 Okay, you're really pathetic first thing, come on guys. Where is your voice? How are you guys doing this morning? Okay, geez, first thing, come on. We gotta get going. All right, so who's my timer? Where's my timer that I have? Because I just wanna make sure I have somebody telling me, Ron, you're gonna be sitting there? Okay, do me a favor, 25 minutes, give me like a 15 minute and make sure I know where I'm at. Okay. Hi, so my back, I was smiling. He introduced us as fish and twig, we're twig and fish. Fish and twig, if you actually do the acronym, it's not as nice. You do it in your head. So that's why we went with twig and fish. I'm not sure if anybody caught that, but we'll keep moving. My talk is about the importance of the human and how we have to consider them in any product interaction. So I have to ask you a question first. What do you think comprises an experience? What's your guess? Anybody? You haven't had your coffee this morning. What's going on? Any ideas? What comprises an experience? What goes into an experience? Yeah, go for it, just shout it out. At the same time. Yeah. Sorry. Seeing, hearing, feeling, thinking at the same time. Yeah. And coming to a conclusion with that. Okay, I'm with you. So I like that. I like that, but here's the deal. This is about as mathematical as I'm going to get. By the way, I really suck at math, so I'm just going to make it look really smart right now. I'm going to make it a little equation. I think an experience. I would say it's a rich knowledge of your altogether, whatever you learn throughout years or phases through your life. And then you put together a rich experience on our knowledge and try to articulate something or learn something and implement on something. I like that. I like that too. We have to understand though that there are people and there's an interaction. At the most basic level, we have people and we have an interaction. Can everybody agree with that? Right? It's okay. And within that interaction, if we look at it, that interaction has products and technology at some level, right? Most often. I typically use the word offering actually, only because it could be a space. It could be much greater than something that's actually tangible. And I think you guys would agree with me there. But here's our problem. People somehow get left out of the equation. It's so funny. And this is, I know you guys, many of you have talked to me and you were at my workshop and you heard me already say this. How can we be building products without thinking about people? That just honestly seems contraintuitive and it really makes no sense. But yet, we see it time and time again. And here's what I honestly believe. We sort of experience a whole product market of mediocrity. So I'm going to ask you guys a question. For a moment, everybody close your eyes. I'm going to give you about 15 seconds. In my mind, I'm going to count 15. And I'd like you to think of five products or experiences that just blow your mind away. That just make you go, holy smokes, what an amazing, amazing experience. I'm counting. So that's about 15 seconds, guys. Truthfully, how many of you came up with five like this? Hands up. Five, five. There's a lot of you and I'm counting maybe four hands. How many products do you think there are in this world? Lots, right? So why aren't they flying out of our minds? Why aren't we just exploding with, oh my God, no problem. Sit down and I'll rattle them off. You guys are not doing that. You see, we have a problem. There's a lot of mediocrity out there. There's things that are meh, but there's nothing that's just blowing our mind away. The blowing our mind away happens rarely. And my honest statement is, we're not thinking about the people who are using this. That is a big problem. So let's talk about how people are studied. Let's get to where we're going. Your typical research question, tell me about the last time you did something. How many times have you heard that question, right? Tell me about the last time you ordered pizza. Tell me about the last time you ordered Ola Cab. Tell me about the last time you actually had to order groceries online. You hear that so often, right? The standard protocol that we look at honestly gives people about five minutes to answer a question. We are steeped in that world. We're steeped in that world. All we think about if I work for a pizza company, all I think about is pizza. Day and night on how people actually buy pizza. You're probably sick and tired of hearing the word pizza. If I work for a cab company, all I do is think about how people hire cabs. But guess what? If I actually meet with my friends here, I have Nandini who I met yesterday. And if I talk to her and I'm suddenly sitting down and saying, hi, I actually wanted to ask you and tell me about the last time you financially invested. Do you think that's all she's thinking about? Do you think that's what she thinks about 24-7? When is Mina gonna ask me that bloody question? I'm waiting. It doesn't work that way, guys. Nandini's got her life. She's got her family. She's got her job. She's gotta figure out what the hell to put on the table if she's hungry. She's got a lot of shit going on, literally. So we've gotta figure out exactly how we ask people questions and how we can get them to sort of articulate their thoughts. It's much more than just having them live our world because actually, my challenge to you is, she couldn't give a rat's ass about my world until she needs it, okay? The challenge also is that we, as people who study, we, as people who create these products, we expect the golden nugget, the moment I meet with Nandini, she