Month: June 2021

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/merlien-institute

Find Jonathan Online:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathangrove/

Website: https://www.nationwide.com/

Find Jamin Online:

Email: jamin@happymr.com

Find Us Online:

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/happymarketresearch

Website: www.happymr.com

Music:

“Clap Along” by Auditionauti: https://audionautix.com

Epidemic Sound: https://www.epidemicsound.com/

This Episode is Sponsored by:

Momentive offers 22 purpose-built market research solutions that incorporate an AI engine, built-in expertise, sophisticated methodologies, and an integrated global panel of over 144M people to deliver meaningful insights in hours, not months. Momentive also has a team of market research consultants that can take on anything from research design to custom reporting as needed, so you can spend more time shaping what’s next for your organization.
To learn more, visit momentive.ai

[00:00:00]

Jamin Brazil: Hi, I’m Jamin host of the Happy Market Research podcast. This interview is being done in conjunction with the Qual360 conference. Qual360 will take place virtually on their dedicated conference platform. Join the most dedicated community of qualitative market researchers and connect with client side researchers, innovative agencies, independent moderators, and disruptive technology providers. For more information, please visit na. qual360.com that’s na. qual360.com. My guest today is Jonathan Grove, director of product design at Nationwide. In preparation for this interview, I found Nationwide start very interesting and I’d like to take just a minute and share it with you. In the 1920s, farmers were paying the same rates on their automotive insurance as city drivers, even though they had fewer accidents and their claims were much lower than city drivers. The Ohio Farm Bureau decided to set up their own insurance company to offer rates that accurately reflected their drivers’ habits. On April 10th, 1926, the Farm Bureau Mutual Automotive insurance company obtained licensed to do business in Ohio and two days later, it acquired its financing, a $10,000 loan drawn from their membership. Today, Nationwide has over 35,000 employees and is ranked 73 in the fortune 500 list. Prior to joining Nationwide, Jonathan has served as a leader in several brands you’d recognize including McGraw Hill as a director of design research. Jonathan, welcome to the Happy Market Research podcast today.

[00:01:40]

Jonathan Grove: Thank you for having me.

[00:01:46]

Jamin Brazil:

This episode is brought to you by Momentive. You may have heard that SurveyMonkey’s parent company recently rebranded as Momentive, a leader in agile insights and experience management. The Momentive AI-powered insights platform is built for the pace of modern business so you can deeply understand your market, elevate your brand, and build winning products faster. Momentive offers 22 purpose-built market research solutions that incorporate an AI engine, built-in expertise, sophisticated methodologies, and an integrated global panel of over 144M people to deliver meaningful insights in hours, not months. Momentive also has a team of market research consultants that can take on anything from research design to custom reporting as needed, so you can spend more time shaping what’s next for your organization. To learn more, visit momentive.ai. Let’s talk about your talk. What is the topic that you’ll be covering? Give us the sneak peek into what you’ll be sharing with qualitative market researchers.

[00:02:55]

Jonathan Grove: Thank you. So in view over the last few years, I’ve kind of found myself at the intersection between qualitative research design and innovation, and it’s not always been a comfortable place to be. And the purpose of my talk really is to share some of my learnings as I’ve attempted to navigate things like design thinking and the role of design thinking in qualitative research. As I have tried to navigate through these, sometimes competing and not necessarily well connected domains, I’ve had some failures and some successes, and really my intention is to share some of those stories to help those folks who are maybe about to go through the same thing or are going through a similar thing right now.

[00:03:41]

Jamin Brazil: Are you seeing research becoming more integral, meaning that maybe democratized across the organization?

[00:03:51]

Jonathan Grove: Yeah, I think there’s a design thinking part of the culture really is around democratization. I think there’s two kinds of sciences I’m thinking, one is the cultural and one is the practice. I think that design thinkers don’t always necessarily separate those two things very effectively. And some when it comes to research, particularly qualitative research, I think there are some things that are quite difficult to reconcile. For example, design thinking tends to prioritize shallowness in general; it’s focused on forward momentum. There are lots of ideas around iteration and learning through failure. When it comes to research, the kind of approaches that they advocate for are really very inductive kind of grounded theory, which is very hard to do quickly and very hard for novices to do independently. So you got almost like a two competing forces or two forces that do not integrate very effectively. Grounded theory, qualitative methods on the one hand being executed potentially by novices who are also expected to do things very quickly. These three things in my experience can lead to some tension and conflict that is difficult to resolve. So this is very much what I’ve been through over the last few years and Nationwide has invested very heavily in design thinking type methods over the last five years or so. And there are certain patterns that have emerged and I’ve shared some of them here. So I’m going to talk a bit more about that experience and about some of the things we may need to do as researchers to evolve with this new way of approaching things, which is design thinking.

[00:05:28]

Jamin Brazil: That sounds super interesting and relevant for quite literally all of us, wherever we sit inside of the organizations that we serve. Let’s shift gears a little bit and pull back at a macro level. What are some trends that you’re seeing in the market research space that will carry us through to 2022?

