UX field Study - How exactly to do for any problem in the world

Doing a field study is very, very crucial step for a product designer or even a UI UX designer. Right? So even the starting freshers and even experienced people sometimes really miss this process. Sometimes even they don't understand how to exactly do it. Right? Because field study is something like which a marketing people does or maybe a guy who does a population survey or something like that. But let me tell you, there is a big misconception. Field study is a reality. How a product and the services behaving with the customer and how you can really understand them and how you can even find the need of a product when it is not created before. Right? This is a very important podcast and I'm going to give you exactly 10 steps how you can do field study irrespective of any problem, whatever you're going to face or do in your design studio freelancing work. Okay? So take definitely a lot of notes and we're going to break that into six different problems and how the 10 methodologies are going to approach in different, different problems. Okay? Like let's say if it's a creativity problem, like let's say if it is a healthcare related problem, or let's say if it is relating to wealth and finances, if it's relating to relationship problem, if it's related to career problem, it's related to business. Whatever problem you take, it will fall in either of the six categories. Okay? So with that, let's jump into this podcast. Welcome to this Design for Change podcast. I'm really happy to engage with you and thank you so much again for the overwhelming support and response. And I really like you to recommend to your friends if you find this podcast useful. And there has been a very good responses and interactions as well happening in the podcast. And particularly today we are going to discuss very important topic which is how to do a field study when it comes to product design and UI UX design. Right? So if you really take very closely, if any design studio is really doing this, to be very honest, 80% of the design studios don't take this very seriously. They underestimate the power of doing. And even some of the big studios sometimes do it because of various reasons. Like they say they have timeline constraint, they have financial issues, they don't have a process or a provision to make a field study. Right? Let me tell you guys, the more you skip this process, the more problems you will find at the end. What happens is you will have to reiterate to do the product and solution again because you have not understood the customer and the Business in a real time, right? So what happens is it will lead to version 2, it will lead to version 3. Customer will not be happy, your business and sales will not grow. What happens? You will have to make another version to really perfect it out. Why to do that? Instead you can use that money now and invest in the field study. And what happens if you do it? You will make an excellent product and service which is irresistible for the next two, three years or even five years. That is the power of doing a field study, right? If you do it properly, people will understand the depth and the impact of how it can really play a vital role in the customer. People will love the brand and the revenues and profits will go high. Like anything, it's not the other way around. You cut the cost because of this reason and then later you do it again. A lot of big design studios also make this mistake. Okay, so the very first step, what you can do for doing a field study is define the objectives very clearly. Okay? So I've already told you there are totally six areas, guys. Okay? You can note it down. Like let's say if it's health, okay? The second is relationship. The third is businesses and finances, maybe wealth and finances. The fourth is creativity problem. The fifth is business related problem. The sixth is wealth related. Okay, financial, so sorry, the career related problem, the sixth one. So a lot of areas are there. Whatever problem you choose, guys, it will either fall in this category, all the 10 parameters. What I'm going to tell you, know the steps. It's going to be in relation with this six field because you will be doing a problem or you will be working on a problem statement. Hundred percent. It will fall in either one of this category. If it is not falling, probably you have not taken a problem itself properly. You have to redefine that first. Okay? Yes. So the very first point is defining objectives. If you really understand what is the objective of your particular product or the solution, whatever you're doing, it's very, very vital to take the step accordingly. Okay, like let's say if it is a healthcare product or service or maybe if it's a health related thing. So understand the healthcare need properly. Try to get more clarity in how people are able to react it. Okay, like let's say maybe if you're doing any problem related to clinical or hospital, or like let's say if it's a long waiting time of the hospital patients or if it's a communication gap between the doctor and surgeon and nurse and patient, or it's a complex process, whatever Your particular problem relating to healthcare, please define that. The first step is defining the objective clearly. If it's relating to financial and wealth, understand the behavior of that financial recruitment or the kind of management, what is being there? Because behavior, understanding and then clearly setting the objective is very important, right? It applies for even creativity field or even relationship. What are the patterns, what you can see, right? See if you observe this pattern and if you understand the need of the customer, then you can define that objective very