The interview guide is not as important a document as most people think. Most if not all qualitative research would be improved if researchers stopped focusing on the guide, and focused more on the research questions.

Many qualitative researchers have had this very same experience: the client wants to add too many questions focusing too narrowly on their product. They are afraid to have open-ended, general questions for fear they won’t get the insight they’re looking for. They insist on structuring the interview guide to only see a tiny slice of the customer experience.

The result is a narrow understanding of the overall customer experience, which fails to provide deep insight.

This week I was reminded again why it’s more important to spend more time on research questions than on the guide itself.

I have the good fortune of having very informed, sophisticated clients. Just this week, in two separate meetings with two separate clients, we had the very same conversation about the details of the interview guide. I’m lucky enough that my clients agree with me, that the interview guide itself is not the most important output — it’s the final report that matters.

But they, like many of us, have other stakeholders to whom they are accountable. We collaboratively discussed how to handle questions from these stakeholders when they want to add innumerable questions to the interview guide.

This is how I typically handle this issue.

• Help the client understand the difference between a response and analysis: Many clients have been trained by their research providers that customers are the source of insight. They are not; research analysis is where insight comes from. I often give clients the example of “No one ever asked for a Post-it note” to show that we cannot put the burden of thinking onto customers. We still have a job to do after they talk to us.

• Create a separate document of research questions: When your client insists they want to know why someone uses a competitor’s product, you can record that question in a “research goals” or “report outline” document. The client will learn that you intend fully to answer that question, but that the research participant isn’t responsible for answering it.

• Show the gaps in current customer knowledge: I often like to ask clients what they know about their customers. They usually start by saying “a lot” but when you delve deeper, it turns out they don’t know much beyond their immediate product space. What keeps her up at night? Would she drive a Volvo or a Hummer? Is she interested in book clubs? They often have no idea because their research has been narrow. I then show them that knowing if she likes book clubs will help them reach her better.

• Put the consumer in the centre: It’s all well and good to say to your clients, “Trust me.” But chances are, they’re going to need some more evidence. The best way to do this is to put the consumer at the centre of every project, and not the product. You can use past projects to show clients what you’ve managed to achieve with open-ended questions. You can demonstrate that narrow product answers is no substitute for deep understanding. But you can only do this if make the consumer’s own experience the main research question. Product fit into the consumer’s world (or perhaps they don’t). In everyday life, people don’t run around thinking about products. Deep insight comes from this starting point.

Truly relevant questions may appear as only tangentially related when crafting the guide. It’s our job as researchers to show how general questions are always valuable.

I recently spoke about ethnography at the Market Research Intelligence Association’s conference. Below are the original slides from my presentation.

Of course, the in-person experience is so much better, so here’s a run-down of the big ideas:

• Ethnography is about immersing oneself in a “foreign” context
• You do ethnography to really understand your customers, from their own perspective
• Good consumer ethnography is about understanding SYSTEMS (I can’t stress this enough), as well as media channels people are now using
• Outputs from ethnography are often “non-traditional” reports such as tag clouds, comic books, and personas
• It takes longer but it’s worth it

Christmas shopping season is in full swing, but one retail company stands out for its message: don’t buy our stuff. That’s right, Patagonia is telling its customers that they should NOT buy more of its products. From their blog:

What kind of crazy reverse psychology is this? Is Patagonia trying to fool its customers into buying something? Are they lying? What are they doing?

IMHO, this is the bravest, most honest campaign I’ve seen in…well forever. The company has said repeatedly that it values the environment above its profitability. It wouldn’t exist as a outdoor recreation company, were it not for the amazing natural beauty of the world.

So they decided to put their money where their mouth is. They recognize the true cost of consumerism:

“Think twice before you buy anything….take the Common Threads initiative pledge, and join us in the fifth ‘R’ to reimagine a world where we only take what we can replace.”

Patagonia is appealing to their own, broader vision with this campaign. Instead of stooping to get the easy buck, they stay true to their value of environment over people. Some marketers might say this is a dumb way to sell outdoor clothing. But this approach appeals to the values of the very people who do buy these kinds of clothes.

