Reach Global Design Research Network

With the theme of connectivity, Reach explored different perceptions of the camera and tablet, as well as PC, Games Console, MP3 player, and of course smartphone. Together these form what is known as an ecosystem of devices.

Perceptions are influenced by mental models people have developed to manage their relationships with the devices they own. To uncover the underlying behavioural routines by which people integrate such devices into their lives, we need to understand what influences their choice of the right tool for the job. This is an area of research that involves multiple phases, working across a number of time zones. However, the strong professional relationships within the Reach network ensure regular, close and open collaboration.

For many people functionalities are replicated across several of the devices they own; choosing which of these to use to accomplish a given task therefore is a complex process that involves various emotional and behavioural factors. Making sure all of these devices work together happily meanwhile is another challenge – especially when managing how content flows across them.

Smart devices

This project aimed at understanding smartphone behaviours and practices in China and the United States. There was special emphasis relating to still image and video capture, usage of multiple devices across personal ecosystems, and the different contexts that influence usage of (and activities with) the multiple devices people use in their daily lives.

Fieldwork was conducted in China and USA by Apogee and STBY, in the form of in-depth video interviews on location, which resulted in design documentaries. This approach allows culturally-specific local influences to be preserved and examined within the films, whilst also ensuring the consistency of data needed for meaningful cross-regional analysis.

The research informed specific lines of enquiry that had been developed in previous projects with the client, and helped to broaden the existing base of knowledge.

Secure mobile access with Biometrics

Precise Biometrics has been making secure access systems for decades, and specialise in fingerprint recognition. They wanted to explore potential consumer good markets for their new product: Secure mobile access for iPhone and iPad, using biometric technology in the form of a built-in fingerprint sensor.

Antropologerne, in collaboration with Apogee, conducted user studies and visited 10 different users in Asia (Hong Kong) and Scandinavia (Sweden & Denmark). We generated insight on the role that mobile devices play in the everyday life of the people and the need for secure access to content on these. We tested and gave feedback on the packaging, hardware and software of the new product. We helped set the direction for further product development, delivering four Innovation Vectors and we defined key barriers as well as future scenarios for potential new areas of business.

Feminine inspiration for mobile phone design

Nokia wanted to gain insights into what women want from mobile phones and find design directions for phones with a female perspective. Indri Tulusan and Fumiko Ichikawa from Reach partner Spur worked with the Nokia Insight & Innovation Tokyo team and devised ‘collaborative innovation’ processes that started with internal “share and discover” workshops in 4 countries, and then continued with consumer insights intervention with consumers in Bangkok, including “homework’ exercises, home interviews, and co-creation workshops.

Bespoke tools were used to elicit insights and directions on both motivations and materials and shapes. The team supplemented this process with ad-hoc street interviews and Nokia internal expert interviews.

The results were presented in an internal sharing tool presenting bite size videos, slideshows, photos, where the audience in Nokia can see and hear first hand what women want. There are also executive summaries in form of PowerPoints. Workshops communicated the 5 key themes and design directions further internally and have resulted in successful product improvements.

The following projects are global studies focussing on people’s contextual usage of mobile devices, with a perspective to identify needs and preferences that could be satisfied by future designs and concepts.

Most people have fully integrated their mobiles into their everyday lives, and would have a hard time imagining how to organize their social circles without it. Yet, it is not the mobile that sets the norm for how social life is organized, it’s still people who do that. The research analyses how the environment someone is in affects their perception of the device they are using. We looked at how people adapt their behaviours and routines around the specific challenges of the contextual environment they inhabit – whether a smartphone is too expensive for the street or too rude for a dinner table, or if a tablet is too big to use on a bus. And why? A smart device can be an invisible helping-hand in one instance, and burden or source of stress in another. It also covers those moments where a device is integrated into an environment well enough to assist or delight someone in their daily life.

These projects posed the challenge of combining a global focus with the specific peculiarities of local environments. By adopting a flexible, iterative approach to research, Reach partners tailored the process for their individual cultures, allowing researchers to get an in-depth look at cultural differences and similarities around mobility.