clearly. Even before going to the field, you have to do this. Sometimes there is a flip side also you can define objective and go. But while you conduct a field study, it may little bit differ. You need to have that openness to receive it. Okay? The second important step, what you can do is select the participant, see if it's a healthcare setting, choose wisely. Who's going to give you proper information? Either the doctor, the surgeon or the caretaker, or sometimes even the ward boy. Okay? Or the person who is lifting the bed and carrying that particular patients to the bed can give you information. Like let's say you might be solving a problem of people having a lot of bed sores or maybe something like that. You can very well ask them their input. Also what do they really think about what is the problem? You know what better than a doctor? Sometimes these people can give you a lot of input. So that way selecting a participant is very crucial. Even in financial sectors or even the wealth management sector. You need to find out what, what is the various income levels and whom you can exactly target to get more information. Okay, let's say if you're solving a relationship problem or it's relating to more particular application, what you're developing, you can find out a crucial family member or a couples or whoever. Like let's say if you're solving a dating problem, like you can able to understand the couples and which region are they and what is the kind of ethnographic perspective they have. Selecting participants is a very, very crucial step. If it's a, if it's a creativity problem, what you're solving, like let's say an entertainment or something like that, you can find out the artist or designer who makes this. If it's a business, go and ask a person who is a decision maker. Go and ask the person who is really going in and going out after this particular problem of the business, they can able to give you more clarity and information. Okay? Because a lot of people don't understand this. They just choose the participant who is very comfortable for them. What happens if you do that big problem will come for you. You will not be able to find out the real need and the real problem, what is happening. That's why you need to talk to professionals in that. Okay, so then you can get more clarity on that. The third important step is plan your interviews and observations. Okay, so let's say if you're doing an interview, if you're doing a physical interview, if you're doing a virtual interview or if you do a. Sometimes your settings might be little different like because of COVID or some health reasons, you cannot go for that particular field. In that case, plan the interview very properly through virtual call or through phone call or through physical interviews or whatever. Try to observe the interactions and record each and every information. Because a lot of people don't record anything and sometimes people record it without a permission. Both are problem. You should ask a concerned permission like hey, I'm recording your voice. Hey, I'm recording a video. Hey, I'm recording your conversation. Is that okay? Sometimes people will be scared. In that case you can follow nuance. Okay, you can record all this information and finally you can tell them, hey, see, with your permission, I have recorded whatever happened. Like let's say if you have recorded an audio, you can ask them on permission, is it okay if I can use this? Or if you say no, I will not use it. The reason why I didn't tell you is because lot of times when I say to the people that I wanted to record your voice, they get really nervous. Natural answers will not come. I really appreciate that. You have given a very natural, honest feedback. Thank you. You should be able to tell your participant about this interview, recordings and everything. Then you will get more confirmation. See guys, privacy is very important. Whenever you're asking a person, you should get that concern before posting. Okay, if it's a hospital setting like you can have the patient doctor healthcare related. If it's a financial, make sure to talk to some what you call financial decision maker for a proper virtual interview or a physical interview, whatever. Okay, so observe that communication dynamics, how it's really happening. If it's a business maker, if it's a creativity process, whatever you're selling. So any, any six problem you can able to understand how the decision making really happens and you can able to plan the things well better. Okay, so this is about getting into planning the interview in a, in a well advanced way. Okay, the fourth important thing is create a script. Now so once you plan this interview, you have to create a questionnaire or you need to create a kind of module or you have to create a kind of steps. You cannot go and talk to people randomly and draw, right? You need to have 1, 2, 3. Hey, first, what's your name? Like let's say if you're talking to a doctor here. Hi doctor, I'm so and so. What's your name? Like, what are you really doing? How much experience you have? It should not be very difficult question. It should not be very obtrusive. Also it should be very flowing in that communication. That's why you will have to keep a script. Lot of times people don't create the script and then they do it on the spot. No, that's absolutely wrong. The moment when you do it on the spot, then you will not observe what the person is saying. You'll be focusing only on the asking next question. Next question. You will not really observe what they're saying. Sometimes your questions will be little bit changed based on the answers what they say. That's why you need to observe what they say. For that you can able to correct that questions. Okay, so. But 95% you