Full Service

Northstar Research Partners is a premier strategy, insights and analytics firm utilizing proven marketing principles and approaches to accelerate the growth of your business.
We offer full-service global insights through our offices in the US, Canada, Europe and partnerships in Asia and Latin America. Our capabilities include, but are not limited to qualitative and quantitative research, consumer anthropology, statistical analysis and digital research. Our experience spans both consumer and B2B research: across every imaginable industry vertical.


Northstar Research Partners

United States of America

Full-service, global marketing research firm, U.S., Canada, Europe, partners in Asia. Quantitative/qualitative, consumer/business-to-business studies

Advertising Effectiveness Research

B2B Research with Professionals & Executives

VISIT OUR WEBSITE

<h2>What is Layout Design for Insight Communication?</h2>
<p>Layout and composition are the foundations of good insight communication. Regardless of your medium, understanding the effect layout has on your audience&rsquo;s visual perception is crucial for Market Researchers. By developing your composition skills, your layout can be one of the most effective ways of storytelling. But if used badly, your message could become lost within your layout and you risk communicating the wrong insights. Additionally, having a good eye for composition can have a financial effect on your business as well, behavioral economics suggests that people pay more for better presentation. For example, people are willing to pay more for food served on a plate than on a napkin. Better layout equals a better presentation, which then equals your company being able to charge more money for their services.</p>
<p><strong>For more layout design insights, check out our top tips on <a title="Distilling Data Into Infographics" href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/market-research-trends/distilling-data-into-infographics" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">how to create the best infographics</a>.</strong></p>
<h2>The psychology of layout design</h2>
<p><strong><em>&ldquo;The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.&rdquo; &ndash; Aristotle</em></strong></p>
<p>This is the key concept of Gestalt psychology; a 1920s design movement that underpins the effect layout has on your visual perception. The theory is that the human brain makes sense of the world. It does so by grouping several elements to form one whole, instead of several separate objects.</p>
<p>From this, five simple principles were established to aid visual understanding:</p>
<ol>
<li>
<h4>Similarity</h4>
<p>We group similar objects to make sense of the world around us. For example, this could be grouping things of similar color, shape, scale, typeface, or even types of information on a page.</p>
</li>
<li>
<h4>Continuation</h4>
<p>The eye visually identifies information by following things. For example, we read text best in a line.</p>
</li>
<li>
<h4>Closure</h4>
<p>Complete shapes or layouts are the simplest things to improve visual perceptions.</p>
</li>
<li>
<h4>Proximity</h4>
<p>The composition of lots of objects manipulates the message of the whole image. If you have text boxes that all relate to each other or are the opposites of each other, the placement is crucial depending on what message you want to give.</p>
</li>
<li>
<h4>Order</h4>
<p>There must be an order and hierarchy to your layout. Otherwise, there will be visual anarchy. Therefore, we group types of text into headlines, subheads, and body text. Also, if there are too many groups the audience will get visually lost and won&rsquo;t be able to decode the meaning of the document.</p>
</li>
</ol>
<div id="attachment_20177" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 949px;"><img class="wp-image-20177 size-full" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/blog1-2.png" alt="A picture of text design principles: closure, proximity, continuation, similarity, and figure and ground" width="939" height="618" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-20177">
<p id="caption-attachment-20177" class="wp-caption-text">Image Source: http://sibraco.com/rules-of-design-gestalt-principals/</p>
</div>
<p>Based on these five key principles, we have our own five top tips for great layout design and how to ensure you communicate the right things to your clients.</p>
<h2>Use a grid</h2>
<p>Before thinking about your layout or aesthetic, a grid is a very first thing you should create. A grid is a set of guidelines you give your document. It includes things like margins and gutters, and most importantly it is to help you guide your layout, it will never be seen by your audience.</p>
<p>Firstly, it makes sure your margins are consistent throughout the whole document, it helps keep your layouts clean, tidy, and legible, and will guide you as you progress creatively with your data visualizations and reports. As the designer, it will help you make sense of your layout and give it purpose by helping you work out what text boxes, images, or objects should be aligned with each other.</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter wp-image-20178 size-full" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/blog2-1.png" alt="A sample design grid" width="581" height="333"></p>
<p>Depending on the nature of your document, i.e. a visualizing qualitative data, a research presentation, visualizing quantitative data, content-heavy report, or interactive PDF, your grid can be anything from a three-column vertical grid to a five-column by five-row grid. The key is to align things to each other, so they don&rsquo;t appear as if they are floating on the page.</p>
<h2>Hierarchy</h2>
<p>Hierarchy is essential in any document, regardless of whether it&rsquo;s client-facing or stimulus for a focus group, we know this because behavioral economics suggests that the first thing we see about a brand or a product informs our overall opinion of it. Since we are nothing if not research storytellers, hierarchy is crucial because you need to make sure the first thing your audience sees is actually the most important.</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter wp-image-20179 size-full" src="https://greenbookblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/blog3.png" alt="a sample page layout depicting clearly defined elements (title, intro text, quote etc.)" width="533" height="304"></p>
<p>When designing each page, you should know before you start what is the most crucial element of that page and what you want your client to remember from it. You should then apply the most appropriate &lsquo;level&rsquo; (e.g. title, intro text, quote, etc.) to that element and build your layout around that. This allows the most crucial elements of your content to be your communication focus point.</p>
<h2>Use boxes</h2>
<p>The key to great layouts is to box up all the individual elements to form one whole and keep the amount of space between each one consistent. Again, the eye visually perceives things much better when everything is grouped. Furthermore, it will make your layouts much cleaner and easier on the eye, and you will avoid &lsquo;floating&rsquo; elements. This does not mean literally put everything into colored boxes, just group elements where you can.</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter wp-image-20180 size-full" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/blog4.png" alt="a sample page showing a mix of text, list, and picture elements" width="587" height="337"></p>
<h2>Utilise white space</h2>
<p>Give your layout space to breathe. If you overcomplicate your layout or add in any unnecessary elements that don&rsquo;t aid your story, then you will overwhelm your audience and they won&rsquo;t be able to visually interpret the page. Ultimately this could end in your insights not being communicated.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter wp-image-20181 size-full" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/blog5.png" alt="a sample page showing a mix of text and picture elements with liberal use of white space" width="560" height="325"></p>
<h2>Scale and balance</h2>
<p>Earlier we mentioned the importance of hierarchy. A good way to direct your audience&rsquo;s attention to particular areas of your data visualizations and make your layouts more diverse is to sensibly use scale. Making statements, quotes or key points bigger or bolder is a great way to pull out the key messages. Having said this, you don&rsquo;t want to make elements too big so that they are screaming at your audience, or make it look as if you have run out of things to put on that page so you have just made something bigger.</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter wp-image-20182 size-full" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/blog6.png" alt="a sample page showing a balance of text, picture, and heading elements" width="552" height="320"></p>
<p>Making sure your layout is balanced makes the aesthetic easier on your audience&rsquo;s eye, and makes sure that one side isn&rsquo;t too heavy.</p>

The Fundamentals of Layout Design for Insights

<p class="p1">So far in this innovation management series, we&rsquo;ve covered the four main types of innovation which are <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/monthly-dose-of-design/innovation-management-sustaining-innovation-part-two">sustaining innovation</a>, <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/monthly-dose-of-design/innovation-management-breakthroughradical-innovation-part-three">breakthrough/radical innovation</a>, <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/monthly-dose-of-design/innovation-management-disruptive-innovation-part-four">disruptive innovation</a>, and <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/monthly-dose-of-design/innovation-management-part-one">basic research</a>.</p>
<p class="p1">Now that we know what they are and why they&rsquo;re relevant to market research, we&rsquo;re going to discuss how to create a successful environment for innovation, starting with discussing the main barriers to innovation.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h2>The five main barriers to innovation</h2>
<p>Below, learn about the primary obstacles to innovation.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h4>1. Fear of cannibalising current business prevents investment in new areas</h4>
<p>One of the barriers to innovation is fear of cannibalisation. Companies often create strategies to prevent users from pulling away from one of their products to another. For example, if a market research firm has a key product or service, sometimes creating a new product could divert attention away from that new product if it&rsquo;s cheaper or more efficient for clients. However, we must remember that clients may eventually move to cheaper or more efficient products and services elsewhere if you don&rsquo;t innovate. In a nutshell, your competition will kill your product and service if you don&rsquo;t.</p>
<p>The best companies aren&rsquo;t afraid to replace their most profitable products and embrace self-cannibalization. <a href="https://hbr.org/2016/07/the-best-companies-arent-afraid-to-replace-their-most-profitable-products">This is how tech giants like Amazon, Google, and Facebook have continued to grow impressively over the years.</a><span class="s2"><br></span></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h4>2. Poor structure or unclear process</h4>
<p>Many organisations don&rsquo;t have a structure or processes in place for innovation. Employees are often unsure of how to take ideas forward and what are the next steps to turn these ideas into a product or service. There&rsquo;s a range of different processes and frameworks that can help you in your innovation process. One of the most popular frameworks is design thinking, to learn more about design thinking visit our expert channel <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/introducing-design-fundamentals-for-researchers">here</a>.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h4>3. Not enough time to innovate</h4>
<p>Market researchers have a consistent chain of deliverables to produce and deadlines to meet. Things can get stressful when market researchers must combine both their daily assignments with other innovation duties. Businesses need to help their employees. Instead of telling people to find time, businesses should supply time for them to work on what could be a game-changing idea.</p>
<p>Time can also be managed by having productive meetings or developing a topic to focus on which will allow market researchers to hone their attention. Regardless, innovation requires investing time, and companies should create time for the innovation process.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h4>4. No rewards or incentives for innovative behaviours</h4>
<p>Some employees are magically able to generate ideas, research, and experiment in their spare time, in between their other responsibilities. These are people with innovative behaviours who are willing to constantly challenge the status quo. Innovative leaders are described as fearless and doing what&rsquo;s right versus what may be politically correct. Some highly effective leaders of innovation were characterised as being <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackzenger/2015/05/14/9-behaviors-that-drive-innovation/?sh=3f2941e97593">&ldquo;inverse to the environment&rdquo;</a>.</p>
<p>Companies need to identify these people and reward them. Rewards can come in the form of responsibility. For example, if a person has an innovative idea, they are given the freedom to take the idea forward, without feeling the risk of their professional careers or time off to further pursue other innovative projects.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<div class="post-related-post">
<h3>Related</h3>
<h4><a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/monthly-dose-of-design/innovation-management-disruptive-innovation-part-four">Innovation Management: Disruptive Innovation (Part Four)</a></h4>
</div>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h4>5. Not embracing failure</h4>
<p class="p6">Fear of failure is one of the biggest reasons why people and organisations don&rsquo;t develop new ideas. Many things can go wrong when something new is introduced. There are no guarantees that a new idea will work, and sometimes market researchers can feel like they are risking themselves by going after something new.</p>
<p class="p6">Failure is an important part of learning, development, and progress that an organisation must embrace to move forward.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h2 class="p1">Next month&hellip;</h2>
<p class="p1">Next month we will talk about <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/monthly-dose-of-design/innovation-management-team-diversity-part-six">team diversity for innovation</a>.</p>

Innovation Management: Barriers to Innovation (Part Five)

<p class="p2">In this 12-part innovation management series, we have discussed <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/monthly-dose-of-design/innovation-management-sustaining-innovation-part-two">sustaining innovation</a> and <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/monthly-dose-of-design/innovation-management-breakthroughradical-innovation-part-three">breakthrough/radical innovation</a>, this month we are going to explore disruptive innovation, looking at what it is, examples of it, and why market researchers need to know about it.</p>
<h2 class="p2">What is disruptive innovation?</h2>
<h4><div class="su-pullquote su-pullquote-align-right"><em>&#8220;Disruption is about doing things differently and making a deliberate choice to try to change an industry.&#8221;</em></div></h4>
<p class="p2">Disruptive innovation is when a company creates a completely new product or service by using new technologies to try and solve a less-defined problem. This new product or service can either disrupt an existing market or create a completely new market segment by transforming the way consumers interact with the services or products.</p>
<p class="p2">Disruptive innovation can break existing operating models and create the right conditions for the emergence of new ones. Disruption is about doing things differently and making a deliberate choice to try to change an industry.</p>
<p><div id="attachment_33161" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-33161" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-33161" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/W170608_SATELL_FOURTYPES-1024x600.png" alt="four types of innovation chart" width="1024" height="600"   /><p id="caption-attachment-33161" class="wp-caption-text">GREG SATELL, <a href="https://hbr.org/">HBR.ORG</a></p></div></p>
<h2 class="p2">Examples of disruptive innovation</h2>
<p class="p2">An example of disruptive innovation is Airbnb. Airbnb disrupted the entire hospitality industry and created a new market segment, by providing a platform where hosts can rent out their unused housing and travellers can stay in local accommodation with household amenities.</p>
<p class="p2">Airbnb used existing internet technology. However, they created a new business model where they act as a broker between the two parties and take a commission on each transaction, thereby opening a whole new market segment.</p>
<h2 class="p7">Why market researchers need to know about disruptive innovation</h2>
<p class="p7">By understanding the process of disruptive innovation, market researchers can gain valuable insights and develop a business plan for their own organisation or on their clients&#8217; behalf.</p>
<p class="p8">This can be either to protect an incumbent business from the threat of disruption. For example, by leapfrogging the entrant or by helping the entrant break into the market by understanding consumers and market needs.</p>
<h2 class="p2">Disadvantages of disruptive innovation</h2>
<ol class="ol1">
<li class="li2"><b><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Disruptive innovation produces inferior products or services in the beginning:</span> </b>There are many unknown factors when embarking on disruptive innovation. Initially, disruptive innovation often produces inferior products or services compared to ones that have long existed in the market and may take several improvements.</li>
<li class="li2"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><b>High risk:</b></span><b> </b>When disruptive innovation first enters the market, it initially caters only to a small number of people. This means there is a high financial risk when entering the market for the first time.</li>
<li class="li2"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><b>Hard to break into the market:</b></span><b> </b>For example, when buying a new phone, rational consumers often keep buying a brand they’re already familiar with because they rely on the established provider, even though the new entrant might be using more advanced technology.</li>
</ol>
<h2 class="p8">Advantage of disruptive innovation: It positions the company for the long-term</h2>
<p class="p2">Despite the disadvantages, when the product receives uptake from the mainstream audience, it is often too late for established companies to pick up on new concepts or technologies. Oftentimes, responding to the new and disruptive competition with the same technologies isn’t enough as the new entrant has had time to develop a business model around the product.</p>
<p>
        <div class="post-related-post">
            <h3>Related</h3>
            <h4><a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/monthly-dose-of-design/innovation-management-breakthroughradical-innovation-part-three">Innovation Management: Breakthrough/Radical Innovation (Part Three)</a></h4>
        </div>
    </p>
<p class="p2">This is known as a first-mover advantage, because the new entrant is more likely to be more successful than its competitors because it was the first to market in a new product category.</p>
<p class="p2">An example is Amazon, which created the first online bookstore. By the time the competition reacted, Amazon had achieved significant brand recognition, took its first-mover advantage, and expanded into marketing a range of additional products.</p>
<h2 class="p2">Next month…</h2>
<p class="p2">Next month we will talk about <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/monthly-dose-of-design/innovation-management-barriers-to-innovation-part-five">barriers to innovation</a>.</p>


Innovation Management: Disruptive Innovation (Part Four)

<p class="p1">In this 12-part series on innovation management, we started by introducing the four main types of innovation. Last month we discussed <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/monthly-dose-of-design/innovation-management-sustaining-innovation-part-two">sustaining innovation</a>, exploring what it is, its advantages and disadvantages, and how it is applicable to market research.</p>
<p class="p1">This month we are looking at breakthrough/radical innovation, what it is, and why market researchers need to know about it.<span class="Apple-converted-space">  </span></p>
<h2>What is breakthrough/radical innovation?</h2>
<p class="p1">Breakthrough/radical innovation creates new value and applications from existing technologies and knowledge. This can shift how an organisation behaves or it can change its structure. This allows an organisation to create new models, products, services, and customer interactions that provide a competitive edge.</p>
<blockquote><p><i>&#8220;Radical innovation focuses on long-term impact and may involve displacing current products, altering the relationship between customers and suppliers, and creating completely new product categories.&#8221;</i></p>
<p><b>&#8211; Christian Hopp, David Antons, Jermain Kaminski, and Torsten Oliver Salge</b></p></blockquote>
<div id="attachment_33640" style="width: 578px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-33640" decoding="async" class="wp-image-33640 size-full" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/42b16920-a6cb-4b9a-befd-1e8649a02bc7-article_submissions_image_one-4-types-of-innovation.png" alt="4 types of breakthrough innovation" width="568" height="330"   /><p id="caption-attachment-33640" class="wp-caption-text">GREG SATELL, <a href="https://hbr.org/">HBR.ORG</a></p></div>
<h2>Examples of breakthrough/radical innovation</h2>
<p class="p1">An example of breakthrough/radical innovation is <a href="https://www.zipcar.com/">Zipcar</a>. Zipcar changed the business model for the car rental industry by offering a subscription car rental service. Zipcar identified a market need; to rent cars anytime and drop off rental cars in nearby locations to them. To fulfill this need, they used existing technologies such as wireless communication and the internet in a new way which enabled consumers to reserve and open cars themselves &#8211; therefore eliminating physical dealerships and creating a new market by renting cars by the hour.</p>
<h2>Why market researchers need to know about breakthrough/radical innovation</h2>
<p class="p1">Internally, by understanding breakthrough/radical innovation, market researchers can improve their own research practices by exploring existing technologies and possible new applications of these technologies to add further value and offerings to their clients, and therefore increase their revenue. The understanding of breakthrough/radical innovation allows researchers to venture out and combine other industries (e.g., design, finance, technology) with market research to improve the value of market research or the chance to create a new hybrid industry.</p>

        <div class="post-related-post">
            <h3>Related</h3>
            <h4><a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/monthly-dose-of-design/innovation-management-sustaining-innovation-part-two">Innovation Management: Sustaining Innovation (Part Two)</a></h4>
        </div>
    
<p class="p1">Externally, there is a downside in the relationship between breakthrough/radical innovation and market research. The role of market research is perceived to be less effective in the space of breakthrough/radical innovation. Market research is seen as less effective because it&#8217;s likely that the customers and users in research samples might not be able to describe their requirements for a new product that is unknown or a problem that is not fully understood or defined.</p>
<blockquote>
<p class="p8"><i>&#8220;If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.&#8221;</i></p>
<p class="p8"><b>&#8211; Henry Ford</b><span class="s2"><b><br />
</b></span></p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Advantages of breakthrough/radical innovation</h2>
<ul>
<li class="p8"><em><b>It creates new partnerships </b></em>&#8211; Breakthrough/radical innovation uses existing technologies and knowledge. However, you might not have these technologies and knowledge within your business. Therefore, collaboration with other companies is necessary. This leads to forming new partnerships which could enhance your reputation.</li>
<li class="p8"><em><b>It allows you to move into new markets</b> </em>&#8211; By combining different industries through partnerships, it opens up the possibility to reposition an organisation and create new offerings to expand into new markets and gain a new range of clients.</li>
<li class="p8"><b><em>It helps the company to evolve</em> </b>&#8211; The expansion into new markets and the ability to supply new offerings allow the company to grow and evolve with the market’s evolving needs.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Disadvantages of breakthrough/radical innovation</h2>
<p class="p1"><em><b>Like sustaining innovation, there’s little to no protection from disruptive innovation. </b></em></p>
<p class="p1">While radical innovation allows a company to grow in its offerings and expansion into new markets, it offers little to no protection of an organisation&#8217;s competitive edge against disruptive innovation &#8211; which we will cover in part four &#8211; as disruptive innovation can completely topple traditional models, products, and services through the creation of a completely new product that the market has not seen.</p>
<h2 class="p1"><b></b>Next month&#8230;</h2>
<p class="p1">Next month, we will dive deeper into <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/monthly-dose-of-design/innovation-management-disruptive-innovation-part-four">disruptive innovation</a>.</p>


Innovation Management: Breakthrough/Radical Innovation (Part Three)

<p class="p1">Last month we embarked upon a new 12-part series of Monthly Dose of Design, <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/monthly-dose-of-design/innovation-management-part-one">Innovation Management</a>. We introduced the four main types of innovation which are breakthrough innovation, sustaining innovation, basic research, and disruptive innovation, and shared why innovation is relevant to market research.</p>
<p class="p1">This month we are diving deeper into sustaining innovation by discussing why market researchers need to know about it and how they can do it.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h2>What is sustaining innovation?</h2>
<p class="p1">When we think of innovation, we tend to think of being radical and doing something ground-breaking that no one has done before. However, improving existing products, brands, and services in increments is another form of innovation known as sustaining innovation.</p>
<p class="p1">Sustaining innovation is the most common form of innovation in the innovation matrix. This is because the problem is already known, and the knowledge or technology needed to solve it already exists.</p>
<div id="attachment_33161" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-33161" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-33161" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/W170608_SATELL_FOURTYPES-1024x600.png" alt="four types of innovation chart" width="1024" height="600"   /><p id="caption-attachment-33161" class="wp-caption-text">GREG SATELL, HBR.ORG</p></div>
<p>&nbsp;</p>

        <div class="post-related-post">
            <h3>Related</h3>
            <h4><a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/monthly-dose-of-design/innovation-management-part-one">Innovation Management (Part One)</a></h4>
        </div>
    <b></b></p>
<h2>Examples of sustaining innovation</h2>
<p class="p1">Smartphones are a great example of sustaining innovation. This is because each year, companies release new phones which have incremental improvements, often incorporating new technologies.</p>
<p class="p1">In 2019, Apple released its iPhone 11 with three rear cameras. Then in 2020, Apple released the iPhones 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max with a lidar scanner. Lidar scanners provide these iPhone models with a new type of depth-sensing that aids with augmented reality. By adding the additional cameras and lidar scanner, Apple is setting the scene for some powerful applications of augmented reality.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h2 class="p5">Why market researchers need to know about sustaining innovation</h2>
<p class="p5"><b></b><span class="s2">Read on below to learn about the key reasons market researchers should be familiar with sustaining innovation.</span></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3><a href="https://www.greenbook.org/market-research-companies/new-zealand">Market research</a> itself represents a need for innovation</h3>
<p class="p1">To generate ideas for sustaining innovation, companies need to listen to and learn from their customers, which is what market researchers are great at. By turning customer feedback and communication into insights, market researchers have a thorough understanding of how businesses can continually improve their products, brand, or services and therefore provide greater value to their customers.</p>
<p>By understanding the different types of innovation, market researchers can adapt how they work internally, and externally transform their value to clients.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3>Market researchers can provide better value to their clients</h3>
<p class="p1">Market researchers can use this understanding of the types of innovation to provide further value to their clients by developing new products or services which can help meet their client’s needs vs. what each specific type of innovation requires.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3 class="p1">Market researchers can innovate and improve within their own organisations</h3>
<p class="p1">Market research as an industry shouldn’t stay stationary. By understanding these types of innovation, market researchers can see where they sit in the innovation process and can innovate by developing new tools for themselves to improve their own work.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3 class="p5">Advantages of sustaining innovation<b><br />
</b></h3>
<ol class="ol1">
<li class="li6"><b></b><span class="s5"><b>Companies remain competitive<br />
</b>By continuously improving their products or services, companies remain relevant in the market and can survive against their competitors because they are prolonging their product’s lifespan, whilst also driving brand loyalty and maintaining customer retention. </span><span class="s6"><br />
</span></li>
<li class="li6"><span class="s5"><b>Companies can reduce risk and uncertainty</b><br />
Companies are able to spend less money by incrementally improving existing products or services, as they are building upon the previous version instead of creating a brand new one. This is cheaper than creating a brand-new product which comes with potential risks, such as uncertainty over how the product will fare in the market. However, by improving a product or service that you already know has been well received, you can be more certain that it’ll succeed.</span></li>
</ol>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3 class="p5">Disadvantages of sustaining innovation<span class="s2"><b><br />
</b></span></h3>
<ol class="ol1">
<li class="li6"><b></b><span class="s5"><b>No protection from disruptive innovation<br />
</b>Sustaining innovation takes existing products or services and makes them better. However, this leaves the market open to new players coming in with radical new ideas which could potentially disrupt the entire landscape. This means years of incremental improvements on a product or service could end up redundant.<br />
</span></li>
<li class="li6"><span class="s5"><b>No new radical products<br />
</b>Sustaining innovation doesn’t give you a completely new product to reposition yourself in the market, since you are building upon previous versions of your product. Therefore, it does not create new markets.</span></li>
</ol>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h2 class="p8">Next month…</h2>
<p class="p8">Next month we will dive deeper into <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/monthly-dose-of-design/innovation-management-breakthroughradical-innovation-part-three"><span class="s3">breakthrough</span> innovation</a>.</p>


Innovation Management: Sustaining Innovation (Part Two)