[00:05:45]

Jonathan Grove: It’s been a really interesting year for research. When I think back to March of last year where we were running a combination of remote activities and in context, in-person and lab based activities. We have a brand new research center at Nationwide. We had to really kind of switch our approach in a matter of weeks and move exclusively to remote research, which quite a surprise to everybody and took a- it took quite a bit of time to respond effectively to the new landscape. But I think without those remote tools, we may have had an awful lot of unemployed researcher who were no longer in a position to sit in the same room as the people they were interested in learning about. So clearly it feels as though 2020 and 2021 have very much been the year of remote research. I think we’ve probably crossed the threshold now that we won’t be going back from. I suspect that remote research will probably be the primary way in which we all, we do our work from this point onwards. I think that combined with developments in artificial intelligence and the ability of these kinds of software tools to pass significant amount of qualitative data, these two things potentially coming together, I think is going to be a fascinating, potentially fascinating development. I think with regards to AI, it may mean that researchers need to rethink their role in some respects, since we may in some regards become partners to certain types of artificial intelligence and potentially chaperones of those kinds of tools as they grind through qualitative data on our behalf. So I think we’re at a kind of pivotal point in terms of remote research and artificial intelligence that is likely to redefine the role of research over the coming years.

[00:07:41]

Jamin Brazil: Qualitative at scale, you think about like a survey is really just a conversation at scale. And the reason that we started doing them is we wanted to talk to 100 people and we just couldn’t facilitate that. It just wasn’t feasible. Now AI is punching through and actually allowing us to analyze volumes of data that otherwise would have gone absent.

[00:08:02]

Jonathan Grove: Absolutely. And we’re seeing as well, the ability- the cycles have shortened. So the idea that we’d be able to execute certain types of studies in three weeks would have been five years ago, unheard off.

[00:08:19]

Jamin Brazil: Totally.

[00:08:20]

Jonathan Grove: So we’re increasingly in a position where we can get feedback from our research participants at a cadence that was previously impossible. Now that’s great if you’re trying to run design thinking iterations, but what we’ve got to try and do is evolve our methods in such a way that they can keep up with the pace of the technology and the cultural expectations of design thinking. So I think it feels as though- and I spent the last 25 years in research, it feels as though I’ve spent much of my time trying to either persuade people of the value of research and try and educate them. And I’ve barely completed that part of my work and now I’m having to move on to something else. So it’s a fascinating, ever changing, ever evolving space.

[00:09:04]

Jamin Brazil: Last question. What is your personal motto?

[00:09:07]

Jonathan Grove: Don’t sit still. That’s my personal motto is don’t sit still because I think that if the world keeps on moving. So if you kind of sit around expecting it to stay where it is, I think you’re going to be caught out quite badly. So that’s my motto. Don’t sit still.

[00:09:25]

Jamin Brazil: My guest today has been Jonathan Grove, director of product design at Nationwide. Thank you, Jonathan, for joining me on the Happy Market Research podcast.

[00:09:33]

Jonathan Grove: Thank you.

[00:09:34]

Jamin Brazil: Everyone else, I genuinely hope you’ll take time out of your day make sure that you sign up for this event. It will be one you will want to attend. It’ll add a lot of value to what you’re doing at very little cost. Have a great rest of your day.

June 8, 2021September 1, 2021

Happy MR Podcast Podcast Series

Ep. 413 – How to Leverage Multi-Methods to Understand Your Customer with Steve Fadden, Research Lead at Cloud Platform at Google

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

My guest today is Steve Fadden, Research Lead for Cloud Platform at Google.

Google is an American multinational technology company that specializes in Internet-related services and products, which include online advertising technologies, a search engine, cloud computing, software, and hardware. It is considered one of the five Big Tech companies along with Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft.

Prior to joining Google, Steve has held senior research roles at Salesforce and Dell.

These interviews are being done in conjunction with the Qual360 North America 2021. It will take place virtually on a dedicated conference platform! The unique Qual360 concept allows for a diverse range of participants and topics at each conference, offering local trends as well as a global perspective.

Qual360 North America 2021:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/merlien-institute

Find Steve Online:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevefadden/

Website: https://careers.google.com/

Find Jamin Online:

Email: jamin@happymr.com

Find Us Online:

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/happymarketresearch

Website: www.happymr.com

Music:

“Clap Along” by Auditionauti: https://audionautix.com

Epidemic Sound: https://www.epidemicsound.com/

This Episode is Sponsored by:

[00:00:00]

Jamin Brazil: Hi, everybody. I am Jamin, host of today’s episode on the Happy Market Research Podcast. I guess that’s kind of silly because I am the only host of the podcast. These interviews are being done in conjunction with the Qual 360 North American Conference this year, this summer, actually. This conference will be taking place entirely virtually on a dedicated conference platform. This is a unique environment that allows for a diverse range of both participants, speakers, and topics at a global level where they’ll be uncovering trends. It’s going to be very interesting. I’ve really enjoyed the podcast chats I’ve had an opportunity to do with the upcoming speakers. I will absolutely be attending and I hope you will too. If you would like to attend, please click the registration link inside of the show notes or simply google Qual 360, and you’ll be taken right there. So, without further ado, our guest today is Steve Fadden, research lead for cloud platform at Google. Google is an America multinational technology company that specializes in Internet related services and products, which include online advertising technologies, a search engine, cloud computing, software, and hardware. It is considered one of the big five technology companies, along with Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft. Prior to joining Google, Steve has held senior research roles at Salesforce and Dell. Steve, thanks for joining me on the Happy Market Research Podcast today.