should have a script properly with you. Like let's say if it's a financial consultant, you should have questions regarding that. Let's say if he's a growing financial consultant, it's not very experienced. You can ask question like that. You can. You don't have to ask a complex question if you're going for a financial vice president. Like let's say if you want to solve a financial problem, then you can ask a very complex question. So understand your participant and then plan your interview and then create a script accordingly. If it's a relationship problem. So try to ask them emotional questions. Try to try to create more what you call communication preference question. Like how do they really want to communicate? Sometimes if it's a relationship problem or you're solving, people will be not very comfortable to talk. So choose a method accordingly. Okay, Script will not work. You can prepare a script, but your method itself needs to change, right? Like you can say here, okay, we don't have to meet each other. Like can we have a phone call? I will not use your name. I will not use your any other information. I just need your info zip file. People will be sometimes okay because they are not seeing the face. They are not giving their name or anonymous thing. So they will be able to do so. You should be very smart enough to do it. Okay. The fifth important thing is choose the right environment. See, this is very, very, very crucial. Even though if you have followed clearly defining the objective or Even if you're selecting the right participant, or if you're planning the interviews, or if you're creating a very good script, if you do it in a playful way, not in the hospital environment, for let's say if it's a healthcare, you will not get the reality. Sometimes you can observe lot many things in the reality apart from people, what they say. Because I'll tell you one golden tip. People don't do what they really say. People do things very differently. While you ask for an interview, they'll tell you, I'll do. I'll be this, I'll be perfect, I'll do this steps, protocol, will I do the operation. But when you go and reality, they see the operation, they would be doing entirely different or they would be doing some mistakes. That's totally fine. Because we are humans, not robots, right? We will. We are prone to make mistakes, errors, and we cannot really do that a robotic way. That is why your design should also compensate for the errors and tolerance what your customer is talking. Don, no one always talks about it, okay? You need to account for the errors what users are making. That is why observation is very important. It's not like you also become a robot and then you just ask your doctors or your healthcare provider, then you write it and then you make a solution. Not going to solve any problem in reality, how does the real change happens? And how do you really go and understand that? And how do you even design for that? Right? That's why observation in the field is important. If it's a. If it's a business space, you can go and travel to that. If that particular person is saying no, we'll have to go to a financial institution to understand that. You have to travel to that. Sometimes you have to go to a public space. Sometimes you can find an online space. Sometimes you have to go to the home of the people. You should be able to schedule an appointment. You can able to talk to them in front before, hey, I'm coming for an interview. Is it okay? Get all these things very clearly done before you go. Don't surprise that person on the go. That will itself make them very uncomfortable. And they will not give you any information. They'll say, okay, okay, this is the leave. That's it, five minutes, they'll close the interview. You could have planned one hour script. So you should be very careful while doing that. Okay? So choosing the right environment is very important. The sixth important step is observing, documenting it. Okay, now comes the documentation. You will have to be very, very, very observant. While you are listening to the people, right? I've recorded a separate podcast on listening skill for a designer. You can do that. I'm really bad at listening when start of my career, during my engineering days and even start of the design field. But I very well understood by talking to lot many students. When I started mentoring more than 12,500 students I've talked with, I really understood. When we are silent and when we are listening, people really pour out a lot many things. And your way of approaching them will totally change. Your way of understanding the problem will totally change. You would have understood, oh my God. This is what this person is trying to say. That level of clarity will emerge once if you listen. Observe carefully and then document it. Whether if it's a healthcare environment or if you're solving a creativity problem or business or whatever. Try to observe very carefully their strategies. Try to understand what are their challenges they faced. Try to understand their experience, what they've faced while failing or maybe becoming success. Try to observe that pattern, see if you're not able to get the pattern clearly, what happens is you won't be able to make any big creative output or. Okay, this is a very important step. The seventh step is feedback session. Now, having said all these points, you've talked to people, got the feedback. I mean, you have talked to people, you have noted down the thing. Now we have to ask them, hey, what do you really think about it? Okay, the interview is done, it's completed. So you tell me, what do you feel? What happens is people sometimes give you very free inputs now and many times this is more, more true, guys, because you're not setting them in a context, right? They are not in the context of interview or something. So now they'll give you real honest answers. Also with this, you have to correlate with the information. Whatever you had, it applies for even healthcare field or financial field or creativity problem, relationship, anything. So you will have to find that particular thing using your feedback session. Okay, so having a free session on feedback is very important in the field study. 