is gonna give me the answer to all my problems. Tell me how to design this thing I'm waiting. And in two seconds, if she doesn't give me that answer, I'm like, oh, well, that was pretty useless. Sorry, Nandini. Check out, right? And that is completely unfair. So the problem here is that studies actually just jump right to interaction. They jump right to the product and the technology, but we really don't bother to study the people. Therein lies our problem. So what we need to do is we need to study people in a way and give them space to articulate what they do. Their ways, who they are, what they do. I've heard from so many of you. That's great, Mina, but it's really hard. Twig and fish. No, we're not a pub. I said that at my workshop. It sounds like a pub, but we do like to drink, but that's a different story. We're basically a qualitative research practice based out of Boston. And our goal is actually to focus on people, to bring back that element of focus to people. And not only to people, but also to elevate research as a strategic tool and position it properly in an organization so that we make sure that the people are focused and that we make sure that we give them that focus that they duly deserve, but that it becomes something that becomes a bit of inspiration for people because I know every good designer, if you hear a good people story and you hear a gap, you want to solve it. But when it becomes a mandate, it's not as much fun. So how can we study people? That is the question here, right? So I'm gonna say this upfront as a caveat, the best solution to studying people is to just do so by advocating for it. I think for those of you who attended my workshop, you heard from me loud and clear that there are ways to elevate that because I heard time and time again from the population, not only in the workshop but outside of the workshop, talking in the hallways, that you know what? It's really hard to get people to buy in to research. They just don't seem to see the value in it. But guess what? There is a way to do it. And if we give up, shame on us, truthfully, we're throwing in the towel far too easily. So I'm gonna offer you instead a little bit of a pivot. If you cannot for whatever reason, if you find yourself saying, yeah, I mean it, that's great, even if you think you can advocate, I can't, there are things that we can do. And my advocating to you is that you start with the people and then only move to the product. In any situation when you are met with somebody, do not, do not put the coffee cup, literally. Show them your coffee cup and say, hey, tell me about your last time you used a coffee cup. And oh, by the way, how else do you drink beverages? That is an unfair question. You're starting with your product and then going to the person. That's really unfair because guess what? You've already shown them your product, you've already biased them. They're gonna go, wow, that's great, it's brilliant, love the color by the way. But that's not really gonna give you anything. So here's what we're gonna do really quickly. And I lost Rohan, I don't know where he went, but I hope I'm on time. Okay, so what we're gonna do is I'm gonna share a few techniques that we have used in order to be able to gain some sense and insight into people. Just gonna go over three very quick examples, okay? My number one first thing is give people a chance to think. If I was to ask any of you guys, if I was to just pick on somebody and say, hey, tell me what it is that you're doing when you actually order your pizza. At that very moment, if somebody just asks you with a question and you actually don't really know what they're talking about, you're not in that space, you're not really thinking about ordering pizza. I see Paul sitting there and I go, tell me about ordering pizza. And he's thinking about the project that he's in the middle of and he knows he's supposed to be talking about pizza, but he's like, God, right, pizza, right. And he tries. He's gonna give me the best answer possible, but is that really the best he can do? We need to give him a little bit of time, right? This is called being empathic. We use that word empathy and we throw it around like the silly buzzword, but if we're gonna do it, walk the walk and talk the talk, guys, do both. I do have to be a little bit empathic, so what can we do? Here's a little example. Robotic Device Company that we worked for were actually in the middle of a project right now. They want to understand how people actually learned about robotic instruments that you could buy for the household. What they wanted to understand was how do people actually learn about robotic vacuums? How did they actually learn about this vast scape of something called a robotic vacuum? Instead of just sitting somebody down because I met Paul, I'm gonna pick on him and I say, Paul, tell me about robotic vacuums. And he goes, right. And he starts talking about it, but he's sort of rambling because his thoughts aren't assembled, right? Instead of that, what if I was to give him a little homework assignment? Say, Paul, hey, we're meeting tomorrow morning. And what I actually wanna do is not tell him about what I'm talking about because we all know that's gonna bias the study potentially. I just wanna say, hey, think about something big that you just bought that you didn't know anything about. Anything at all, in your house. And tell me how you learned about it. Just write a few thoughts down. We might give them a little sheet, we might make it open-ended, we might make it a collage, we can make it anything we want. But Paul, would you do me a favor? Bring that in when