This is evocative of the model we use with our clients, called the Value Orientation Model, which guides good, values-based marketing. The value orientation model shows us the 5 central values humans use to organize their lives and understand the world:

Value Orientation Model

When your brand’s values are clear, decisions like this are easy. Put the value at the centre of your message, and the campaign writes itself. The hard part is keeping true to that value system. Patagonia has done this, and in so doing, is ensuring the loyalty of its most valued customers.

Value-based marketing isn’t cynical reverse psychology. It isn’t even marketing. It’s about finding a moral centre of where you want to be. This can only be done with deep social insight.

I had the privilege to work under Roger Martin when I worked at the Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity. Roger’s got much to say about innovation, and I find his take to generally reinforce the “qualitative lens” Copernicus takes to its projects. Roger recently wrote for Harvard Business Review that companies don’t get growth from mere “analysis.” What they need is “appreciation”:

If instead, the core tool is not analysis but rather appreciation —deep appreciation of the consumer’s life — what makes it hard or easy; what makes her (in this category) happy or sad — there is the opportunity to imagine possibilities that do not exist.

He goes on to point out that it was this kind of “appreciation” that lead to great products like The Swiffer and Febreze. What he’s really talking about is the transformative nature of qualitative research. When you really understand (or “verstehen”) the consumer, you can’t help but feel their pain when they get frustrated or annoyed with your current products. You have empathy for them because you deeply understand them.

This is the kind of work that Copernicus does with its clients. We the consumer to the centre of your universe, and show you their needs, wants, desires, and frustrations.

Two of us at Copernicus (Sarah and I) are working on a project, funded through Ryerson University, on smartphone usage. One of the key findings we’ve uncovered so far is that people tend to adopt new communication channels (e.g., text) when they purchase new handsets. This new handset/life change correlation is a symbolic ritual that leads to new ways of communicating.

New phone, courtesy of emotionaltoothpaste on Flickr.com

When do they purchase new handsets? When their lives change in some way. Here’s an example.

We spoke to one young professional who was telling us when he started using BlackBerry Messenger (BBM). He noticed that he started using it more when he got his new BlackBerry handset, but it was also around the time he got engaged to his fiancée (who also had just gotten a BlackBerry). So he wasn’t sure if it was because he got the new BlackBerry or because he got engaged.

This type of life event was a recurrent theme. Participants got new handsets when they went away to university, when they started a new job, when they got a promotion, when they moved house. Or they purchased them for their children when they reached a certain age.

This type of ritualistic consumption is common. We have talked about this before in our analysis of autumn jean buying. People buy certain items to equip themselves for the new season, but also to symbolically mark the shift from one state to the next. There are practical reasons why one would purchase a new handset when one is moving house, for example, but there is also a deeply symbolic transformation taking place.

Participants are hiving off the past by giving up their old handsets. They are preparing for the future (at university, at the new job, with the new partner) when they are upgrading to a new, “futuristic” piece of technology. Just like new jeans are symbolic of a new school year, new handsets are symbolic of a new way to relate to new people or things in your life.

New handsets are not just new phones; they are new ways to communicate. Our participants did not intend to re-invent how they talked/texted/BBM’d but they did intend to change their lives in some way. Texting for the first time seems natural when you’re embracing another life change. Using BBM for the first time makes sense if your new fiance already uses it. Answering email on the bus for the first time is not weird if everyone at the new office does it.

I have argued in the past that financial services providers should only ever look to life changes as triggers for new products. It’s clear that new products go hand in hand with new life events. In this case, new products and new life events correlate with new technology adoption.

Technology designers should consider what events are the triggers, and incorporate these symbolically into their mobile platforms. Advertisers should understand that getting consumers accustomed to new mobile content means understanding their new life situations. Employers should understand that new hires and the newly promoted are adjusting to new ways of communicating, usually because they are given new phones without much discussion. And parents should realize that symbolic ages for their children (e.g., age 16) will often mean new ways of communicating. Just teaching your son or daughter to drive is the start of it — you may also have to learn how to BBM.

In our work with Ryerson University, we are uncovering some interesting findings about domestic mobile phone use. For example, mobile phones are affecting family management:

Smartphones bind families closer: some participants told us that their texting increased when they upgraded to a smartphone. A discrete text to one’s spouse is easily tolerated in the workplace, making it much easier to stay in touch than through voice only. Partners tend to be sending quick texts to each other throughout the day, thereby binding their lives closer together and facilitating their domestic management.