8th important point is analyze the data, okay? Don't do the analysis there itself. Please take it to your home or maybe take it to your office or wherever. Do it on the same day, within next one hour. I'll tell you 1, 80% of the information, you will forget it in next 24 hours. Remaining 20 percentage, 80 percentage. You will forget in second day, third day, you will not remember at least 1, 2 percentage. After a week, you will not be sure which place you really went. That's the Reality when you do a lot of field study and design, this becomes a problem. And even if you do one field study, you cannot recollect information after a day. People take it very lightly. I've seen in my design institute as well, there was a team which worked on a very system design project. Okay, they did a very intensive study. But the point is they did not document any point while presenting. It doesn't seem like these people have collected that much of information. I mean, luckily I was there next to the team. I kind of observed what they did and I know, but people are looking at that presentation. They cannot even convince like these people have done this much of work because they have not really analyzed and they have not really synthesized this information properly. Just like that presenting. So there are a lot of tools to analyze. There are fishbone Diagram, there are 5Y analysis, there are 6 Sigma methods, 8D approach root cause analysis. Lot of methods are there to analyze and synthesize your information. Here only you will have to find out the patterns. Here you have to find out more what you call information which is relating to how does this people really what you call talk about. How does this people really get the thing? Why is this people talking about this topic? If I'm asking this question, what are the commonality which they are repeating? What is the group experience and what are the individual unique experience? You will have to analyze this, right? Let's say the user could have told like I didn't like this tool to be operated in hospital. Where other people would have said I like it, other people would have not reacted. So you have to understand, okay, why is this person saying this tool is not comfortable? It's because of handle. It's because of the way in which it is designed. Or it's because of the weight, or is it because of the touch and feel? Or is it because of something else, right? If you analyze what happens is you will have to really confirm it again with your user. Again, a very good way to do field analysis is to do it one more time with the insights what you collected first time. This will really close your loop properly. Because people don't get this clarity, you know, they. They do it on their own. What do you call assumption and this that and what happens? I'll tell you. There will be absolutely no correlation between what you collected in the field and what you summarized and what your project needs. Because you have not really analyzed and understood. You are just keeping the raw data, right? So converting the raw data only you will have lot of questions and second time if you go for the field, you will have to confirm lot many things while you're doing the analysis. You can also check with secondary information, whatever you had, the facts, the statistics, the information, what you got in your journals or your website or the numbers and the data, whatever you have. And you can able to check in the online. And now there will be some gaps available to close the gaps you will have to travel. Let me tell you honestly guys, for my hospital project I went almost to six, seven times for different, different hospitals for the same context. Even three times I went to the same hospitals to really observe and get it back. Because when I was learning to do a research and a field study there. So it's very important and vital to recognize that. And you know what, this will be the very crucial factor for you to take decisions in your particular problem statement. Whatever you're working. Once you do the step eight, then you can go for ninth step, okay, so which is called iteration design. So now you can work on iterating the process. Maybe you can do two times, maybe you can do one more time field. Maybe you can talk to people, maybe you can iterate, maybe you can get an expert support, maybe you can talk to different user needs. Or if you, if you find this is little distracting or if you find this is more engaging, you can go deep into that particular thing and iterate the process, iterate the field study, iterate the video call, iterate the interview processor, iterate the audio recording, whatever you did that, hey Jagdish, why should I iterate it? If you're not iterating, Let me tell you guys, you will not be able to go deeper into that particular insight. It's not like we are doing it for the sake of doing right. We need to understand this here. Okay, so this is the ninth important thing is iterative design. Tenth important factor is presentation. If you have documented everything, if you did all this information, if you're not able to present it carefully, nothing is going to really work guys. Particularly if it's a healthcare industry, you should be able to clearly show what is the need of the people, what is the problem which a doctor or a surgeon