NCredible Research: Positioning the Power and Potential of Research Using a Reflection and Roadmapping Framework
The Same Problems
As consultants in human-centered and user experience research, we encounter predictable challenges that impact our work. Researchers around the world cite perennial problems such as resource scarcity, prevalent bias and inexperienced practitioners as impediments to the strategic positioning and implementation of research. Some practitioners have aggregated these challenges (e.g., “The State of UX” report), though much of our understanding of these issues is anecdotal. It is common to find articles and professional conferences that commiserate on these challenges, yet few focus on sustainable solutions.
These challenges are symptoms of a bigger issue we face in our domain: teams do not know how to leverage research services. With this confusion comes bad behaviors such as misdirected study design, scope creep, and redundant learning (Figure 1). These behaviors result in a devaluing of our contribution as researchers, and relegates learning opportunities as simply value-adds to other people’s workflows. The consequences are poorly designed studies, researchers putting in extra work to course-correct misinformation and lost opportunities to leverage insights. Ultimately it leaves researchers vulnerable to bigger mindset issues that impact their ability to make a case for more resources and a more skilled workforce of research contributors.
Let’s Talk Solution
In 2015, we at twig+fish, developed a simple, effective, and resource-lean approach to mitigate these chronic, domain-wide issues. We originally wrote about this approach for UXPA Magazine (Kothandaraman, Ludin, 2015) but have evolved to new ways of considering its service to teams. In short, our approach is to have a repeatable learning process that unwaveringly includes an initial phase of alignment. In this alignment phase, we leverage a simple 2x2 canvas in a facilitated workshop to publicize team members’ intentions behind what they wish to learn. The canvas, known as the NCredible Framework (Figure 5), organizes questions and brings clear workflows to the often-nebulous experience of “learning from people.” In short, it acts as a meeting ground for stakeholders and researchers: stakeholders can share the genesis and spirit behind their learning objectives and researchers can externalize their pathway to addressing those learning objectives.
In the five years since we developed this approach, we have conducted this alignment phase as a standalone offering to clients, as the onset of a project, and as a teaching tool at professional conferences. From these countless experiences, we adapted the way we facilitate the process and how we describe the benefits of alignment in developing learning objectives. However, one thing has not changed: this approach is a proven way of positioning the power, practice and potential of research.
The Five-Phase Learning Process
To truly understand how to leverage the power of research, teams must first understand how its most important component, a study, operates. In every project, we implement a repeatable five-phase process that allows teams to understand what researchers will do, when certain steps will happen, and how long tasks will take. This transparency eliminates any questions team members have later on about what needs to be done to get to the point of serviceable learnings. The process language allows teams to successfully socialize a study and be transparent about its design.
Each phase has its own intention and tasks (Figure 2). No matter the scope of the study, we ensure that our clients and collaborators know where we are within its workflow. We also emphasize the importance of internalizing and socializing a process language into their research practices.
Phase 1, Align, is arguably our most important and strategic phase. Because of this, we often develop client proposals that just include tasks for Phase 1. It kicks off any project and results in multiple, organized and prioritized learning objectives. Phases 2–5 are the execution of a study, selected from Phase 1. Depending on the learning objectives, and the client’s ability to execute their own studies, we sometimes will only conduct Phase 1.
At the start of any project, it is crucial for teams to determine what they must learn and the kinds of questions they would need to ask in order to achieve that learning. Many organizations have strategic efforts to do this, and ours involves the use of the NCredible Framework. During this phase, we conduct a facilitated workshop, which can vary in length between 2 hours to 1 day. Prior to the workshop, we ask attendees to generate questions they have about the people they serve and the offerings they produce.
We begin the workshop by assessing team members’ levels of confidence in their existing knowledge-gathering practices and auditing their sources of knowledge. Through this exercise, we reveal how much of their confidence is based on assumption or bias, and how much is based on the team’s perception of acceptable knowledge sources. We consider confidence as a binary quality: either high or low. Very often, when knowledge sources are cited with low confidence, attendees apply assumptions to bolster confidence in that knowledge. Though this seems banal at face value, excessive assumption application can result in biased decision-making, complacency and a deficiency of useful insights. Low confidence knowledge therefore must be turned into questions to be answered, which are then affinitized onto the NCredible Framework (Figures 3 and 4).
Once all questions have been plotted onto the framework, as a group, we select the cluster of questions that, if answered, will provide the most useful service to the team. We then formalize these findings into a learning roadmap of potential studies. The learning roadmap is a deliverable the team can reference as they move forward to other knowledge priorities.
Phases 2–5 are our study execution phases. Phase 2 is when we identify the people we need to learn from and craft a protocol that allows participants to articulate themselves adequately. Because we often invite our clients into the field with us, we also hold a “code of conduct orientation” to ensure proper observer engagement. Phase 3 is when we collect data and stories (whether it’s in a lab for usability testing, remote for diary studies, or in-person for in-depth interviews). We always conduct post-session debriefs to cement our raw data connections. In Phase 4, we unpack our raw data and review it against emerging themes. We examine our data for typologies and patterns that will help address our study’s objectives. Phase 5 is where typically researchers may generate a report, but with us, that is not always the case. We sometimes create interactive posters, conduct ideation work sessions, or simply cut out any formal documentation (depending on the nature of the study). Our goal in Phase 5 is to move the learnings forward toward that service it must provide to the organization.