<p class="p1">Previously in Monthly Dose of Design, we’ve discussed the development process of innovation by using <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/introducing-design-fundamentals-for-researchers">Design Thinking</a> to generate ideas, the <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/how-the-lean-startup-can-help-you-reduce-the-risk-in-innovation">Lean Startup</a> to prototype ideas, and <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/monthly-dose-of-design-part-4-agile-principles-for-market-research">Agile</a> to transform prototypes into products.</p>
<p class="p1">This month we’re starting a new 12-part series on innovation. We’ll go beyond the development of innovation to explore:</p>
<ul class="ul1">
<li class="li1">The four main types of innovation</li>
<li class="li1">The skills and culture required to facilitate them</li>
<li class="li1">The advantages that innovation brings</li>
</ul>
<p class="p1">In the first part of this series, we’ll summarize what innovation is and the four types of innovation. We discuss each one in more depth and how to manage them in the latter part of this series.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h2 class="p4">Market research and innovation</h2>
<p class="p1">The main reason for innovation in marketing is to maintain relevancy and to succeed in the market by understanding needs. Market research and innovation have always complimented each other. Market research’s role is to explore and understand how people and the environment relate to new products and services. Research in marketing has looked to describe, explain, and predict how consumers and markets will respond to innovation.</p>
<p class="p1">By understanding the different types of innovation, market researchers can assist their clients in their innovation processes, and internally improve their own organization.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3 class="p4">Three facts about innovation<span class="s3">:<br />
</span></h3>
<p>Below, learn about three important consequences of innovation.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h4>1. Innovation can help you outlast your competitors</h4>
<p>Innovation is a critical factor in surviving longer and withstanding competitors. This is because you will discover new or better ways to compete in an industry. Therefore, you’ll hold an advantage against your competitors.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h4>2. Innovation does not always need to be a big radical change</h4>
<p>Often innovation is thought of as a big radical change. However, small improvements can be made to a company’s existing products or services. Low-cost improvements carried out consistently can help further differentiate a company from its competition.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h4>3. Innovation utilizes people inside and outside of the company</h4>
<p>It’s a common misconception that innovation is based on never-before-seen technology. While technology is one factor often required in the space of innovation, people are often at the core of it. The key is to always evolve and make progress, and people drive that progress. People are needed to be innovative internally to improve the business, and an understanding of consumer behavior is required for any new product or service to succeed.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3 class="p4">The four types of innovation</h3>
<p class="p1">The <a href="https://hbr.org/2017/06/the-4-types-of-innovation-and-the-problems-they-solve">four main types of innovation</a> we will explore in this series are:</p>
<ul class="ul1">
<li class="li1">Breakthrough innovation</li>
<li class="li1">Sustaining innovation</li>
<li class="li1">Basic research</li>
<li class="li1">Disruptive innovation</li>
</ul>
<p class="p1">Market researchers can assess the opportunities that exist and consider different approaches that can enable them to create and capture value by classifying innovation into four distinct categories.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><div id="attachment_33161" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-33161" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-33161" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/W170608_SATELL_FOURTYPES-1024x600.png" alt="four types of innovation chart" width="1024" height="600"   /><p id="caption-attachment-33161" class="wp-caption-text">GREG SATELL, <a href="https://hbr.org/2017/06/the-4-types-of-innovation-and-the-problems-they-solve">HBR.ORG</a></p></div></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3 class="p1">The four distinct categories are divided on a matrix of:</h3>
<p class="p1">Do we know the problem?</p>
<p class="p1">Do we have what we need to solve it?</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>
        <div class="post-related-post">
            <h3>Related</h3>
            <h4><a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/introducing-design-fundamentals-for-researchers">Introducing Design Thinking - What is it and How Can it Help Researchers? (Part 1)</a></h4>
        </div>
    </p>
<h4 class="p1">1. Sustaining innovation</h4>
<p class="p1">Sustaining innovation is improving upon existing products. This area of innovation is most common because the problem is already known and the knowledge or technology needed to solve the problem already exists, and therefore you know what skills are required to solve it. For sustaining innovation, market researchers can utilize <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/introducing-design-fundamentals-for-researchers">Design Thinking</a> to ideate new ideas.</p>
<p class="p1">A good example of sustaining innovation is Apple’s iPhone. Year after year Apple releases new iPhones with new incremental upgrades that allows its product to stand above its competitors.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h4 class="p1">2. Breakthrough innovation</h4>
<p class="p1">Breakthrough innovation takes a product to the next level and changes the way customers use it and how they interact with a company and industry. The problem is often well known but the knowledge or technology to solve it is unknown.</p>
<p class="p1">Microsoft is an example of breakthrough innovation. Microsoft changed its business model going from buying products as a one-time purchase to a subscription-based model.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h4 class="p1">3. Disruptive innovation</h4>
<p class="p1">Disruptive innovation is using &#8216;out of the box&#8217; thinking to create something completely new that hasn&#8217;t been done before, therefore the problem can be unknown, but the knowledge or technology needed to solve the problem already exists.</p>
<p class="p1">It allows companies to expand into new markets, separate themselves from the competition, and has the potential to completely change industries.</p>
<p>An example of disruptive innovation is Netflix. Netflix disrupted an entire industry by creating a subscription-based streaming service and producing its own entertainment content.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h4 class="p1">4. Basic research</h4>
<p class="p1">Basic research is innovation through exploration, where you don’t know the problem and you don&#8217;t know the market. But you are exploring areas to dive further into. This type of innovation can be purely academic.</p>
<p>Lots of companies have internal labs dedicated to basic research, for example, IBM. Additionally, some companies collaborate with academic institutions and fund research projects into areas of interest.<b></b></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h2>Next month…</h2>
<p>Next month we will dive deeper into <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/monthly-dose-of-design/innovation-management-sustaining-innovation-part-two">sustaining innovation</a>.</p>


Innovation Management (Part One)

<p class="p1">In 2021, we discussed Design Thinking, Lean Startup, and Agile as part of our seven-part <i>New Ways of Working for Market Researchers</i> series. This included <em><a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/combining-the-lean-startup-and-design-thinking-for-market-research">Combining the Lean Startup and Design Thinking for Market Research.</a></em></p>
<p class="p1">This month, in the series&#8217; final installment, we’re going to combine Design Thinking, Lean Startup, and Agile into one framework.</p>
<h2 class="p1">Why is this relevant to market research?</h2>
<p class="p1"><a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/new-ways-of-working-to-help-researchers-solve-problems-test-and-build-solutions">All three methodologies have their advantages.</a> Design Thinking is used to generate ideas. Lean Startup is used to test ideas and prototypes. Agile is used to turn prototypes into products.</p>
<p class="p1">By combining all three, market researchers can understand and enter any part of the innovation process. This provides value to both their clients and their organisations.</p>
<div id="attachment_32777" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-32777" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-32777" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Untitled-1-1024x567.png" alt="combining design thinking, lean startup, and agile" width="1024" height="567"   /><p id="caption-attachment-32777" class="wp-caption-text">GARTNER</p></div>
<h3></h3>
<h2 class="p1"><b></b>How do we combine Design Thinking, Lean Startup, and Agile into one framework?</h2>
<p class="p1">The goal is to capitalise on the strengths of each methodology and utilize them at the right phase of this combined framework.</p>
<p>The combined framework is split into three frameworks: Using Design Thinking at the start. Lean Startup in the middle. And Agile at the end.</p>
<h3 class="p1">Phase 1: Generating creative ideas using Design Thinking</h3>
<p class="p1">Market researchers use Design Thinking in the first phase of the framework to generate ideas to solve the user’s problem.</p>
<p class="p1"><i>(For more information on Design Thinking please click </i><em><a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/introducing-design-fundamentals-for-researchers">here</a>.</em><i>)</i></p>
<p class="p1">The three strengths of using Design Thinking in phase one are as follows:</p>
<ol class="ol1">
<li class="li1"><em>Empathy</em>: Design Thinking allows you to get to the heart of the problem and fully understand your user by using research techniques such as focus groups, interviews, and surveys to unearth valuable insights.<span class="Apple-converted-space">    </span><span class="s2"><br />
</span></li>
<li class="li1"><em>Helps create new ideas</em>: Design Thinking encourages you to think as widely as possible to generate lots of ideas to solve the problem at hand.<span class="s2"><br />
</span></li>
<li class="li1"><em>Viewing the problem from different perspectives</em>: Meeting with team members from different disciplines means you can approach the problem from different angles and therefore generate new and innovative solutions to the problem.<span class="s2"><br />
</span></li>
</ol>
<h3 class="p1">Phase 2: Turning ideas into prototypes using Lean Startup</h3>
<p class="p1">Market researchers use Lean Startup in the second phase of the framework to build and test prototypes of their ideas, as well as to improve upon them. This lowers costs and reduces any potential risks early on.</p>
<p class="p1"><i>(For more information on </i>Lean Startup<i> please click </i><em><a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/how-the-lean-startup-can-help-you-reduce-the-risk-in-innovation">here</a>.</em><i>)</i><span class="s2"><br />
</span></p>
<p class="p1">The three strengths of using Lean Startup in phase two are as follows:</p>
<ol class="ol1">
<li class="li1"><em>Building cheap prototypes</em>: By creating a Minimum Viable Product (in other words, a cheap prototype), you can quickly test your ideas and fail earlier in the project. This helps minimise failures and costs further down the line. <span class="s2"><br />
</span></li>
<li class="li1"><em>Measure and understand results</em>: By using research techniques such as surveys, interviews, and focus groups, you’re able to gather customer feedback.<span class="s2"><br />
</span></li>
<li class="li1"><em>Learning and adapting</em>: By learning from your prototype’s successes and failures, you can apply these new findings to your prototype and test them again.</li>
</ol>
<h3 class="p1">Phase 3: Making and doing with Agile</h3>

        <div class="post-related-post">
            <h3>Related</h3>
            <h4><a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/agile-frameworks-scrum-part-6">Agile Frameworks - Scrum (Part Six)</a></h4>
        </div>
    
<p class="p1">In the third phase of the framework, market researchers use Agile to turn their prototypes into products.</p>
<p class="p1"><i>(For more information on Agile please click </i><em><a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/monthly-dose-of-design-part-4-agile-principles-for-market-research">here</a>.</em><i>)</i></p>
<p class="p1">The three strengths of using Agile in phase three are as follows:</p>
<ol class="ol1">
<li class="li1"><i></i><em>Efficiency</em>: Agile frameworks are designed to be more efficient and eliminate &#8220;waste&#8221;. They map out the work that needs to be done from a low to high priority. This ensures that the right resources are directed to the right places.<span class="s2"><br />
</span></li>
<li class="li1"><i></i><em>Responsiveness</em>: Flexibility is important in Agile frameworks. By being able to adjust what needs to be done, teams can continuously evaluate requirements and results, and improve upon these findings rather than sticking to an outdated plan.<span class="s2"><br />
</span></li>
<li class="li1"><i></i><em>Transparency</em>: Transparency is one of the core characteristics of Agile frameworks. By maintaining transparency, teams can understand <em>who</em> is responsible for each task and <em>when</em> it needs to be completed by.</li>
</ol>
<p class="p1">We’ve now concluded our seven-part series on Design Thinking, Lean Startup, and Agile methodologies. We hope we’ve shown you how market researchers can now create ideas, test prototypes, and make products.</p>
<h2>Next month&#8230;</h2>
<p class="p1">Next month, we&#8217;ll kick off a new Monthly Dose of Design series. We’ll go beyond ideation, prototyping, and making &#8211; and into the management of innovation and new ideas, from ideation to taking action, and turning them into reality.</p>


Combining Design Thinking, Lean Startup, and Agile into a Single Framework (Part Seven)

<p class="p1">Over the last few months, we have been discussing <i>New Ways of Working for Market Researchers </i>in our seven-part series. Recently we have covered <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/monthly-dose-of-design-part-4-agile-principles-for-market-research">Agile</a> and one of the most popular frameworks for Agile processes, <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EOReh16-xwko3z77oXhd16eaDI7tzU1mLeDA6xwYyAE/edit">Kanban</a>.</p>
<p class="p3">This month we are discussing another popular Agile framework: Scrum. We’ll be discussing what it is, the key roles in a Scrum team, and what benefits Scrum can bring to market research.</p>
<p class="p1">First, an important matter to highlight: Agile and Scrum are often confused as the same thing but they are not. Agile is a set of principles and project management philosophies that work with different frameworks such as <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/agile-frameworks-kanban-part-5">Kanban</a> and Scrum. Scrum is a specific Agile methodology and a framework to manage how a job is to be completed, which we will discuss below.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h2 class="p4">How are Agile and Scrum relevant to market research?</h2>
<p class="p1">Scrum is most commonly and originally used by software development teams, however, this style of project management can be applied to market research and other industries. It can help teams work together and encourage teams to improve on both the product and the team itself. This is done through reflecting on experiences and improving on them in cycles. Market researchers can utilize this framework to improve both the product they wish to develop and their teams.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h2 class="p4">Roles</h2>
<p class="p1">Scrum involves a set of roles that collaborate to help teams organize and manage their work. Scrum teams require three roles that we will discuss below.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h4 class="p1">Role 1: The internal product owner or external client</h4>
<p class="p1">The product owner or the client is the proxy of stakeholders and/or a business. The person in this role fully understands what the final product needs to be and what needs to be added, omitted, or improved upon. The product owner must be consistently kept in the loop with the team to ensure that both parties are aligned.</p>
<p class="p1">Product owner responsibilities include:</p>
<ul class="ul1">
<li class="li1">Developing product goals with the team.</li>
<li class="li1">Communicating the needs and uses of the product concisely.</li>
<li class="li1">Giving feedback on project deliverables.</li>
<li class="li1">Understanding timelines and constraints to the project.</li>
</ul>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h4 class="p1">Role 2: The Scrum master or team leader</h4>
<p class="p1">The team leader ensures that the project is running smoothly and that all deliverables are being delivered on time. The team leader is tasked with the formation of the team, ensures the team possesses the skills needed for the job, and takes into account the needs of the product and the team.</p>
<p class="p1">Team leader responsibilities include:</p>
<ul class="ul1">
<li class="li1">Forming a team based on the project’s needs and deliverables.</li>
<li class="li1">Managing and updating the list of project deliverables based on priority.</li>
<li class="li1">Ensuring the to-do list is transparent and everyone knows their roles.</li>
<li class="li1">Managing and communicating feedback to team members.</li>
</ul>
<h4></h4>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h4 class="p1">Role 3: The team members</h4>
<p class="p1">The team members are responsible for working through the to-do list and delivering the work.</p>
<p class="p1">Team member responsibilities include:</p>
<ul class="ul1">
<li class="li1">Executing the project deliverables throughout the Sprints (more on Sprints later in the article).</li>
<li class="li1">Continuously improving based on feedback.</li>
<li class="li1">Meeting the required deadline for their part of the work.</li>
</ul>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h2>The Scrum environment: Sprints</h2>

        <div class="post-related-post">
            <h3>Related</h3>
            <h4><a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/monthly-dose-of-design-part-4-agile-principles-for-market-research">Agile Principles for Market Research (Part Four)</a></h4>
        </div>
    
<p class="p1">Sprints lie at the core of Scrum. They enable teams to work more efficiently and deliver the output of work in cycles, rather than at the end of the project.</p>
<p class="p1">A <em>sprint</em> is a set period, usually one to four weeks, where the team works to complete a set number of items on the list of things to do. There are usually several sprints within a project, each one taking into account client feedback, and building and improving upon the previous one.</p>
<div id="attachment_32488" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-32488" decoding="async" class="wp-image-32488 size-large" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/northstar-springs-1024x567.png" alt="sprint cycle" width="1024" height="567"   /><p id="caption-attachment-32488" class="wp-caption-text">NORTHSTAR RESEARCH</p></div>
<h2 class="p10">The four main phases within a Sprint</h2>
<p>There are four primary phases within every Sprint. These are as follows:</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h4 class="p12">Phase one: Planning</h4>
<p class="p12">Before starting a Sprint, it is imperative to plan what you will be working on. This involves the product owner, team leader, and team thoroughly understanding the product needs and listing out what must be completed. The team leader and team members prioritize which items need to be worked on and completed for that sprint, and form a list of things to do.</p>
<h4></h4>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h4 class="p12">Phase two: Implementation</h4>
<p class="p12">This is where team members start working and executing the items on the list. The goal is to complete the listed items, which are delegated to different team members.</p>
<p class="p12">During the implementation stage, team members hold daily meetings to check in and discuss any problems that may have arisen, and identify how to solve these problems. By way of daily meetings, teams can work more efficiently, come to an understand on where everyone is at, and provide support as needed.</p>
<h4></h4>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h4 class="p12">Phase three: Sprint review</h4>
<p class="p12">This is where the team leader and team members gather to discuss the work that has been completed for the sprint cycle. The team leader and members present the work completed and receive feedback from everyone, internally and externally. This helps the team understand if they need to improve or adapt any of the work done.</p>
<h4></h4>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h4 class="p12">Phase four: Sprint retrospective meeting</h4>
<p class="p12">This meeting is at the end of the Sprint where the team leader and team members reflect on the working process of the last sprint and discuss any successes and failures. These learnings can be applied to the next Sprint and enable the team to work more effectively.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h2 class="p10">Benefits of Scrum</h2>
<p>Scrum offers teams many benefits. For example, here are three:</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h4 class="p12">Scrum helps teams solve complex problems</h4>
<p class="p12">Scrum, with its different roles clearly defined, is a project management framework that helps teams work together to create adaptive solutions to complex problems. Actors in the Scrum framework understand their responsibilities and whom to liaise with in a step-by-step process.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h4 class="p12">Scrum helps teams manage large projects</h4>
<p class="p12">As work is done in cycles and smaller chunks, Scrum teams are able to break down projects into smaller sets of deliverables and meet these within the time frame. Each time the team finishes a cycle, work is reviewed and feedback is given. This ensures that the team is on the right track throughout (rather than at the end of the project).</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h4 class="p12">Scrum helps teams improve their working process</h4>
<p class="p12">It&#8217;s not just the product that improves &#8211; the team also evolves over the course of each sprint! The retrospect phase of the Scrum framework allows the Scrum teams to work toward improving their working process by way of the lessons they have learned from each product delivery. This builds an ever more effective team.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h2 class="p12">Next month</h2>
<p class="p12">In next month’s Monthly Dose of Design entry, we’ll discuss how we can <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/combining-design-thinking-lean-startup-and-agile-into-a-single-framework-part-seven">combine Design Thinking, Lean, and Agile for market researchers</a>.</p>


Agile Frameworks – Scrum (Part Six)

<p class="p1">Over the last few months, we have been covering our seven-part <em>New Ways of Working for Market Researchers</em> series. Last month we looked at <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/monthly-dose-of-design-part-4-agile-principles-for-market-research"><span class="s1">Agile</span></a>, what it is, the core characteristics of an Agile team, and why Agile is relevant to market researchers.</p>
<p>This month we’re diving deeper into Agile by looking at one of the most popular frameworks for Agile processes &#8211; the Kanban. We’ll discuss what Kanban is and what benefits it can give market researchers.</p>
<h2 class="p1">Core characteristics of the Agile framework</h2>
<p class="p1">Agile is an iterative approach to project management that allows teams to quickly adapt to changing requirements and focus on continuous delivery in the form of small increments, rather than a single final product.<span class="Apple-converted-space">  </span></p>
<h2>Agile frameworks</h2>
<p>The four Agile frameworks are as follows:</p>
<ol class="ol1">
<li class="li1"><i></i><b><i>Transparent</i></b><i><br />
</i>Transparency is one of Agile’s core characteristics. By being transparent, teams can understand who is responsible for the work required and when it needs completing.</li>
<li class="li1"><i></i><b><i>Efficient</i></b><i><br />
</i>Agile frameworks are designed to be efficient and eliminate &#8220;waste&#8221;. These Agile frameworks can map out work that needs to be done from a low to high priority, to ensure that the right resources and manpower are directed to the right places.</li>
<li class="li1"><i></i><b><i>Adaptable</i></b><i><br />
</i>Flexibility is important in Agile frameworks as the scope of work can change from new learnings. By being able to shift and adjust what needs to be done, teams can continuously evaluate requirements and results, and improve upon these findings rather than sticking to an outdated plan.</li>
<li class="li1"><b><i>Responsive</i></b><i><br />
</i>Agile frameworks thrive on teams that have initiative. Teams using Agile frameworks not only identify new problems but solve them as well. By being responsive to the task at hand teams can work more effectively within an Agile framework.</li>
</ol>
<h2>What is Kanban?</h2>
<p class="p1">Kanban is a popular visual framework that aims to maximize efficiency by limiting work-in-progress tasks.</p>

        <div class="post-related-post">
            <h3>Related</h3>
            <h4><a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/monthly-dose-of-design-part-4-agile-principles-for-market-research">Agile Principles for Market Research (Part Four)</a></h4>
        </div>
    
<p class="p1">Within this framework, the aim is to list all tasks needed to complete project deliverables and continuously work through those tasks on the Kanban board until they are completed. Teams using Kanban benefit from full transparency of the work and knowledge of who is accountable for it.</p>
<h2 class="p1">Why is Kanban relevant to market research?</h2>
<p class="p1">Use of Kanban isn’t restricted to software development. The framework can also be applied to other industries. This is because Kanban is an effective and efficient way of working. In particularly, Kanban can help market researchers understand <em>who</em> is tackling a problem and <em>what</em> needs to be done about it.</p>
<p><strong>Kanban board example</strong></p>
<div id="attachment_32107" style="width: 1610px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-32107" decoding="async" class="wp-image-32107 size-full" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/image1.png" alt="Kanban board example" width="1600" height="696"   /><p id="caption-attachment-32107" class="wp-caption-text">Image: Northstar Research Partners</p></div>
<h2>The Kanban board</h2>
<p>The Kanban board is a visual representation of project deliverables split into smaller tasks. Each task is represented by a card on the board. As each card moves across the board to completion, team members may visually track all progress.<span class="Apple-converted-space">   </span></p>
<h2 class="p1">Kanban card movement</h2>
<p class="p1">Kanban cards contain information about the task, such as:</p>
<ul class="ul1">
<li class="li1">What needs to be done?</li>
<li class="li1">What is the priority of the task?</li>
<li class="li1">Who is responsible?</li>
<li class="li1">When is the deadline?</li>
</ul>
<p class="p1">All project-relevant information should be laid out on the cards. This means Kanban cards can be used as information sources and reduce the need for actual meetings.</p>
<p>The card&#8217;s position on the board reflects the stage in which the task is at, representing g following statuses:</p>
<ul class="ul1">
<li class="li1">To be done</li>
<li class="li1">In progress</li>
<li class="li1">Completed</li>
</ul>
<p class="p1">This allows teams to see the state of each task at any time. This improves transparency within teams to understand what needs to be done and how far along is the project completion.</p>
<h2 class="p1">Benefits of Kanban</h2>
<p>A Kanban-based approach comes with a variety of benefits:</p>
<ol class="ol1">
<li class="li1"><b>Continuous flow<br />
</b>The project deliverables are split into smaller achievable tasks and designated to different team members. This means as team members complete each task and bring them to the next stage, team members are free to pick up new tasks or continue another member’s task at different stages. Therefore, the project is continuously moving and improving.<b><br />
</b></li>
<li class="li1"><b>No fixed roles<br />
</b>With no fixed roles apart from completing their task, team members are also able to add new tasks to the board for other team members. This allows the whole team to not only find solutions but find new problems as well.</li>
<li class="li1"><b>Minimise wasted time and effort</b><br />
Kanban cards can be assigned to team members to avoid overlap. However, to minimise wasted time and work, team members can also choose tasks in order of priority to keep the project moving along efficiently. As the cards are prioritised, team members can instantly move on to the next most important task.</li>
</ol>
<h2 class="p1">Next month&#8230;</h2>
<p class="p1">In next month’s Monthly Dose of Design, we’ll discuss a second Agile framework &#8211; <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/agile-frameworks-scrum-part-6">SCRUM</a>.</p>


Agile Frameworks – Kanban (Part Five)

<p class="p1">So far in this seven-part <em>New Ways of Working for Market Researchers</em> series, we’ve discussed <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/introducing-design-fundamentals-for-researchers">Design Thinking</a> and <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/how-the-lean-startup-can-help-you-reduce-the-risk-in-innovation">Lean Startup</a>, and the benefits of <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/combining-the-lean-startup-and-design-thinking-for-market-research">combining both methodologies</a> for innovation. This month we’ll look at the Agile methodology, its principles, and what benefits these can provide market researchers.</p>
<h2 class="p3">What is Agile?</h2>
<p class="p1">In 2001, a group of programmers discussed the future of software development. They concluded that companies were too focused on planning, management, and writing long documents. This meant that they failed to investigate the most important thing &#8211; the user.<span class="Apple-converted-space">  </span>From this, the <a href="https://agilemanifesto.org/">Agile Manifesto</a> emerged, setting four simple principles which we’ll now discuss.</p>
<div id="attachment_30606" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-30606" decoding="async" class="wp-image-30606 size-full" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/what-is-agile-1024x614-1.jpeg" alt="Agile methodology chart created by Hygger" width="1024" height="614"   /><p id="caption-attachment-30606" class="wp-caption-text">Image: <a href="https://hygger.io/guides/agile/">Hygger</a></p></div>
<p class="p1">Agile is an iterative approach to project management. It originates from software development and helps teams deliver value to their customers through a product.</p>

