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My Role?
UX Researcher
Team?
Group of 8
- 3 UX Researchers
(including me) +
- 3 Designers +
- 1 Developer +
- 1 Growth and Strategy +
- 1 Founder
Tools?
G forms
G Meet
Notion
Google
Project Type?
Volunteering
Timeline?
9 months
(March 2022 - Nov 2022)
Company?
Design Ambitions (a design community) -
Virtual
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Overview: -
the start! - why are we here?
According to "StartUp Talky" the design industry in India is growing at a rate of 23 - 25% annually.
Which means there is and will be a lot of problems people in this industry face. Saying newbies wanting guidance to get into the field, guidance to prepare in the right way, etc.
Our of my fellow designer had a vision of contributing 1% of the Indian creator economy by bringing more creators and mission being helping the new designers get their 1st job by creating content. However had seen a wide range of scope to grow together in this field and needed research help. This is when on being approached, I joined the team as the first person focusing on only the research.
As, the design field is evolving, and as people are shifting towards design more and more, and as technology is evolving too - it would sure impart this segment - it would be interesting to dig into it! -
let's find out what exactly are the problems now, how does it impact and let's ideate to solve it together!
Overview
What's the aim of the research? - the scope!
the
the
Research aim here was to understand the design community as a whole,
to improve the design community - a place where all designers, be at any professional level can rely on, can get support from and can improve in their work.
- to understand what are the people problems in other communities
- to understand what are the people problems faced by themselves
- and then understand the source and ideate on the solutions.
I also helped with other community team related work with my research and ideations like,
to decide the community name and discuss on the logo, etc. and being a part of the family!
After knowing the why and what,
let's understand the
How? - the methodologies!
My way to move forward:
Let's deep dive into each step!:
1.
SECONDARY RESEARCH:
A warm kickstart!
Started off by firstly understanding the research topic and the research domain better, to understand the environment to dive deeper, plan smarter and analyse better.
WHY THIS STEP?
I (and later encouraged others as they joined) started with secondary research first because I think that to start any project we should have a little prior knowledge about that atleast so that we can relate and grasp better - what is going on in that domain, how is it affecting people in it, etc., its a great way to kickstart a research topic. Later once we get a basic understanding and our mind starts recognising the possible paths - we can pause it and do secondary research again when needed.
HOW?
Googling and self reading, searching for online video contents on the design community with basic keywords first, where people share their experiences in the journey or share what they have observed - why people come into this field, what kind of problems they face, the expectations people keep from the field, the gap in the field, and so on.
Then understanding and discussing it with other team mates to get different perspective. As needed, to go back and forth to the secondary research.
When?
In the start and in between as needed.
What's next?
Although we got an idea that there are scopes of problems people face in design communities and in their day to day design work or to get into design - we now need such a research method that would help us directly understand from the people we are researching about and get the exact usable data we need , get the real problem(s) to work on.
So we next went to :
Competitor's analysis
User Interviews
Surveys
Some initial phase ideations of mine on what and how should we proceed. :)
(The framework and planning is done by me for the research team, then discussed with others and the founder)
2.
Competitor's Analysis
We are a design community / group , here to understand problems in the design field that people face.
So it would be a good idea to see what people experience in other design communities, observe people's expectations and pain points of all professional levels and how communities run and help their participants.
WHY THIS STEP?
People's end:
- To understand and note down people sharing their expectations and pain points getting into design or being in the design field.
- To observe and understand people's experiences in other communities - how satisfied and helped they are
Community's end:
- Understand how communities run for their people -> what services or help they provide
- Are the communities out there are able to meet their participant's expectations and serve their needs.
- What is the gap between the design communities and their participants.
HOW & WHAT DID WE DO?
1. We made a list of all competitor's :
- The requirement I had was that they wanted to check over different mediums like - discord, slack, facebook and whatsapp groups.
- We did so to understand the situation everywhere and not restrict ourselves in the starting only - after understanding the problems and situations and post ideations - the solution can be scoped.
2. Started exploring:
- We divided the competitors amongst ourselves and started exploring them.
- We entered just like a new participant and experienced the onboarding journey.
Then read and understood the expectations and problems other fellow designers face and observed how the community serves.
- Tried to understand from different perspectives like say when we entered new, after spending a few days there, and divided people based on different professional levels they are at during the time of research.
