Day 2- Embracing participation to unlock deeper truths in commercial research

Participants

Amber Davis (AD): UXR Director, Audible

Nidhi Singh Rathore (NSR): Assistant Professor of Design, Cocoran School of Arts and Design at GWU

  1. How were you introduced to participatory research as approach?

NSR: Here’s what it means to me, and bringing different perspectives into learning and development process, and cohesive understanding of challenges

  • Approach happened in classroom and began to question practice and better resources and tools and on journey
  • Evolved into mindset and viewing classrooms through participatory lens

AD: Experience sounds similar and working UXR for number of years and financial inclusion in Sub-Saharan Africa and interesting non-profits in space and involving farmers in co-design for solutions that would resonate for them and not having opportunity to experiment

  • At McKinsey got to experiment with doing participatory research to improve employee experience
  • Spent lot of time and traditional relationship dynamic between structure of work
  1. Structures you think of?

NSR: Power structure and linearity of work. Tools come from power of researcher and their goals, with tools as extractive and participatory design leans on expansiveness and allowing participants to talk through experiences, with UXR not being in control

  • Think of journey map as suggestion and attempt to shape tools to be about people and tools we are working with and want to learn from

AD: Journey maps as traditional UXR tool and can be deconstructed and participatory research and structure of journey map to bring into research session and build out map together, deconstructed and simplified and stripped it out

  • Democratizing artifact itself
  1. Dynamics are what they are in traditional researcher relationship, but how do they shift with participatory methods?

AD: Dynamics can shift in two ways

  1. Participatory research feels like improv instead of a scripted play, and sharing the pen and paper with the participant
    1. Role of researcher shifts in certain way, and go into session not knowing what will happen and where you’ll end up
  2. More engaging for everyone, especially for participant, and will feel bigger sense of involvement and help unpack learnings to co-design a solution
  3. Moments where participatory research more effective?

AD: Like doing it through out product dev lifecycle, and testing and developing new ideas. Something impactful when you don’t have good sense of what to know about a space

  • Play key role in defining objectives and in some instances people can’t verbalize certain thoughts, motivations or goals like visual stimuli like doing a collage and can be helpful to kick off conversation as person can walk you through research and explain it to you
  • Saw lot of success with modules or templates as jumping off point for conversation and allows person collaborating with to provide rich insights and wireframe

NSR: Process effective when space is unknown and helps us to learn about problem or challenge, and here to learn from other person

  • Example of Montgomery Country Transit Department with low morale which impacted service delivery and not happy and showing up to work on
    • People didn’t ask why something was happening and bus drivers weren’t seen and heard, and felt penalized for their decisions and used methods to redefine tools like Six Sigma and thought about five whys to make activities playful and allow conversation space rather than space to express frustration
  • Connected why low morale existed in the first place , and bring people closest problem to table and considering ethics number of sources
  • Landscape of what’s happening

AD: Team at Audible working to define new concept for wellness and relaxation and remarkable nature of experience and co-design to define new concepts in wellness and relaxation space

  • Co-design with participants to iterate on what to build and wireframes or prototypes and storyboards and in-person research session and marking it up, and what resonated with them and what wasn’t

Inviting approach gets more participation, and finding solution that is lower-fidelity gets more collaboration and better insights

  1. Are stakeholders resistant to type of work? How have you brought them onboard?

NSR: Yes, and often from sense of uncertainty and what outcome would be and quantitative analysis. Often don’t use participatory design unless necessary and just call it research and make it participatory

  • Meaningful relationships beyond a single project and how to use opportunities with people using services and customer and user,

Since fear of the unknown avoid language that makes people feel scared— by emphasizing how participatory design can provide direct insights

  • Nudge to be seen as co-facilitators to given them comfort and power with process

— Also workshop in itself to explore fear of unknown, and misconceptions about the process, and transformative impact it can have — even simple act of inclusion is powerful, and people feel really excited to be included and heard

  • Moment of honesty and creates momentum to overcome resistance and unique value of participatory approaches

AD: Comes to selling idea of participatory research and tips to share and helping stakeholders understand participatory research best way for you to learn what you need to learn and get student stakeholders involved and bring them to co-facilitation of participatory research is getting it co-design work with them and explain and deconstruct what co-design is and highlight professional networks and perspectives and define research goals

  • Way to shake up day-to-day and internal company jargon and leverage
  1. Challenge or differences of participatory design, compared to other research and how to prepare for it?

AD: Can really challenge what we expect it to look like and comes back with clear cut replies and can look back like co-design and photograph and expecting the unexpected and don’t know what session will look like

  • What success looks like can be very different for traditional research and points of confusion identified and participatory research may look very different
  • Important to look at how to prepare stakeholders and limitations and prep stakeholders on what they’ll see in sessions themselves and output

Jobs-to-be-done and surfacing emotional jobs-to-be-done and ten different participants and what key outfit might be to meet for the solution and way we are solving for it, and take it back to product team that meets everyone’s needs

NSR: Session on psychological safety, and transferring agency to experts, and crucial role for this.

  • Doesn’t put assumption on people to use languages like English to express themselves and channel own walkthrough how someone would engage with session. Also helps me reimagine existing design tools like multi-lingual design material and help figure out who is participating in research and feels like calling them her tools and helps understand freedom of how transferring agency to others
  • Managing candid feedback see people very passionate about certain topics and when share thoughts, where people in power can be uncomfortable with defiance. Lead in participatory research and hindrance to process and sign of engagement and willing to be vulnerable
    • Sign that their input matters and debrief sessions of why someone didn’t show up