        <div class="post-related-post">
            <h3>Related</h3>
            <h4><a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/new-ways-of-working-to-help-researchers-solve-problems-test-and-build-solutions">New Ways of Working to Help Researchers Solve Problems, Test and Build Solutions (Part One)</a></h4>
        </div>
    
<p class="p1">An Agile methodology aims to deliver outputs in small increments and focuses on continuous delivery, rather than a single final product. The advantage of this is that a product is consistently updated to fit the user’s needs.</p>
<p class="p1">This is done by strong communication and collaboration between diverse teams, continuously evaluating requirements and results, and improving upon them. By doing this, Agile teams can effectively respond to any changes.</p>
<h2>Why is this relevant to market research?</h2>
<p class="p1">Externally, market research’s goal in new product development (NPD) is to ensure that a product is relevant and viable in the marketplace. The Agile methodology’s flexibility, adaptability, and collaborative methods mean market researchers can use Agile principles to effectively inform NPD decisions.</p>
<p class="p1">Internally, market researchers can use the Agile methodology to improve how they work within their organization, as it’s an efficient and effective way of working</p>
<h2 class="p3">An Agile team’s core characteristics</h2>
<p>An Agile team has three core characteristics: Collaboration, communication, and flexibility.</p>
<p class="p1"><b>Collaboration:</b></p>
<p class="p1">Agile teams work together instead of working in silos. This allows all teammates to have a view of the project. Additionally, the Agile methodology promotes working with customers to gain feedback.</p>
<p class="p6"><em><span class="s4"><b>Why?</b></span></em></p>
<p class="p1">Products are human-centric. By collaborating with customers, involving them in the decision-making process, and acting on their feedback, Agile teams can deliver products to solve the customers&#8217; problems. Additionally, this leads to greater customer retention as customers feel part of the NPD process.</p>
<p class="p1"><b>Communication:</b></p>
<p class="p1">Communication between teammates, clients, and stakeholders is integral. This ensures that everyone is aligned towards the end goal, and team meetings with clients and stakeholders will determine the next development phase rather than long written emails.</p>
<p class="p6"><span class="s4"><b><i>Why?</i></b></span></p>
<p class="p1">Agile prioritizes human interaction over rigid processes. This is important as Agile teams make complex products. This means being able to converse about choices is critical. The Agile methodology fosters collaboration. Therefore, teams can learn from shared experiences that lead to product improvement.</p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s5"><b>Flexibility:</b></span></p>
<p class="p1">Being flexible and able to adapt to changes is paramount in an Agile workflow. There are several factors that may lead to changes within a project (e.g., changes in the marketplace or feedback from customers). By responding to these changes, Agile teams can continuously progress and improve a product.</p>
<p><strong><em>Why?</em></strong></p>
<p class="p1">Agile teams can keep on top of what&#8217;s relevant to their customers and to the marketplace because they deliver work in increments. They can respond and adapt to feedback, make changes easier, and integrate these into the project&#8217;s future at a minimal cost.</p>
<h2 class="p3">Four values of the Agile manifesto</h2>
<p>The Agile manifesto places emphasis on four separate but interconnected and complimentary values:</p>
<p class="p1"><b>1. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools</b></p>
<p class="p1">Processes and tools are important. But it’s more important to have clear and continued communication within teams and with clients and stakeholders. By incorporating stakeholders into the process, teams can move forward together more effectively.</p>
<p class="p1"><b>2. Working software over comprehensive documentation</b></p>
<p class="p1">An Agile methodology is based on learning by doing. This means building and creating products to test &#8211; and sometimes fail &#8211; and learning from mistakes instead of over-planning a product. It’s more effective to learn from a product&#8217;s failures and successes in the market as a prototype.</p>
<p class="p1"><b>3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation</b></p>
<p class="p1">Customer collaboration is at the heart of the Agile methodology. It’s imperative to include them in all phases of the development and decision-making process. This will ensure that the product meets customers’ needs and will minimize wasted time and resources.</p>
<p class="p1"><b>4. Responding to change over following a plan</b></p>
<p class="p1"><b><i></i></b>Embracing ambiguity is key in an Agile methodology. Having a flexible project plan allows teams to accommodate any changes that may occur along the project timeline &#8211; for example, changes in the project scope or a shift in stakeholders&#8217; priorities.</p>
<h2 class="p3">Common misconceptions of Agile</h2>
<p>There are a variety of misconceptions surrounding Agile, including that:</p>
<p class="p1"><b>1. Agile is faster</b></p>
<p class="p1">People tend to believe that the Agile methodology allows work to be done faster due to the word “agile”. Agile with a capital “A” is a process that is not fast, <span class="s6">but instead flexible</span>. The Agile methodology is by no means faster than traditional processes. Its advantage is its agility to produce a product that has been improved to be viable in the marketplace.</p>
<p class="p1"><b>2. Agile is only for software development</b></p>
<p class="p1">“Agile” refers to a group of frameworks such as SCRUM and Kanban (which we will discuss next month in <i>Part 5: Agile Techniques and Frameworks)</i>. These frameworks focus on the end-users needs that add value to the product and divide large work into bitesize projects. These frameworks do not only apply to software development but can be applied to other industries because it is an effective and efficient way of working.</p>
<h2 class="p1">Next month&#8230;</h2>
<p class="p1">In next month&#8217;s Monthly Dose of Design, we’ll discuss <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/agile-frameworks-kanban-part-5">Agile techniques and frameworks and how these can benefit market researchers</a>.</p>
<p><em>Header Image: <a href="https://unsplash.com/@patrickperkins">Patrick Perkins</a>, <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/ETRPjvb0KM0">Unsplash</a></em></p>


Agile Principles for Market Research (Part Four)

<p>This article is part three of Monthly Dose of Design&#8217;s seven-part series <em>New Ways of Working for Market Researchers</em>. Read <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/new-ways-of-working-to-help-researchers-solve-problems-test-and-build-solutions">New Ways of Working to Help Researchers Solve Problems, Test and Build Solutions (Part One)</a> and <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/how-the-lean-startup-can-help-you-reduce-the-risk-in-innovation">How the Lean Startup Can Help You Reduce the Risk in Innovation (Part Two)</a>.</p>
<p>Before we discuss combining these two methodologies, let&#8217;s briefly recap what Design Thinking (DT) and the Lean Startup are:</p>
<h2>What is Design Thinking?</h2>
<p>Design Thinking (DT) is a process used by designers and strategists to develop human-centered solutions. The process starts by building empathy with your customers and ends with solutions that best solve their problems. DT consists of four key steps: <em>Discover, Define, Develop, </em>and<em> Deliver</em>.</p>
<h2>What is the Lean Startup?</h2>
<p>The <em>Lean Startup</em> is an iterative process used for developing products or services based on what people want. The goal is to develop a product or service by first creating a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). This MVP is then developed using the Build Measure Learn framework to gather feedback and improve it.</p>
<h2>Combining Design Thinking (the problem phase) and the Lean Startup (the solution phase)</h2>
<p>There are two main phases that a new product goes through when it’s created. These are:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong><strong><em>The “Customer Problem” Phase<br />
</em></strong></strong>New and innovative products look to solve new problems or solve old problems differently. This means you need to explore and understand your customer’s needs. In doing so, you’ll identify their unmet needs and create new ideas to solve them.</li>
<li><strong><strong><em>The “Customer Solution” Phase<br />
</em></strong></strong>You’ll need to validate your ideas from the “Customer Problem” phase to ensure they’re feasible solutions. In the combined framework of DT and the Lean Startup, DT is used in the “Customer Problem” phase. The Lean Startup is then used in the “Customer Solution” phase.<img decoding="async" class="wp-image-30158 size-full" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Combine-design-thinking-graph.png" alt="Combine design thinking, lean startup and agile graph" width="829" height="466"   />Image: Gartner</li>
</ul>
<h2>Why use Design Thinking to find the ‘Customer Problem’?</h2>
<p>DT is about developing ideas to solve problems. Starting by building empathy with customers, you will identify their unmet needs and problems. The insights you collect will help you generate multiple ideas and define a <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/framing-your-insights-with-a-8220how-might-we8221-statement-part-2">‘How Might We’</a> statement. This statement outlines the problem you and your team are trying to solve.</p>
<h2>Benefits of Design Thinking</h2>
<p>Design Thinking provides a variety of benefits in the innovation process. For example, Design Thinking:</p>
<ul>
<li><em>Builds empathy with your customers</em><strong>: </strong>DT’s first step is the ‘Discover’ phase, where you gather as much information on your customers as possible. This allows you to step into their shoes.</li>
<li><em>Uncovers unmet needs: </em>By finding your customer’s successes and pain points, you are unearthing the problem you want to solve.</li>
<li><em>Aligns you and your team on the problem you’re trying to solve: </em>Innovation teams are often diverse, consisting of people from different disciplines. Therefore, by defining a ‘How Might We’ statement, you’re ensuring everyone is on the same page.</li>
<li><em>Helps you and your team understand the value of the problem from the customer’s perspective, when evaluating ideas: </em>By cultivating a wealth of knowledge on your customers, you can develop human-centered ideas for them.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Why use the Lean Startup to develop the Customer Solution?</h2>
<p>The Lean Startup’s strengths lie in rigorous testing, measuring, and iterating. This ensures that the best ideas are tested and improved upon, thus creating the best solutions.</p>

        <div class="post-related-post">
            <h3>Related</h3>
            <h4><a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/how-the-lean-startup-can-help-you-reduce-the-risk-in-innovation">How the Lean Startup Can Help You Reduce the Risk in Innovation (Part Two)</a></h4>
        </div>
    
<p>The Lean Startup gives teams an iterative framework to quickly build solutions (the above-mentioned MVPs), to measure their successes and failures with customers, and to apply those learnings to the solution’s next iteration.</p>
<h2>Benefits of the Lean Startup</h2>
<p>The Lean Startup provides a variety of benefits in the innovation process. For example, the Lean Startup:</p>
<ul>
<li><em>Provides incremental improvements for solutions:</em> Incremental improvements prioritize smaller solutions and actions when tackling large projects and therefore make innovation more efficient.</li>
<li><em>Allows businesses to divert the right resources into the right places:</em> The Lean Startup provides validated learnings from its feedback-focused framework. Because of this, teams can put the right resources in the right places and work more efficiently when developing solutions.</li>
<li><em>Tests new ideas quickly and delivers results:</em> The Lean Startup is an iterative framework. It aims to test quickly and gather feedback fast. This enables teams to understand what’s working and what’s not, and quickly develop new solutions.</li>
<li><em>Reduces risk:</em> Due to its iterative and incremental nature, the Lean Startup reduces risk because you are constantly testing to see if a solution is viable, before investing more time and money into it.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Next month&#8230;</h2>
<p>Join us next month, when we&#8217;ll take an in-depth look at the <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/monthly-dose-of-design-part-4-agile-principles-for-market-research">Agile framework and its principles, and how these can benefit market researchers</a>.</p>


Combining the Lean Startup and Design Thinking for Market Research (Part Three)

<p>This article is part two of Monthly Dose of Design&#8217;s seven-part series <em>New Ways of Working for Market Researchers</em>. Part one, <em>New Ways of Working to Help Researchers Solve Problems, Test and Build Solutions</em>, can be found <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/new-ways-of-working-to-help-researchers-solve-problems-test-and-build-solutions">here</a>.</p>
<h2>What is the Lean Startup?</h2>
<p>The Lean Startup is an iterative process used for developing products or services based on what people want. The Lean Startup values experimentation, consumer feedback, and iterative design. It prioritizes speed, aims to eliminate any unknown factors in product or service development, test assumptions, and shorten development cycles. This is done by rapidly testing solutions, getting feedback on them by measuring their performance, and improving them based upon the feedback received.</p>
<h2>Why is the Lean Startup relevant to you?</h2>
<h3>It plays to market researchers’ strengths</h3>
<p>Market research explores, tests, and identifies consumers&#8217; needs and pain points. The Lean Startup works like this too, by continuously testing solutions and applying learnings to better them. Customer interaction and feedback are crucial, as this provides insights into what improvements must be made.</p>
<h3>It helps market researchers play a part in innovation for businesses</h3>
<p>The Lean Startup is geared towards NPD (new product development). This means it can help you by testing prototypes and using consumer feedback to optimise them. In doing so, this reduces the chance of a new product failing when it’s launched.</p>
<h2>The key values to the Lean startup are:</h2>
<div id="attachment_29296" style="width: 557px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-29296" decoding="async" class="wp-image-29296 size-full" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Key-Values-to-startup.png" alt="chart of key values to startup" width="547" height="458"   /><p id="caption-attachment-29296" class="wp-caption-text">Image: <a href="https://jtrsolutions.com/blog/customsoftware_leanstartup/">JTR Solutions</a></p></div>

        <div class="post-related-post">
            <h3>Related</h3>
            <h4><a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/new-ways-of-working-to-help-researchers-solve-problems-test-and-build-solutions">New Ways of Working to Help Researchers Solve Problems, Test and Build Solutions (Part One)</a></h4>
        </div>
    
<p>The Lean Startup framework works on the Build–Measure–Learn loop. This loop is a learning cycle that involves building ideas quickly into rudimentary products, measuring customers&#8217; reactions, and improving the production in three key stages:</p>
<ol>
<li><strong>Build: </strong>Start by creating a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) – a cheap and rudimentary version of the actual product or a prototype, which will be used in market testing.                                                 <strong>Why? </strong>By building a minimum viable product,  you can quickly test your product and fail fast early on. Failing with an MVP is significantly cheaper than a real product failing.</li>
<li><strong>Measure: </strong>Once you have an MVP or prototype, the next step is to test with consumers. This is where market researchers thrive, by using methods such as surveys, data analytics, interviews, and focus groups to gain consumer feedback and insight.                                                       <strong>Why? </strong>This feedback and insights are needed to improve the next iteration of your product.</li>
<li><strong>Learn: </strong>Once you’ve identified what works and what fails in the market you need to improve the product by eliminating pitfalls and leveraging areas of success.                                                           <strong>Why? </strong>This ensures that your new product meets the market’s expectations.</li>
</ol>
<h3>The Lean Startup has three main advantages:</h3>
<ol>
<li><strong>Eliminating uncertainty: </strong>The Lean Startup is more than learning fast and failing cheap. It allows you to de-risk your product quickly and reduce financial loss. This allows market researchers to help companies to develop confidence in their business ideas before turning them into products or services.</li>
<li><strong>Validated learnings: </strong>This feedback-focused development process enables you to focus your resources in the right places. This increases productivity and allows you to see if the product is viable before investing more time and money into it.</li>
<li><strong>Systematic approach for innovation: </strong>This systematic approach requires fast thinking and action to make for a simple yet efficient model of working.</li>
</ol>
<h3>Next month&#8230;</h3>
<p>We’ll discuss how <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/combining-the-lean-startup-and-design-thinking-for-market-research">combining Lean Startup and Design Thinking can benefit market researchers</a>.</p>
<p><em>Header Image: <a href="https://unsplash.com/@brandsandpeople">Brands&amp;People</a>, <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/Ax8IA8GAjVg">Unsplash</a></em></p>


How the Lean Startup Can Help You Reduce the Risk in Innovation (Part Two)

<p>For the next seven installments of Monthly Dose of Design, we’re going to discuss how you can use new ways of working to solve your client’s problems in the series <em>New Ways of Working for Market Researchers</em>. The ways of working we’re going to cover are Design Thinking, <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/how-the-lean-startup-can-help-you-reduce-the-risk-in-innovation">Lean Startup</a>, and <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/monthly-dose-of-design-part-4-agile-principles-for-market-research">Agile</a>. Yes, we know some people THINK these are buzz words. But they aren’t. They’re effective ways of working which we use daily. And not just us! Brands like Nike, Airbnb, Zappos, and Dropbox use them too!</p>
<h2>Why is this relevant to you?</h2>
<p>Market research&#8217;s purpose is to solve business problems. To do this market researchers must adapt to new feedback and insights in order to answer clients’ questions. The new ways of working we’ll introduce you to will help you by providing different ways to explore problems, create ideas, and test solutions whilst being adaptable to new feedback. To start with, we’ll give you an overview of what these new ways of working are and how they can help you.</p>
<h2>What is Design Thinking?</h2>
<p>Design Thinking is an iterative process that designers use to solve problems. It combines the user’s needs and pain points with technological feasibility and business practicalities. In doing so, it balances rigor and creativity to generate new ideas for products and services.</p>
<p>Design Thinking’s key values are:</p>
<ul>
<li><em>Empathy:</em> Understanding the problems and opportunities through research, to ensure that the solution is human-centric</li>
<li><em>Ideas:</em> Generating as many ideas as possible, to ensure a wide range of design routes that lead to prototypes being created</li>
<li><em>Validation:</em> Learning and improving prototypes which will lead to the development of functional services/products through testing</li>
</ul>
<h2>What is the Lean Startup?</h2>
<p>The Lean Startup is an iterative methodology used for developing brands, products, and services. It aims to shorten product development cycles by rapidly testing solutions, then measuring their performance and improving them based upon this feedback to ensure that the proposed solution is viable.</p>
<p>Lean Startup’s key values are:</p>
<ul>
<li><em>Build:</em> Creating a minimum viable product (a prototype with basic features that cheaply reflects the capabilities of the full product)</li>
<li><em>Measure:</em> Testing the prototype with customers</li>
<li><em>Learn:</em> Understanding what works and what doesn’t, and improving upon these findings</li>
</ul>
<p>The Lean Startup thrives when there are lots of unknown factors and uncertainty when developing a new brand, product, or service, due to its ability to quickly understand and test assumptions.</p>
<h2>What is Agile?</h2>
<p>Agile is a project management methodology originally used in software development. Its aim is to combat high rates of failure.</p>
<p>Agile’s key values are:</p>
<ul>
<li><em>Teamwork:</em> getting strong individual team member support that leads to a strong team</li>
<li><em>Execution over documentation:</em> doing work instead of talking about work, most learnings from Agile come from executing work</li>
<li><em>Customer collaboration:</em> including the customer throughout the whole of the project</li>
<li><em>Adaptability:</em> adapting to change and not sticking to an outdated plan</li>
</ul>
<p>Similar to the Lean Startup, Agile relies on gathering rapid feedback, producing iterative releases, and being able to rapidly adapt the design plan to best meet the needs of its users. Like Design Thinking, solutions are constantly evolving throughout the process based on customer feedback.</p>

        <div class="post-related-post">
            <h3>Related</h3>
            <h4><a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/5-common-misconceptions-of-agile-market-research">5 Common Misconceptions of Agile Market Research</a></h4>
        </div>
    
<p>The key difference of Agile is that the framework divides the project into smaller chunks (called Sprints) which can be completed in batches. This allows project teams to adapt faster to the changes that new insights might bring and ensure that the solution meets the customer’s needs.</p>
<h2>The table below shows a general overview of the purpose, core values, differences, and similarities of Design Thinking, Lean Startup &amp; Agile.</h2>
<p><img decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-28756 size-large" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Screen-Shot-2021-06-24-at-3.44.27-PM-1024x633.png" alt="" width="1024" height="633"   /></p>
<p>In a nutshell, Design Thinking explores the problems and ideates possible solutions, Lean Startup tests possible solutions, while Agile employs adaptability to new feedback and insights pushing the product towards completion.</p>
<h2>Next month&#8230;</h2>
<p>In Part 2: The lean start-up for market research, we’ll discuss the <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/how-the-lean-startup-can-help-you-reduce-the-risk-in-innovation">Lean Startup</a> in more detail and show you can use it within market research.</p>
<p><em>Header Image: <a href="https://unsplash.com/@myleon">Leon</a>, <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/Oalh2MojUuk">Unsplash</a></em></p>


New Ways of Working to Help Researchers Solve Problems, Test and Build Solutions (Part One)

<p>Over the last two articles, we’ve discussed the different ways market researchers can use design in our three-part series <strong>The Design Ladder</strong>.</p>
<p>Part one focused on <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/design-as-an-aesthetic-part-1">design as an aesthetic</a>, which usually comes as a project ends.</p>
<p>Part two focused on <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/design-thinking-series-part-2-using-design-as-a-process">design as a process</a>, which is part of the <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/introducing-design-fundamentals-for-researchers">Design Thinking</a> process.</p>
<p>This month we’re focussing on design as a strategy. Using design as strategy helps market researchers combine their research findings with other techniques to turn insights into innovation.</p>
<h2>Design as a strategy for innovation</h2>
<p>Recently, there’s been a design shift underway in successful organisations. Jon Kolko recently authored an article – <a title="Design Thinking Comes of Age" href="https://hbsp.harvard.edu/product/R1509D-PDF-ENG" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Design Thinking Comes of Age</a> – on <em>Harvard Business Review</em> on this design shift. The shift is that companies now place design much closer to their culture and work process than before. This leads to innovation. This shift applies the principles of design that designers use to innovate the way people and organisations work, ranging from customer experience to product development.</p>
<h2>Market research and design strategy</h2>
<p>Market researchers can use a design strategy to help their clients optimise their offer. This can range from developing principles such as a brand mission statement to help organisations align their vision, mission, and purpose to innovating new products or services. These actions develop brands, services, and products while considering what’s valuable for customers and profitable for businesses.</p>
<p>They do so by addressing the 4 key principles that market researchers can use to innovate in research businesses by using design as strategy.</p>
<h3>1: Collaborate within diverse teams to create better solutions</h3>
<p>Collaboration is key for strategic thinking – both internally and externally. Internally, this means market researchers need to make sure departments work together to put the user’s core needs at the heart of collaboration. Externally, collaboration means that market researchers must look outwards and work with different disciplines. This will give them new skills to look at business problems in new ways.</p>
<p>Diverse backgrounds coming together brings diverse solutions to solve problems. This leads to a wider range of solutions and ideas which are more informed and produce better results.</p>
<h3>2: Ensure that all design is human-centred</h3>
<p>People should always be at the core of design, whether it’s a brand, service, or product. Human-centred design works towards the market researcher’s strength, as understanding people comes from research.</p>

        <div class="post-related-post">
            <h3>Related</h3>
            <h4><a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/developing-and-testing-your-design-thinking-ideas-part-4">Developing and Testing Your Design Thinking Ideas (Part 4)</a></h4>
        </div>
    
<p>Market researchers&#8217; thorough understanding of the user is based on workshops, focus groups, and surveys. These identify and innovate effective solutions through synthesising information and insights, thus providing the most value to the user. This means brands, products, and services developed with the user in mind enable businesses to build better and stronger customer relationships.</p>
<h3>3: Make design iterative and continuous</h3>
<p>Once an initial design is completed, you should always seek to improve it. Good design succeeds because it continuously learns and evolves. It is tested, validated, and continuously improved based on users’ needs and pain points. Market researchers have the tools to continuously test products and ideas and therefore easily find ways to make improvements. This saves both time and money for clients, and ensures they are adding value to the users’ experience.</p>
<h3>4: Build a design-centric culture in your workplace</h3>
<p>Build a design-centric culture by being open to new ideas, collaborating, and using iterative processes as stated in the first 3 principles. The cultural environment this builds helps innovation to thrive and encourages behaviours necessary for successful innovation. Innovation, after all, is about how people behave.</p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>Utilising design as a strategy can help market researchers create sought-after experiences that improve what businesses offer. But it cannot do so until it’s embedded in a business.</p>
<h2>Next month&#8230;</h2>
<p>Next month we will go beyond Design Thinking to <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/new-ways-of-working-to-help-researchers-solve-problems-test-and-build-solutions">“design doing,” which encompasses agile processes that lead to innovation</a>.</p>
<p><em>Header Image: <a href="https://www.pexels.com/@rethaferguson?utm_content=attributionCopyText&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_source=pexels">RF._.studio</a>, <a href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/women-at-the-meeting-3810795/?utm_content=attributionCopyText&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_source=pexels">Pexels</a></em></p>


Utilizing design as a strategy can help market researchers create sought-after experiences that improve what businesses offer.