Low cost smartphone usage in emerging markets

STBY and Quicksand conducted a research project on the usages of the new generation of low cost smartphones. The study was based in India and the analysis was conducted in London in close collaboration with the two REACH partners and the client team.

Initial analysis of the fieldwork in a workshop with the client team identified new insights into emerging behaviours of consumers in connection to low cost smartphones usage, some of which were relatable to previous insights from studies in other markets, such as China, Russia and Europe. The insights were then synthesised into an illustrated report to communicate the main findings to a wider range of internal stakeholders, accompanied with initial recommendations for design.

Smartphones UX study

This project aimed at understanding smartphone behaviours and practices in China, India and UK. There was special emphasis relating to still image and video capture, usage of multiple devices across personal ecosystems, and the different contexts that influence usage of (and activities with) the multiple devices people use.

Fieldwork was conducted in the form of in-depth video interviews on location, which resulted in design documentaries. Reach partners STBY, Quicksand and Apogee worked in close collaboration with the client team. This approach allows culturally-specific local influences to be preserved and examined within the films, whilst also ensuring the consistency of data needed for meaningful cross-regional analysis.

The research informed specific lines of enquiry that had been developed in previous projects with the client, and helped to broaden the existing base of knowledge.

Mobile phone concepts

In the context of developing a strategy for a potential new product family of mobile phones for the European market, Nokia wanted a better understanding of unmet consumer needs. The new mobile phone product family would have to offer a competitive advantage in a market that is becoming increasingly saturated with tablets and smart phones. Reach carried out consumer research in the UK, Spain, Russia—with STBY, fuelfor, and Summ()n.

The approach adopted was to conduct “User Experience Labs”, exploratory interactive sessions where the participants are invited to actively engage and to give personal feedback on the topics and materials presented to them. In addition to general findings, the group sessions allowed for a comparative analysis between markets focused on identifying differences, as well as commonalities. This highlighted which responses seemed to be due to locally specific socio-cultural factors. These labs also provided the opportunity to identify the most interesting candidates for ethnographic interviews.

After the series of User Experience Labs a second round of in-depth ethnographic immersions with of the some participants followed. This allowed the team to develop a deeper understanding of the accounts elicited during the group sessions. These immersions also generated a set of new design documentaries about everyday experiences around the usage of mobile phones. The study helped Nokia define the key features that resonated most with consumers, and to evaluate the potential of the anticipated new concept.

Cross-cultural Research for Cisco

Reach recently completed a project for Cisco, in which several Reach partners compiled a report detailing the benefits of cross-cultural research. Cisco wanted to know exactly what they stood to gain from developing their own cross-cultural research program, and asked Reach to provide a general introduction to the field. They also asked for a number of compelling case studies detailing the problems and opportunities encountered by companies already conducting cross-cultural research, and for each of these to be related to specific area’s of Cisco’s business.

Reach’s report drew on the personal experience of several partners, providing in-depth analysis of programs undertaken by HP, Philips, General Electric, and Nokia. These projects covered territories from North America, Europe, Asia and Africa, with each case study focusing on specific aspects relatable to Cisco’s operations. Liaising with members of Cisco’s User Experience Team allowed Reach were able to tailor the report around their specific needs, with the final presentation being made in the form of a compelling Powerpoint presentation that could be presented and circulated internally.

Mobile internet concepts

Companies like T-Mobile can learn a lot from how people actually organize their social life a broad sense (as opposed to how people use their phones) when they want to develop new concepts for mobile internet. Spur and STBY did fieldwork in Berlin, London and Tokyo and worked with a T-Mobile team to set up the research and organize the workshops that used the results to create insights and ideas.

We worked extensively with video in this project, using the small and easy to operate Flip Video which we gave to participants to film moments in their life for us. In the picture you see Bas Raijmakers transferring the clips one participant made onto his computer, to discuss them during the home visit. To prepare, participants had received the Flip camera and a set of nicely designed instructions a few weeks before. They each made some 30-40 clips for us, which we edited into short films of 1-3 minutes each.