[00:01:32]

Steve Fadden: Yeah. Thanks so much, Jamin. It’s great to be here.

[00:01:35]

Jamin Brazil: This episode is brought to you by Momentive. You may have heard that SurveyMonkey’s parent company recently rebranded as Momentive, a leader in agile insights and experience management. The Momentive AI-powered insights platform is built for the pace of modern business so you can deeply understand your market, elevate your brand, and build winning products faster. Momentive offers 22 purpose-built market research solutions that incorporate an AI engine, built-in expertise, sophisticated methodologies, and an integrated global panel of over 144M people to deliver meaningful insights in hours, not months. Momentive also has a team of market research consultants that can take on anything from research design to custom reporting as needed, so you can spend more time shaping what’s next for your organization. To learn more, visit momentive.ai. What is your topic? And give us a little bit of insider kind of knowledge about your chat at Qual 360.

[00:02:42]

Steve Fadden: Sure. Yeah. So the title is Enhancing Our Customer Understanding by Bridging Qual and Quant Perspectives. And, now that I read that out loud, I realize that it is a lot more nerdy than I wanted it to sound. But it sounded good when I submitted it way back when. The main message that I’m hoping to communicate is that I’ve noticed a tendency in organizations for researchers and data owners to want to own their data. And they want to believe that they have an exclusive representation of the customer’s voice. And I’m really trying to make an appeal toward more collaborative approaches that use multiple methods, multiple channels, multiple measures, and multiple disciplines in terms of understanding the customer experience.

[00:03:29]

Jamin Brazil: So when you think about qual and quant, I immediately default to primary research. Are you incorporating transactional or behavioral into that as well?

[00:03:39]

Steve Fadden: Absolutely. Yeah. Part of the conversation I hope to be having is about using a big tent approach to experience data analysis, if you will. So not just people who are running and owning voice of customer efforts and surveys and feedback channels, but also the folks who have support data, they understand the trends of performance in the product, they have access to the usage logs and behaviors that end users or other types of users are engaging with the product. So, basically, trying to bring everybody in to create a common view and a common understanding of what is it like to actually be a customer experiencing a product or a service.

[00:04:23]

Jamin Brazil: How much does video play in that?

[00:04:26]

Steve Fadden: That’s interesting. I think my answer would be different if you asked me a little more than a year ago, pre-pandemic. I think it kind of comes down to what you’re trying to convey. One of the points that I’ll be making in the talk is that context really matters. And, so, for some organizations and individuals, having access to the visual channel is really, really beneficial. Of course, that brings with it accessibility challenges. For example, if you don’t have the ability to see or you don’t have access to technology that allows the rendering of video in a robust, fidelity way, it can be problematic. But I would say any channel, any mode of communication that helps ultimately build that empathy bridge between ourselves within the walls of the organization and to the people who experience what our companies and organizations are producing outside, anything to bridge that gap is beneficial.

[00:05:26]

Jamin Brazil: The accessibility point is really interesting. I just heard this statistic- And I haven’t validated it, but one in five of us have some sort of a disability, which really starts impacting how we do and conduct research.

[00:05:41]

Steve Fadden: Absolutely. Yeah. It, I mean, I guess, technically, I’m one of those one in five. I’m sure you’ll be able to see this when I’m doing the presentation for the conference, but I have to wear glasses for reading. And, since the pandemic started and most of my life shifted to working behind a screen, I’m pretty much finding myself reading- Wearing my reading glasses- Or what I thought was reading glasses. I’m pretty much now wearing them all day. And I used to be able to be in meetings and take notes without my glasses, but now that everything is on a screen that’s about, maybe, three or four feet from my head, I need these things to see words and to see faces. And, unfortunately, being an aging man with presbyopia, I know it’s only getting worse and worse over time.

[00:06:31]

Jamin Brazil: Yeah. Presbyopia comes for us all.

[00:06:34]

Steve Fadden: It’s awful. It’s terrible. I will say that the benefit of considering the needs of people with accessibility challenges ultimately comes down to the benefits of universal design, right? This idea from, I think it was Ron Mace at the North Carolina Center for Universal Design, if I’m remembering correctly. And, basically, the idea was to avoid designing for any one particular physical or sensory ability profile, and trying to hit the largest range and curb cuts, right? Are the most common example. Anybody who’s ever had a- If you’re in a wheelchair, absolutely, a curb cut is a wonderful way to access the sidewalk. But, if you have a roller board luggage or if you’re carrying a television or something, it’s also really beneficial to not have that big gap that you have to step up in order to get onto the sidewalk for.