Design as a Strategy (Part 3)

<p><em>Editor&#8217;s Note: This article is part two in the three-part series <strong>The Design Ladder</strong></em><strong>.</strong></p>
<p>Last month we introduced <a title="The Design Ladder: Part 1: Design as an Aesthetic" href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/design-as-an-aesthetic-part-1">the Design Ladder by the Danish Design Centre</a>. We discussed the ladder’s different design levels, how it can be used to identify where your company currently sits, how further design implementation can be used to improve your client’s product and their business and how to use <a title="The Design Ladder: Part 1: Design as an Aesthetic" href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/design-as-an-aesthetic-part-1">design as an aesthetic</a>.</p>
<p>Moving up the ladder, we go from design’s execution to design thinking. This month we’re at level three; <b><u>design as a process</u></b> which is part of Design Thinking.</p>
<h2>What is design as a process?</h2>
<p>A process is defined as <em>‘a series of actions taken to reach an end goal’</em>. The end goal can be creating or improving a service, product or brand. Design as a process involves incorporating design into a process’s early stages, or using a design process, (like Design Thinking), to help create better products, services, or brands.</p>
<h3>How can you use design as a process?</h3>
<p>Market researchers can use design as a process both:</p>
<ul>
<li>Internally to improve their service, products or their brand within the industry, or</li>
<li>Externally to provide more value to clients</li>
</ul>
<h3>What type of design process can you use?</h3>
<p>Many different design processes exist. And no single design process fits all industries or companies. There are some design processes that can be modified to fit different purposes or company cultures. The design processes shown below are used in different industries from engineering to market research.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<div id="attachment_27401" style="width: 610px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/news-opinion/what-framework-innovation-design-councils-evolved-double-diamond"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-27401" decoding="async" class="wp-image-27401" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/General-Design-Process.png" alt="" width="600" height="352"   /></a><p id="caption-attachment-27401" class="wp-caption-text">The source of this material is the Design Council at www.designcouncil.org.uk. All rights reserved.</p></div>
<div id="attachment_27400" style="width: 610px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.teachengineering.org/design/designprocess"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-27400" decoding="async" class="wp-image-27400" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/EDPHub_Graphic-e1618439050547.png" alt="The engineering design process is a series of steps that guides engineering teams as we solve problems." width="600" height="600" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-27400" class="wp-caption-text">The source of this material is the TeachEngineering digital library collection at www.TeachEngineering.org. All rights reserved.</p></div>

        <div class="post-related-post">
            <h3>Related</h3>
            <h4><a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/market-research-trends/design-thinking-isnt-bs-but-the-way-we-think-about-it-is">Design Thinking Isn’t B.S. (But the Way We Think About It Is)</a></h4>
        </div>
     However, whilst there are many types of design processes, they all have three similar stages:</p>
<h4>Stage 1: Research, understanding, empathy</h4>
<p>This stage always occurs at the process’ beginning and requires:</p>
<ul>
<li>Market research</li>
<li>User research</li>
<li>Design research</li>
</ul>
<p>The aim here is to gather lots of information on the target audience’s behaviours, problems, and perceptions. These insights will then be used as the foundation for the products, brands or services which are being designed. This will ensure that you are designing with the user in mind.</p>
<h4>Stage 2: Design, prototyping, developing</h4>
<p>Using the insights uncovered in stage 1, you can now start designing the right solutions and requires:</p>
<ul>
<li>Brand design</li>
<li>Business design</li>
<li>UX/UI design</li>
<li>Graphic design</li>
<li>Project development</li>
</ul>
<p>Great insights aren’t enough and they need to be brought to life. The aim of stage 2 is to develop insights into solutions for the problems uncovered in stage 1. These are then developed into high or low-fidelity prototypes. A prototype&#8217;s fidelity level refers to how much it will match the final solution. For example, a low-fidelity prototype could be a paper interface, whereas a high-fidelity prototype could be a video walkthrough of an app. From here you can test your prototype.</p>
<h4>Stage 3: Test, learn, reiterate</h4>
<p>Compared to traditional processes, stage 3 is what makes the design process effective. This stage requires:</p>
<ul>
<li>Market research</li>
<li>User testing</li>
<li>Feedback groups</li>
</ul>
<p>Stage 3 tests your prototypes, learns from their successes and failures, re-designs them, then re-tests them based on user feedback. Here, you measure the results that you obtained in Stage 2.</p>
<ul>
<li>How did the prototype fair compared to the hypothesis?</li>
<li>How do your customers or stakeholders feel about your idea?</li>
<li>Do the insights and data show that this will lead to a successful product, service, or brand?</li>
<li>Should you continue developing it?</li>
</ul>
<h3>Why should you implement design as a process?</h3>
<p>By using a design process, you can ensure that design is well implemented. This results in good design that’s based on understanding people and validated by testing. Good design leads to improved products, services, and brands.</p>
<h4>How can you implement a design process into your organisation?</h4>
<ol>
<li><em><b>Develop your own design process and techniques</b></em><br />
There are many different design processes and there’s no one size fits all. However, by incorporating the three key stages into your organisation&#8217;s process, you can design a process that is well suited to your organisation’s needs.</li>
<li><em> <b>Promote formal but flexible control of the design process</b></em><strong><br />
</strong>A design process is never ridged. Most frameworks shown serve as guidelines and must adapt to the users&#8217; and stakeholders&#8217; needs.</li>
<li><em> <b>Foster a corporate culture that values design</b></em><strong><br />
</strong>A design process is a process that must be considered from start to finish across an organisation. It can’t work within silos and requires participation from everyone from clients to stakeholders. Therefore, a corporate culture that values design needs to foster an environment where design processes can be integrated into the business.</li>
</ol>
<h3>Next month…</h3>
<p>In next month’s Monthly Dose of Design, we’ll discuss <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/monthly-dose-of-design-design-as-a-strategy">level four, using design as a strategy</a>.</p>
<p><em>Header Image: <a href="https://www.pexels.com/@kaboompics?utm_content=attributionCopyText&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_source=pexels">Kaboompics .com,</a> <a href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/in-design-we-trust-billboard-6253/?utm_content=attributionCopyText&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_source=pexels">Pexels</a></em></p>


How to incorporate design into a process’s early stages, or using a design process to improve your services or brand and provide more value to clients.

Using Design as a Process (Part 2)

<p><em>Editor’s Note: This article is part one in the three-part series <strong>The Design Ladder</strong></em><strong>.</strong></p>
<p>In 2020, we discussed what <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/introducing-design-fundamentals-for-researchers">Design Thinking</a> (DT) is, it’s different phases, and how the <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/a-design-thinking-framework-for-market-researchers">DT framework</a> can be applied to market research. Over the next three articles, we’ll use the Danish Design Ladder as a framework to show you how you can use design:</p>
<ol>
<li>As an aesthetic</li>
<li>A process</li>
<li>A strategy</li>
</ol>
<p><span style="font-style: normal !msorm;">This month&#8217;s article will </span><span style="font-style: normal !msorm;">introduce</span><span style="font-style: normal !msorm;"> the design ladder and</span><span style="font-style: normal !msorm;"> design as an aesthetic. </span></p>
<h2>Why is this relevant to market research?</h2>
<p>Good design is always based on user research. And market research’s goal is to improve a product’s value to a business and its customers through understanding users. By understanding how different types of design can add value to products, you can improve your client’s products and ultimately their business.</p>
<h2>What is the Design Ladder?</h2>
<p>The Danish Design Centre’s Design Ladder lists four levels of design.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-27000" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/danish-design-ladder.png" alt="Diagram of the Daish Design Ladder" width="400" height="246"   /></p>
<h3>Level one: Non-design</h3>
<p>Design plays a negligible (small or unimportant) role in the company and non-designers conduct it. As a result, using design in this way leads to businesses overlooking user considerations.</p>
<h3>Level two: Design as form-giving</h3>
<p>Design as a use for aesthetics (a set of ideas or opinions about beauty), in which design often comes into play at the end of a project.</p>
<h3>Level three: Design as a process</h3>
<p>Businesses that integrate design into the development process (a series of actions to achieve a particular end goal) at an early stage.</p>
<h3>Level four: Design as strategy</h3>
<p>Design as a business concept or strategy (a plan of action designed to achieve an overall aim) one that’s able to permeate an organisation and drive innovation.</p>
<p>The Design Ladder shows a shift in design’s understanding. To put it simply, this shift goes from <em>‘designing things’</em> to <em>‘design thinking’</em>. From this ladder we can see how design morphs from design as beautification of products, to a way of solving problems, and to being a strategic tool.</p>
<h2>Why is design important for businesses?</h2>
<p>Design implementation is good for businesses. Companies that use design tend to have higher levels of efficiency and their use of design can come from hiring in-house designers or partnering with design organisations.</p>
<p>Furthermore, companies that use design higher on the ladder tend to use design early-on in any project or use design to support their overall business strategy.</p>
<h2>What is Level 2: Design as an aesthetic?</h2>
<p>This is where businesses view design as purely aesthetic. Market researchers traditionally identify design with this level, considerations range from usability to a product’s aesthetics. Aesthetic design tends to enter at the final stage to beautify or promote products. Most designers term this as ‘styling’. Aesthetic design is typically done by professional designers or by non-designers.</p>
<h2><b>Key considerations of aesthetic design include basic design principles, such as:</b></h2>
<h3>Information Hierarchy</h3>
<p>Information hierarchy is the arrangement of elements that reveals the order of importance. By laying out elements logically and strategically, you’re allowing your user to digest the most important information first.</p>
<h3>Typography</h3>
<p>Typography is an important element of visual design. It&#8217;s crucial that your typography is always legible and that you use no more than two typefaces. This helps simplify the design and makes it easy on the eyes to follow through a document.</p>
<h3>Use of colour</h3>
<p>Create a complementary colour palette that creates contrast in your document, and helps you create a hierarchy by pulling out key points of information. Use different tones of your colour palette throughout your document to keep it consistent, yet still visually appealing.</p>
<p>Three advantages of aesthetic design for market researchers:</p>
<ol>
<li><b><span style="font-style: normal !msorm;">Information is more appealing</span></b><br />
When you deliver information in a more creative format, users pay more attention to the information they receive. For example, here data was visualized in a way that makes the user want to read it.</li>
</ol>
<p><img decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-27012" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/AI-today-AI-tomorrow.png" alt="an infographic on the benefits and negatives of the future of artificial intelligence." width="800" height="1148"   /></p>
<ol start="2">
<li><strong>Information is digestible and understandable</strong><br />
Aesthetic design isn’t only beautifying documents, it also allows you to create a visual narrative and system that’s easy and enjoyable for the user to follow, and therefore more actionable.</li>
</ol>
<div id="attachment_27011" style="width: 810px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-27011" decoding="async" class="wp-image-27011 size-full" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/5e622033760740b17a086831_Northstar-x-ARM-2-e1614898657780.jpg" alt="A collection of stills from an animated YouTube video." width="800" height="486" /><p id="caption-attachment-27011" class="wp-caption-text">Image source: Northstar</p></div>
<ol start="3">
<li><strong>Improvement of usability of information </strong><br />
Aesthetic design is used as a functional purpose to aid navigation. In web design, these are items such as range, radio buttons, checkboxes, location.</li>
</ol>
<p><img decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-27001" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/northstar.png" alt="A screenshot of Northstar.com" width="800" height="427"   /></p>
<h2>Next month&#8230;</h2>
<p>Design as an aesthetic clearly benefits market researchers. But it can do more if used as a process. We’ll discuss this in more detail next month in <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/design-thinking-series-part-2-using-design-as-a-process">part two, Using Design as Process</a>.</p>
<p><em>Header Image: <a href="https://www.pexels.com/@kaboompics?utm_content=attributionCopyText&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_source=pexels">Kaboompics .com</a>, <a href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/working-in-a-group-6224/?utm_content=attributionCopyText&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_source=pexels">Pexels</a></em></p>


Design as an Aesthetic (Part 1)

<p>Our last four Monthly Dose of Design articles have discussed every phase of the <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/introducing-design-fundamentals-for-researchers">Design Thinking (DT)</a> process and how it can be applied to market research. DT is an iterative four-step process that designers use to solve problems. Starting at the Discover phase where you unearth valuable insights, moving to the <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/developing-and-testing-your-design-thinking-ideas-part-4">Deliver phase where you prototype and test solutions to your design brief</a>.</p>
<p>
        <div class="post-related-post">
            <h3>Related</h3>
            <h4><a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/developing-and-testing-your-design-thinking-ideas-part-4">Developing and Testing Your Design Thinking Ideas (Part 4)</a></h4>
        </div>
    </p>
<p>The Design Council developed the DT process over 15 years ago. Its aim was to explain a designer’s process from start to finish. It’s now applied to many areas, from business design to product design. Clearly DT is good! But for market research it can be better. And central to this is having specific market research DT processes.</p>
<h2>Market research’s own adapted DT framework should cover two main objectives:</h2>
<ol>
<li>Create a more detailed structure around the DT process, which is more understandable for market researchers and their clients</li>
<li>Highlight market research’s strengths and weaknesses to see how market researchers can use the DT process</li>
</ol>
<p>We’ve been developing an adapted DT framework specifically designed for market research which modifies the typical DT Framework to achieve these objectives.</p>
<p><div class="su-table su-table-alternate"></p>
<table style="width: 100%;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th style="width: 33%;" colspan="2">RESEARCH</th>
<th style="width: 33%;" colspan="2">CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT</th>
<th style="width: 33%;" colspan="2">TESTING</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="background-color: #fcca03; text-align: center;"><strong>Phase 1</strong></td>
<td style="background-color: #fcca03; text-align: center;"><strong>Phase 2</strong></td>
<td style="background-color: #87c6ed; text-align: center;"><strong>Phase 3</strong></td>
<td style="background-color: #87c6ed; text-align: center;"><strong>Phase 4</strong></td>
<td style="background-color: #aedb9a; text-align: center;"><strong>Phase 5</strong></td>
<td style="background-color: #fcca03; text-align: center;"><strong>Phase 6</strong></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="background-color: #fcca03; text-align: center;">Core Market Research Strengths</td>
<td style="background-color: #fcca03; text-align: center;">Core Market Research Strengths</td>
<td style="background-color: #87c6ed; text-align: center;">Secondary Market Research Strengths</td>
<td style="background-color: #87c6ed; text-align: center;">Secondary Market Research Strengths</td>
<td style="background-color: #aedb9a; text-align: center;">Developing Market Research Strengths</td>
<td style="background-color: #fcca03; text-align: center;">Core Market Research Strengths</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="background-color: #fcca03; text-align: center;"><img decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-25898" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/DT-Framework-phase-1.png" alt="" width="99" height="216" /></td>
<td style="background-color: #fcca03; text-align: center;"><img decoding="async" class="alignleft wp-image-25899" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/DT-Framework-phase-2.png" alt="" width="99" height="221" /></td>
<td style="background-color: #87c6ed; text-align: center;"><img decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-25896" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/DT-Framework-phase-3.png" alt="" width="99" height="223" /></td>
<td style="background-color: #87c6ed; text-align: center;"><img decoding="async" class="alignleft wp-image-25897" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/DT-Framework-phase-4.png" alt="" width="99" height="221" /></td>
<td style="background-color: #aedb9a; text-align: center;"><img decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-25894" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/DT-Framework-phase-5.png" alt="" width="96" height="219" /></td>
<td style="background-color: #fcca03; text-align: center;"><img decoding="async" class="alignleft wp-image-25895" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/DT-Framework-phase-6.png" alt="" width="99" height="219" /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p></div></p>
<p>For a smoother application of the DT framework, we’ve split the process into three areas:</p>
<ul>
<li>Core market research strengths</li>
<li>Secondary market research strengths</li>
<li>Developing market research strengths</li>
</ul>
<p>This framework maps out the strengths and weaknesses specifically for market researchers. This means you can anticipate which phases will require external help to complete. The Discover and Define phases – from which you emerge with a design challenge/problem to solve – are the same as the traditional DT process. However, the remaining phases are different:</p>
<h2>Phase 3: Ideate</h2>
<p><strong><em>What is this?</em></strong></p>
<p>This phase explores and creates as many possible ideas/solutions to the design challenge/problem as possible. These ideas should be proposed in quantity and can be built on to expand their depth.</p>
<h4><em>Why do market researchers need this phase?</em></h4>
<p>To increase insight’s potential to be used in innovation, the extra granularity in this phase shows that market researchers can be involved in the ideation process and think of big ideas, beyond the obvious solutions.</p>
<h2>Phase 4: Selection</h2>
<p><strong><em>What is this?</em></strong></p>
<p>At the “Selection” phase, ideas are prioritized and the ideas with the most potential to solve the design challenge/problem are selected. The aim is to spot potential winners, which can then be developed into a prototype.</p>
<p><strong><em>Why do market researchers need this phase?</em></strong></p>
<p>The original DT process doesn’t discuss “Selection” in great detail. However, given that this phase relies on being able to prioritize and make decisions based on (often) how to solve a business problem, it’d be pertinent to maximize market researchers’ skills in this area to get better design outcomes.</p>
<h2>Phase 5: Prototype</h2>
<p><strong><em>What is this?</em></strong></p>
<p>Having selected the best ideas, you enter the prototyping stage. Here, the best ideas are turned into prototypes – an initial outline of your solution to the problem. Prototypes can be anything from rough sketches and paper interfaces to 3D models and videos.</p>
<p><strong><em>Why do market researchers need this phase?</em></strong></p>
<p>This phase helps market researchers because after selecting an idea to prototype, it can be expanded again to include new variations and possibly be built out in different ways. This means market researchers can present multiple variants of prototypes to clients.</p>
<h2>Phase 6: Test and validate</h2>
<p><strong><em>What is this?</em></strong></p>
<p>Learnings from testing are used to further refine prototypes. Testing can be repeated until you’re satisfied that your prototype solves your design challenge/problem. The goal here is to test and validate your prototype, to ensure it can solve your design challenge/problem.</p>
<p><strong><em>Why do market researchers need this phrase?</em></strong></p>
<p>It’s this final phase where market researcher’s core strengths lie. This means market researchers can be confident they’re testing a prototype in a familiar way. Furthermore, DT’s speed will mean researchers will need to become more agile in how they approach testing and validation.</p>
<p><em>Header Image: <a href="https://unsplash.com/@dtopkin1">Dayne Topkin</a>, <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/Sk-C-om9Jz8">Unsplash</a></em></p>


A Design Thinking Framework for Market Researchers

<p>The last three Monthly Dose of Design articles have discussed what <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/introducing-design-fundamentals-for-researchers">Design Thinking</a> (DT) is, what it means for, and how it can be used by, market researchers and discussed DT’s <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/framing-your-insights-with-a-8220how-might-we8221-statement-part-2">Define</a> and <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/idea-generation-for-market-researchers-part-3">Develop</a> phases.</p>
<p>In the last installment of our <strong>Design Thinking</strong> series, this month we’ll discuss DT’s Deliver phase. By now, you’ll have clearly defined the design problem you want to solve, formulated a <em>‘How Might We’</em> statement to frame how you’ll solve it, and created ideas about how to solve your design problem. Now you’ll prototype and test the best idea.</p>
<h2><strong>What is the Deliver phase?</strong></h2>
<p>The Deliver phase is where you turn your best ideas about how to solve your design problem into a prototype (a rough, preliminary form of the product or service that’ll solve your design problem). However, this isn’t your final output. DT is an iterative process where you’ll keep refining your prototype based on feedback</p>
<p>This is the only DT stage where Designers take the lead. However, as you’ll soon see, a prototype can be built in many ways. And most of them are simple from a design perspective.</p>
<h2>What makes a good prototype?</h2>
<p>Prototyping’s goal is to develop a rough example to 1) test quickly and 2) learn from its failures or successes. Validated learnings allow you to improve the prototype quickly and efficiently, whilst still in its early stages. This means your prototype must be:</p>
<ol>
<li><strong><em>Easily modifiable</em></strong><br />
Changing your prototype quickly and testing it again is key to success. But having an easily modifiable prototype means you can include new ideas and for those to be re-tested</li>
<li><strong><em>Quick to produce</em></strong><br />
You don&#8217;t want to spend a long time developing your prototype, as it&#8217;ll most likely be re-developed as the process continues. Instead of spending time on fine details, the goal is to get a general idea across and get feedback.</li>
<li><strong><em>Cheap to produce</em></strong><br />
You don&#8217;t want to spend lots of money developing your prototype either, as it’ll likely change. Additionally, cheaper prototypes are easier to discard to make way for new ideas.</li>
<li><strong><em>Easily discardable</em></strong><br />
Don’t be afraid to discard your prototype, better solutions can appear during the Deliver process. Not falling in love with a single idea and being able to move on to better options is key to success.</li>
</ol>
<h2>What kind of prototypes are there?</h2>
<p>Prototyping has many mediums. However, it’s best to pick the most appropriate medium for your situation. Here are five examples to choose from:</p>
<p><img decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-25432 size-full" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/sketches-and-diagrams.png" alt="" width="595" height="435"   /></p>
<p><strong><em>Sketches and diagrams</em></strong></p>
<p>These are drawings that visualize your prototype and how it works. Keep them minimal and simple, so your user understands exactly what it is. Sketches and diagrams can help understand how your prototype works.</p>
<div id="attachment_25435" style="width: 710px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-25435" decoding="async" class="wp-image-25435" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/5016637130_e0aaf94715_c-e1604331221898.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="361"   /><p id="caption-attachment-25435" class="wp-caption-text">Photo by <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/21218849@N03/5016637130" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Samuel Mann via Flickr</a></p></div>
<p><strong><em>Paper Interfaces</em></strong></p>
<p>These are paper drawings that resemble the same dimensions you’re designing for. These can be used as the initial prototype for digital solutions e.g. apps. Paper Interfaces allow you to test the user flow and allow for multiple versions, which you can change between.</p>
<div id="attachment_25436" style="width: 710px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-25436" decoding="async" class="wp-image-25436" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/5480900645_e5d66c96d7_k-e1604331489475.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="438"   /><p id="caption-attachment-25436" class="wp-caption-text">Photo by <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/artechanias/5480900645/in/photolist-9mo92b-6vDoii-9mk3NZ-4WDtAK-9PtzS-9vuVyi-9vxXgQ-9vxR8j-9vxXem-9vxRgY-9vuPtK-9vxRiY-9vuPpT-k6kB5z-9kJTsK-D6Rmp-dgXCS4-9zpys8-7Rr9Sa-7RqQUr-7RqQRx-9bAVaK-7Ru6TC-7Ru6Hs-4UBDJG-4UBDCq-5UxV4a-4Uxqs2-FZ96kR-4UBE7d-6rNpTs-svXJCA-23nULEr-9pDbS7-231FuGB-aeMLgQ-babAzX-mPhrz7-mPfYtp-d5X4hw-mPfY9i-mPg8jv-mPfTfv-mPg31V-mPfPHk-mPfHyM-mPfVdB-7h2Kj9-BdYpzn-4yZ5R1/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Art Tech via flickr</a></p></div>
<p><strong><em>Storyboards</em></strong></p>
<p>A storyboard is a visual sequence of how you want to show your product. It breaks downs the presented process into steps and this helps the user visualize the journey. Storyboards are a sequence of sketches showing how your prototype will be used.</p>
<p><img decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-25433" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/videos.png" alt="" width="574" height="322"   /></p>
<p><strong><em>Videos</em></strong></p>
<p>Video can be a recording or reproduction of moving visual images. Videos allow your users to see your prototype in action. This is appropriate for lots of different solutions ranging from digital to service.</p>
<div id="attachment_25437" style="width: 710px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-25437" decoding="async" class="wp-image-25437" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/106674782_74b0972921_c.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="525"   /><p id="caption-attachment-25437" class="wp-caption-text">Photo by <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/goldberg/106674782/in/photolist-aqJGo-4YZLZb-8wHwB4-VkortZ-22BRmyF-bA27HU-7Lucsp-7Lyht3-bxU3vf-4x7tSJ-7LuehM-MKNBL4-Kvxak-54ftny-7DZVhu-auuDb2-bP266V-bP26W6-23ZdtLM-7DZV4U-4YVsET-bxSU8m-5aU1XG-bA2GWd-7LyJjb-8i9W2L-23ZdsWk-aTUpLR-7Lyd4d-22BRksc-7LyfgG-23ZdtoT-8i6LKV-22BRjUi-bNVFRM-h1N66C-h1P9UV-bNUSje-4YVurt-4YVwWK-c9Xm8f-4YZKxu-bA7v6j-bP28NM-bA7swq-bA7xGU-bA7rp3-bP2ayx-bP294e-unNL8g" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Joe Goldberg via flickr</a></p></div>
<p><strong><em>Physical Models </em></strong></p>
<p>A physical mock-up is a 3D visualization of your solution. This allows users to touch, smell, and physically evaluate your prototype.</p>
<h2>How do you test and develop your prototype?</h2>
<p>Once you’ve built your prototype, you must test and validate it. This is something you’ll be familiar with as researchers! So instead of discussing the techniques (which you’ll probably know!), here&#8217;s an example of the prototype for an anti-cyberbullying app that stops messages when profanity or hate is detected and was tested iteratively with relevant people (youths) via testing and learning.</p>
<p>The example below shows our high fidelity prototype, which was sent out for mass testing, however, before this, we started with low fidelity prototypes (sketches and paper interfaces) to share ideas and improve upon.</p>
<h4><em>Step 1: Getting a youth’s opinion </em></h4>
<p>Youths told us that our initial prototype made them behave counterproductively. They felt they should be able to send a message if they wanted and any restrictions should be optional, not forced.</p>
<p><img decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-25431" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/prototype-development.png" alt="" width="596" height="290"   /></p>
<h4><em>Step 2: Proposing new (hopefully better!) ideas</em></h4>
<p>We proposed a <em>“time delay function”</em> to replace the message block function. This gave youths a choice of whether to send a message or not. If they chose to send it, the keyboard places the outgoing message on a five-second timer before sending it to give the youth time to reflect.</p>
<h4><em>Step 3: We asked youths about the benefits of the “time delay function”</em></h4>
<p>Youths agreed that the <em>“time delay function”</em> was less intrusive and made them aware of their actions.</p>
<p>This example demonstrates how testing can lead to new learnings and improved prototypes that are viable and practical through iterations.</p>
<h2>Next month&#8230;</h2>
<p>Next month we’ll look at <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/a-design-thinking-framework-for-market-researchers">a customized Market Research design thinking framework and how it plays towards market research’s strengths</a>, with a look at how to turn research into a product.</p>
<p><i>Header Imag</i><em>e: <a href="https://unsplash.com/@kellysikkema?utm_source=unsplash&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_content=creditCopyText">Kelly Sikkema</a>, <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/ml1IgjV8OvY">Unsplash</a></em></p>