Later in the insights and ideas workshops we used the short films in two different ways: as inspiration for creating the insights and ideas. And later, once we had developed these in more detail we used the films to back them up, as evidence. Because we used a video diary approach, the films became often very personal and intimate which was great for the topic we wanted to explore: how do people organize their social life. From this research resulted almost 30 detailed ideas for new services which are currently further developed by T-Mobile.

The Reach Network works with clients to develop a better understanding of opportunities for new concepts and value propositions, based on the technology platforms in their portfolio, and to develop new service offerings to augment and enhance the consumer experience. Together with our clients, we generated insights as to how companies can better integrate their products and services into the contemporary lifestyles of consumers. Depending on the culture, different tools and methods are employed and the research process is designed with partners who are embedded in the culture of study.

A service design approach is a very useful framework that looks at the constellation of products and services on offer, analyses them individually, and how they relate to each other, to identify what is working and what are the opportunities for improvement. Reach helps clients identify with their consumers, and empathise with their routines, preferences, motivations and concerns.

Volkswagen Mobility Services

Volkswagen was interested in enhancing their customer experience, and identifying opportunities for new value propositions. The purpose of this study was to explore and inspire the development of a new service offering around paying at gas stations, based on the technology platform of an existing product.

For this project STBY worked with minds & makers. Together, they interviewed a set of German consumers to learn about their behaviours and attitudes around payments and billing with respect to products and services around cars and mobility. These interviews were analysed and transformed into easy to present personal profiles, combined with customer insights and opportunity areas.

Open Innovation for Reed Elsevier

Throughout the concept development process the perspective of users/consumers is a leading element in selecting and elaborating on ideas for potential innovations. Services can be seen as a journey or a series of critical encounters between a customer and a service provider that take place over time and across channels. Service design focuses on integrating the organisation of service elements around the user experience and combining distributed organisational resources to create an optimal service offering.

Reed Elsevier, one of the largest academic publishers on the planet, engaged STBY for an open innovation project, to explore new opportunities for their business based on current customer practices. Working across multiple countries (UK and Netherlands), we focused on lead users who we identified through a process of snowballing.

We conducted fieldwork and followed-up with meetings for the identification of opportunities (insight creation) and a co-creation workshop (idea generation). The results have been used to inform the vision and strategy for a new portfolio of services targeting a specific market segment. The concepts that came out of the workshops are currently being prototyped.

Practices and motivations relating to energy use have become more and more important in people’s lives for many reasons, ranging from finances to the environment. At the same time, we use more and more devices that need to be powered and we often become quite personally attached to them. This complex hodgepodge of issues plays out in very different ways in the personal lives and attitudes of people around the world.

The aim of design research projects in this area is to develop concepts for consumer products and services with a longer term goal of understanding consumers’ practices and motives around sustainable life. Research focusses on analysing how people around the world cope with mundane daily activities associated with their devices. And, how they think about related bigger issues, such as energy usage and the consumption of natural resources.

Maintaining the global focus while being open to cross-cultural differences requires a great deal of planning and the networked collaboration model adopted by Reach ensures a balanced approach.

Green Living study

This project was a collaboration across Japan, UK and US, with a focus on people’s attitudes towards ‘green’ living. Reach partner STBY collaborated with Portigal Consulting for the fieldwork in California. The aim of the research was to generate materials that would inspire concept development for Panasonic’s US consumers. It was also necessary to communicate observations in a strong, empathic way, thus the approach Reach employed was to create short films on location, where participants interacted with probes that served as stimuli for conversations.

The results of the fieldwork were analyzed and mapped onto a framework that described the process of behavior change that people go through when trying to live a more green life. This detailed framework became valuable because it could also accommodate concepts that were in development; thus making a connection between the concepts and people’s everyday struggles with ‘going green.’

In this case, design research was instrumental in performing two roles: First it played a generative role, in inspiring and enriching concepts, and helping to develop ideas out of contextual knowledge gained from people in the videos. Secondly, it was validating, research served as the evidential foundation upon which new concepts could be compared and measured.

Charging Up around the globe

The entire network of Reach partners participated in a global study on how people use electricity and think about energy use, with a focus on charging devices. This study took place in 8 countries: USA, Brazil, The Netherlands, Spain, Denmark, Hungary, India, China and Japan. The data repository for this study may even include more countries later on. With so much fieldwork being done already, we have created a long list of the insights, pointing towards opportunity areas and ideas for several industries.

