set-up for success and can deliver maximized output, here are a few variables that you should consider.
1. Contextually informed timelines
When setting timelines for research projects, it is common to prioritize and aim for achieving the maximum within the limited timelines. A lot of times stakeholders define timelines in silos which leads to errors in estimates. Also, timelines are often defined based on the standard practices or past experiences. However, this can be very different from the user’s context that we are researching for.
These common but most prevalent ways of approaching schedules and timelines leads to a very big disconnect between the actual experience of adhering to the timelines on field, and the ideal experience imagined during the planning.
When defining timelines it is very important to understand the local context and its constraints by being open to the country and context that you are going to be working in and not limiting perspectives to where you may be based or what may be defined as standard.
Based on the market and context, it is important to consider factors such as infrastructural constraints, climatic conditions or cultural/social events that can affect the availability of participants for the research. Especially while planning a research sprint in India, a lot of variabilities and other factors can come into picture. Even two seemingly similar markets can be extremely different. For example; travel distances, time, and cultural nuances will be very different for Pune (a tier 2 city in India) as compared to another tier 2 city like Jaipur! Similarly, if one plans to do research in the months of June to August in Mumbai they will have to navigate a lot of logistical challenges because of the heavy rains. These factors will need you to devise schedules differently, like having a buffer day if you are doing research in Mumbai during the monsoon or planning research and timelines based on how long it takes to travel, or checking for any major festivals that are celebrated in the city that overlap with the timelines, etc.
Lastly, it is important to not focus on power-packing the field days with a lot of research activities or dealing with unmanageable sample sizes. These factors may end up not adding a lot of value to the study, but in fact will only lead to a compromised research output and fatigued team. Being cognizant of all these factors and taking them into account can help you put together better timelines that are relevant to the context and mindful of your team’s wellbeing.
2. Methodology follows research goals
A lot of times, project managers or stakeholders can end up making the common mistake of starting by defining the methodology first. You might have heard clients come to you with requests that sound something like ‘we want to conduct a diary study with our customers..’ or ‘we are interested in doing one on one interviews with our target audience’, etc. as the first step when starting a project. When you hear a conversation that starts like this, it is always better to pause and take a step back and ask ‘what are the goals that you are trying to reach through this research?’
This approach where the methodology is predefined without a deeper understanding of the research goals and objectives, can lead to a mismatch that impacts the outcomes of the project. Along with the larger project goals, it is also key to define market specific goals as the drivers, challenges and context differs market to market. This approach allows the research team to focus on the bigger picture and stay aligned to the key research objectives throughout the project.
Thus, it is very important to map your research goals very clearly and articulately at the beginning of the project and use that as a starting point to identify the market specific methods that can aid in reaching the goals.
For example — If your stakeholders are aiming at understanding the behaviours, motivations and drivers for the users that can influence the uptake of a service, you may suggest an ethnographic study that gives you a better understanding of the user’s context followed by a co-creation activity to identify the most useful and relevant features for your users. OR If your stakeholders wish to identify the various touchpoints, triggers and sources of influence for the user, a diary study that is spread over a few days becomes beneficial. It helps you interact with your users over a longer period of time allowing you to broaden your understanding.
3. Curated research methods for target audience
When deciding the research methodologies to use for a project, it is also important to work from a place of understanding what works for your target audience along with helping you achieve your research goals. Doing a dipstick test to know a little more about the context, background and socio-cultural aspects of your target audience can help you identify what research methodology to work with that can ensure better results.
A lot of times when vouching for a particular methodology, we focus solely on the methodology that would work best for the goals but we do not consider whether the method is suitable for the audience we are working with.
Every methodology demands a different level of digital awareness, comfort, articulation skills, confidence and time commitment, and hence a mapping of these variables with respect to the user profiles becomes key.
For example, when defining the research methodologies for the rural Indian context, if we do not consider the digital awareness of the participants, the methodology in itself can prove to be a huge bottleneck in extracting insights. For a remote one on one interview setup that we conducted with women from rural India, we had identified ‘buddies’ who could help the women with low tech awareness to assist them to join the video calls or help them in case of tech issues that needed troubleshooting.
4. Immersive socio-cultural understanding
While planning for your research project, it is beneficial to pause and assess how familiar you and the other stakeholders are with the market or the context in focus. If you are conducting research in a geography or context that is new and not explored by the team before, this is a good time for you to consider how you can make the project experience more immersive and experiential to build a holistic understanding beyond the research sessions.
Even though the actual sessions with the end users will provide a window into the key user insights and behaviors, it does not always give you a glimpse into the broader socio-cultural influences and aspects that in reality play a huge role in defining the user behaviors. While creating a research plan, it is always advisable to start with Cultural Immersions for the entire team through localized activities and experiences like visiting local markets, religious places, conducting street intercepts, speaking with diverse local experts from different walks of life to brief you about the geographies etc.
Such experiences help you get a pulse of the culture and build a deeper understanding of the intangible aspects of the society. This helps inform and shape research sessions that follow in a much more holistic way.
5. One-team approach
Companies commonly hire an external researcher or research teams to go into the field to conduct studies and come back to them with final user insight reports and strategic recommendations for the company to implement into their product or a service. However, oftentimes the researchers experience a pushback from the client’s end in accepting the learnings and insights and struggle with client buy-in. Although it may be normative to face pushbacks to new learnings or insights that might suggest a need for change in approach, it is possible to preempt these situations and address them while building the project plan.
A simplest solution for this is by having a one-team approach and inviting all stakeholders to be a part of the research activities.
One of the most effective ways of addressing this is by exposing the client to the user’s voice directly as hearing the user himself talk about his experience, pain points and opinions is a lot more impactful than a researcher articulating and reiterating this to the client. The more you engage the stakeholders in the process, the better will be their understanding of the users and their context. Apart from inviting them for the research sessions to experience it first hand, we also recommend conducting multiple team debrief sessions with all the stakeholders during the course of the research instead of waiting solely for the final presentation. Such incremental discussions don’t just help in enriching the research sessions that follow, but also help the stakeholders appreciate where their customers are coming from and visualize repeating behavioral patterns themselves.
When all of these intentionally designed, mindfully curated and contextually implemented phases of the study are put to practice, it creates a huge impact on elevating the project experience for all stakeholders involved in the project — right from the research participants, the client, partners, as well as the researchers.
— Avani Tavargeri (Research Consultant, Xeno Co-lab)