Developing and Testing Your Design Thinking Ideas (Part 4)

<p>Over the previous two Monthly Dose of Design articles, we’ve <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/introducing-design-fundamentals-for-researchers">introduced the topic of Design Thinking </a>(DT), why it’s important for market researchers, and discussed the DT process’s <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/framing-your-insights-with-a-8220how-might-we8221-statement-part-2">‘Define’ phase</a>. This month in our four-part <strong>Design Thinking </strong>series. we’re discussing the DT process’s ‘Develop’ phase and sharing three key idea generation techniques you can use.</p>
<h2>A quick recap</h2>
<p>Before you generate ideas, you should’ve synthesized your insights into a <a title="Monthly Dose of Design: Framing Your Insights With a “How Might We” Statement" href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/framing-your-insights-with-a-8220how-might-we8221-statement-part-2" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">‘How Might We’ statement</a>. This statement aligns your team, and your stakeholders, on the challenge you’re trying to solve. Once you have alignment on your <a title="Monthly Dose of Design: Framing Your Insights With a “How Might We” Statement" href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/framing-your-insights-with-a-8220how-might-we8221-statement-part-2" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">‘How Might We’ statement</a>, you can progress to the ‘Develop’ phase.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<div id="attachment_25101" style="width: 805px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/news-opinion/what-framework-innovation-design-councils-evolved-double-diamond" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-25101" decoding="async" class="wp-image-25101 size-full" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Double-Diamond.png" alt="" width="795" height="466"   /></a><p id="caption-attachment-25101" class="wp-caption-text">Source: The Design Council</p></div>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h2>What is the Develop Phase?</h2>
<p>The ‘Develop’ phase is where (ideally diverse) teams start thinking of creative solutions to the problem they&#8217;re trying to solve. A diverse team means more perspectives are provided. This creates greater collective intelligence and promotes functional debate and disagreement. The ‘Develop’ phase aims to generate as many ideas as possible, regardless of feasibility. This ensures a wide range of potential design routes, some of which will eventually be prototyped.</p>
<h2>Why is it important for market researchers?</h2>
<p>This is usually where market researchers hand over to designers and exit the DT process. However, it’s crucial for market researchers to help create ideas. Market researchers have conducted research on the user/product/service and understand the problem that needs solving.</p>
<h2>Six considerations for producing ideas</h2>
<ol>
<li><a title="Monthly Dose of Design: Framing Your Insights With a “How Might We” Statement" href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/framing-your-insights-with-a-8220how-might-we8221-statement-part-2" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><strong><em>Keep to the &#8216;How Might We&#8217; statement and stay focused on the topic</em></strong></a><br />
Staying focused is crucial – if you stray from the How Might We statement and deviate from the aligned vision, you won’t solve the right problem.</li>
<li><strong><em>Defer judgment or criticism and encourage weird, wacky, and wild ideas</em></strong><br />
Ideation sessions should be a safe space where people can freely share their ideas and not be judged.</li>
<li><strong><em>Aim for quantity and ruthlessness</em></strong><br />
The most successful innovation systems create ideas en masse and kill losing ideas quickly. As we’re going wide and broad, we want to explore all possible solutions. By generating as many ideas as possible, we can ensure that we have a wide range of ideas to test.</li>
<li><strong><em>Build on each other’s ideas</em></strong><br />
Approach each other as friends, not foes. Cooperation and building on each other&#8217;s ideas are key in expanding ideas and helps create variations of an idea.</li>
<li><strong><em>Be visual</em></strong><br />
Be as visual as possible. You don’t have to be an artist to visualize your ideas, rough sketches are sufficient. Being visual helps open new possibilities and creates an interpretation of the idea which can easily be built on.</li>
<li><strong><em>Lots of ideas are great, but you can’t develop all of them</em></strong><br />
From the ideation sessions, you’ll generate lots of ideas. However, you can’t develop them all and will only take one or two forwards. We’ll discuss how you choose which ideas to take forward later on.</li>
</ol>
<h2>Three idea generation techniques</h2>
<p>Many different idea generation techniques exist, but, we’re only going to discuss three:</p>
<h3>1. Crazy Eights – generating lots of ideas</h3>
<p><img decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-25105" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/1-300x227.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="302"   /></p>
<p>Crazy Eights is a fast-paced activity that stimulates creativity by asking individual team members to sketch at least eight potential solutions to the How Might We statement in eight minutes.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-25103" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/2-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="300"   /></p>
<p>Team members then present their ideas to the rest of the group and discuss them.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<div id="attachment_25104" style="width: 410px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-25104" decoding="async" class="wp-image-25104" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/3-300x224.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="299"   /><p id="caption-attachment-25104" class="wp-caption-text">Crazy Eights in action.</p></div>
<p>Feedback is then provided on the potential solutions so they can be developed further.</p>
<h3>2. Collaborative drawing – learning from one another</h3>
<p>Team members have five minutes to draw their ideas and line them up alongside the ideas of other members on a canvas. Ideas are then compared, and team members find ways different ideas can co-exist.</p>
<h3>3. Mission Impossible &#8211; working with seemingly impossible limitations</h3>
<p>Mission Impossible centers around exaggerating existing constraints to where they are seemingly impossible to solve. This encourages people to think laterally and outside of the box to discover new and exciting solutions.</p>
<p>Examples of limitations:<em> ‘How do we build a house in one day?’ and ‘How do we build a house using 100% recyclable materials’. </em></p>
<p>If you’re running multiple ideation sessions, or have lots of people in your session, you can split your session into smaller groups and provide each group with a different limitation. Like all the techniques discussed, this is a fast technique and should have a time limit of 5-10 mins.</p>
<h2>Voting</h2>
<p>From the many ideas you generate, you’ll need to pick a couple to develop further as it’s impractical to develop them all. Voting helps with this.</p>
<p>Voting creates a prioritized hierarchy of the ideas and the one with the most votes is taken to the Deliver phase where it’ll be turned into a prototype. It’s important that people vote independently as if people vote publicly, they can fall foul of HiPPO (where team members follow the highest-paid person&#8217;s opinion) or groupthink, where they simply follow the crowd. There are lots of ways to vote: via post-it notes, or digitally where one person collects all of the votes and announces the winners.</p>
<h2>Next month&#8230;</h2>
<p>Next month we’ll dive into DT’s <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/developing-and-testing-your-design-thinking-ideas-part-4">Deliver phase and discuss the most effective ways to prototype your solutions and test them</a>.</p>
<p><em>Header Image: <a href="https://unsplash.com/@mwilner">Martin Wilner</a>, <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/J1ActGs9Qzg">Unsplash</a></em></p>


Idea Generation For Market Researchers (Part 3)

<p>Design Thinking is an iterative process that designers use to generate design solutions to problems. By understanding this process, you can expand your offering to clients. The process is visualized by the <a href="https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/news-opinion/what-framework-innovation-design-councils-evolved-double-diamond" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Design Council’s Double Diamond</a>. The overall process combines identifying the user’s needs and pain points, then solving them based on what’s technologically feasible and commercially practical.</p>
<p>In last month’s Monthly Dose of Design, we introduced the topic of <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/introducing-design-fundamentals-for-researchers" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Design Thinking.</a> In the second installment of our four-part <strong>Design Thinking </strong>series, this month we’ll discuss the process’s ‘Define’ phase. Here we’ll discuss how to form a ‘problem statement’ and a ‘How Might We’ statement. Combined, these statements lead to brainstorming and eventually creating ideas. The Define phase shapes the entire problem-solving process. This then enables researchers to successfully exit the first diamond and begin innovating.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3><img decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-24880 size-full" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/the-double-design-diamond.png" alt="The double diamond of design" width="660" height="400"   /></h3>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h2>What is the Define Phase?</h2>
<p>The Define phase forms the brief for the next phases. You start by gathering the research collected in the previous Discover phase. You then synthesize it into a problem statement – a statement that clearly defines the challenge you’re trying to solve. A clear problem statement means you, your team, and your stakeholders can align on a user-centric, common goal.</p>
<h2>How to write a problem statement</h2>
<p>There are no specific steps to writing a problem statement. However, there are areas which you should identify with based on your research. For example:</p>
<p><strong>Youths</strong></p>
<p>Persona, character, role</p>
<p><strong>Need</strong> to be online</p>
<p>Action, situation</p>
<p><strong>Because </strong>they enjoy being connected and having fun</p>
<p>Aim, need, outcome</p>
<p><strong>But</strong> they also realize that the internet can be addictive and is a place where bullying occurs, causing anxiety and low self-esteem.</p>
<p>Restriction obstacle, friction</p>
<h3>A Problem Statement’s Common Areas Are:</h3>
<ol>
<li><strong>Persona</strong> &#8211; The persona is your problem statement’s focus. Essentially who you’re designing for. For example, businesses, people, products.</li>
<li><strong>Action</strong> &#8211; Based on your research, list what tasks the persona is trying to accomplish or the situation that requires completion. For example, increasing revenue, eating ice cream, improving an existing platform.</li>
<li><strong>Need</strong> &#8211; Why does this action matter and what leads to these needs that the persona is looking to accomplish? From here try to understand the importance of why this problem needs to be solved, and what value a solution to it will bring the persona. For example, income, happiness, useability</li>
<li><strong>Obstacles</strong> &#8211; What’s the problems and pain-points? Stating the obstacles helps you look in-depth at what you must overcome and parameters to operate in. For example, a competitive market, health problems, budget.</li>
</ol>
<h2>Defining the challenge &#8211; &#8216;How might we&#8217;</h2>
<p>Once you know what the problem is, you must construct a ‘How Might We’ statement to frame the design challenge that’ll solve your problem. This means questioning your insights and framing them to uncover and explore new ideas.</p>
<p>These are often used to launch brainstorms and generate ideas in Design Thinking’s Develop phase. By asking a How Might We statement, you can generate alternative ideas for tackling a problem.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><em>“Every design challenge at IDEO begins with a “How Might We?”</em><br />
<em>Navigating between the overly general and too specific.”</em><br />
<em>Tim Brown, Executive Chair at IDEO</em></p>
<h2>How to form a &#8216;How might we&#8217; statement</h2>
<p>There are no specific steps to forming a How Might We statement. However, the width of framing the problem is vital.</p>
<p>A properly framed How Might We statement doesn’t lead you towards an intended solution. However, it gives you the perfect space and parameters to think creatively. The challenge of creating a How Might We question lies in framing your design challenge in its sweet spot.</p>
<p>If the design challenge is framed too broadly, there’ll be too many factors in place. This will make your problem too difficult to solve. However, if the design challenge is too narrow, it hinders the new idea’s development. For example (in the context of youth cyberbullying):</p>
<p><strong>Framing your problem too wide: How might we help youths be relaxed</strong><br />
This statement is too wide as too many factors are involved. Furthermore, it has no stated medium that narrows down where youths want to relax.</p>
<p><strong>Framing your problem too narrow: How might we control and lock phones of youths to prevent anxiety</strong><br />
This statement is too narrow as it’s confined to locking and controlling phones. This will limit your ideas to this small space and gives limited creative freedom to come up with new ideas.</p>
<p><strong>The sweet spot: How might we help youth be conscious while being connected</strong><br />
This statement is just right. You know you’re working in space where youths are being connected – narrowing the focus to several devices. Furthermore, the decision to state the challenge to “help youth be conscious” could range from controlling them to educating them.</p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>As simple as a ‘How Might We’ statement might be, the value it provides is to give you focus and a unique perception of the problem to help you generate ideas creatively and effectively in the Develop phase of the Design Thinking process.</p>
<h2>Next month&#8230;</h2>
<p>In next month’s Monthly Dose of Design, we will explore the next phase of the double diamond, <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/idea-generation-for-market-researchers-part-3">Develop, and discuss key tips for idea generation</a>.</p>
<p><em>Header Image: <a href="https://unsplash.com/@silvanarnet">Silvan Arnet</a>, <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/PFqfV5bn91A">Unsplash</a></em></p>


Framing Your Insights With a “How Might We” Statement (Part 2)

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Monthly Dose of Design’s previous three articles discusses <strong>The Fundamentals of How You Can Build a Digital Platform for Research Purposes</strong>, step by step fro</span>m <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/wireframing-101-for-market-researchers">wireframing</a> to <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/user-interface-design-basics-part-2">user interface design</a>, to <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/market-research-industry/writing-for-digital-platforms-part-3">copywriting for digital platforms</a>. We’ve now reached t<span style="font-weight: 400;">he final topic in our four-part series &#8211; User Interface (UI) Interactions. This topic will cover what UI interactions are, how they can help researchers and how to improve UI interactions.  </span></p>
<h2>What are UI interactions?</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Interaction design focusses on specific points where user interacts with your digital platform. These points occur when the user has triggered an action and the action must be communicated to them. For example, clicking a button or loading a new page, animations, and page transitions.</span></p>
<h2>How will UI interactions help researchers?</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Interactions are crucial elements to consider when building your digital platform for two reasons:</span></p>
<h4><i>1. Telling a user that an action has/can be triggered and that something is about to happen</i></h4>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">A simple example of this is a cursor hover which changes the color of text or images. This informs the user that they can click on the object and that by clicking on the object it will change color, leading them away from the current location. This can be used in online concept evaluations where concepts need to be assessed in different colors. </span></p>
<h4><i>2. Providing interactive information that improves user experience</i></h4>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Displaying a loading animation when users upload a document communicates that the upload is progressing and the remaining wait time. This gives the user an expected timing of when the function is completed and is one of the earliest forms of user interaction design. Engaging loading animations are important to keep the attention of users who are conducting tasks like uploading self-ethnography videos. Losing their attention in the uploaded process risks losing valuable video insights. </span></p>
<h2>Four ways researchers can improve UI interactions</h2>
<h4><i>1. Timing</i></h4>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Timing is a fundamental aspect of animations used in user interactions. A lengthy transition will frustrate users, but one which is too quick to deliver useful information lacks functionality. The general timing for most UI animations is 0.3 to 0.6 seconds. However, elaborated motions like transitions may take longer. This is important to consider when quickly displaying advertising stimulus in attempting to recreate real-world interactions with adverts.  </span></p>
<h4><i>2. Anticipation</i></h4>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Anticipation is essential to UI design. It tells the user what’s about to happen, meaning they can prepare themselves accordingly. For example, having the appearance of a button change when the user hovers over it builds anticipation and tells the user that this is a clickable link. </span></p>
<h4><i>3. Staging</i></h4>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The order of how objects are placed on a digital platform is crucial as it helps direct the user’s attention to specific objects. For example, if uploading multiple stimuli, users are most likely going to engage more with the first and last stimulus uploaded. Understanding these biases means you eliminate them from your platform or allow you test hypotheses around framing biases. </span></p>
<h4><i>4. Exaggeration</i></h4>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The most important elements of your UI can be exaggerated by using animation to make them stand out and help the user achieve your overall goal. For example, having your call-to-action appear 1-2 seconds after the rest of your content makes the call-to-action stand out. This exaggeration of call-to-actions should be applied when trying to engage clients with insights communicated on microsites. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">So to recap the main parts of building a digital platform: </span></p>
<h2>Wireframing<span style="font-weight: 400;"> </span></h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Designing a platform’s structure to lay out a blueprint for your content and functionality before any design is done.</span></p>
<h2>User Interface Design</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The “skin” and visual characteristics of your platform consisting of colors, shapes, images, and fonts.</span></p>
<h2>Copy Writing for Digital Platforms</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The ways people read the copy on a digital platform differs from print. Be sensitive to these differences to maximize digital copy’s impact.</span></p>
<h2>UI Interactions</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Using animations and interactions to communicate and improve the user experience.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">We’ve hoped you’ve enjoyed this series!</span></p>
<p><em>Header Image: <a href="https://unsplash.com/@alvarordesign">Alvaro Reyes</a>, <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/qWwpHwip31M">Unsplash</a></em></p>


UI Interactions (Part 4)

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In the previous two articles, we’ve explored <strong>The Fundamentals of How You Can Build a Digital Platform for Research Purposes</strong> in our four-part series. We’ve already cov</span>ered <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/wireframing-101-for-market-researchers">Wireframing</a> and <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/user-interface-design-basics-part-2">User Interface Design</a>. This mo<span style="font-weight: 400;">nth we’re discussing how to write copy so it’s an effective design asset for digital research platforms.  </span></p>
<h2>What’s the difference between writing copy for print and digital?</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The difference between writing for print and digital platforms lies in how information is read. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;"> Reading print:</span></p>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Is often for leisure</span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Involves less distractions than reading on digital </span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Copy flows in a linear format from the top to bottom</span></li>
</ul>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Reading on digital platforms:</span></p>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Is often a task-driven activity &#8211;  instructions or gathering information</span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Has many distractions with pictures and moving parts</span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Has multiple-direction reading formats (back and forth between pages and navigation menus)</span></li>
</ul>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Digital platform copy exists to guide and inform. It’s a direct line of communication between your platform and your user. Therefore, digital copy must simply deliver information to your user that’s easy to understand at a glance.</span></p>
<h2>Why are digital copywriting skills important for researchers?</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Effective digital copywriting is integral to your digital platform’s user experience, user interface and overall usability. Users have shorter attention spans than ever. If your copy is overcomplicated and difficult to understand, users will struggle to navigate your platform and quickly lose interest. This will result in poor insights from participants or poor client engagement (depending on the platform’s purpose).</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Resultantly, you must consider four things when writing copy for digital platforms:</span></p>
<ul>
<li><b>Purpose</b>
<ul>
<li><b><span style="font-weight: 400;">You must consider the purpose of your copy. What is its aim? And how is it aiding your users in reaching their goal?</span></b></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><b>Simplicity</b>
<ul>
<li>When writing for digital platforms, simplicity is key. This is because digital readers are easily distracted due to there being buttons to click on, progress bars and animations</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><b>Tonality</b>
<ul>
<li><b><span style="font-weight: 400;">Central to having the correct tone is knowing your audience. For example, for a sample of B2B finance professionals, your tonality should be more serious and formal vs. a youth sample which should be simple and lighthearted</span></b></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><b>Length</b>
<ul>
<li><b><span style="font-weight: 400;">Your copy’s length will vary based on your audience and subject matter. Remember that regardless of how long or short your copy is, make sure you are effectively getting your point across</span></b></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><b>Visual Hierarchy</b>
<ul>
<li><b><span style="font-weight: 400;">The copy is a key visual asset of your user interface. Often users scan online content looking for the most relevant sections to them. Consequently, you need to correctly ‘signpost’ content. For example:</span></b>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Headlines must be the largest text elements on the page</span></li>
<li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Subheaders should be the smaller but still impactful</span></li>
<li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Body copy is typically the longest piece of text </span></li>
<li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Footers should be the smallest in size. This signals it&#8217;s the least important information on the page</span></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">With your copy now sorted, it’s time to concentrate on microcopy!</span></p>
<h2>What is microcopy?</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Microcopy is generally smaller copy that consists of 1-3 words, or a short phrase, compared to regular copy which is a lot longer. It refers to the instructional text that guides you on a website or app. Microcopy nudges the user to complete tasks. Such tasks can include subscribing, purchasing, filling in a form or sharing a product or service. </span><b> </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">Call to actions (CTAs), buttons, notifications, error messages and menus are Microcopy. Their main purpose is to help your user navigate the user interface. </span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br />
</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br />
</span>Here are 4 key considerations when writing your UX microcopy:</p>
<ul>
<li><b>Keep it concise</b>
<ul>
<li><b><span style="font-weight: 400;">Less is always more. Keep your copy simple, catchy and to the point. This means users can intuitively reach their end goal. Additionally, avoid technical jargon &#8211; users don’t have extensive knowledge of web design or mechanics</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;"><br />
</span></b></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><strong>Set the scene</strong>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Context is key for microcopy, it subconsciously guides your users and helps them reach their end goal. </span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br />
</span></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><strong>Take Action</strong>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Microcopy often takes the form of CTAs. These are usually 1-2 words or short phrases that are designed to make your user immediately respond and do something. Therefore, make this tone authoritative, clear and action-based</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br />
</span></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><strong>Authenticity</strong>
<ul>
<li>Authenticity is what designers call “dark UX”. This is a term deemed to mislead and send users into tasks not intended as written. This damages the experience of the user. Be truthful about what is written and do not intentionally manipulate users by leading them on</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<p>For example, a button can be written as “You have completed the survey” but when users click on that hoping to have finished and receive a reward, they could be sent to another section which task them to complete another 3 more questions about themselves.</p>
<h2>Next month&#8230;</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Next month is the last in our four-part series on <strong>The Fundamentals of How You Can Build a Digital Platform for Research Purposes</strong>. We will be focusing on </span><a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/ui-interactions-part-4">Interaction Design</a><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></p>
<p><em>Header Image: <a href="https://unsplash.com/@dtbosse">Daniel Thomas</a>, <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/6_NXEMZbUq0">Unsplash</a></em></p>


Writing for Digital Platforms (Part 3)

<p>Last month, we discussed <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/wireframing-101-for-market-researchers" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">wireframing</a> as the first part in our four-part series, <strong>The Fundamentals of How You Can Build a Digital Platform for Research Purposes</strong>. Wireframing is how you design a platform’s structure and layout a blueprint for content and functionality while considering user needs and journey. This month, we will discuss User Interface (UI) design and how to start designing once you have created your wireframes.</p>
<h2>What is UI design?</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">UI design is the ‘face’ and visual characteristics of your platform (polling app, ethnographic diary, gamified survey). It consists of visual hierarchy, layout, typography, and color.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">UI design is about practice, patience, and constant learning. No one gets it right the first time. You’ll run into issues such as wrong button sizing or text sizes that might be too small to read. As you start designing and practicing, you’ll start to eliminate such problems by experience and create a platform that is user-friendly and easy-to-use. Also, best practices change often and rapidly in the digital realm. Therefore, it’s important to stay informed</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br />
</span></p>
<h2>How can researchers use UI design?</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">UI design is integral for researchers when building digital research platforms. When done successfully, it enhances the user experience and makes the platform more engaging. In turn, this yields better insights. Conversely, when UI is poor, participants can misinterpret instructions and become disengaged. This will reduce insight quality.  </span></p>
<h2>Five simple and effective tips to use when designing your user interface:</h2>
<h3>1. Train Your Eye</h3>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Developing a keen eye for good visual design may sound daunting. However, by visiting </span><a href="https://dribbble.com/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dribbble.com</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, </span><a href="https://www.behance.net/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Behance.com</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> and </span><a href="https://pinterest.com"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Pinterest.com</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> you can study how UI designers work. Watch how they layout their platforms, use white space, typography and spacing. Training your eye can come from simply looking at how UI designers work. This will give you a better understanding of how to better design your own platform.</span></p>
<h3>2. Read About Best Practices</h3>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">UI design is constantly changing. This is because designers are always testing and discovering new insights to better their interfaces. UI design is obsolete within a year. Daily articles on </span><a href="https://medium.com/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Medium.com</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> will help you keep abreast of the latest updates on best practices in UI design</span></p>
<h3>3. Use Established Design Patterns</h3>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Websites and apps like </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">F</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">acebook</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">, </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Instagram</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">, </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Netflix</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> and </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Whatsapp</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> have conditioned users to expect key elements and design principles to be consistent across different platforms. For example, having a red close button in the top right or left corner. Therefore, don’t unnecessarily design your online platform. Ultimately, it will frustrate your users and they will quickly lose interest. This will disengage them and reduce insight quality.</span></p>
<h3>4. Visual Hierarchy</h3>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Visual hierarchy is the arrangement of elements in the order of their importance. As every digital platform has a purpose/goal, having a strong hierarchy is crucial. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">For example, if your platform’s purpose is for polling, the “Poll Now” button is the most visually important element. This is followed by checkboxes to state the choices the user wants to make. Other elements such as the menu, back and home buttons are at the bottom of the hierarchy. Visual hierarchy is established by using a combination of size, typography, white spaces and colour to direct the user to do what is most important.</span></p>
<h3>5. Share Your Work For Feedback</h3>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">So you’ve followed designers, read about best practices and established a strong visual hierarchy that you believe that users will find easy to use. However, in the UI design world, there’s always re-iterations and something to improve. Unlike traditional design such as print, the digital world provides the flexibility to improve on your work, even when it’s gone “live”.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Feedback is probably the most important aspect of UI design. When designing user interfaces, it&#8217;s imperative to consider multiple perspectives and demographics, so you can be inclusive of everyone using your platform. Potential improvements can be easily identified from user testing. This is because users may interact with, and interpret your UI differently to how you initially envisioned, which may not have been obvious to you in the beginning. For example, if you are designing a kid’s research platform for 8-year-old children to interact with, a 20-something designer wouldn’t be able to tell how an 8-year-old child would think and interact with your platform. The same goes for different demographics of people you design for, elderly, people with disabilities, etc. You need to ask how your users find your products instead of guessing what works best for them.</span></p>
<h2>Next month&#8230;</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Next month’s Monthly Dose of Design will talk about <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/market-research-industry/writing-for-digital-platforms-part-3">the basics of copywriting and how we can tie a sense of tonality and function to your platform</a>.</span></p>
<p><em>Header Image: <a href="https://unsplash.com/@uxstore">UX Store</a>, <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/jJT2r2n7lYA">Unsplash</a></em></p>


