Research methodologies to gain empathy 2 - Framing Context

We come now to something that most of us find very difficult to do – planning our work and perhaps even making decisions whilst ensuring we are keeping everything in context. If you are human, you will have your own perspectives, opinions, biases and all those nuances that make your mind think your thinking is generally the correct one’ and those very nuances are what will drive you away from framing a problem or in this case, gaining an understanding or empathising in context.

Framing context is the quest to understand what makes people tick – why they what they do, why they react the way they react; just what that little quirk is that causes a particular series and sequence of actions. It is pretty difficult to achieve, this contextual empathy, but try we must, if not do we must.

So, how do we do this wonderful thing that enables us to learn and frame the context of people’s actions? Why, by studying them in their own environments of course. Follow me through his train of thought.

You are trying to learn a particular something about the way people is a certain environment move. So, your focus is through the lens of that something, for every move you make after that. In effect, you are discovering the context for that particular something in the context of that environment. Now, that particular something is an action or response of a human being, who becomes your subject in this little research problem you are undertaking. So…we have this final objective.

This is the current final version of the working hypothesis that explains what framing context is.

We are focusing to discover the subject’s response in the context of the his environment, to gain  a deep understanding of the thinking processes driving those responses by asking relevant, meaningful questions that will not only educate us, but gain us empathy with the subject and the environment.

Breaking it down, we have four distinct steps:

·         Selecting the right subjects to work with, doing this after clearly understanding user bases or people who could potentially provide many different insights and perspectives into a particular problem. In fact, you should crowd source the question, “What type of subjects do I need?”

·         Determine after deep, deep ideating, the focus of your research

·         Discovering the context of the subjects’ responses

·   Ensuring the authenticity of the subjects’ environments, ensuring that while you are watching and questioning subjects in their natural environments, you are not inserting new variables into it that will skew the research.

Whew!

That was a brain-full of thoughts to wrap your mind around, wasn’t it? Let’s delve a little deeper into the steps governing the process. But a reminder again, just to put the thinking behind this process into context.

If you just sit back and think about it, innovation can be as easy as putting white wires on a music device, so it becomes cool to be seen walking around with it. That is of course what Apple did. And for this simple eureka moment to hit, it just required Apple to experiment with a crowd of hip people plus some very normal people who would not be caught dead using music devices and headphones. Apple also famously said “our device stores 10,000 songs,” rather than “Our device carries 10 gigs of memory.”

What caused all these simple realisations that made billions for Apple?

Crowd sourcing in a design thinking process, gaining empathy by looking at what people wanted when living in their normal everyday spaces. It was not the insight of one person, but the work of a team of brilliant designers who knew the right questions to ask after putting normal, everyday people into their normal everyday circumstances.

There are several tales of caution when you use this method of deconstructing environments and human minds, the most important of which is to remember that you are dealing with human beings. Remember that they would be on their guards and defensive even, watching for the slightest move on your part that you are judging them or prying into their lives.

I am not the one to say what approach works best in these situations, but let your subjects (please don’t call them subjects to their faces!) see you are also a friend who is only trying to understand them. You are not their master, employer, partner or mentor; but only a friendly human being who might make mistakes, but who only wants to understand. I think we usually will be surprised when we show open hands and trust, no matter the state of the world and what cynics we are.

One thing more, you will collect huge amounts of data, or perhaps information (since this is all data in context) and sometimes the information will be stuff that you are not even looking for in the first place. But it might turn out to be the most important detail to learn after all. So keep an open mind, and don’t form conclusions about anything beforehand. Many researchers fail before they even start, simply because they have made judgments and have decided what SHOULD be the right information to find. That will just cause you to be blind to vital clues that happen right in front of your eyes.

Be open, question everything, show yourself and connect to your friends in their spaces. You will be surprised by what you learn.

Still, plan for and enter this process with all the knowledge and wisdom you can gather, so you will be ready for VUCA humans in VUCA environments, without forming preconceived notions. Sun Tzu said, “The general who wins the battle makes many calculations before the battle is fought. The general who loses makes but few calculations beforehand.”

This is the Art of Design Thinking in a VUCA world.