[00:07:32]

Jamin Brazil: That’s super interesting. So trends. Nothing makes sense, right? When you look at historical data, and normally that has a- Is a predictive factor of the future. Last year kind of disrupted the whole normalized view of the world. What do you see as trends, specifically in consumer insights, that will carry us forward into 2020?

[00:07:54]

Steve Fadden: Yeah. That’s a really interesting question, especially now as we’re starting to go through the- I hesitate to say post-pandemic, but at least-

[00:08:03]

Jamin Brazil: Yeah.

[00:08:04]

Steve Fadden: The new normal, right?

[00:08:05]

Jamin Brazil: Yeah.

[00:08:05]

Steve Fadden: I think it’s, from my perspective, I think my answer probably would be slightly different if we hadn’t been going through the pandemic. But ultimately, I think there’s a couple trends that I’ve noticed and I’ve been excited about, and also skeptical about. One of them is, I think it’s really exciting to see organizations starting to embrace more naturalistic and observational methods to understand the experience that customers are having in context over time. So study methods like diary studies, field research methods, anthropologically informed, ethnographic methods. None of those are new, but I’m starting to hear them referenced a lot more in boardrooms and in corporate conversations. And I think advancements in technology, and I think advancements and the accessibility of different kinds of technology, as well as methods from places like journalism and media, where we’re starting to see the ubiquity of these technologies and these approaches. I don’t want to say reality television, but there’s this idea that recording and capturing a person’s experience over time is normalish. And it seems to be made more easy and more adaptable for companies to do it. The other thing I’d mention is- So I spent an early part of my life doing eye tracking research. So I actually spent my graduate study years doing work building cognitive models of how people learn to read and comprehend scenes and text. And then, when I was working on my more advanced graduate work, I was looking at the role of perception in high stress environments and how that influences decision making for pilots and air traffic controllers and that sort of operator. And, so, once the phrase neuromarketing started to show up, I was pretty skeptical when I heard it. And then, when I started diving into those techniques, I realized this is kind of a new term for a lot of old techniques. I’m still skeptical of it. I don’t see it being thrown around as much as a buzz word, but I believe that the types of techniques that folks are using in this so called field or discipline are just as effective as many other techniques that are available. I just don’t know that it’s the panacea that people were promising long ago. And then, the last thing- I know this is running long, so I’ll keep this one quick. But there is one trend I hope will become more common. And that is the importance of futures thinking as we understand people’s experiences and the products and services we build. I think things like the pandemic, right? These one in 100 years types of scenarios help emphasize how important it is to think about divergent futures in what we are building and what we are communicating to our customers and to our end users. And I think that type of skill set is something I would absolutely like to see more coming out of the academy, coming out of apprenticeship programs, and coming out of our companies.

[00:11:20]

Jamin Brazil: I know you can’t share specific examples, right? But- Which is unfortunate because that’d be super interesting. But we think about those one and 100 year scenarios, is the role of insights in that more measurement or what role does insights play in that?

[00:11:37]

Steve Fadden: Yeah. That’s a really neat connection. And to be fair, I have not thought about this deeply, so I’m just answering off the cuff.

[00:11:44]

Jamin Brazil: Yeah.

[00:11:45]

Steve Fadden: I think there are- There are some examples I can share just because I spent some of my life in management consulting working with the Federal Government, so these are things that aren’t- They’re not under NDA and confidentiality agreements. But when we’re thinking about, for example, like the future of air traffic control in 30 years, what might that look like, right? When we think about commercial space travel. Back when I was working on these problems in the early 2000s, it was almost laughable. But now, we actually have several companies that are actually exploring these things. So the importance of using futures thinking methods to envision scenarios that are possible, I think, not only help give rise to opportunities, they also give rise to darker futures, right? Things we don’t want to have happen. And I think all of that informs the types of measurement systems we should be building to ensure that the futures we want to happen are being made more likely than the futures we don’t want to happen. Because if- As has been said by many famous people, “If you don’t measure it, you can’t change it.” So, if we don’t have a sense of what kinds of realities we are moving toward, it’s really hard to anticipate what the data streams should be that we should be looking at now to make sure that we are going in the right direction. And I think climate change is probably a good example. I think staying outside of the political debate around climate change and what we can do about it, I think there are lots of data streams that we can be looking at over time to understand if the situation is improving or if it’s not, and if there are correlations and associations, we should be more mindful of in order to make better choices for our future.

[00:13:34]

Jamin Brazil: By the way, I just love- I’ve never, 400 and, I don’t know, 20 interviews, I’ve never heard anybody talk about futures thinking. And that is so interesting because it really- It’s almost like, I mean, exactly what you do in every research project, which is kind of a microcosm of that, right? Is you build the end report before you actually field, right? You come up with your analytics plan, etc., etc. And that basically informs the whole thing that you wind up executing against.