We know that the family is changing. Copernicus researchers have gone into family homes to understand how changing ideas of gender are affecting product use, cultural beliefs, and everyday practices. The mobile study is another example of how the family — usually a taken-for-granted category — is a dynamic, changing form.

Read more about these initial findings and our exciting project.

As we go forward with this work, we’ll be updating the public on these fantastic insights. Stay tuned!

I’m thrilled to be managing a research project on mobile technology use through a fellowship at the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University. I’ve assembled a research team and we have started initial research. Our “ethnographic stretching” exercise lead to some interesting insights:

“Attachment Paradox”: More than one person we talked to said that their mobile phone meant nothing to them. “It’s just a device. There’s no attachment to it,” said one person. Yet, this same person said she’d “panic” if she lost it. How can they be anxious of its loss, yet “unattached” at the same time? Again, more work to be done here.

Check out some of the other insights on the Mobile Work Life project Web site

I recently spoke with JohnnyHolland’s Jill Christ and Andrew Harris about research for the design process. The result is an easy-listening podcast, ready for download onto your iPod! Radio Johnny also has a huge number of other, fantastic podcasts.

Jill provides some highlights:

Sam Ladner share her insights about Design Research, and what the Interaction Design community can learn from social research. Sam discusses the difference between quantitative and qualitative research, and why one might choose one method over another. Sam also discusses how to uncover your stakeholders true research questions, and how to offer deep insights, even when there doesn’t seem to be enough time. She covers various approaches to research, shares insights that sociologists have studied for hundreds of years, and how designers can use them when designing for social spaces.

Check it out on JohnnyHolland.org

Copernicus Consulting is pleased to announce that its founder and Principle, Dr. Sam Ladner, will be conducting research with Dr. Catherine Middleton at Ryerson University’s Ted Rogers School of Management. Dr. Ladner will lead the research on the social effects of mobile phones and work/life balance.

“I’m thrilled be working with Catherine on this project,” Dr. Ladner said. “It’s been my personal academic interest for a long time. I’m very excited to collaborate with her.” Dr. Middleton is the Canada Research Chair in Communication Technologies in the Information Society.

The project is in its early stages (see the placeholder mobileworklife.ca or @mobileworklife for more information). Currently, Dr. Middleton and Dr. Ladner are sketching out the specific research activities, but the general approach will be ethnographic in nature.

“From my previous research, I discovered that mobile devices have a distinct impact on how private lives are separated from work lives,” said Dr. Ladner. “I plan to uncover how and in what ways these tools live with us in our homes and in our offices.”

The project is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The research team is currently interested in recruiting companies and individuals to participate.

Dr. Ladner will continue at the helm of Copernicus as she leads the mobile work life research effort. “We do so many mobile-related projects, that this was a perfect fit,” she explained.

I am currently writing a grant proposal for a research project on mobile phones. This is the (very) short version:

All too often, technology designers create systems that unwittingly expose social actors to socially awkward situations. Companies like Facebook struggle to satisfy their users’ needs to present different selves in different social contexts. The dreaded “My mom is on Facebook” problem is so pervasive it was recently lampooned on Saturday Night Live. Such problems persist because technology designers lack an actionable, sociologically informed understanding of how face-to-face social interaction intersects with and co-constitutes online social interaction. Off-line and online social interactions frequently occur between the same actors, sometimes simultaneously, yet we have little understanding of how online interaction affects, and is affected by off-line interaction. I propose to work with a mobile technology company to investigate how material social life intersects with digital social life, which is now increasingly by the use of Web-enabled smart phones.

Further down in the application, I zero in on my specific research questions:

Social actors often simultaneously present a “work” self through their smart phone, while presenting a “domestic self” to their family members surrounding them. These devices, like the BlackBerry, were originally created for business use (Aoki and Downes, 2003), as was the telephone itself (Flinchy 1997). Researchers have already found that mobile phones make the presentation of a consistent “self” tenuous and vulnerable to disruption in various public spaces (Fortunati, 2005). What are the social consequences of a business technology brought into the domestic context?

I will be adding to this proposal in the coming weeks, but in the meantime, I welcome (nay, beg for) comments from the technology design community. Please weigh in!