3. Observed, read, understood and felt the environment. :
- We tried to observe and understand if the participant's problem and needs mentioned, solved in any way in the community and how satisfied they seemed to be.
4. We noted the data - to later analyse it.
(noted their geographic location, experience level, type of questions (which design field), and the questions)
5. Since we are from the same design field, people approach us too with their issues or just to connect - we talked to them there - to deeply talk about their exact problem and needs, experience in the design field and different communities so far.
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KEY INSIGHTS
We understood that:
- Communities do try to provide help and resources, but often the groups / channels get cluttered due to all kind of resources and messages together - making it difficult for the participants to get the right help at the right time.
- Sometimes the participants want a dedicated or group of dedicated seniors to help them in the journey and do not want to spend time searching on content on those groups.
So help is available, but getting the help at the right time and quickly is not always there.
Also, mainly help is required for the freshers who wants to get into design - say like what courses to be done, how to get their first internship/job, etc. -
Although there are plenty of resources, those overburden often and few specific help, at the right time is needed.
So major help is needed by the freshers.
Seniors normally are here to provide help, get people to join their team or just to be connected to what is happening in the design communities nowadays.
People from all over the whole seems to be a part of these communities and face the similar problems and have the similar needs as mentioned.
However people do get to network better with like minded people.
Some competitor's analysis we did and the list of problems/needs/queries we maintained.
Blurred due to data privacy.
WHAT'S NEXT?
We noted the data we read and observed properly.
We now think the need to dive deeper, with more specific and detailed questions as needed and talk to our fellow designers.
Next we did:
- Surveys
- Interviews
3.
PARTICIPANT INTERVIEWS
We have observed people and heard them in the comminuty groups.
Let's directly hear from them.
WHY THIS STEP?
Hearing users directly helps us understand their point in depth. They explain their point and open ended questions opens up some very interesting points. Later these data can be segregated and analysed properly as needed.
Hearing users directly also let's us analyse their emotions by seeing or hearing them out directly.
HOW & WHAT DID WE DO?
In the previous section : competitor's analysis, we understood that the major help is needed by the freshers who wants to get into design and grow as a fresher designer in the field.
So, our participant group will be freshers who wants to get into or grow as designers in the field.
These can be of different groups -
depending on what is their education background (design or other), their goals, etc.
We did so as:
The interview was either :
As per the convenience of the participants.
KEY INSIGHTS
- Freshers get overloaded with information and need guidance as in exactly what would help and when.
- All the communities provided and are structured in almost the same way - further increasing the cognitive load
- 1/3rd of the fresher group knows about the mentorship platforms like adplist - however out of those, not all prefer going there in the very beginning because they first want to learn from juniors, build confidence and then go to the seniors - to get help and also build a better and more confident connection.
- Freshers from the design background, have more knowledge about design than the freshers from other education background and are more confident in general about design - BUT they still lack the knowledge and confidence when it comes to get into real world work.
- Mainly it is just that they need the right resource at the right time!
Noting down of the points
blurred due to privacy reasons.
Oh btw,
The founding team was planning of keeping an ambassadorship program for multiple reasons. We the researchers suggested that one good use of it would be to get
in touch with :
- students
- professors
of both the :
- design institutes
- other educational field institutes
To,
- know about the design field - pain points, expectations, experiences from different aspects
- spread help in the colleges.
WHAT'S NEXT?
We parallelly also worked on creating survey form to reach to a wider group of freshers.
The user interviews and the surveys went hand in hand.
The process went as follows:
4.
SURVEYS
Surveys to understand and analyse wider audience
WHY THIS STEP?
We wanted to go wider audience, people whom we can not connect to.
We also used this method when needed to get answers to scoped out analysed data from the previous interviews ans surveys.
Meanwhile this community also was thinking of naming itself - so I proposed of the survey form to take suggestions for the names and why do they think or feel the name suits the community group.
HOW & WHAT DID WE DO?
- First made the questions
to get usable data that can be used to analyse and come to solutions from the research findings we get.
and to get deeper on the usable points
- Then discussed it with the team of other researchers and founding team.
- Then properly drafted the messaged to be sent on different mediums and made the survey form
- Circulated the survey
- Analysed the data we got
- Noted it down by properly grouping the users and the responses
- Discussed the analysed findings with the team.
Also took the founder's requirements needed for the community building like - The the communities they joined, where did they know about it, etc. for the community building purposes - so added those.