[00:14:00]

Steve Fadden: Totally.

[00:14:01]

Jamin Brazil: And it’s a Mad Lib after that. And, so, thinking of it in that framework, that’s really helpful because then you know what things you need to pay attention to, to your point, which you already said. And then, guide- Help guide us- Create those guideposts for us to know if we heading into, God forbid, that- Something like what we’ve gone through.

[00:14:20]

Steve Fadden: Totally.

[00:14:21]

Jamin Brazil: Anyway, it was really interesting. I just had to-

[00:14:22]

Steve Fadden: Thanks.

[00:14:22]

Jamin Brazil: Had to underscore that. Yeah. So last question. What is your personal motto?

[00:14:28]

Steve Fadden: So I’m glad you warned me about this one in advance because this is something I wouldn’t even acknowledge that I have. But I think I have two, and one is something that my coworkers and my direct reports and my students, even, probably are sick of hearing me say. But it’s basically have a bias for action. I love the field of research and I really admire researchers, especially in the academy, because researchers are often relied on as being the truth tellers. We have scientific methods to use to arm ourselves with data and processes to ensure that the findings and insights we are defining are as valid and defensible as possible. Having said that, I also feel that researchers have a reputation for being overly conservative, especially in industry settings. I remember when I was in graduate school, one of my colleagues basically said that one of our advisors was so conservative, they’re not even wrong. Imagine having an idea about a potential connection or phenomenon that exists, but you want to run a million studies and prove it to yourself before you let the outside world know. You’re basically depriving other people of the benefits of that knowledge. And, so, I encourage everybody in the field of research and outside to ask yourself, “What data am I collecting right now?” Maybe you’re doing an interview. Maybe you’re looking at, I don’t know, a survey response. And ask yourself, if that’s all the data you have, what decision and what recommendation would you make? You might have only 50 percent confidence of it, but if you can convince yourself that you could move toward 51 percent, what I like to consider as a casino level confidence, if you know you’re going to win in the long run and the cost and the consequences of a bad decision aren’t going to destroy your organization, then I think it’s worth entertaining, “Well, what would I do right now as a result of the data that I’m seeing? As opposed to waiting three, six, nine more months to make it perfect.” And then, my other motto, which goes- Dovetails with this really well, is the idea that in order to see real change in an organization, you need to avoid inflaming the corporate immune system. And so- And this comes from my time in consulting. I’ve heard many consultants say this. Change is hard and scary, especially for the incumbents who have something that they don’t want to lose. So just say, “This doesn’t really make a difference, we’re just going to run a pilot. We’re going to collect a little data.” And, by collecting a little data, it makes things sound a lot less scary and less intimidating, but it also gives you the evidence you need to get a sense of whether or not the direction you want to go in is a promising one.

[00:17:15]

Jamin Brazil: My guest today has been Steve Fadden, research lead for cloud platform at Google. Steve, thank you very much for joining me on the Happy Market Research Podcast.

[00:17:24]

Steve Fadden: Thanks so much, Jamin. This was super exciting. I really look forward to the conference.

[00:17:28]

Jamin Brazil: Everyone else, I hope you found some value. Please take a moment, screen capture, share on social media. If you tag me, I will send you a t-shirt, COVID free t-shirt. Have a great rest of your day.

June 2, 2021August 5, 2021

Happy MR Podcast Podcast Series

Ep. 412 – How to use Job’s To Be Done with Qualitative Research with Paul Bruening, Director UX Research and Insights at Thomson Reuters

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

My guests today is Paul R. Bruening, Director UX Research and Insights at Thomson Reuters.

Thomson Reuters has around 50,000 employees globally and is the world’s leading provider of news and information-based tools to professionals.

Qual360 North America 2021:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/merlien-institute

Find Paul Online:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulreevesbruening/

Website: tr.com

Find Jamin Online:

Email: jamin@happymr.com

Find Us Online:

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/happymarketresearch

Website: www.happymr.com

Music:

“Clap Along” by Auditionauti: https://audionautix.com

Epidemic Sound: https://www.epidemicsound.com/

This Episode is Sponsored by:

This episode is brought to you by SurveyMonkey. You may know SurveyMonkey as a leader in feedback software, but may not know about their all-in-one market research platform. It’s powered by AI technology and taps into an integrated global Audience panel to deliver insights faster, without compromising quality.

Their latest innovation, the SurveyMonkey Brand Tracker, disrupts traditional research techniques by helping companies continuously monitor shifts in brand perception. Instead of static presentations, data is delivered in dynamic dashboards. Revolutionary AI-Powered Insights instantly surface meaningful trends so you can spend less time digging through data and more time on your high impact strategy.

To learn more about SurveyMonkey’s market research solutions, visit surveymonkey.com/market-research.