or anybody is facing, right? If it's a financial thing, how a financial thing is before and after. And you have to show some graphs, you can show some data pivotal analysis. There are a lot of tools in Excel and PPD you can directly do. You can put the numbers in the pivot chart or pie chart automatically tools will be able to populate that information. The more you clearly present your data or the information on the synthesis people will be better able to take decision. Who is the people? Is your customer? Is your business? Is your studio? Is your client or anybody? Then what happens is you will have more upper hand to really make big decisions in your problem statement. Okay, so to summarize all the points, the very first point to do a field research is defining your objective clearly. The second important point is selecting the participant. Third is planning interviews and observation. Fourth is creating a script or a guide for that. Fifth is choosing the right environment for the field and six is documenting an observation and seventh is feedback sessions. And eighth is analyze and synthesize the data. Ninth is iteration and tenth is presentation of your entire final work. And whenever you are able to do it guys, definitely you will be able to get more, more more things done in your field. Okay, this is really really important and people don't really take it very seriously. That is a big problem and the close this podcast I'll tell you some general tips. Please build a very good rapport with your audience or the customer. Many times people will feel awkward whenever you're going to a place like let's say if it's a healthcare industry or it's the like let's say if you're solving a business related problem, sometimes the business will be itself very confidential. People will not allow you inside. You should be more polite, you should establish the trust and you should tell hey, I'll sign an agreement, I'll send an email, I'll not send any information what I'm collecting. With your permission I'll send you if you're okay, I'll do it. So build that rapport trust and make a very contextual inquiry. Do not talk random things. Make sure whichever is interacting with your product talk about it. Observe their non verbal cues because people will sometimes hesitate. Sometimes people will be like how much time this interview is going to happen here. If you are observing that non verbal cues, please cut short your interview very shortly. Ask important questions and close because people are not able to understand it. People are not able to engage with you much. Observe their body language, facial expression because if you able to do it sometimes you will be able to understand. People are not very confident to talk or people are not very engaging to talk. This is a very important tips guys. The fourth important thing is use diverse methods. Don't only use survey, survey, survey or don't only use interview, interview, interview. Choose different methods for different test based on the context. Whatever you're having, please have a mindset of iterative Approach. That's the fifth important thing. Okay. Always be very open and iterative. Sixth is please consider privacy and ethical. Make sure you follow some legal laws or if it's a confidential, if it's concerned. Before recording or sharing information which is more sensitive, please be very careful about it. And if they're not comfortable, you can mask their face. You can able to even mask their names and details and whereabouts. Please be very careful about it. Seventh thing is you should be more collaborative with the stakeholders because many times your stakeholder would have done some field study, your marketing team or sales team. Sometimes it will be very useful for you. You need to be patiently observing what they are trying to say and you have to take it down. Right? That's very important. And then the eighth important tip is triangulation. Use multiple sources of data to validate your findings. That's why I told you you can refer it with your secondary information primary and then you can able to find out which is going to help you or not. Ninth is very surprising. Guys, please expect some unexpected events. Sometimes that will flip your project. Trust me, this works. Nothing is random. Everything happens for a reason, right? So sometimes unexpected insight will come and that will really change your field study in a few ways. So please be a little open. Also don't be very rigid. And the tenth last important tip is iterate the design based on insight one more time. Okay? Because if you're able to do it guys, you will be definitely able to crack a very good field study in interview. And this will be fitting for every industry. Any problem which is on. Okay? So thank you so much guys for listening to this podcast. I've gone a little deeper. I think it's 25 minute, 23 minute podcast but. But thank you so much because if you have really listened to this, you're very serious about making some impact in your UX field study and all. Okay. Or problem or product design field study. Implement each of these things and feel free to iterate and give me about a description in the podcast if you have any changes. I'm also open and ready to learn from you. Okay, thank you so much guys. If you, if you feel this is a value added podcast, give me a best trading in Apple and Spotify and recommend for your friends. And if you need my mentoring and support, feel free to send an email and I'll be able to happily check you for my mentorship program. And right now seats are filling fast and you can able to check it out quickly so that there is a special offer running for the new year, I'll be able to help you. Okay? So thank you so much, guys. Take care. All the best. Bye. Bye.