User Interface Design Basics (Part 2)

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The shift to online platforms means that researchers are looking for ways to best engage participants digitally. While traditional platforms are still widely used in research, they lack many utilities, such as functionality and interactiveness, that newer digital platforms (apps, websites and gamified surveys) have. </span></p>
<p><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Over the next four articles, we will talk in-depth about the fundamentals of how you can build a digital platform for research purposes. The articles will cover four areas:</span></i></p>
<ol>
<li>Wireframing</li>
<li><a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/ui-interactions-part-4">Interface design basics</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/market-research-industry/writing-for-digital-platforms-part-3">Copy basics</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/user-interface-design-basics-part-2">Interactions</a></li>
</ol>
<h2>What is a wireframe?</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wireframing is how you design a platform’s structure. It’s used to lay out a blueprint for content and functionality while taking into account user needs and user journeys</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></p>
<h2>How is a wireframe used for researchers?</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wireframes are the first step in the process for researchers designing digital platforms. Wireframes provide a naked layout of a digital platform with no user interface design whatsoever. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">As a result, wireframes are critical for the following reasons:</span></p>
<h2>Planning overall infrastructure for a digital platform</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">You should ensure that you build a digital platform that covers all research objectives. Similarly to building questionnaires and discussion guides, this should be done with detailed planning. Early-stage planning and structuring create a ‘better research experience’. Therefore, the same logic applies when building a digital research platform.</span></p>
<h2>Address potential problems early 0n</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">This is to avoid the duration needed on platforms being too long and prevent boredom, participant fatigue and drop out. How often have you created a discussion guide or questionnaire that is clunky or too long? Wireframing helps avoid this issue in a digital context.</span></p>
<h2>Routing multiple avenues efficiently</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">This creates a better research experience leading to better participant engagement. For example,  a gamified survey’s routing has many paths a user can take. Therefore, planning is needed to predict where the user will go to. By using wireframes, we can develop multiple screens, plan different paths users will take, change the flow quickly and form the platform’s architecture. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Using wireframes allow you to build an interface structure that helps solve routing questions such as:</span></p>
<ul>
<li><b><span style="font-weight: 400;">How would the user stop the game?</span></b></li>
<li><span style="font-weight: 400;">How does the user check his points?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-weight: 400;">How does the user know how much more to play?</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="list-style-type: none;">
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">How does he come back to the main screen?</span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">How does he restart the game?</span></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<p>To meet these needs, wireframes must:</p>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Show and support the flow of the user’s journey</span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Clearly outline the layout and infrastructure</span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Easily fit all intended features into the wireframe</span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Clearly provide a description of the user interface</span></li>
</ul>
<h2>Tips for building a wireframe</h2>
<p><b><i>1. Set Clear Expectations</i></b></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wireframing must be goal-related &#8211; i.e. what does success look like? Be clear on what your platform’s goal is before you start building a wireframe.</span></p>
<p><b><i>2. Keep it Simple</i></b></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">When we have multiple needs to fulfill or elements to include, wireframing can get confusing. Take the time to establish a hierarchy in your elements. Identify the most important functions within each layout and from there, only focus on one layout option at a time for your wireframe. </span></p>
<p><b><i>3. Use the Right Tools</i></b></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">You can use to create wireframes using many tools. It&#8217;s best to start off using pen and paper so you have a rough understanding of your platform’s flow. Once you’re happy with your pen and paper plan, then transfer your initial wireframe into specialist software such as InvisionApp, UXpin, and Axure. </span></p>
<p><b><i>4. Don’t Use Color</i></b></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The goal of wireframing is to build a simple layout that conveys flow and steps in your process. Therefore, the focus should be on the experience you are creating, not visual design. You should focus on aesthetics like color, shapes, and patterns later in your design process. It’s best to think of wireframes as a flow chart of your user’s experience, rather than a visual design solution</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></p>
<p><b><i>5. Consistency is Key</i></b></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wireframes should facilitate an understanding of how an experience starts and where people are going during an experience. It’s crucial to keep things consistent in order to avoid confusion. Keep buttons, menus, instructions and object placement consistent so it makes sense at a glance. Focusing on how to improve the user journey rather than looking for your assets will result in a better wireframe</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></p>
<p><b><i>6. Use Real Content</i></b></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wireframe’s advantage is that you can quickly use actual content to see if it works without worrying about design aesthetics. Content usually comes in different quantities that change the flow of a design. This is the best opportunity to see if everything fits, and rebuild your wireframe it if it doesn’t.</span></p>
<p><b><i>7. Communicate Functionalities and Interactions Statically</i></b></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Functionalities and interactions for digital platforms come at the prototyping stage. This is more time-intensive than wireframing. The purpose of wireframing is speed and the agility to stop building a concept and build another easily. Interactions can be simply listed rather than animating or making one. </span></p>
<h2>Next month&#8230;</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">We will be focussing on the <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/ui-interactions-part-4">interface design basics</a>.</span></p>
<p><em>Header Image: <a href="https://unsplash.com/@kellysikkema">Kelly Sikkema</a>, <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/io0ZLYbu31s">Unsplash</a></em></p>


Wireframing 101 for Market Researchers

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Designing new, creative research methodologies which use different digital research platforms to gain information means you often need a greater design focus vs. when you use traditional research methods. This is because creative, and often gamified, methodologies </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">can</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> be confusing for research participants if it’s not clear how to use them. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The field of design that brings clarity to how things are used is ‘onboarding design’.  Onboarding design is the design of instructions and giving a simple tour of the experience &#8211; in this case, a digital research platform.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The onboarding process is the first point of contact between your digital platform and research participants. It’s an explanation of how the participant should effectively navigate the platform. This is essential because participants need to have a clear understanding of how a digital platform works in order to use it and provide you with quality information. If research participants don’t understand a digital research platform they’re using, they will instantly become disengaged. This affects the quality of the information you elicit and the insights you generate. Onboarding design aims to communicate instructions in a way that’s clear, memorable and understandable. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Benchmarks for onboarding don’t exist. A bank on-boards people differently to a fashion retailer. This means you cannot use the same onboarding methods for a gamified survey as you can a mobile ethnography diary. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">However, there are four universal onboarding principles you can use to make your onboarding instructions clear, memorable and understandable:</span></p>
<h2>1. Understand your participant</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">At the heart of every well-designed platform and process is a good understanding of the participants who are using it. This is because you need to reflect the type of participant in your onboarding flow. For example, if the primary participants are teenagers, the onboarding process, design and tonality will be completely different compared to if the primary participants are aged 50-65. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">However, some basic instructional design tips apply to all participant audiences:</span></p>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Stay away from any kind of technical, complicated jargon &#8211; they’re unlikely to be understood</span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Break up your information in bite-sized chunks for easy reading</span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Categorize instructions</span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Use a design hierarchy &#8211; place the most important things to know the beginning</span></li>
</ul>
<h2>2. Provide effective, intuitive instructions</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">For some participants, it can be challenging to use a new platform for the first time. Therefore you need to be selective with the amount of information you show participants. Set your instructions to bite-size blocks of content, if possible, the size of a tweet (280 characters). No one wants to be greeted by a wall of text or 10-page document. In fact, most participants are excited to start off without fully reading the instructions. The goal here is to not lose the participant’s interest before even using the platform and maintain a high level of excitement and positivity as they start to use it. </span></p>
<h2>3. Be predictable</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Research participants are conditioned by the internet and content providers like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Therefore you shouldn’t “reinvent the wheel”. During the onboarding process keep things easy for participants by placing buttons and waypoints in predictable areas. Eg. the “back” button on the left and “next” button on the right, similar to a web browser. The general consistency of where these buttons are placed should be the same throughout both the onboarding process and platform experience. This will make navigation as simple as possible for research participants.</span></p>
<h2>4. Test, learn and improve</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Even experienced platform designers don’t get onboarding design right on the first time. Each platform you design is different, and you will run into different problems on how to instruct new participants. The only way to understand the effectiveness of your onboarding design is to test it before fully using. The idea of ‘piloting’ may be old-fashioned, but it has an important role in onboarding design. Key areas to assess your onboarding design are:</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br />
</span></p>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Can participants find their way around the platform?</span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Do participants find the platform interesting to use? </span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">How successfully/unsuccessfully did participants manage to onboard?</span></li>
</ul>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">However, it isn’t enough to get ‘measures’ in these areas. You will have to obtain feedback in a way which means you can make improvements </span></p>
<p><b></b><span style="font-weight: 400;">The purpose of using digital platforms for creative research methodologies is to better engage participants and get high-quality information from them. Effective onboarding of research participants is key to this. If onboarding design is clear, memorable and understandable you’ll capture the high-quality information you desire on which to generate your insights.</span></p>
<p><em>Header Image: <a href="https://unsplash.com/@dunc_in">Duncan Meyer</a>, <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/xruML_FcCOk">Unsplash</a></em></p>


Instructional and Onboarding Design

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The benefits of delivering insights to your clients in a data-based story are well known:</span></p>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Stories are more memorable and understandable vs. reportage </span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">The better insights are remembered and understood, the more likely they are to be actioned</span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">The actioning of insights leads to both demonstrable business outcomes and increases value perceptions of insights to a business</span></li>
</ul>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">However, knowing how to tell a data-based story that is effective by way of being memorable, understandable and actionable is challenging. Especially in the tl:dr (too long, didn’t read) culture that exists today. This is made even harder given that the benchmark for data-based stories is exceptionally high due to the data-tainment used by the sports industry, TED and mainstream media’s use of data visualization. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Effective data storytelling rests on the shoulders of four stages; knowing your audience, planning, messaging and visualization.  </span></p>
<h2>Stage 1: Knowing your audience</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Having a clear understanding of your audience helps you determine how to best engage with them. For example:</span></p>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Knowing their insight needs helps you to focus your story </span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Being aware of how ‘data savvy’ they are informs how simple your visualization must be </span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Recognizing topics they’re sensitive towards can inform your tone of voice </span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Knowing how they communicate will inform the platform (digital or print) you use to tell your story </span></li>
</ul>
<h2>Stage 2: Planning</h2>
<p><b><i>A beginning, a middle, and an end</i></b></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Before designing charts, images or illustrations, look at your data and create a storyboard (plan). Like all good stories, your data-based story needs a beginning, a middle and an end. The planning stage exists to create a narrative that is clear for the audience to follow, before deciding on the messages and visualizations to use. The key is to structure the key points and how they flow together. Remember to keep your narrative clear and easy to follow. A complicated narrative risks losing your audience&#8217;s attention. </span></p>
<p><b><i>Exploration is key for interactivity</i></b></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Exploration helps create interesting and unique experiences for your audience. By structuring your data so that it’s not all given away at the start, you are able to maintain high levels of engagement with your audience, as well as sustaining their interest throughout your narrative. </span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br />
</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br />
</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Anchoring is also a key factor to consider when planning your narrative. Anchoring is a behavioral economics term that suggests the first piece of information your audience receives can have a drastic effect on their future decisions. Therefore, it is imperative to consider what order you present your findings within your narrative, as it could impact how they respond to the rest of your findings. </span></p>
<p><b><i>The story’s goal</i></b></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Determining the goal is a critical point in visual storytelling. Without purpose, there is no story. Ask yourself questions such as, what are the research objectives I need to address, what are my key insights, what do I want my audience to see. Setting your goals early allows you to keep track of the final deliverable, creating a clear and concise path in the storytelling leading up to the purpose of the project.</span></p>
<h2>Step 3: Messaging</h2>
<p><b><i>Tone of voice</i></b></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Your audience and the nature of your client will determine the tone you use to tell your story. For example, having a more conservative approach versus a more liberal, straightforward approach. Your tone of voice also dictates the way the visuals are presented; is the data presented in a corporate style of simple charts or quirky illustrations? The objective is to ensure that your message is relatable to your audience, not just in the content but in terms of personality too. The right tone of voice will enable this objective to be met.</span></p>
<p><b><i>Hierarchy of Objectives </i></b></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Make sure you have a checklist that lists what messages you need to deliver and how important each of these messages is. This will serve as a route markers in creating an impactful story structure, making sure key points are delivered in a well-structured form before reaching your endpoint.</span></p>
<h2>Step 4: Visualisation</h2>
<p><b><i>Tools</i></b></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">You need to choose tools that will effectively tell your story, based on the audience, planning, and messaging stages. There are plenty of different tools to work with. Charts, images, illustrations and programming platforms to name a few.</span></p>
<p><b><i>Medium</i></b></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Try to think creatively about your medium, whilst also considering who you are talking to and the type of content you are working with. For example, for time conscious c-suite clients, why not consider short bitesize videos of key insights, that can be easily shared after a debrief, as opposed to a 200-page report.</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br />
</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Or if the insight needs to resonate throughout a whole organization, why not create an event that allows clients to live and breathe the insights.</span></p>
<p><b><i>Inspiration</i></b></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Inspiration is one of the most important criteria for success in data storytelling. There are plenty of visual inspirations that be found on platforms such as Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook. Using these mediums as a source of inspiration, you will be able to expand your creative capabilities and create a unique and engaging story.</span></p>
<p><em>Header Image: <a href="https://unsplash.com/@matias_north">Matias North</a>, <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/v8DSLoY80Xk">Unsplash</a></em></p>


Data Storytelling for Market Researchers

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Currently, the Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) market is worth </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">$20.4 billion</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">. In three years this is predicted to rise to $192.7 billion. This revenue will largely come from the entertainment industry. However, AR/VR can also seriously impact the Market Research industry.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">AR and VR technology can immerse users in any virtual environment. This can range from an exhibition or retail space, to test driving a new car. All within a cost-effective manner. By virtually transporting participants into environments, researchers can capture emotional and behavioral insights. These elements are sometimes lost in focus groups, where consumers can also struggle to unpack their own non-conscious behavioral traits.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">However, market research can’t simply just ‘do’ AR/VR. There’re some general design considerations we must acknowledge first.</span></p>
<h2>AR/VR’s multiple facets</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">AR/VR consists of several factors. These include 3D modeling, 2D images, programming, animation, sound, physical environments, and virtual environments. These are all design disciplines in their own right. They all need to come together to form an immersive AR/VR environment. Resultantly, the skillsets used to design an AR/VR research environment need to cover all these disciplines.</span></p>
<h3>Believability</h3>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">When designing for AR/VR it’s important to incorporate additional features such as motion, images, sound and haptic perception (the process of recognizing objects through touch e.g. an iPhone vibration</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">)</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">combined with 3D environments. However, to make environments </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">truly</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> believable immersive factors such as temperature and smell need to be considered – e.g. the smell of leather in an AR/VR car environment. </span></p>
<h3>Interactivity</h3>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">AR/VR designs must be intuitive by considering what function they’re going to be used for. We need to ask ourselves questions such as: </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">would the user need to pick up an object in an AR/VR world or simply look at it?</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> Interactions should match what people intend to do in reality. If a product needs to be picked up, 3D modeling is required to simulate this.</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">Decisions also must be made regarding whether to remove outside world interference or not – e.g. a background noise. These interferences should reflect how users interact with products and visuals in real life. </span></p>
<h3>Explorability</h3>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">A benefit of AR/VR is the ability to allow movement. This means users can freely move about and discover an alternate world. However, AR/VR designs must set boundaries within their environments. These boundaries should ensure it isn’t possible to leave a physical or virtual testing zone. This will prevent injury in both physical or virtual worlds. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">But there’s more to AR/VR design than these general considerations. Specific considerations exist for designing AR/VR environments for shopping/packaging and communications testing (two common AR/VR uses in market research).</span></p>
<h3>Shopping/Packaging Testing Design Considerations</h3>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">AR/VR helps researchers immerse participants in virtual shopping spaces to test packaging designs and placements. In these environments, participants can pick products up and down. This provides a realistic, yet virtual, experience. When designing for shopping/packaging testing, interaction with objects and test products are the key factors. However, using visuals and sound, we need to ensure that users’ natural movements are replicated as best as possible. For example: </span></p>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">If users’ arms have a 70cm reach, it’s vital to place AR/VR products within this zone to make virtual products reachable. Additionally, shelf size and perspective-to-distance ratios must be accurate to recreate reality </span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">3D modeling on packages must be the highest quality possible. A poor render or an awkward corner/curve on a product will change user perception and effect results </span></li>
</ul>
<h3>Communications Testing</h3>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In AR/VR shopping environments, communications on displays and fixtures can also be tested. Digitally fixing and altering displays and fixtures helps test multiple designs and messages, quickly and cost efficiently. But these efficiencies are balanced out with highly detailed design considerations:</span></p>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">To aid depth perceptions, images and text must be as detailed as possible. The notorious last-minute injection of stimulus before a focus group can’t be replicated when using AR/VR research methods </span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Text and images must be eye-catching and participants must be comfortable focusing between distances of 0.5–20 meters (how one would view communication in reality)</span></li>
</ul>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The benefits of AR/VR to market research are well-known. But the design considerations mentioned here are less discussed. If market research wants to maximize the potential of AR/VR, these design considerations – amongst others – must be acknowledged and acted upon.</span></p>
<h2>Next month&#8230;</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In the next Monthly Dose of Design, we lo</span>ok at <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/data-storytelling-for-market-researchers">visual data storytelling</a>.</p>
<p><em>Header Image: <a href="https://unsplash.com/@ciabattespugnose">Lucrezia Carnelos</a>, <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/IMUwe-p1yqs">Unsplash</a></em></p>


Design Considerations for AR/VR

<p>User Experience (UX) design aims to remove friction from an experience for those who both use and deploy it. Good UX design boosts user satisfaction by providing better efficiency, functionality, and usability.</p>
<h2>Why market researchers should care about UX</h2>
<p>Much of what modern market researchers do has UX at its core. For example:</p>
<ul>
<li>Online surveys and communities are a digital experience for participants (users). By understanding how users think and interact with these platforms, researchers can give them a better experience, engaging users and generating high quality data because of this</li>
<li>Client debriefs are a learning experience. Making this experience captivating and dynamic for clients is more likely to make what you’re teaching them memorable. Increased memorability will improve the chance of clients actioning your teachings</li>
</ul>
<p>However, the benchmark of what constitutes ‘good UX’ for research participants and clients isn’t set by the market research industry. It’s set by platforms and events outside of the research world. For example, online UX benchmarks are set by BuzzFeed and Facebook. Similarly, face-to-face learning UX benchmarks are set by TED and museum exhibitions.</p>
<p>Resultantly, the benchmark for UX is high. However, by learning the following seven principals of UX design, market researchers can better engage both research participants and clients.</p>
<h2>Seven principles of UX Design for market researchers</h2>
<h3>1. Narrative creation</h3>
<p><strong><em>What is it?</em></strong></p>
<p>Storytelling is at the heart of UX design because humans engage with stories. Good storytelling takes complex ideas and transforms them into manageable pieces of information while building an emotional connection. To keep stories engaging, keep narratives simple and coherent.</p>
<p><strong><em>How Can Market Researchers Utilise It?</em></strong></p>
<p>Don’t try to fit too many themes into client-facing outputs. The chance of <u>any</u> message being communicated by adverts <a href="http://bbh-labs.com/most-marketing-is-bad-because-it-ignores-the-most-basic-data/#_edn3">reduces significantly</a> the more messages they try to create. Don’t let your insight communication fall foul to this. <strong><br />
</strong></p>
<h3>2. Von Restorff Effect</h3>
<p><strong><em>What is it?</em></strong></p>
<p>When multiple elements are similar, the most differentiated element stands out. This is most effective for call-to-actions on digital platforms. These are usually buttons that prompt the user to do something – e.g. a sign in button.</p>
<p><strong><em>How Can Market Researchers Utilise It?</em></strong></p>
<p>Make key takeaways stand out by having them presented slightly differently to the rest of your aesthetic is effective at ensuring key takeaways are read, understood and actioned.</p>
<h3>3. Law of Proximity<strong><br />
</strong></h3>
<p><strong><em>What is it?</em></strong></p>
<p>Placing elements within close proximity of each other signals they are grouped together. The psychology behind this is that the human brain has a natural habit of organising things together to make better sense of them.</p>
<p><strong><em>How Can Market Researchers Utilise It?</em></strong></p>
<p>To visually compare customer segments in reports, place one segment and its sub segments on the left and the next segment and its sub segments on the right. This shows that segments are grouped near to, or far away, from one another.</p>
<h3>4. Hick’s Law</h3>
<p><strong><em>What is it?</em></strong></p>
<p>The more choices users have, the longer it takes for them to decide. Best practice is therefore to keep options simple and give a minimal amount of choices.</p>
<p><strong><em>How Can Market Researchers Utilise It?</em></strong></p>
<p>Within survey design, try to keep your options simple. This will maintain engagement and avoid overwhelming participants. The example below shows how to effectively lay out survey answer options:</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-21999 size-full" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/mmdd.png" alt="3 examples of a question design. The easiest having the fewest number of options" width="706" height="372"   /></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3>5. Millers Law<strong><br />
</strong></h3>
<p><strong><em>What is it?</em></strong></p>
<p>A typical memory span can only hold 7 (+-2) items. Good UX design organises content into groups of 5-9.</p>
<p><strong><em>How Can Market Researchers Utilise It?</em></strong></p>
<p>Keep key action points for clients in the 5-9 range. Too often natural gravitation towards using 3 (not enough) or 10 (too many) for key takeouts is deployed.</p>
<h3>6. Serial Position Effect<strong><br />
</strong></h3>
<p><strong><em>What is it?</em></strong></p>
<p>Users best remember the first and last elements in a series. Putting the most important elements at the start and end, with the least important elements in the middle, help make an experience memorable.</p>
<p><strong><em>How Can Market Researchers Utilise It?</em></strong></p>
<p>Place key insights at the start and end of debriefs and reports to ensure they’re remembered.</p>
<h3>7. Jakob’s Law</h3>
<p><strong><em>What is it?</em></strong></p>
<p>UK residents typically spend <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/01/decade-smartphones-now-spend-entire-day-every-week-online/">24 hours</a> a week online. Resultantly, people are conditioned to the norms of the digital landscape. For example, forwards and backwards buttons are always assumed to be in the top left corner. Jacob’s Law states that you shouldn’t reinvent the wheel, simplify your users learning process by keeping key elements the same.<strong><em> </em></strong></p>
<p><strong><em>How Can Market Researchers Utilise It?</em></strong></p>
<p>Don’t over-obsess about innovating the experiences you offer participants and clients. Obsess about experiences being effective at engaging participants/educating clients. Consistency is essential to experiential effectiveness – unnecessarily innovate at your peril.</p>
<h2>Next month…</h2>
<p>In next month’s Monthly Dose of Design, we’ll look at <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/augmented-reality-and-virtual-reality/design-considerations-for-arvr">design considerations for AR/VR</a>.</p>
<p><em>Header Image: <a href="https://unsplash.com/@nordwood">NordWood Themes</a>, <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/ubIWo074QlU">Unsplash</a></em></p>