you come. So Paul comes in the next morning, we meet. And I love it because for any of the researcher nerds out there, I don't even have to worry about what am I gonna say to start this session up. I'm gonna go, Paul, great to see you. Thanks for joining us, blah, blah, blah. Here's the study, blah, blah, blah. Tell me about what you got. And that is my protocol. That's my moderator's guide. I love that statement, tell me what you got. He puts it down on the table and he goes, so, gotta tell you about when I bought my last washing machine. It's a piece of work. And he starts telling me about it. And what he did and how he learned about it. And what he does is he gets a chance to sort of organize his thoughts. He now has a cohesive story. Am I biasing him? Because he actually doesn't even know I'm gonna move him into robotic vacuums any minute. But what I'm getting now is a sense. It's a sense of, hey, he's had a chance to organize his thoughts. Now he can actually cohesively share something with me. And actually I can believe him. Because it gets even better. Number two, if I piggyback off of that, I can actually reveal behaviors and aptitudes, patterns with a rationale. So let's continue that story just for a second. I asked Paul. He tells me about his washing machine. And then guess what? I go, Paul, thanks so much. Really appreciate that. I'm actually gonna change topics, you know. Let's talk about robotic vacuums. And he's gonna go, whoa, robotic vacuums. Okay, wasn't quite expecting that. But let's do it. What do I have now? He has given me a little window into his world of his behaviors, of his aptitudes, of how he looked at something, how he did something. What he did in order to educate himself about what was out there. So how might he extend that model to something that I'm asking him about now in the spur of the moment? He now has something to piggyback off of. Are you all listening? Makes it a little bit more fair to him as a human, right? I'm simply not broadsiding him with the question. Here's a little tidbit, guys. This can go very deep. I'm not gonna kill you all. It's first thing in the morning. I'm not that mean. Behaviors, aptitudes, attitudes, and emotions. These are the four ways we actually categorize human data. Behavior and aptitudes are very interesting because they move quickly. They change quickly. If you think about yourselves, the last time your behavior changed, even in the last month, has something changed about the way you've done something? Have you learned something new? I'm gonna garner to say yes. Because we tend to do that. That's how we function. However, your attitudes and your emotions are longer lasting. If you have a reaction to something, it tends to be that way for a while. If you have a fear of flying, it doesn't go tomorrow. Are you with me? So what we wanna focus on in that moment are the patterns that are more behavior and aptitude driven. Only because if we're gonna start going into the attitudes and emotions, we don't need to seek those longer term patterns because people, what they share with us, often is what is going to be. But the behaviors and aptitudes, we need some sense of patterns. I think of it as a dot. You have a dot, you have only one point. So the way we do research today, a lot of you guys, I heard it, it's one point. You throw a dart and you're like, praise the Lord, it hit the center, or maybe it missed completely, but you're like, well, I threw the dart, it's a good thing. One dot is not gonna cut it. You need at least two to make a line. You need three to make a triangle. Now we got some shape going. We need to actually get those patterns, guys. So the deal is focus on the top two. Get that sense of evidence. How did we do this? Most recently, we finished up work with the Judicial Council of California, a really fascinating project. Where we're looking at how people actually self litigate. That means they're representing themselves in court. As you can imagine, not to get too political here with our lovely president of the United States right now. In California, people are very concerned about deportation. So we met with a lot of people in terms of, wow, I have this information, I know this about myself, I might not be documented. I had to go and find out if I had to represent myself, could I? Because I can't afford a lawyer. This is a real thing. It's a real problem that has real issues with it. These are real stories. But instead, what we ask people is when they were with us, because we couldn't get them to homework because of legal issues, instead what we said is, take a moment when you come in. Hey, Nandini, thanks for joining us. No, Jeff, thanks for joining us. Guys, thanks for joining us, being here. And can you please fill this out for me? Take a few moments, get your thoughts together. Again, it's very broad. How do you answer questions? What do you do when you look online? Just to get a sense, to give that person some quiet. How many of you have ever been in an interview where you start out going, hi, tell me about yourself. And you just sort of look at them and you smile because silence is an okay thing. And they're like, okay, tell me about myself. Well, I'm a researcher. And you're trying to think like, what does this person need to know about me? You're put on the spot, right? Take that element away. None of us like that feeling, okay? So what we did here was we, again, made it a little broad, simple little worksheets. We call these activities, and all it is is giving that person a moment to actually write out exactly what's going on. Oh, wow, I'm doing awesome, thank you. So give them a chance to actually