Thread by @RohanIrvine

Final session of the conference!!

@ashdonaldson & Simon Tobias of @designtobias presenting

How do you do Research to own a Multi-Billion Dollar Industry?

#dr2020

Over the last year's or so we've seen a change in the design consulting space from enhancing teams to strategic work.

This has been out down to the proliferation of design research practices and sometimes the removal of key research steps removed from processes.

One morning Simon received a call from the US and was asked "Can you design a value prop for a $6.4 billion industry, and can you start next week, and what do you know about tattooing?"

The last time Simon had worked with Jo or was at BUPA, Jo had been headhunted by a VC company who wanted to enter into the tattoo removal industry.

They bought stakes in 3 of the biggest tattoo removal companies and wanted to merge all three and scale by 300% in 12 months

Jo wanted people to do deep qualitative research.

But as you can imagine, the selling the value of research can be tough.

So Tobias went about defining the best practice tattoo removal across America

As design researchers we used to always struggle with clients wanting quant for everything.

Now we have to deal with 'democratised' research, which is a new way of saying 'commodified' we have a glut of researchers from 2 month courses.

It means they spend less time doing and analysing research and cheaper.

Ash is saying market research and new researchers would only hit the surface level insights.

You need to understand the whole ecosystem which is really important for new movers. Not just what it's like, but where it's going to go.

They looked at the operational side of the business, the physical space and do interrupt interviews.

Tobias had to identify the history of tattooing in white America.

If you want your research to be used to must:

Get all your stakeholders to agree what they want to find out

Keep them engaged throughout the entire process.

We delved deep with the investors, VCs, and companies to learn more about their operations, discuss how we would do interviews in their clinics and answer their questions.

We setup a design wall in Austin & Manly in Sydney.

We wanted daily summaries.

And we wanted to keep the stakeholders engaged with rich storytelling.

Each place had its own unique culture of tattooing.

During the project a 4th company was acquired and had to be included in the research as it was in flight

When ever you're doing international research it's good to have someone on the ground who can give you local context and deal with problems as the arise. When they arise.

Your connections are important, being able to connect with people in places will help you immensely.

The research community are welcoming and love to help!

Ash recommends to speak at conferences and meetups & seek out mentors

Visual communication is important to reducing barriers.

Ash and Simon spent a long time have one on one conversations over dinner and drinks with the leaders of the companies.

There's nonsuch thing as a perfect research project.

Have the confidence to adapt to the situation.

There will always be a spanner in the works.

Some of the team got tattoos at a conference so they could speak with the artists.

One of the sites staged their interview, and so instead of writing it up they just noted the cultural norms

The only say they could meet with all three companies they had a full day of research.

Ash built a workshop using mural for each company to participate remotely

Develop a good research rhythm.

Field research can be exhausting, moving in and out of new contexts, checking into hotels, driving.

Make sure you know each other's non negotiables.

Do research early in the day

Assign roles and know your roles

Keep it interesting

Build in buffer in the planning stage.

Be prepared to say 'no' if it doesn't add enough value.

All serious things should be done with a sense of play.

Being a team split across Australian and US it meant as one team slept the others could analyse.

To be successful we needed to build deep connection between the companies, the VC and align on the research and the purpose.

Quality research will be used over a longer period of time. It will be useful for strategic initiatives over years.

Don't lose heart if your research does not see the light of day immediately!

The heliotropic principle notes that plants grow towards their source of light.

In the same way people and organisations are drawn towards positive and affirming visions of their future.

Thanks so much!!!!

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