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Generative Research to find and frame problems

By Jason Brown

In this piece, we’re going to talk about starting the human-centred design process by focusing on generative interviews and identifying and classifying the user pain points, so that you and your team can create solutions with confidence.

Qualitative research is about gaining a new perspective. The nature of unpacking people’s experiences and stories can also become very empowering because being aware of the practicalities of people’s lives gives you a real impression of the impact that you can make.

Explore, decide or justify

Qualitiative research typically falls into 3 categories; generative interviews, interviewing to understand and interviewing to evaluate.

Used as a decision-making and justifying tool, a way of firmly grounding your direction with confidence. It can also reduce the risk of failure by testing your working knowledge. This ultimately helps to reduce the development cost because of the iterative nature of research when you’re leading the design as the requirements are solidified when they are put in front of the development staff.

There is a need to research with customers or test the products with potential users because the stakes are so high.

We look to gain a deeper understanding in order to uncover their needs and pain points. An analysis is then done to frame the problem in question and build a solution to it.

Testing for start-ups at the concept stage is a way of getting them to ‘buy-in’. If they are aware that you want to solve their problems they will help you in every way they can, which, in turn, increases early adoption and lowers their resistance to change.

Generative interviews are done when you still don’t know what the problem is you’re trying to solve, and start with a hypothesis that you’re trying to prove or disprove.

Understanding context reveals user centered problems.

With a target demographic established we can start to uncover issues by looking at the different contexts that person is doing their job. What area of their working life or lifestyle should it work with them? We uncover hindrances; pain points, barriers or obstacles they face in their daily environment, and identify the drivers that are causing this issue to crop up.

Without initial research you run the risk of creating a product your customers don’t adopt, and without designing for the users context of use, they will not understand how it works for them.

Planning for qualiative research

Planning can be a lengthy process depending on the types of people you are recruiting for. It’s a good rule of thumb to have 5 screeners and dedicate approximately an hour to meeting them.
Consider how much information you will need; the more complex the situation you are investigating, and the less you know about it at the beginning, the more people you will need to talk to. So add on five or six more, depending on the complexity.

Consider important sub-groups in your pool of potential interviewees (for example, if you need to talk to both men and women, or members of multiple age groups).

If you have not conducted open-ended interviews before, or have not done any recently, add two or three extra interviews to your list – if everything goes well, you’ll have some extra data, but if something happens and you need to discard an interview or two, then you can.

Incentivize your participants

Incentives cover the participants time and range from £20-£100, depending on their NRS social grade. We typically sends out a survey to identify if the individuals fit your criteria, and depending on the answers, they are included or screened out.

Basic criteria (gender, ethnicity) and NRS social grade are generally included, as well as their role, income bracket and any additional marketing segmentation information.

You also need to consider their competency with specific tools or usage frequency – and you will need to handle details around data protection and any confidentiality agreements in place.

Interview Preparation

When it comes to interviewing prep, its best to have someone to take notes. If you are doing remote interviews and you don’t have anyone available, record the interviews via your conferencing service, but make sure you’ve got permission first and they are informed of the recording’s purpose.

To help you guide the conversations prepare a semi-structured guide. This needs to include the goal, the introductory paragraph and the questions you wish to ask. It helps to go through a process of identifying the themes, and then drilling down into them. Rewrite them so that they meet your learning goals. As it is not obvious what you’re trying to achieve, this also acts as a guide.

The guide should start with an introductory piece about the subject, but don’t tell them about the product solution you are developing, as it leads to bias which could include them recommending features when you’re trying to get an honest perspective of how the solution fits into their routine. The contents of the guide should include the following:

  • The hypothesis you wish to test
  • What you wish to discover and the learning goals, e.g. to understand the context of [z]
  • How the customer uses [y] tools
  • Identifying problems with [brand x].

Lastly, make sure you setup software to record the time spent and get approval from all parties that their information will be used to feedback into product development

Kickstarting the conversation

Use the Funnelling technique to draft questions, ask a top-level question and then unpack their choices.
Guide them to unpack the subject matter, but keep the conversation fluid.
Use simple, straightforward language that the respondent will easily understand.
Helping understand the participants priorties will help guide the conversation and get the most value out of the conversation. It’s worth writing in some primer questions that will clarify how they want to be engaged.

It’s always about the interviewee’s story, so reiterate that you’re there to understand their perspective.
The conversation is not just about answering your questions but about the whole conversation – sharing experiences, stories and frustrations might also be useful for your research endeavour.

Steering the conversation

Ask about their past experiences, and get them to reveal their stories to you.

Structure the dialogue to end with more personal questions, so you can lean on the rapore you built.
Questions should focus on past behaviour, and typically get them to tell a story about a specific scenario/context.

Avoid using closed questions that might have yes/no answers. They aren’t useful in this context as they are loaded from your perspectives.
Also, avoid any leading questions – don’t make assumptions in the questions you are asking. Be ethical in your approach, if your end goal is a tool to help them, then make the participant feel like that it will contribute to their job.

The Analysis stage

Analysis and classification bridges the gap between interview stage and architypes/persona. Forming patterns of data are grounded in persona sets.

Once you’ve generated enough pain points the trick is to classify them.

  • Are they financial, productive, process-based, or support-based?
  • Are there commonalities around the problems you’ve identified?
  • Where can you potentially create a solution to address the problems?

Qualitative research can be tricky but even attempting it in a light-weight fashion is worth the effort as they reinforce the purpose and create direction for you, showing you where you should begin in your quest to create a solution, and will act as evidence to justify your strategy design decisions.

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