write down what's going on, and it's really fabulous because then they can articulate their thoughts a little bit better. They can come across much more clearly. The last one I'm gonna share with you, and this is one of my favorites, is avoid the typical list of questions. I had a number of people ask me lots of questions about how to ask the right question, and I smile because as many of you know who have met me, we are basically turning over the way research is done. We don't want it to be this same process over and over because it has to change to meet how people articulate themselves. So I show hands. How many of you, if I was to sit down, and again, let's pick on financial investing because I just absolutely despised that field. Sorry to say that. How many of you would love to talk to me for one hour, face to face, nonstop, about how you invest your finances? Raise of hands. Would you just absolutely love it, have fun? Oh, you look so excited, especially the people in the front row, you look like you're gonna fall over, right? People don't talk about one topic anymore for any large amount of time. We're so ADD about everything that we do. We can't focus on one thing. We're thinking about one thing, we're thinking about what the text was, that came in on our phone, we're moving our heads around. We can't focus on one thing. How are we actually supposed to think of these things that somebody's asking us? That might be actually be something quite deep. How are we supposed to actually do that and again make sense and sound intelligent and da-da-da-da. It's very hard. So what we actually advocate is, try not to. Try, oops, did I skip that one? Oh, sorry, no, I didn't. Try not to actually just ask that long list of questions. Instead, move to simple activities. Move to things that are easy for people to do, for them to fill out, for them to move around with. And by the way, for any of you are thinking, well, yeah, I mean it, but I don't do in-person sessions all the time. You can do this remotely too. There's nothing stopping you. It's called screen share, right? Not that difficult. You can do all of these things. An example is, we met with an insurance company that had a really fun, fun challenge that we're dealing with, is how do people keep a track of valuables? It's a very simple question. How does somebody actually manage their valuables? So to put it into context, some of you might actually have a written, you know, little diary that you have of all the things that you own that are slightly valuable. The challenge here is a larger question, is how do you even define what a valuable is? So in this particular situation, we actually had people do a fun little exercise with us. They got all comfortable. We were in their homes and we gave them a posted notepad. We said, are you ready? We're gonna give you a little, little activity. Here's a posted notepad. Turning the timer on, five minutes. Your house is on fire. Go tag everything that's a valuable, fast. You're on the clock, run. They're like, okay, wow, all right. They started sticking it on everything. They're stuck to the dog. The dog was sleeping. Dog has a posted note on it, right? They stick the posted note everywhere. Guy was actually, and it's funny, you see all these different people of how they organize things. They're like, you know, I actually have all my, he was, you know, Guy was a professional photographer. Had all of his stuff on his table neatly put there and he goes, honestly, it's just that table. And he was just like stuck to the table and he's like, how much more time do I have? I'm like, keep moving. House is burning down. Keep going. And it's just a little experiment to see what do people do under that duress? And where do they, how does their brain think? How do they categorize that information? Some people told us about stories. Well, you know what, it has nothing to do with the material stuff. My favorite story was I actually practiced this exercise on my husband. And he actually went and stuck a sticky on myself and my two kids. He goes, I'm good, I'm done. I was like, oh, okay, fine. I'll stay married to you for a little bit longer. But it was adorable. And I was smiling. But the thing is, I want to know what people are thinking. I want to know how they're thinking. And then we can actually unravel that. Do you think that's a little bit better than me going, obey. Tell me about how you categorize your valuables. And he goes, yeah, valuables. Okay, give me a second, right? It's not as much interest. We need a little bit of excitement. I hate to say this guys, research should be fun. Not only for the researcher, but also for the participant. Another little experiment we did, City of Boston. City of Boston currently going through a housing crisis for the middle income population. That in and of itself is a loaded statement because nobody goes up to people and goes, hi, my name's Sham. And by the way, I'm middle income. You don't really define yourself that way. So you find that we were trying to understand how people actually would describe their neighborhoods, what type of houses they were looking for, how would they define what was their home, all these sort of specific details. And what we wanted to do was understand that sense of neighborhood. What makes a neighborhood? What brings that together for somebody? So in this particular situation, instead of just saying to somebody, describe your neighborhood to me, which is a pretty standard question. I think you'll agree. We took out a huge nice big sort of flip chart sized piece of paper. And we're like, stuck the Sharpie in the center, the whole bunch