Seven Principles of UX Design for Market Researchers

<p><em>“Design is not just about creating elegant objects or beautifying the world around us. The best designers match necessity to utility, constraint to possibility, and need to demand.” &#8211;</em><em>Tim Brown, CEO, Ideo</em></p>
<p>Usually, in Monthly Dose of Design, we focus on the visual aspects of design. However, this month we are going to focus on how design thinking can improve your overall approach to research – not just the outputs.</p>
<p>Design thinking refers to a process used by designers and strategists to develop human-centred solutions. The process starts with the audience you’re designing for and ends with solutions that best fit the problem.</p>
<p>We believe that human-centred approaches improve market research as they generate lots of ideas; design different options and test these options to see what the best solution is. Design thinking is a powerful tool because market researchers can use it to apply the same method to different challenges that can be interactive or physical. There are other ways to approach research – but they are problematic:</p>
<ul>
<li>Academic centred approaches are often too theoretical and not practical</li>
<li>Process centred approaches often are uninspiring for end clients</li>
<li>Technology centred approaches often focus on the platform, data and content but not the people</li>
</ul>
<p>The basic principles of design thinking are:</p>
<p><img decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-21679 size-full" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/stanfordpic1.png" alt="the Stanford d.school design thinking process includes: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test" width="939" height="537"   /></p>
<p><strong>Empathise</strong><strong> with Your Audience </strong></p>
<p>When starting a project, you need to look laterally at your audience and ask questions like; who these people are, what are their skillsets, should we use high-end technology to meet their needs or something more simplistic and what style of work they would prefer. This needs to be applied across all audiences – participants, clients and stakeholders.</p>
<p><strong>Define</strong><strong> the Problem</strong></p>
<p>It is imperative that the researcher, client and stakeholders have a deep understanding of the problem that needs to be solved, otherwise you could generate a lot of insight that lacks meaning. This means your research will not be effective in driving change. By defining the business problem (and therefore the project objectives), which needs to be solved, you can create a more effective, well targeted idea in both how you develop a methodology and communicate insight back to clients via insight outputs.</p>
<p><strong>Ideate</strong><strong> as Much as Possible</strong></p>
<p>Within ideation, the goal is to generate as many ideas as possible. As you’re coming up with the ideas, remember to focus on the business problem/project objectives. Ask yourself; what mediums can I use to solve this problem, for example music, videos, augmented reality, virtual reality, interactive games? How do I tell a story with the outputs? What narrative can I create? How can I build a meaningful project experience? Can I communicate the insight in and exciting and purposeful way?</p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>Build Methodological and Output Prototypes</strong></span></p>
<p>Once you have all your ideas, take a step back and evaluate, always referring to the business problem/project objectives. For each idea ask yourself: does this solve the problem? From here select the best 2-3 ideas to refine and develop. This should be done when both designing the methodology and the insight outputs.</p>
<p><strong>Test</strong><strong> Your Solutions </strong></p>
<p>It is imperative to always go back and test your solutions with your audiences. This will keep your solution on track and prevent you straying from the project objective. This can be done by piloting your methodology and getting participant feedback and adjusting accordingly or testing your insight outputs on a small number of clients before sharing with a wider audience.</p>
<p>Next time we will explore the fundamentals of UX design thinking.</p>


The Essential Principles of Design Thinking for Market Researchers

<p>In last month’s Monthly Dose of Design, <a href="https://greenbookblog.org/2018/09/14/how-to-effectively-brand-your-research-projects/">we examined how to effectively brand your research projects.</a> This month we are looking at the key principles of conceptualising and designing a game concept that can be used within a research methodology.</p>
<p>But why should you use games within a research methodology?</p>
<p>Games are an effective way to engage research participants. This is because often people don’t know what they think or over rationalise their decisions. This means it can be hard to get a true reflection of their attitudes and behaviour. To overcome this, researchers often try to better understand attitudes and behaviours on an implicit/system 1 level (anything automatic, habitual, rapid or unconscious).</p>
<p>Gamifying research allows us to better understand implicit/system 1 thinking. It also increases participant engagement and increases motivation by using competition.</p>
<p>Having a game concept is the first step in designing a research game. A game concept is the idea that the game is built around. E.g. the concept behind Pokemon is ‘a world full of little monsters’ and the concept behind Monopoly is ‘property ownership and entrepreneurialism’.</p>
<p>Before you develop your concept you need to ask yourself the following key questions: What are the research objectives? Who is playing? What is the scene the game is set in? What is valuable in the game? What motivates players? What kind of problem-solving does the game use?</p>
<p>If you ask yourself these questions, you will be able to effectively brainstorm ideas that will help you generate a viable research game concept.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3>Concept Foundations</h3>
<p>The foundations of your concept will be based on the story and aesthetics.</p>
<p>The story describes the world of your game. This is paramount at the start of the game as the copy and tone of voice sets the agenda for the rest of the game. The aesthetics encompass the visuals, sounds and animation. Both story and aesthetics are closely tied together and are integral to generating an engaging player experience.</p>
<p><a href="https://medium.theuxblog.com/our-pok%C3%A9mon-go-user-experience-fixes-1573b4debf50"><img decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-21455 size-full" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/pic1.png" alt="screenshots of the Pokemon Go! game where Professor WIllow explains the premis of the game" width="939" height="422"   /></a></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3>Personalisation</h3>
<p>Personalisation allows a player to become immersed – and therefore engaged – within a game. You can allow players to personalise the game experience by building personalised avatars to represent themselves.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-21456 size-full" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/pic2.png" alt="the avatar personalization screen from a game" width="939" height="531"   /></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3>Game Mechanics</h3>
<p>Mechanics are the rulebook of the game. They set out the steps a player must take to achieve the goals of the game. When considering game mechanics, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel, common game mechanics include:</p>
<ul>
<li>Capture (gaining territory or possessions) e.g. Risk</li>
<li>Exploration (discovering new places or unlocking experiences) e.g. Warcraft</li>
<li>Role Playing (being someone else) e.g. Zelda</li>
<li>Puzzle-Solving (matching objects or solving riddles) e.g. Solitaire</li>
<li>Dice Rolling (luck based-instructions) e.g. Backgammon</li>
<li>Co-operative Play (collaborating with other players) e.g. Worms</li>
</ul>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3>Success Criteria</h3>
<p>There needs to be some way of knowing when players have met the objectives of the game. Clear success visuals, sound and animations help establish a sense of success and completion. These can then lead on to reward screens. Clear communication of success criteria will avoid confusion and motivate players to continue participating.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><a href="https://cgiclinic.com/epic-wins-how-your-favourite-game-can-help-you-today/"><img decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-21457 size-full" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/pic3.png" alt="Ryu defeats Sagat in a win screen from Street Fighter" width="856" height="529"   /></a></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3>Rewarding Players</h3>
<p>It is integral to consider how you will reward your players. Rewards help to encourage game participation and enhance the game experience. This will provide richer results and insights. There are two ways to reward players – intrinsically and extrinsically.</p>
<p><em><strong>Intrinsic rewards</strong></em> consist of in-game rewards. For example, earning points, getting recognition and encouragement for earning those points or unlocking other areas/elements of the game.</p>
<p><strong><em>Extrinsic rewards</em></strong> are external rewards. For example, offering vouchers or cash incentives for scoring high points or completing a certain amount of levels of the game.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3>Competition</h3>
<p>Competition is an interesting element to introduce into the game. It can thrive by encouraging better engagement. If your game is team-based, it can encourage richer collaboration within the teams. This can be done by using scoring systems that compare results across different players and leadership boards.</p>
<p>However, only introduce competition if it aids your game objectives, otherwise, it can create an unhealthy obsession with winning at any cost i.e. What is the most effective way to overtake my competitors? Which could compromise the quality of your results?</p>
<p>If you follow these rules you will have the foundations to develop a research game that will engage players and allow you to better understand implicit/system 1 thinking.</p>


How to Design Research Game Concepts

<p>In last month&rsquo;s Monthly Dose of Design, we discussed <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/market-research-trends/distilling-data-into-infographics">how to create visually impactful infographics</a>. This month, we look at how you can creatively enhance your consumer segmentations.</p>
<p>It&rsquo;s crucial for brands to hav&shy;e a thorough understanding of their target consumer segments. The better brands understand them, the more effective marketing and communications can be.</p>
<p>At Northstar, we believe that to truly understand the character, nuances and demographics of your client&rsquo;s target consumer segment, the key is to bring them to life via interpretive visualisation. If your client can look at their target consumer every day in their office, then they have a better chance of understanding their needs and being able to meet them.</p>
<p>To help bring target consumer segments to life, there are three components to consider:</p>
<h2>Visualise laterally</h2>
<p><img class="size-full wp-image-20939 alignleft" src="https://greenbookblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/mdd1.png" alt="" width="795" height="447"></p>
<p><em>Caption: &lsquo;Generation Z&rsquo; consumer avatar, housing and environment example</em>.</p>
<p>To really dig deep and understand target consumer segments, you need to portray more than their physical appearance. Instead of just thinking about their physical nature, think about the world around them. Where do they live or travel to? What do they enjoy doing? What do they eat? Illustrate the type of home they would live in, their pets and possessions. This gives your client a 360 view &ndash; and greater understanding &ndash; of the consumer segment they are looking at creating an in-depth personality for.</p>
<p>Providing your client with a visually immersive environment, where they can better emphasise with the personality of the segment, allows them to understand the target segment much better and even help them connect the segments with themselves or people they know.</p>
<h2>Brand the consumer</h2>
<p>Most businesses usually have more than one target consumer segment. To visually distinguish between the different segments and elevate them within a business, you can individually brand each one by allocating different logos, colour palettes and typefaces.</p>
<p>This is useful in long-term consumer listening projects, as you are using the design aesthetics of each segment as a shorthand in project collateral. By creating a distinct image, clients can use the consumer branding as visual signposting.</p>
<p><img class="size-full wp-image-20940 alignleft" src="https://greenbookblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/mddgz.png" alt="" width="335" height="418"></p>
<p><strong>Consumer logos</strong></p>
<p>Start by creating a logo for each segment, using distinct typography, imagery and colour. You can choose to have your consumer logos either entirely different or have them in a consistent style under an umbrella project brand.</p>
<p><em>Caption (left): &lsquo;Generation Z&rsquo; consumer logo example.</em></p>
<p><strong>Colour palettes</strong></p>
<p>Colour is a great visual device to differentiate each segment. It can be applied to all collaterals, from the logo to secondary graphics like consumer environment illustrations. When applying the segment colours, make sure to use them sparingly as accent colours to highlight key areas. While accent colours help differentiate between segments, it is also important to have characters having one consistent colour amongst themselves. This allows consistency between themselves and to tie it back to the branding of the entire project.</p>
<p><img class="size-full wp-image-20943 alignnone" src="https://greenbookblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/mddcp.png" alt="" width="939" height="254"></p>
<p><em>Caption: Example colour palette for the &lsquo;Generation Z&rsquo; consumer segmentation.</em></p>
<p><strong>Typefaces</strong></p>
<p>Typefaces are great at bringing to life the personality of each segment. There are multiple typefaces from script to condensed to handwritten. Again, if you&rsquo;re using a different typeface for each segment, remember that less is more. Try to only use bespoke typefaces for the segment branding as it will be illegible as body text.</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-20942" src="https://greenbookblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/mddtt.png" alt="" width="564" height="575"></p>
<p><em>Caption: Example type testing for the &lsquo;Generation Z&rsquo; consumer segmentation branding.</em></p>
<h2>Consider your format</h2>
<p>Different mediums are appropriate for different projects. Therefore, to communicate your target consumer segment in an effective and engaging manner, you should pick the right format.</p>
<p><strong>Consumer avatars</strong></p>
<p>These should be the minimum for bringing your segmentations to life. Think about target consumer segment&rsquo;s physical features as well as their body language. As previously mentioned, to enhance your visualisation, illustrate other aspects of the segments lives.</p>
<p><strong>Infographics</strong></p>
<p>To communicate quantitative data in an exciting and engaging manner, infographics are effective. The benefit is that they can easily be shared within a business, both physically and digitally. When visualising your segmentation data, think creatively and see if the data lends itself to be visualised in a more illustrative manner and can communicate more about target consumers.</p>
<p><strong>Animation</strong></p>
<p>Target consumer animations are perfect for communicating consumer nuances, personalities and behavioural trends. They allow you to communicate subtle traits which isn&rsquo;t possible in a still image.</p>
<p><strong>Video</strong></p>
<p>A video is the ideal format for qualitatively visualising segmentations. Even more so if you&rsquo;d like to highlight key consumer mindsets and have video footage to support your insights. They are great at communicating lots of information quickly, especially to busy senior stakeholders. Try to keep your videos between 2-4 minutes long, depending on how much you are communicating.</p>
<p><strong>3D Segment Visualisation</strong></p>
<p>The ultimate way to bring your target consumer segment to life is to physically re-create objects and personal items. Gather physical possessions that a consumer in the segment would typically own and try to recreate elements of their lives. This could be the type of wardrobe they would own with their style of clothing inside or recreate their living room and have your clients walk around and engage with the setup. &nbsp;Life size portraits can also be introduced and setup in a style of an exhibition.</p>
<h2>Next month&hellip;</h2>
<p>In next Month&rsquo;s Monthly Dose of Design, we will talk about <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/market-research-trends/how-to-effectively-brand-your-research-projects">how to brand your projects</a>.</p>
<p><em>Header Image: <a href="https://unsplash.com/@wildlittlethingsphoto">Helena Lopes</a>, <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/PGnqT0rXWLs">Unsplash</a></em></p>

Visualising Consumer Segmentations

<p>In the previous Monthly Dose of Design, we examined <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/insights-industry-news/the-future-of-communicating-quantitative-data">the future of communicating quantitative data</a>. This month we are looking at how you can design infographics from quantitative data.</p>
<p>The marketing and communications landscape is fast becoming a visual world. Only <a href="https://blog.wyzowl.com/power-visual-communication-infographic/">20% of people remember what they read</a> and only 10% of people remember what they hear. But visual information makes up 90% of the information translated to our brains and is shown <a href="https://blog.wyzowl.com/power-visual-communication-infographic/">to improve learning by 400%</a>. Therefore, infographics are crucial in communicating masses of complicated data, simply and effectively, to your audience and making sure your insights resonate.</p>
<p>To simplify the process, here are three simple steps on how to prepare, design and share your infographics.</p>
<h2>1. Prepare your data</h2>
<h2>2. Tell a story</h2>
<p>Once you’ve collated your data, the first thing to do is to create a narrative of how you want to communicate your insights. Remember that not everyone will be as close to the data as you are. Therefore, the best way to story-tell is to assume that your audience is not well informed.</p>
<p>Generally, infographics start with a leading title, then a section to briefly introduce the topic, followed by the hypothesis. Next will be the insights, which will make up the body of your infographic. You should end by summarising your key points.</p>
<p><strong><img decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-20533 size-full" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/info1.png" alt="An infographic about the 2014 FIFA World Cup" width="283" height="706"   /></strong></p>
<p><i>Image Caption: An infographic created in 2014 by Northstar, commenting on the branding and advertising of the 2014 Brazil World Cup.</i></p>
<p><strong>A Bold Title</strong></p>
<p>The first thing your audience will see is the title, so make sure it introduces your data well, and entices them to read on and find out more.</p>
<p><strong>Hierarchy</strong></p>
<p>When forming your narrative, a good technique is to group your insights based on primary and secondary importance. This will ensure the most important insights are read first and you establish a prioritisation of the data for your audience.</p>
<p><strong>Layout</strong></p>
<p>Whilst preparing your infographic, roughly layout where you want each insight to be placed. This will help categorise which elements are of primary and secondary importance. Additionally, it will help you develop a ‘flow’ in your infographic, something that ties all of the information and visuals together.</p>
<h2>3. Design your data</h2>
<p><strong>Style<br />
</strong>Throughout your infographic, consider what visual style you want to present your data in, for example, illustration or photographic. If illustration, what kind of illustrative style? Try to see if your insights lend themselves to any particular style.</p>
<p><img decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-20534 size-full" src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/info2.png" alt="a close-up of the 2014 FIFA World Cup infographic section about marketing and advertising costs and advertising hierarchies of FIFA Partners, FIFA world cup sponsors, and National supporters" width="849" height="585"   /></p>
<p>You need to make sure that your style is consistent throughout, otherwise, you will confuse your audience. Test different sections to see if your style is successful and can be used consistently.</p>
<p><strong>Be Creative, Yet Simple</strong></p>
<p>Think creatively to visualise your data and see if the insights lend themselves to any creative solutions. However, don’t overcomplicate your design. You want your audience to instantly understand the message. If there is too much distraction or unnecessary imagery, you won’t achieve this.</p>
<p><strong>Format</strong></p>
<p>Try to consider different formats. For example, your infographic could be a poster, booklet, interactive microsite, or split into several social media gifs. Whatever your format, you need to design specifically for that format. If you are designing across several platforms, then you need to design a different layout for each platform.</p>
<h2>5. Share your data</h2>
<p><strong>Social Media</strong></p>
<p>We find that the best ways of sharing infographics are via websites like Information is Beautiful, Pinterest and Instagram. A great technique is to split your design into multiple social media posts and communicate bitesize visual pieces of data and hook your audience into reading more.</p>
<p><strong>Don’t Forget Your Format</strong></p>
<p>It is crucial to fully understand who your audience is and how they consume content. This will allow you to use an appropriate format with the correct specifications and measurements. For example, if you are creating an infographic for a sports brand aimed at millennials, the likelihood is your audience will be viewing the infographic via a smartphone. In this case, try to keep your layout and design as clear as possible. This ensures that when its shared by your audience, the insights do not get lost in a smaller format.</p>
<h2>Next month…</h2>
<p>We will be telling you <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/market-research-trends/visualising-consumer-segmentations">how to effectively and creatively communicate customer segmentation</a>.</p>


Distilling Data Into Infographics

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In last month’s Monthly Dose of Design, we identified </span><a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/insights-industry-news/using-creativity-to-improve-qualitative-outputs">how to use creativity to improve qualitative outputs</a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. This month we shift our focus to quantitative outputs, focusing on a digital alternative to dashboards.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dashboards are a well-known platform for data storytelling. However, they are expensive to build, need to be custom-made by developers for each individual project, at excessive cost and often have a bland interface. PowerPoint although quick to simple to use, lacks many functions such as data storytelling and navigation</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">An alternative to a dashboard and PowerPoint is a microsite – but what is it?</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">A microsite is a webpage, or collection of webpages, that typically works on a separate domain from a website. Microsites are like a dashboard, but can be produced at a fraction of the cost, and sometimes as easily as creating a PowerPoint deck.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">We see microsites as being the future of communicating quantitative data for several reasons:</span></p>
<h2>1. Simple to make</h2>
<p><b><span style="font-weight: 400;">Free DIY website builders and data visualisation plugins mean that digitising how you communicate quantitative data no longer need be expensive. These tools are simple-to-use and can produce outputs in a matter of hours. New website building tools can make building a website as easy as creating a PowerPoint deck. This reduces the need for expensive developers and increases time efficiencies. All you need to do is buy a domain and combine this with your website builder and chosen data visualisation plugin. However, if this sounds too daunting, then you could simply employ a freelance web designer for a day to set up the basics for you, teach you how to edit it and you are ready to go.</span></b><b><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br />
</span></b></p>
<h2 style="display: inline !important;">2. Experience and interface</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">As data storytelling progresses with platforms like microsites and dashboards, the similarities between the two are starting to grow. Therefore, where do we go from here? </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">The next step is user experience.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">People currently spend hours every day scrolling through web content. This makes us all familiar with websites and apps. This has raised expectations around how we expect content to be delivered. When it comes to data storytelling, people do not want to be staring at a bland grey board covered in charts. They want well designed data with micro interactions, hover buttons and well animated drop-down menus. Backgrounds that animate and change in colour in a way that directs a waypoint in the user’s journey are also in demand. All of which is easily accessible with the help of plugins to site builders. Such plugins offer a range of unique functions from simple hover buttons to mini tic-tac-toe games. </span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br />
</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br />
</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">By focussing on user experience, you are allowing your user to relate comfortably to the information you are providing. </span></p>
<h2>3. Flexible design features</h2>
<p><b><span style="font-weight: 400;">Microsites have the power to be truly bespoke and tailored to your individual client’s needs. With hundreds of distinctive features that can support multiple media types like videos, images, word clouds, interactive charts, password protection and stimulus existing. You can also add comment boxes or a live chat and get feedback from your clients via the site. These features allow you to expand the way you interact with your users beyond basic dashboards or PowerPoints.</span></b><b><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br />
</span></b></p>
<h2 style="display: inline !important;">4. Ease of navigation</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Microsites can beautifully tell the story of a project through digital navigation functions, filters and animated charts. By adding micro-animations, rolls, hovers and tap functions to light up values of any chart, there is no struggle in interpreting data. </span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br />
</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br />
</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Microsite’s have strong digital navigation functions and filters that eradicate the need to read through lengthy documents or make awkward formatting amendments. Tools such as menus, drop-downs, links and categorization methods allow users to compare subgroups easily – while navigating a large amount of content. The ease of navigation puts your client in control and makes all the data variables flexible. This means you or your client can easily sort the data, or hide any unnecessary information. If your client decides to change the variables of a chart, or compare different elements, they can do so at the click of a button.</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br />
</span></p>
<h2 style="display: inline !important;">5. Dynamic data</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Microsites are dynamic. This means you can regularly upload data and ongoing content anytime, anywhere and anyplace. This means you can either deliver key findings to your client as the project progresses or upload all your data and visualisations at the end. </span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br />
</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br />
</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Additionally, because of the accessibility of a microsite, you can present to clients either via face to face, or via video call, or allow your client to navigate the findings themselves. </span></p>
<h2>What’s next…</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Next time we will be observing the </span><a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/market-research-trends/distilling-data-into-infographics">visual design for 2018 and how you can utilize these within research</a><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></p>
<p><em>Header Image: <a href="https://unsplash.com/@medbadrc">Med Badr Chemmaoui</a>, <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/ZSPBhokqDMc">Unsplash</a></em></p>


The Future of Communicating Quantitative Data

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In last month&rsquo;s Monthly Dose of Design, we identified how</span> to <a href="https://greenbookblog.org/2017/11/06/monthly-dose-of-design-improve-your-questionnaires-with-visual-design/">improve your questionnaires with visual design</a>. Th<span style="font-weight: 400;">is month we shift our focus from research design, to research outputs and how creative thinking can improve your outputs from qualitative research.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">No two qualitative research projects are the same. So why should your outputs remain stagnant? Especially if your outputs are long presentations that are hard to read and share.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">To avoid delivering tiresome qualitative outputs, here are two things for you to consider next time you deliver qualitative insight to clients:</span></p>
<h2>1. Branding</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">We believe transforming a research project into a brand helps breathe life into the project and can help transform research into a tool that can help shape the future of a business. Branded projects help engage both participants and clients whilst showing them that they are part of something special. </span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br></span><span style="font-weight: 400;">For example, our </span><strong>#20ExtroadinaryStories </strong><span style="font-weight: 400;">project with Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) built a research brand that became a currency within the JLR business and help elevate the profile of research within the organisation. There were 3 key characteristics of this project that we wanted to communicate in the brand identity:</span></p>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Create a sense of modern luxury &ndash; to reflect the brand we were researching and the preferences of our research participants</span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Create a sense of unity and belonging &ndash; &nbsp;to ensure everyone involved felt involved in something special</span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Express the idea of digital dissemination</span></li>
</ul>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;"> With these characteristics in mind, we created the following the brand identity:</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;"><img class="alignleft wp-image-19133" src="https://greenbookblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Picture6-244x300.png" alt="Welcome to th club, #20 extra ordinary stories" width="215" height="264">The identity harnessed a modern aesthetic featuring brushed steel and a gold colour palette to create the sense of luxury. Additionally, we utilised secondary graphic elements such as elegant background patterns and mottled paper. &ldquo;Welcome to The Club&rdquo; was our accompanying tagline so that from the beginning, everyone who was part of the project knew that this was a community and felt a sense of unity being part of the project. The use of an iPad screen showed the focus of digital dissemination of insight and materials. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">When branding research projects, it is essential that the brand identity and visual language lives on throughout the whole project and appears on all collateral delivered to both client and participants. This includes everything from printed and email invitations, to online platforms and communities, to the final report and debrief. By maintaining the visual identity and language, you are helping to cement the idea of being part of something special, and create a sense being part of something bigger. </span></p>
<h2>2. The medium is the message</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Many different mediums now exist that you can use to communicate qualitative insights. However, different mediums are appropriate for various reasons, so don&rsquo;t just use a specific medium just for the sake of it. Pick the medium that is best for communicating your research. </span></p>
<p><strong><em>Interactive PDFs</em></strong></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Interactive PDFs are the perfect format for heavy content outcomes. The interactive navigation functions of PDFs allows your audience to easily navigate through content by jumping straight to certain sections though an interactive contents page, navigation buttons positioned on every page help users move around seamlessly. You can also link to separate files within your interactive PDF e.g. videos, websites, social media. The beauty of all this format is that ultimately it&rsquo;s a PDF, so it can be viewed on a computer, tablet and smartphone screen, file size is small so its easily sharable as well. &nbsp;&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><strong><em>Video and Animations </em></strong></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Videos excel in the field of storytelling. They can exist in several formats: from 10 to 40 seconds commercial style videos, to a series of 5-7 minute clip, up to a 30 to 45-minute-long documentary. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Videos have the ability to capture and engage your audience. Depending on the purpose, it can deliver information much more effectively than a 60 page report. It also able to be communicated through different platforms ranging from PDF to website. Animation is also a great format for visualising insights. If storyboarded correctly, you can communicate the character, demographics, behavioural traits and more in the space of just 1 minute. Also, an animation gives the researcher more control in how and in what order the insights are delivered, this could be useful in communicating primary and secondary traits. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><strong><em>Printed Materials</em></strong></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">We are forever evolving into a digital world, but let&rsquo;s not forget the power of printed materials. If your aim is to cement key findings into your audience&rsquo;s mind, then posters, flyers and booklets are often your best medium. For example, target customer profiles are best presented as posters. This is a quick, visual way for your audience to take in key parts of information quickly. Additionally, the placement of physical printed materials, i.e. target customers posters in a company&rsquo;s canteen, can help cement the core message of your research for a long period of time. &nbsp;&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><strong><em>Websites</em></strong></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Websites are a new medium for communicating and showcasing insight, why worry about whether your PDF or PowerPoint is small enough to attach to an email when you can just send a link? Gone are the days of large file sizes and gigabytes of video content. Completely hosted on a web server free from any size constraint, the amount of information you can easily navigate through, store and deliver through a website far exceeds any document or email you can send. Web functions are almost limitless, from password protection, direct chat and feedback boxes. The methods of communicating your findings though a website are only limited by your imagination. </span></p>
<h2>What&rsquo;s next&hellip;</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Next time we </span><a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/insights-industry-news/the-future-of-communicating-quantitative-data">visually examine quantitative outputs and show you how to make them more visually impactful</a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> and the key design rules you should use when communicating data to clients.</span></p>
<p><em>Header Image: <a href="https://unsplash.com/@nevenkrcmarek">Neven Krcmarek</a>, <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/V4EOZj7g1gw">Unsplash</a></em></p>