[00:00:01]

Jamin Brazil: Hi. I’m Jamin, host of the Happy Market Research podcast. my guest today is Paul Bruening, Director of UX Research and Insights at Thompson Reuters. Thompson Reuters has around 50,000 employees globally and is the world’s leading provider of news and information-base tools to professionals. This interview is being done in conjunction with QUAL360 North America 2021. That event will take place virtually on a dedicated conference platform. It is a unique concept that allows a range of diversity of both participants and speakers and topics combined into a multi-day event. I hope you’ll join. For information, please check out the link in the show notes on how you’re able to register and attend. So with that, I would like to welcome today’s guest. Thank you so much Paul for joining me on the Happy Market Research podcast.

[00:00:56]

Paul R. Bruening: Well, it’s great to be here. And it’s really nice to meet you as well.

[00:01:03]

Jamin Brazil: This episode is brought to you by SurveyMonkey. You may know SurveyMonkey as a leader in feedback software, but may not know about their all-in-one market research platform. It’s powered by AI technology and taps into an integrated global audience panel to deliver insights faster without compromising quality. Their latest innovation is the SurveyMonkey Brand Tracker. It disrupts traditional research techniques by helping companies continuously monitor ships and brand perception. Instead of static presentations, data is delivered by dynamic dashboards. Revolutionary AI powered insights instantly surface meaningful trends so you can spend less time digging through data and more time on your high-impact strategy. To learn more about SurveyMonkey’s market research solutions, take a second, visit surveymonkey.com/market-research. That’s surveymonkey.com/market-research. Our topic QUAL360, you’re our speaker, tell us what you’re chatting about.

[00:02:07]

Paul R. Bruening: So I’ll be talking about effective insight communication remotely. Which as you know there can be a lot lost in that stream when we go remote, and how we’ve dialed up our communications and added extra features and strategies to make sure that we are keeping our pulse on what people are thinking and what they’re doing and also how we can improve their experiences.

[00:02:38]

Jamin Brazil: You sit in this interesting spot of top internet media distribution company. I’m really curious about, is this primary research you’re talking about? Or is it social scraping? Or like, how are you getting that type of feedback?

[00:02:54]

Paul R. Bruening: We support a lot of Agile teams because we’re also a technology company. And it’s mostly primary research. We conduct a lot of rapid testing and prototype testing. But we have decoupled ourselves from that Agile churn, so that we’re also conducting these big bat research studies which have many different formats and inputs. So we do qualitative, obviously. We also are studying a lot of behavioral analytics. We’re early in the stages of implementing something where we actually can connect qualitative and behavioral analytics in real time, and see that through a series of dashboards and other kinds of outputs and analysis. And that gives us an amazing new view of what people are doing, is it what they want to be doing? And how can we reduce barriers and increase value when someone, bless them, come to visit us and choose to use us as their source of truth?

[00:04:05]

Jamin Brazil: There’s been a trend over the last maybe eight years, moving away from the large monolithic tracking studies, and then, do you see those coming back in to fashion in some way?

[00:04:20]

Paul R. Bruening: I mean, we have campaigns. We have a marketing wing and they run campaigns, and they track effectiveness of those. But these big tracking studies I think you’re referring to, and I remember those days, we’re not doing that kind of work. Ours is more, do we really understand someone at an individual level? And can that be deployed thematically across a larger set of visitors? And then there is also the idea of turning age cases, which these big tracking studies had this regression to the mean kind of problem which we all face every day. And we didn’t really understand what was going on at the edges, which is where opportunity and innovation occurs. So that for us is really where the focus is. Not that we aren’t building a data lake that’s the size of Mars, and we’re leveraging that. But we have to figure out, what is the strategy for all that data? And it’s not really to draw a straight line, if you know what I’m saying.

[00:05:25]

Jamin Brazil: Right, I do. I think I do. Nobody has 2.3 kids. And the story is all on the fringes. If we’ve learnt anything in the last year, twelve months, it’s that we’re basically a group of people made up of massive amount of diversity. And so you can’t just like homogenize or smash all of us together.

[00:05:46]

Paul R. Bruening: That’s right. And I think our team reflects that, from an organizational standpoint. We’re building teams that reflect the diversity of our audience. And that for me, it’s been a really beautiful and powerful moment, just to see how that’s changed me and made me recognize my bubble. And I think that’s really where growth is. If we can overcome business procedures and really throw them all away and then focus solely on, have we improved this person’s experience? And can we measure how much it improved through them? Through their future actions, but also through how their voice changes when we talk to them.

[00:06:34]

Jamin Brazil: The intentionality around hiring diversity is something I’m finding very interesting just from a practical perspective in my own small business. We’re very small, we have five employees. But I’m the only white guy. Not that there’s anything wrong with white guys. And that’s not happening by accident. That’s happening around a lot of intensity. And what I found, which has been really surprising, I’ve build Teams through my whole career, but it’s the first time I’ve ever done it like this. Which is sad to say. But your point about the self-awareness that I’ve developed around my own bubble, around the people that I normally interface with has been super interesting.