of markers. Draw out your neighborhood for us. They're like, really? Like draw it out? I'm like, yeah. What if I don't remember the street names? That's okay. Not a big issue. But roughly just draw it out. Can you do that? Yeah. They start drawing out just by seeing how they think about that neighborhood. Do they draw their neighbor's house first? Do they draw the street? Is it about the public transportation that's nearby? What is coming front and center to them? Because that is going to be important to them. Guess what? The important stuff, if you ask somebody, they won't think about it. But if they act on it, it's much easier for them to act on it. Little simple ways for us to be more empathic about how people actually communicate. Doesn't take a lot of effort. And it's actually really fun for people. The way we like to think about it is when we run research. Sometimes if we're with people, we have to sort of ask them politely to leave. They're like, can we stay a little bit longer? Is there other stuff if you need more help? I'm like, no thanks, really. I gotta move off to the next person. It should be fun. You should have so much fun with it because you're learning about people. And then when you learn about them and our people are relaxed, you find that people are actually so much happier to share. They get excited about sharing. It's not just this rote question and answer kind of situation which becomes a bad tad boring. So just, that was three, very simple. There's so much more to be honest with you but I promise Papua would stay on time. So keep people first when studying that interaction. Number one, make sure you give people a chance to think. What you want them to do is actually give them that permission to think deeply. They should be able to really immerse themselves in a situation. Think about what does make me tick? Take a little bit of time. Think about it. Make sure you give them a chance to also reveal that sense of behavior and aptitude, reminding yourself that behavior and aptitudes actually do change far more frequently than attitudes and emotions. So if we think about that then, give them a chance to sort of deconstruct those details. Well, hey, you said about, you know, Paul said he learned about his washing machine a certain way and then suddenly if I ask him how he learned about robotic vacuum cleaners, if he changes his way, what do I now have? I have something to go on. Hey, that's interesting Paul because you did it a little differently for the washing machine. What made this different? Oh well, you see, I first have to sort of learn. I mean, I know what a washing machine is. I mean, I know what a washing machine is. But robotic vacuums, I don't really know. I mean, what makes it robotic? Like, does it do everything on its own? Does it, like, I don't know enough about it. So I sort of have to give myself some sense of foundation first. But now he has something to go on. Now he has a little anchor somewhere that he can latch on to that makes it so much better. And then the last one, which is really my favorite because it makes research just so much fun, is allowing people to articulate themselves in different ways. I don't know about you guys. If somebody talks to me for an hour, I literally will fall over. I just, I lose it, I'm very ADD. But if somebody makes it interesting or I keep changing conversation or something is going on, I actually do really well in that. I know people who don't do well talking. How many of you don't really love being approached and asked a question? Anybody like that in here? Right? A few of you raised hands. How many would much rather sit down and draw something? Maybe act it out. Maybe just write it out. You'd might rather, like, a deer diary, kind of diary study. You want to change it up so you give people that sense and chance to resonate with what makes it easy for them to share their information. Because if you force people into something that they're not comfortable with, it becomes really hard for them to share then. And almost unnatural, and therefore, creates a sense of barrier. My ask of all of you guys, I'm still gonna go back to my note, which says advocate for the right way to do these things. But for whatever reason, if you can't, for whatever the situation is, at least extend yourself, evolve your studies, evolve your study protocols, and make sure that you really start with the people. You noticed I didn't start with the product. I didn't say, hi, we're learning about the robotic backing cleaners. Paul, tell me about what's going on. That's not what was going on here. We started slow. We started with that sense of overall pattern, and then slowly brought him into that world so that he has a chance to soak in and he gains a little bit of understanding of what we're trying to do. I personally believe the designs that are really anchored in these rich stories do a much better job of creating that sense of interaction. Time and time again, we see this with our clients, and when they see that sense of human story, and they realize that people are really given a chance to talk about what they really do, to show us that evidence, they share those details, right off the bat, we can actually tell that, hey, you know what? Designers have something to latch on to now. They have something to anchor themselves on. It's not just some cloud that's sitting out there in the middle of nowhere. We actually have an actual anchor. Thank you so much to UX India, thanks to Babu, and most importantly, thanks to my friend Abe, who actually, I'm here because of him, so thank you so very much. Really appreciated your time. Thank you.