Faster, cheaper, deeper user research

Design Management Journal, Spring 2003 by Kumar, Vijay, Whitney, Patrick

As told by Vijay Kumar and Patrick Whitney, the Illinois Institute of Technology's Institute of Design and Tsinghua University's Academy of Art and Design in Beijing are creating a set of "activity-focused" research methodologies and a prototype database of research results. The goals are to identify unfulfilled culturally centered design opportunities and to increase the speed and success of innovating in new geographic regions.

In yesterday's one-size-fits-all world, big companies could often migrate something that was a hit in the US or Europe by tweaking the language and advertising and funneling a lot of money into local marketing efforts. Germany's Mercedes-Benz, for example, traded on its reputation for building highly engineered automobiles to drive into foreign markets. Japan's Sony Corporation found that compact, economical, and reliable electronics, such as the Walkman, struck a chord with people everywhere. Coca-Cola Co. and Philip Morris's Marlboro cigarettes traded on their American-ness to create large overseas followings.

Things have changed. No company can safely assume there will be viable foreign markets for an existing product, and any company seeking to expand globally needs to ask if its offerings are culturally and socially appropriate for its targeted market. Today, Western companies that are strong in their local markets are paying a great deal of attention to the growing number of people with expendable income in China, India, Brazil, and other developing regions in which the cultures are very different from those in the West. While some categories of products and services will succeed in these new markets in spite of, or in some cases because of, their association with modernity and the West, many more offerings will succeed only if they make critical accommodations to the behaviors, beliefs, and aspirations of local cultures. An example of this insight was given by Gerald Levin, former CEO of Time-Warner, who once held a board meeting in China to help his colleagues, who wanted to focus on "the China market," to realize that there were actually about 30 "China markets" created by the country's diversity of geography, climate, religion, economic status, language, and other influencers of culture.2

To complicate matters for companies, pursuing new customers around the world is no longer a strategy exclusive to Western megabrands. Strong businesses in developing countries are expanding into new markets. A prime example is Legend Computer, China's largest computer manufacturer, which is rapidly growing by using great design to serve the diverse needs of the Chinese population.

One of Legend's innovations is a PC designed specifically for elderly people. Instead of a keyboard, it has a touch-sensitive screen that displays, at all times, large icons for topics like Family, Friends, Pets, Medicine, and Hobbies. Legend has designed another model to appeal especially to families. This computer features a large, physical button on the keyboard that rotates, clicking to several positions. Each position sets the computer to the favorite programs and configuration of a family member, allowing him or her to personalize the computer without having to navigate through a single menu.

Legend, along with Apple Computer, stands apart from all other PC manufactures in creating products that are based upon a deep understanding of user behavior. They are using this understanding to create value-added products for the diversity of markets in China, and they will soon extend their human-centered approach to create products for markets outside China.

As more companies from diverse countries create offerings for a market, people have more choices, making it increasingly difficult for a single company to figure out how to produce an offering that wins. In this environment, companies need sophisticated information and ever-faster reaction speed. Is it possible to win this race?

How companies try to understand consumers

There are two general types of research that companies use to understand new markets.

The first type, product-focused research, typically uses surveys, focus groups, interviews, home visits, and usability tests to ask customers about existing or prototypical products and services. The strength of this type of research is that it leads to specific insights about the offering, enabling the company to fix problems or add features. It can be fast and practical, and it can lead to statistically valid conclusions about important details. Perhaps most important, if a prototype of a new offering is examined by a sample group, these research techniques can tell you if they hate it-a good thing to know early in the process. The problem with this type of research is that its results almost never lead to insights that could translate into large-scale improvements. Discoveries drawn from focus groups and surveys are almost always limited by the participants' current expectations. This is perfectly fine if your goals are limited to incremental changes, and if you are sure that none of your competitors are about to launch something that meets users' needs in a fundamentally better way.