[00:07:09]

Paul R. Bruening: Yes. Especially large meetings. There’s a tendency to kind of homogenize the meeting because it just feels more clean burning. But when we start listening to each other and the conversation is shifting and we’ve got a lot of different teams that we’re pulling from, who are in different geographies because we’re global, you start learning that there is something here that I was missing. And maybe I don’t need to stick to the agenda. And that’s been a really great moment for us, I would say, for me.

[00:07:54]

Jamin Brazil: What other trends are you seeing in market research that will carry us through 2022.

[00:08:00]

Paul R. Bruening: Well, there’s been a lot of burn-out for the modes that we pivoted to. So we moved to a mode of putting people on the screen. And there’s a lot of emerging research about how deleterious that is to our cognitive function. For example, accident rates go up after you leave a Zoom call. And I would tie it back to one of the hidden realities of being a human and carrying around this noggin. And that is this transactional knowledge sharing, which is a deep area of study in psychology. But it’s one of those areas that is just too dry for anyone to ever really talk about. But it’s really the automatic systems that we have that adjust our approach in our conversation and the way we interact with people and what we say and what we edit based on some snap decisions that are being made out of our consciousness. I’ll give you an example. This one’s pretty basic but really also it’s a point. When we speak to children, we raise our pitch, we speak in high frequency words and we make eye contact, most of us. That is not an accident. That’s pretty universal to humans regardless of their continent, their language, whatever system they live in. And that’s because we’re performing this transactional knowledge sharing, where we’re deciding and simulating what is that person’s level of knowledge about what I’m going to share? And I think what has happened in the industry and what has happened in my concept of the work that I do and what my team does, is we have to take into consideration our effect on the data. We’ve always talked about having a footprint on data and our software technographies that we do and those kind of things. You know, don’t wear cologne to someone’s house. All of these things that might have an effect on someone or give them an allergy. But then there are things that are more subtle, that are hidden. And those could involve how many people are watching. What are the roles those people have? If we’re on a Zoom call together, they can see all their names, they can see in brackets the area they work in. Is there a sales person on this call? Maybe I need to change what I’m saying. And they don’t do this consciously. We just affect their answer, and it’s instant. And I think that kind of work and that kind of thinking needs to be embedded in the work that we do. So my team has taken an approach that’s very simple, that’s based on that ‘jobs to be done’ principle, where we come in. Our questions are simple. We have long listening periods, and we have an agenda. And our agenda is to understand what is going on at the moment of something, and that person’s not aware of that thing. I can’t call someone and ask them about every single click they made on the Internet today. We don’t think about that. But I can get them really close to a certain set of decisions they made from the Internet. If we take our time and we go very slowly, we will reduce all of the stuff that’s going to either squelch a potential discovery or change their answer. You know we always say, customers don’t do what they say. Guess why? Because we’ve put too much pressure on something they can’t say. Too much emphasis on something they don’t know, and then being good citizens, give us an answer, and then God forbid, that becomes our data. So we’ve been learning to shut up and also learning to turn our cameras off. If this person is not used to this mode, let’s just jump to the phone, let’s just be you and me. And we’ll just jump on the phone and we’ll talk about a couple of points. That kind of flexibility, when we identify that this person has a need and has a mode that’s going to make them more comfortable, we just lean into it. We just have to do. And that’s, I feel, where we’ve been evolving. Because we were thrown into the pressure cooker with going remote. And I think the humans at the other side of our systems were thrown into the same pressure cooker, and it’s really shone a light on things that we could actually improve. We also deliver content that people need. So our audience is going through terrifying things. Like for example, I had a co-creation session set up with legal librarians, which is that audience amazing. They are not what you would expect, but they were going through such turmoil. When you think about what a library is and when you think about that library being empty and converting overnight to a digital resource, this co-creation fell apart. People started crying, it was intense. And I realized, I was living in my bubble. These folks were going through something rather powerful and threatening to their very financial existence. They also were very passionate about their work and they couldn’t solve it. It was too early in the pandemic. So I asked them all if I could come back in six months and we could regroup. We just had to do that. For me, what has happened is that I’ve gotten more flexible in the mode of which I communicate with someone. I’m trying to find that point where they can share this information openly and clearly and give them space to reflect on things that are non-obvious. I think that’s been the biggest advancement for me. And I think with the industry, I don’t think I’m alone. I could tell you a really embarrassing story about how I thought I invented usability. Because I never met anyone who had been doing this, so I came up with my own little program, and that was great. But we’re all doing this as solo practitioners in many cases, and we’re inventing work-arounds. I think a conference like this gives an opportunity for us to say “We’re not alone. You have my pain and I have yours, and look at what you’ve done with that. It’s really beautiful. I’m going to get rid of my pain now.” Or it’s something where we can come together and say, “Look, I’m starting to feel the energy here. And I’m starting to feel that the energy is on this focus. Maybe that’s where I should focus my energy as well.”