Analysed it with other details like their educational and professional levels, sectors, and different personas.
KEY INSIGHTS
Example : 1st version of the survey questions as per the requirements of data and the requirements and expectations of the founder
- Freshers are very motivated and energetic to get into design
- But they 80% don't get exact proper answers of their questions and on time.
- Students from design institutes get major help from their mentors in their Institute and so the students from other background ask for mentor more during their initial phases.
- Around 90% of students from other background take online courses atleast in the start, then they rely on online materials like google search, YouTube videos, podcasts, etc.
- Getting job opportunities is something every fresher wants and so -
they want mentorship, networking, opportunities in events and competitions to get experiences, getting resources, doubts solved on time and guidance is needed.
- People joined too many design communities at a go - majority of them get to know via word of mouth, then via channels like LinkedIn and then google.
WHAT'S NEXT?
This research requirement was scoped out, and the community group needed to know these above research on the design community.
I concluded the research by summarising my research and giving them a research report (which they loved it btw :) )
5.
TO SUMUP
Let's conclude!
Not providing the research report as it was handed to the community founder.
PARTICIPANT'S CRITERIA AND PERSONAS
Can be divided based on :
- student/ fresher vs. working professional
- educational background
- other factors like age, location, gender would be needed to analyse and come to a solution oriented research data.
We can find them :
- design institute/ colleges
- people not from design background (online / offline)
People to talk to :
- design professors / mentors
- students from design background
- students not from the design background
- professionals looking to switch into design
Target geographic locations groups:
- India
- Globally
Problems could be:
- faced by people themselves
- faced by people in the community
KEY FINDINGS :
- Something to provide mentorship - from time to time and the resources only what is required at that time.
- some way for both the introverts and the extroverts to get instant help and help them with skills.
- communities can be structured in a more organised way.
Since the group was interested to not only create a community but also ideate on a product to be built if thats helpful and unique,
then we can think along in this line:
- send question -> get top resources and guidance only.
- notifications to remind them.
to avoid people getting lost in the huge pool of resources and getting diverted from the main goal.
WHERE CAN WE USE THIS FINDINGS?
- To build a more structured community, a product or a solution for better helping the designers.
- Research and ideations can be continued to know in depth "need" and "exact origin(s)" of the people's problem (psychologically, statistically, etc.) and then pick up a problem to build solution on.
DRAWBACKS / PROBLEMS FACED WHILE RESEARCHING?
This research was basic research, as needed by the team.
So the scope and requirements changed from time to time and adapting to it was a learning.
Also since we all were from different places, planning research that might require coming together or an alternative needed thinking and planning and that was a learning too.
Time and resources was a key point in this.
Since this research requirement was very initial and unplanned from the other side, we were not very sure of the resources available to us - we managed and moulded the resources according to what seemed to work at that time and slowly and steadily understood the resources and scope available.
GUIDANCE TO FURTHER FUTURE RESEARCH :
Since this research requirement was just to get an overview of the design community and get started somewhere, it can now be taken ahead in a very strategic planned manner:
- You can narrow down to a topic with ample amount of continued discussions ideations and going back to the basic research - a topic that you can do justice with.
Also remember that you can not make the entire world a better place to live all together - focus one at a time and then plan the research accordingly.
- [As mentioned earlier] Problem we personally faced was that, since this research requirement was very initial and unplanned from the other side, we were not very sure of the resources available to us - we managed and moulded the resources according to what seemed to work at that time and slowly and steadily understood the resources and scope available.
6.
ADDITIONAL ROLE!
Some additional work with my teammates here!
HEADING A SECTOR.
I did the research and then managed the new researchers too (2 of them)
I am still learning so in the process I helped them too :)
We actively discussed different opinions and took the tasks ahead.
Learnt a lot in the journey of learning, experiencing, taking decisions from time to time and also heading and managing other tasks.
Doing your part and also discussing your plus other team mate's work, proper communication, presentation skills, etc. is also something that boasted during the process.
ITERATING, IDEATING AND PLANNING
WITH THE CORE TEAM MEMBERS
Helped other team mates and the founding team on several factors like:
- reaching out to more people to join the team as they needed
- helping to sharing opinions and ideas on the logo of the community
- helping in the naming of the community through surveys and ideations
- helping the founder with other discussions as needed by sharing my opnions
Thanks! :)
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