experience matters

Image: Paco Olvera Monterd

Amazing how refreshing a change of scenery is, isn’t it? I spent a good part of last week in Mexico City on business, and the warmth of the people, the refreshing business culture and the great food made it a memorable journey. It’s been a long time since I traveled outside of the United States and Canada and the trip brought back pleasant memories of traveling in the North Pacific, China and Southeast Asia too many years ago. It was also a firm, but friendly reminder of the assumptions that we can make about customers and research.

The topic of assumptions came up during last week’s meetings. I was asked “How do you, a Canadian, ensure that our customer experience is relevant, easy to use and engaging for Mexican customers?” My answer was nowhere near as eloquent or as illustrative as an article from last Sunday’s New York Times sent to me by Jayne Dow, one of our planning directors in Chicago (thanks, Jayne!).

“Can the Cellphone Help End Global Poverty?” is an engaging look at field research through the eyes of Jan Chipchase, a “human behavior researcher” (we’d call him an ethnographer here) working for Nokia in, well, uh, almost anywhere. If you ever need to explain what ethnography is or why it’s valuable, forget the PowerPoint and hand out copies of this article. And if you don’t know what ethnography is? Read this article now – it’ll change your life (or at least the way you work).

So what are the lessons?

First, fight for field research. In a time when we have so much quantitative data at our fingers tips, it’s easy to believe that the numbers have all the answers. Why do we think this this way? Well, as the planning guru, Jon Steele will tell you, North America is very numbers focused – just listen to a baseball game on the radio. But remember that a key strength of quantitative (numbers) data best is illustrating how people behave whereas qualitative (not numbers) data is better at illustrating why people behave in a certain fashion. To get richer insights in the way that Chipchase does, we need to control the urge to simply number crunch. We need to embrace techniques like ethnography to collect important behavioral information.

Secondly, be sure to go along on the field work and don’t forget your camera (or audio recorder). I forgot my camera when I went to Mexico City and I realized my mistake the moment I walked into the airport. Look at Jan’s blog – it’s full of great insight accompanied by images to illustrate the things he’s thinking about and learning. Photos, video, recordings and artifacts are all invaluable “show and tell” pieces to help grasp and communicate insights. For more examples. look at Steve Portigal’s photostream – he’s a consulting ethnographer from San Francisco (and the topic of an earlier Experience Matters post).

Finally, stay open. While backpacking in China in 1986, I remember the smart travelers always talking about “staying open”, rejecting the tyranny of an itinerary and tours so that they could take the last minute opportunities afforded by fate and whimsy. Once I got up the nerve to try it, I soon found myself sleeping on the ground with donkey herders in the then-remote Tiger Leaping Gorge and wandering the hutongs of a pre-Tiananmen Beijing. I forgot my camera on that trip, too.

But what does it mean to stay open as a researcher? Too often, I believe we perform research to validate our “solutions” (or pre-conceptions) rather than perform research to seek out new ideas. We construct formidable research methods and protocols that we dare not stray from. It’s rigorous and professional, but is it inspirational and innovative? Not always. Sometimes, we need to go off the script and engage in unexpected conversations with complete strangers. Sometimes, we need to leave the rooms with the mirrored glass to follow the dark alleys into a strange city or the faint dirt paths into the wilderness.

Last 5 posts by Dave Robertson

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