[00:15:34]

Jamin Brazil: There’s a lot of things, but there’s two that I want to bring out from what you said. The first is, it reminds me of a conversation I had with Pepper Miller who’s the founder of the Pepper Miller group in Chicago, which is an agency that’s focused on black consumers for market researchers for brands. One of the things that stood out to me in an interview that I did with her, it’s about a year ago, is that in her focus groups it isn’t just the consumers are all black in that meeting room, but it’s the videography as well and everybody else that’s support or visible. The reason why is because the language changes based on who is in the room and our ability to be able to learn. Me as a white moderator for example, is different than the insights that she can pull out of that cultural context. Then the second thing that you said that I really think is important and we don’t talk enough about it in consumer insights, is around jobs to be done. And if you’re listening to this, if you’re maybe a little bit hazy on what that means, it really gets to the specific why a consumer buys or does the thing that they do. And often times, it’s just connected from their cognitive processes. It’s more about habit. Clay Christensen did a good job of talking about that in context of a milkshake, solving a specific problem which was make a commute more interesting. I’m sure many of our listeners are familiar with that. But if you’re not, it’s like a five minute YouTube talk, check him out. I just really appreciate that this trend that you’ve identified, which is moving away from the middle point into these people groups whether it’s age or etc, and understanding the consumer through that lens. But it does make for a more complex connection to the market. Because now you recognize that you have all these different constituents.

[00:17:37]

Paul R. Bruening: Yes, exactly. And what’s interesting about this mode of really getting down to what is someone hiring this thing to do for them? Could be a product or a solution, or a website, or an experience. What are they really trying to get done via that? It becomes really stable, and it actually transcends some group boundaries, right?

[00:18:04]

Jamin Brazil: Yeah.

[00:18:05]

Paul R. Bruening: It becomes very much a human thing. We can use that as our lingua-franca. Because when we need to talk to a development team, they say developers make designers’ dreams come true, but they won’t come true if that developer feels that they can get away with serving meatloaf for lunch every day. The way we get them to rethink the tools they’re using and the kind of ways they’re implementing our designs is to share those jobs to be done with them, make sure they understand them, and actually get them to conduct one of those interviews. That’s another part of our program, is we know they’re not going to be a researcher, but we set up a system where we actually teach them the principles and we teach them Bob missed his switch interview. We get them on a call with a customer and they conduct his research, and it’s magic. They come alive, you can see them really digging in. They ask such cool questions. They don’t really generate data often, but they do change. And then when we send them our jobs to be done, they know what that content is. They know how to handle that material. We’re spreading that across. We’re a huge organization, so we’re spreading that across these Agile teams that go all the way from let’s say insight to code. And when we reach that code phase, they have to really have a deep understanding for that. Insight means for their work and how their work affects people’s lives. It’s a real nice connective point.

[00:19:50]

Jamin Brazil: I had not heard that said exactly. Like you really appreciate that point of view. It’s hard for me to stop the conversation, but we do have time constraints. I do want to ask this last question though. What is your personal motto?

[00:20:02]

Paul R. Bruening: My personal motto has been literally the same since I got into qualitative research. And as you know, none of us fell into qualitative research, because as a child we had to strain. Right?

[00:20:17]

Jamin Brazil: Right.

[00:20:20]

Paul R. Bruening: I mean, we don’t have time to tell my origin story. But the thing that has always been my motto, because people used to not understand this work, it was never featured in media or whatever, is that there is an opportunity sitting right in front of me to change somebody’s life. I know that sounds big and weird and arrogant. But the reality is, if I could change 15 seconds of someone’s life, I think I’ve done something. If I took away a single frustration from a person’s life, that is job done for me. That hasn’t changed. I mean, that was the way I explained when I was a usability specialist way back at a big ad agency, digital agency in the early days. The only way I could explain that job to someone who didn’t work in digital was, that’s what I do. And that hasn’t changed.

[00:21:20]

Jamin Brazil: My guest today has been Paul Bruening, Director of UX Research and Insights at Thompson Reuters. Paul, thank you so much for joining me on the Happy Market Research podcast today.

[00:21:29]

Paul R. Bruening: Thank you. It’s been fantastic. Great to meet you.

[00:21:33]

Jamin Brazil: Everyone else, I hope you’ll take time, screen capture, share this on social media. If you tag me on LinkedIn or Twitter, I will send you a free gift. It’s an amazing gift, you don’t want to miss the opportunity. Having said that, I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day.

June 1, 2021June 14, 2021

Happy MR Podcast Podcast Series

Ep. 411 – How Moving Online has Forever Changed Market Research with George Zhang, Director of UX Research at Course Hero

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My guests today are George Zhang, Director of UX Research at Course Hero.

Course Hero is an online learning platform with over 60 million course-specific study resources contributed by our community of students and educators, and produced by our team of educational content specialists in collaboration with subject experts.

Prior to joining Course Hero, George has held Senior User Experience Research roles at Uber, Google, and Lenovo, and was a Mentor at 500 Startups.

Qual360 North America 2021:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/merlien-institute

Find George Online:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gqzhang/

Website: https://www.coursehero.com/

Find Jamin Online:

Email: jamin@happymr.com

Find Us Online:

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/happymarketresearch