During this project we worked with energy supplier EDF. Other companies and organizations have later also benefited from the research materials and consumer insights. Please contact us if you’d like to know more.

Language and culture affect the way people communicate with each other, and the devices they use can enable (or hinder) these interactions. The following projects studied languages from both a cultural and a functional point of view, exploring how language is used in different contexts and social groups, as well as the impact of digital writing, interfaces and mobility on language use.

These studies illustrate the application of design research techniques to complex, abstract issues, and the strengths of the networked company approach in dealing with the intricacies of cross-cultural research.

The negotiation of language in everyday communication is complex – affected by the mode used to communicate (such as SMS, email or facebook for written language) as well as the code used (accent, tone, slang or humour for instance). Furthermore, language norms are culturally mediated rather than universal and can be further influenced by demographic and other sub-cultures.

Emerging technologies and digital channels for communication add another layer of complexity to language practices, which intersects with cultural norms to create new patterns of use. It is necessary to explore the peculiarities of each language type, so as to identify opportunities for products that can facilitate communication as well as delight the user.

Our objective was to explore and understand the norms, formal and informal structures, usage patterns, and relationships of language and expression in interpersonal communication from a cultural point of view.

Global Language & Culture study

Do different people in different companies have the same conversations? That’s what Reach recently tried to determine in a major project conducted for Nokia that involved synchronised studies in China, Spain and UK. Three network partners, Apogee, Fuelfor and STBY, worked together to design a global study analysing how the cultures people live in can influence the type of language they use.

Working on such a broad topic was a challenge in itself – as indeed was conducting a simultaneous study in 3 separate timezones – and required a great deal of planning and preparation. One of the benefits of the network however is the experience each company has in working with each other; regular, close and open collaborations mean projects like this often feel like working as a single entity.

Each company maintained their own clear areas of responsibility however. Amongst these, the first step was to create a matrix of existing knowledge, developing a framework of relevant issues from a wide range of literature (in 3 different languages no less). After coming together to refine and synthesise this data, it could then be further focused on the topic at hand via a series of in-depth expert interviews. We spoke to a range of leading academics, journalists, and designers from right across the world, and the insights we gained allowed us to build an analytical framework that refined a hugely complex issue into a series of testable hypotheses.

Once developed, we then applied this framework to a series of in-depth ethnographic immersions. Going out into the field in London, Barcelona, and Shanghai, each company conducted a series of intensive interviews with a wide range of different people. This generated an incredibly rich amount of data, which our framework helped shape into a workable format for a collaborative workshop held with Nokia and all the partners in London.

The success of the first phase of the study resulted in the addition of two more phases of study. Phase 2 studied Russian and Arabic, with partners in Russia and Egypt. A similar framework was adapted to the constraints of these non-latin languages. This complex, multi-phase project proved how design research techniques can be applied to even the most complicated, abstract issues. It also proved how the network-company approach adopted by Reach can allow such projects to maintain a global focus, incorporating cross-cultural differences (and universal similarities) into the earliest possible stages of a design process.

Transliterations

]As the variety of written language people use is exploding, a second study for Nokia relating to communication examined how particularly non-latin languages were supported by existing digital writing tools.

The aim of this project was to develop an understanding of transliteration in the wider context of digital written communication, such as text input on mobile devices. Transliteration exists in a multilingual environment where people switch between different languages depending on various factors. It was necessary to explore particularities per language type (since needs can be very different in different languages and cultures).

STBY conducted a pilot study in London to examine some of the themes emerging from this research out in the field. This allowed for the prototyping of several different tools and methods ahead of the main fieldwork in India, in collaboration with Quicksand. By providing some preliminary results, both the scripts and the probes for the Indian fieldwork could be targeted towards those areas deemed most relevant to the overall aims of the study. findings from the fieldwork were documented within an analytical framework developed out of the desk research, pilot immersions, and expert interviews.

This project looked at transliteration in Indic languages—Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi. A follow-up project may look at transliteration in Arabic.