The NCredible Framework
As mentioned above, a hallmark of Phase 1 is the use of the NCredible Framework (Figure 5). We have evolved this Framework over the past five years. Now in its third iteration, this simple 2x2 canvas examines the two inevitabilities of any learning objective: the inputs and outputs. The intersection of inputs and outputs reveals four scopes of learning. For the workshop, team members prepare by writing down up to five questions they have about the people they serve and the offering they create. We facilitate the plotting of these questions against the axes, encouraging other team members to pull out the asker’s intent behind the question and to clarify existing knowledge that may address that question.
An input (vertical axis) represents why a team wants to learn, and accounts for assumptions and agendas. A team may have a desire to learn because they want to incorporate these learnings into existing knowledge, work streams, or processes. A team may also want to learn because they seek to introspect on what is important to them and reveal a new direction.
Outputs (horizontal axis) are the services that the learning will provide to the team. Outputs can inspire a team and establish visionary points or reveal emerging insights. Outputs can also inform an offering by providing evidence for tactical decision-making.
The diverging arms of inputs and outputs reveal four scopes of learning: Discovery, Exploratory, Definition and Validation. Each of these scopes has its own expected learning opportunities and ways of conducting a study. Discovery learning is meant to bring clarity to subjective and abstract paradigms (“how do people define innovation?”). Exploratory learning describes the variety of behaviors, aptitudes, attitudes, and emotions as it relates to people’s realities (“what are the various practices of innovative leaders?”). Definition learning marries offering-feasibility and human understanding (“how might we design a better service for innovative leaders?”). Validation learning provides definitive answers to questions about the offering and confirms all intentions have been addressed (“can innovative leaders integrate our solution into their workflows?”).
By now, you may be wondering: why NCredible? We opted for the root word “credible” because of the challenges we face from scrutinizing stakeholders and sloppy study design. Our goal is to always ensure that any study is executed in a way that cannot be questioned for its credibility and validity. The “N” is a description of the progression through the framework’s quadrants. Beginning in Discovery (bottom left), moving up to Exploratory (top left), down to Definition (bottom right), and up to Validation (top right) is an indicator of bias-free learning and a signal of using research’s fullest power and potential. This learning path signals to organizations the importance and necessity research plays in ensuring offerings are rooted in human learnings. Of course, there are exceptions to this progression (which we will save for another article). Suffice it to say that if an exception is identified, an accompanying rationale for that digression is equally important to align upon.
The Impact of the NCredible Framework
Five years in to consistently beginning every project with this approach, we can confidently say that the NCredible Framework is a mindset shifter. The NCredible Framework brings transparency to the nuanced world of learning from people by solidifying a language, scoping study design rules, and democratizing the insights-production process. We have seen team members enter our workshops with weak body language and arms crossed, questioning the simplicity of the exercise, only to leave the room a competent advocate for shifting away from bad research behaviors.
We have conducted variations of our Phase 1 approach with a variety of clients, including:
- Fortune 100 globally distributed UX teams to formalize their process and to help them develop custom service-offering plans to their companies.
- A Kickstarter-backed idea that is transforming into an emerging startup to determine why their product had success and how they might sustain it.
- A legacy branding agency developing a new kind of offering, not traditional to their business, to gauge receptivity and need for this new offering.
As a micro-agency, we are benefitting from our approach. No longer are we engaged in petty, resource-consuming discussions about including a stakeholder’s pet question. No longer are we retrofitting questions ill-suited to an organization’s preferred methods. No longer are we repeating work and creating process inefficiencies because of lost knowledge. We have essentially stopped our personal challenges as it relates to resource scarcity, uselessly biased decision-making, and deskilled research contributors. Our approach has created a clear channel of communication and expectation, allowing us to make a stronger case for when and how resources should be allocated.
The cumulative benefits of leveraging the Framework include improved research practices, cultural shifts around learning and empathy, creation of a universal understanding of research considerations, and strategic positioning of research in an organization. The NCredible Framework is quick-to-understand and creates a more confident and competent workforce of research producers and consumers. Coupled with an understanding of how it fits within the Five-Phased Learning Process, stakeholders we work with are now able to apply a language to achieve learning objectives that is repeatable, clear, and yet has plenty of room for creativity.
Ultimately, research, particularly qualitative research and its methods (ethnographic methods, contextual inquiry, in-depth interviews, among others), can benefit from a sustainable, functional model to help organizations understand the work of researchers. As a domain, we all benefit from the sharing of these approaches that work and perhaps put an end to our persistent and universal problems.
To learn more about the NCredible Framework and perhaps bring it to your organization or conference, visit our website — www.twigandfish.com.