Using Creativity to Improve Qualitative Outputs

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In last month’s Monthly Dose of Design, we identified how to improv</span>e your <a href="http://greenbookblog.org/2017/10/04/monthly-dose-of-design-improve-your-discussion-guides-with-visual-design/">discussion guide with visual design</a>. This<span style="font-weight: 400;"> month we will focus on how visual design can improve surveys.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Nowadays, most quantitative research is done online. However, this provides researchers with some problems:</span></p>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Online content is consumed via a skimming culture, therefore it is harder than ever to capture participant’s attention</span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">The standards for online content presentation – and therefore survey appearance –  are not set by research providers. They are set by mainstream platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and the BBC</span></li>
</ul>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">For online surveys, this means that design is as much about user experience (UX) as it is about using the right scales. Poor UX equals poor participant engagement, which leads to poor data, resulting in poor insights and eventually poor business decisions.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">To avoid this chain of events, and create a more engaging online survey experience, use these visual design tips:</span></p>
<h2>1. Know your audience and their design preferences</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In the era of personalisation, we should not have a generic survey appearance. Engaging tech savvy millennials will require different visuals than those needed to engage C-level executives. To begin to understand the appropriate visual cues you will need to get to know your audience and what resonates with them. Do this by looking at any existing research and imagery on the target audience and choose your questionnaire design elements accordingly.</span></p>
<h2>2. Engage participants throughout</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Make sure that participant engagement begins on the landing page. The landing page should be an advert for participation. Use an enticing image and a benefit statement to get participants into the survey in a way that means they are motivated and engaged. Once in, make sure you clearly sign-post progress, questionnaire content and deliver on the ‘advert’ you have used on the landing page using design cues like icons and appropriate colours. And finally, make sure the participant leaves feeling positive and treat your closing page like and advert for future research participation.</span></p>
<h2>3. On-screen layout</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Online surveys have a whole screen to utilise – so make the most of it! Use images to fill the screen, whilst making your page look more engaging. On the screen, make sure your content is well organised. This means using a mixture of appropriate spacing between questions and answer options and keeping question length consistent.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Gestalt theory can help greatly with this. Gestalt theory is the idea that visual elements work together to communicate more successfully and stronger than they would working separately. This is achieved through characteristics like similarity and proximity. For example, by grouping related questions, you can make the survey more relatable for the participant and help develop their engagement with the bigger picture – and makes questions easier to answer. If you are worried about giving participants the wrong impression through your use of layout, you could still have less space between the related questions, but also place a thin bounding box around each individual question or faint coloured backgrounds (with clear borders between each question) behind each question. This way the viewer can identify that they are all related but still separate questions.   </span></p>
<h2>4. Use appropriate typefaces and colours</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Use one legible typeface, with a lot of different variations, i.e. light, regular, semi bold and bold. This will support your hierarchy of information and allow your audience to easily distinguish importance. Copy is central to a successful survey and the correct typeface is vital in communicating your questions successfully.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">A complimentary colour palette can bring your questionnaire alive and make it more visually impactful. Remember to use contrasting colours that are easy to read. Try using interesting background imagery or a unique visual pattern. However, make sure your background doesn’t interfere with your content. If this happens, try putting a white box, at a slightly lower opacity, underneath the text to make it stand out.</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br />
</span></p>
<h2>What’s next…</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Next time, we go back into the world of qualitative research and show you </span><a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/insights-industry-news/using-creativity-to-improve-qualitative-outputs">how to make qualitative outputs more visually impactful and the key design rules you should use communicating qualitative insights to clients</a><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></p>
<p><em>Header Image: <a href="https://unsplash.com/@edhoradic">Edho Pratama</a>, <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/T6fDN60bMWY">Unsplash</a></em></p>


Improve Your Questionnaires with Visual Design

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In last month&rsquo;s Monthly Dose of Design, we identified </span><a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/introducing-design-fundamentals-for-researchers"><span style="font-weight: 400;">design fundamentals for researchers</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">However, at Northstar, we believe that design can influence the whole research process &ndash; not just the final output! Therefore, this month we will tell you how you can easily apply design principles to discussion guides to aid legibility and ease of reading. By doing so, your clients will better understand this vital research document when you send it to them and you will be able to better conduct conversations with your research participants. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Below are two examples of a discussion guide. One which uses design principles and one which doesn&rsquo;t.</span></p>
<p><img class="aligncenter wp-image-18837 size-large" src="https://greenbookblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Screen-Shot-2017-09-26-at-4.29.51-PM-1024x705.png" alt="two discussions guides, the guide on the left is color coded, has a lot of white-space, is numbered, and is clearly defined. The guide on the right is two paragraphs of text. Both guide have certain words missing that the reader would fill in as part of the exercise." width="1024" height="705"></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">By using the design principles illustrated on the left, here is what you can hope to achieve with your discussion guides: </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Firstly, it is vital to make sure your reader can clearly read the guide while understanding what&rsquo;s important within it&hellip;</span></p>
<h2>A clear reading path</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">A clear reading path is the most important visual design consideration to make when designing a discussion guide. Losing your client within a sea of text will harm their understanding of what you intend to discuss and how you are going to meet their objectives. Equally, not being able to identify your next discussion point in a focus group or interview will harm the quality of engagement you have with your participants. Reading a discussion guide should be a journey aided with visual cues such as numbers, colours and shapes. These design assets can help you and your client read the guide more easily. </span></p>
<h2>Hierarchy of importance</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">It is essential to visually signpost important points within your guide&rsquo;s content. This will ensure your client can easily see what your discussion points are, and you can make sure you emphasise these in your focus group or interview. You can do this by making important elements bigger and bolder than a less important element which might be smaller and fainter. Scale is often used to help communicate hierarchy by drawing attention towards and away from certain points. This signifies their importance within the guide &ndash; so make sure this is reflected in the font sizes you are using.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Secondly, the following design mechanisms can help enhance clarity of the reader path and content importance&hellip;</span></p>
<h2>Avoid long lines of text</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The optimum words per line of text usually ranges around 13 and is best not to go beyond 18 words. Long lines of text can be fatiguing to read. Also, long lines of text increase the chance of getting lost whilst reading, and potentially you could end up re-reading the same line or accidentally skipping a line and losing the idea you&rsquo;re discussing with participants.</span></p>
<h2>Use spacing wisely</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Provide enough inter-line spacing, or leading space (vertical space between the lines). This will make it easier for your reader&rsquo;s eyes. Often to get the optimum line spacing you will need to go beyond the default line spacing your word processor or page layout program suggests. Remember, it will be you and your client reading the guide, not your PC!</span></p>
<h2>Use colours to link content</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Just because the default colour of Microsoft Word is black and white, doesn&rsquo;t mean that your guide should follow suit. Colours are a great way to link relevant content together such as questions to objectives or linking feedback to external references. Using colour to pair this information will make it clear to your client what questions are meeting which objectives and how you will use participant feedback within your discussion. </span></p>
<h2>Highlight important points</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Highlighting key points, actions or questions makes them stand out and prevents you from missing them, and keeps less important notes in the background text. </span></p>
<h2>What&rsquo;s next&hellip;</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;"><a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/insights-industry-news/improve-your-questionnaires-with-visual-design">Our next post</a> will show you how to design research questionnaires so that layout, colour, sizing and interactivity can improve the survey experience for research participants.</span></p>
<p><em>Header Image: <a href="https://unsplash.com/@mahbodakhzami">Mahbod Akhzami</a>, <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/Fe3xy9C9wow">Unsplash</a></em></p>

Improve Your Discussion Guides with Visual Design

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The visual design of your proposals, discussion guides, questionnaires and reports is probably one of the later aspects you consider after methodology and content. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">However, here at Northstar, our philosophy is that design has the power to positively disrupt, inspire and elevate research within organisations and therefore should in fact be a primary consideration. We believe in ‘Interpretative visualisation’ </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">meaning the look </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">and feel of our</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> deliverables start to tell the </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">story before </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">any word is read</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">. </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">From ensuring proposals resonate with clients, to communicating discussion guides clearly to international moderators, to engaging participants with questionnaires and exciting clients with insight presentations, design can enable a better research experience for everyone involved.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Resultantly, we’d like to share 10 design fundamentals that all researchers can use to enhance their work.</span></p>
<h2><b>Planning Fundamentals</b></h2>
<p><b><i>Do Your Visual Research</i></b><br />
<b></b><span style="font-weight: 400;">Create a moodboard embodying the look and feel of your upcoming document that includes colour palettes, visual styling, and font styles. Most importantly keep it consistent with your research’s theme.</span></p>
<p><b><i>Purposeful Design</i></b><br />
<span style="font-weight: 400;">Make sure you can explain why you have done what you have done visually, and there is a reason behind every visual or graphic element you use in your document. A simplistic layout is more visually appealing and easier to navigate than a chaotic one. White spaces are fine when well placed –  there is no need to pack a page with unnecessary design elements. Then you can try to replicate your inspiration through the layout, alignment, image styling, graphic elements and typography.</span></p>
<p><b><i>Build a Content Hierarchy</i></b><br />
<span style="font-weight: 400;">Once all your content is finalised, the first thing to do is establish what are the primary and secondary points of information you are trying to communicate for each section. The primary points will become the most visually engaging features in your document through clever and considered use of contrasting colour palettes, scale and different font weights. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Setting up a mock content page with all titles, subtitles and key points within each section helps improve in the planning of design. This allows you to easily view information such as consistency of title naming, quantity of pages needed and space allocation for content</span></p>
<h2><b>Layout Fundamentals</b></h2>
<p><b><i>Stretch Your Content Out</i></b><br />
<span style="font-weight: 400;">There is nothing worse than looking at a document that is overloaded with text. It overpowers your audience and makes your content difficult to understand. Spread your content out across multiple pages or slides so that it’s easier for your audience to understand, and so it can speak for itself when you aren’t there.</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br />
</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br />
</span><b><i>Less is More<br />
</i></b><span style="font-weight: 400;">Minimalism is your best friend and will help you communicate your content clearly, concisely and quickly. Keep your layout simple, utilise white space, and make sure your elements have enough room to breathe and are making the intended impact. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The benefits of minimalism also applies to your copy. Having a single word or short phase on a single page sometimes is much more effective in delivering a message.</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br />
</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br />
</span><b><i>Stay Aligned<br />
</i></b><span style="font-weight: 400;">To make sure your content and imagery doesn’t look like it has gone wild on the page, give your document alignment rules and margins so that it encourages structure throughout. Margins are some of the best rules to abide by – enforcing a “no-text zone” within an allocated distance from the edge of the page. This allows your document to have its contents neatly placed in the centre and prevents text being too close to the edge of the page and being hard to read.</span></p>
<h2><b>Font Fundamentals</b></h2>
<p><b><i>Limit Font Usage<br />
</i></b><span style="font-weight: 400;">Choose fonts that are clear and legible to read. What is the point in delivering your finished content in 5 different fonts that no one can read?</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">Having 2 or less fonts also helps simplify design and makes it easy on the eyes to follow through a document.</span></p>
<p><b><i>Use Fonts With Variety<br />
</i></b><span style="font-weight: 400;">When choosing a font, choose one that has a lot of variations. For example, thin, light, semi-bold, condensed and italic. This easily supports your hierarchy of information that allows you to easily distinguish importance. Having a large font family helps you create new sub categories easily without the need for another typeface – helping you create a consistency in your design. </span></p>
<h2><b>Colour Fundamentals</b></h2>
<p><b><i>Use Contrasting Colours</i></b><br />
<span style="font-weight: 400;">Colour can be the S.O.S that your document needs. Create a complimentary colour palette that will create contrast in your document, and help you create hierarchy by pulling out key points of information. Use different tones of your colour palette throughout your document to keep it consistent yet still visually appealing by adjusting the brightness. </span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br />
</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br />
</span><b><i>Managing Colour and Text<br />
</i></b><span style="font-weight: 400;">With text, imagery and innovative colour palettes, a rule to remember is light text belongs on a dark background and dark text belongs on a light background. Also, thinner fonts generally need to be in stronger contrast, as they can become hard to read, if you want to use a thinner font in a lighter colour, try making it a slightly thicker variation –  e.g. From light to regular.</span></p>
<h2>What’s next…</h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;"><a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/improve-your-discussion-guides-with-visual-design">Our next post</a> will show you the rules of layout and copy presentation in discussion guide design, transforming it from a jumble sale of timings, objectives, and questions, into a clean crisp document that any moderator or client can make sense of.</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br />
</span></p>
<p><em>Header Image: <a href="https://unsplash.com/@sadswim">ian dooley</a>, <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/DJ7bWa-Gwks">Unsplash</a></em></p>


Introducing Design Fundamentals For Researchers

<p><a href="https://iiex-eu.insightinnovation.org/">IIeX Europe 2018</a> focused on how researchers are constantly adapting to move forward. The range of speakers and research tools on display certainly provided stimulation and provoked discussion.</p>
<p>It also gave us five memorable takeouts researchers should read to future proof their insight offering:</p>
<p><em><strong>1. More Popular Research Platforms Are More Powerful</strong></em></p>
<p>With the proliferation of new platforms designed to help researchers and clients turn projects around ‘faster, cheaper and better’, <a href="https://www.zappistore.com/">Stephen Phillips of ZappiStore</a> argued that this didn’t mean all platforms are created equal. He made the case that the value of a platform increases the more customers it has. He used Uber as an example of the power of a strong network, where one or two dominant players push through most of the commerce.</p>
<p>So where does this leave market research platforms?</p>
<p>Steve made the point that the best platforms use a combination of automation – to deliver the ‘faster and cheaper’ benefits and data science and semantics to make the data smarter or ‘better’.</p>
<p>In short, you cannot bypass human experience all together. And the truly powerful conclusion…?</p>
<p>…The more projects you have on the same platform for the same brand, the more data can talk to each other. This provide us with a predictive lens so that you can forecast what might happen in 3 months rather than react to what you have learned using a more traditional ‘rear view mirror’ approach.</p>
<p><em><strong>2. Crowd Sourcing Is a Powerful Innovation Tool</strong></em></p>
<p><a href="https://www.unilever.co.uk/">Unilever’s</a> Karen Sears and Lisa Ohlin from <a href="https://en.eyeka.com/">eYeka</a> talked about a recent innovation project for toilet gel <a href="http://www.domestos.co.uk/">Domestos</a>. This is a low engagement category where it has traditionally been challenging to generate new ideas. eYeka worked with Unilever and a large global community of designers and creatives to crack their innovation challenge. From an effectively written design brief, designers from all over the world competed to come up with the winning ideas. In a win-win scenario, the creators of the chosen designs share the prize pool, while the intellectual property got transferred to the client company. What was compelling was the sheer number of ideas that were generated and the originality that can only come from a truly culturally diverse creative base.</p>
<p><em><strong>3. Everybody Lies</strong></em></p>
<p>Tony Costella from <a href="http://www.theheinekencompany.com/age-gate?returnurl=%2f">Heineken</a> stated boldly, that we are complicit in knowing people ‘lie’ in research. This is either deliberate, due to social convention or unintentionally because they can’t remember or simply don’t care as much as we do about the question being asked. He said that conventional polling is broken and that we need to measure behaviour not just ask opinion. However, his tone was optimistic. He argued that “tomorrow is already here” with the mainstream availability of what was a once futuristic sounding toolkit such as Facebook/ YouTube Live testing, Biometrics/Implicit Reactions, Eye-tracking/Facial Coding, Crowd-sourcing, VR, and Machine Learning.</p>
<p>Similarly, he argued that functional silos have blurred and we’re sometimes in the business of impacting consumer behaviour rather than staying neutral. The take out was that if we embrace the disruption we could indeed ‘Have it all’. In other words, the Holy Grail of research that is not only faster and cheaper, but also better.</p>
<p><em><strong>4. Learn from the Masters</strong></em></p>
<p>Day two kicked off with an entertaining and informative presentation from Matt Cole and James Mansell of <a href="http://www.wearethemoment.com/">The Moment Content Company</a>. It was refreshing to hear a new perspective, and these film makers brought us storytelling tips from masters of the craft.</p>
<p>Starting with Hitchcock, considered the ultimate storyteller by many, they told us to put the audience one step ahead of the protagonists and to treat them with intelligence. The more inside information the audience has, they argued, the more invested they become in your story. We should also make the audience care where the story is going, about the human story at the heart of it so that they empathise and can relate – as Pixar manage to do with every story they bring us.</p>
<p><em><strong>5. Utilising your Sensory Signature</strong></em></p>
<p>The use of semiotics to complement and enhance brand and category understanding is not new in our industry. Semiotic analysis can help make sense of the cultural context that surrounds a brand and help to identify category white space to create differentiation.</p>
<p>Gemma Jones from <a href="http://www.space-doctors.com/">Space Doctors</a> argued that there is so much more that semiotics can be used for, beyond providing retrospective understanding. The key to brand differentiation and lasting impact, she explained, is to identify a brand’s ‘Sense Signature’. In other words, what meaning it creates at every sensory touchpoint, not just the more immediate tastes and smells of a food product but the sonic feedback you get from interacting with the pack or the feel of the product as you touch it. Once identified and understood, she argued, you will have a powerful toolkit by which to build relevant brand meaning at every touchpoint. That certainly gave us food for thought!</p>


Five Key Takeouts From IIeX Europe 2018

<p><a href="https://behaviour-london.insightinnovation.org/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">IIeX Behaviour</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> focuses on the current advancements and trends in behavioural sciences and non-conscious testing in market research. This year in London there was a notable focus on how the field is moving towards being more accessible and faster to implement</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">These are five thought provoking take-outs from the day.  </span></p>
<p><b>There’s More Than System 1 and 2 Thinking</b></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The terms System 1 and 2 were mentioned regularly throughout the conference. Daniel Kahneman’s theory has clearly inspired a lot of behavioural science based research methodologies. This inspired Leigh Caldwell from </span><a href="https://www.irrationalagency.com/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">the Irrational Agency</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> to talk about there being more than two systems, and the theory of a third system for how we process information.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">System 3 features whenever we want to imagine our future, using the past to do so. Whether we are thinking of buying a new car or deciding to book a holiday, System 3 kicks-in and plays on our memories to help predict the potential outcome. This theory is taken from Prospection Psychology – the mind simulating a scenario in which we may be faced with tapping into resources from both System 1 and 2. </span></p>
<p><b>Behavioural Economics Repackaged Can Be a Researcher’s Best Friend</b></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Caroline Hayter from </span><a href="https://www.acacia-avenue.com/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Acacia Avenue</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> spoke about how behavioural economics should be a key research tool. The field has faced some criticism for using old techniques that have been re-packaged with fancy names. The panel agreed that this shouldn’t be taken as a criticism. If behavioural economics is making a difference then it should be championed and used as an asset for all researchers. In fact, using some of the techniques that have been around for a while such as priming and framing, in the real world helps clients understand the use and benefits. For example, encouraging people to send in their tax returns on-time has been improved by framing their HMRC letter using statistics of how many people end-up sending theirs in late, is one key use of behavioural insights.</span></p>
<p><b>Stay True to Theory to Win at Automation</b></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">A clear theme of the conference was how technology has helped change the behavioural sciences landscape. The gap between technology and research has clearly become very slim. Furthermore, the trend of automation is rife in research whether that be through dashboards or questionnaire design. Aaron Reid at </span><a href="http://www.sentientdecisionscience.com/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Sentient</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> spoke about the wealth of technological companies that are now established in measuring behaviour either through eye-tracking, facial coding or Implicit Association Testing (IAT). There are many platforms that are now speeding up the research process and the automation of behavioural science is fundamental to the future of the research industry. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Within behavioural science automation, the techniques that stay true to the theory behind them will prove to be the most effective. Simply put, if you want speed and automation you need to have reliability behind your measurement technique. If not, you will spend wasted time trying to make sense of your findings. The tools that are currently being used have the staying power and have made it through the initial hype around non-conscious measurement. It will now be interesting to watch as newer companies try and establish themselves in the era of automation. </span></p>
<p><b>Mix Minds for Methodological Success</b></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Research has merged fields for its benefit before. Behavioural sciences and economics have been merged into behavioural economics for example. That was another key theme of one of the talks, merging of two fields that can be blended together to uncover insights. Will Leach at </span><a href="http://www.triggerpointdesign.com/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Trigger Point</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> spoke passionately about how his company helped with the designing of the branding for Wicked Crisps. Everything from the name of the logo on the packet, to the design of the font, were tested with a view to tapping into a person’s unconscious thinking using metaphor’s to do so. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">This provided fascinating insight into another merging of fields where behavioural sciences and design can work with each other. Designers shouldn’t just be left to create, their knowledge of imagery, and aesthetics can be a toolbox for giving a specialized view for a range of uses such as product placement, imagery, packaging, and brand fluency. With recent rises in fields such neuro-aesthetics the designers eye can be important for helping to tap into behaviours and communicate brand messages in more subtle ways. </span></p>
<p><b>Communication is Key for Clients</b></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">To round off the day there was a client panel session</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">. This was a fascinating session which emphasized some of the worries that clients face around using behavioural sciences and how these reservations can be appeased through clear communication.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">There is sometimes a misrepresentation of behavioural sciences as being a black box of tricks that most people may not understand. The panel emphasized that this shouldn’t be the case. It was argued that neither should these techniques be clouded by the drier complicated terminology that may come with them. Simpler terms where applicable should be used to communicate ideas back to clients, so that stakeholders at all levels can interpret the findings without an instructions manual. This is a fine balance, as the little moments that behavioural sciences can measure have shown to be actionable and vital in understanding key moments. Therefore, reliable theory still needs to be applied to unearth this, finding a blend is the ideal world for clients.</span></p>


Five Thought Provoking Take-Outs from IIeX Behaviour 2018

Full-service, global marketing research firm, U.S., Canada, Europe, partners in
Asia. Quantitative/qualitative, consumer/business-to-business studies New York, New York, United States of America.

Qualitative Research

Quantitative Research

<p>The world’s leading businesses find their advantage with NewtonX. </p><p> </p><p> NewtonX is the only B2B research company that solves the challenges of today’s insights leaders by connecting them with verified business expertise. To do this, we built the most sophisticated algorithm in the research industry, the NewtonX Graph. The AI-driven Graph custom recruits the perfect audience for your business question from an open network of 1.1 billion professionals across 140 industries. Every professional is 100% verified, so you can make your next bold move with confidence. </p><p> </p><p> Decision-quality data is embedded in everything we deliver. We field large-scale quantitative surveys, facilitate qualitative or expert interviews, engage in long-term consultations, and create customized research plans. With our all-access platform NewtonX Prime, we deliver expert intelligence at scale, giving investors an edge via instant access to expert surveys and transcripts. </p><p> </p><p> NewtonX partners with the Fortune 500, top consultancies, marketers, and investors. Together with our clients, we’re ushering in a new standard of truth in B2B insights. </p><p> </p><p> To learn more, head to newtonx.com.</p>

NewtonX

We’re the only B2B research company that solves the challenges of today’s insights leaders by connecting them with verified business expertise.

B2B Research - General

Market & Competitive Intelligence

Advertising Research - General

General - Healthcare

Online Panels

Surveys

International Consumer Market Research

Online Communities - MROC

Western Europe

Consultation

Sampling

Focus Groups

Customer Satisfaction

Product Testing

Website Usability / UX

Proprietary Panels

Financial Industry

Africa / Middle East

CX - Customer Experience

Automotive

Artificial Intelligence / AI-Powered Platforms

Brand Positioning

Gaming / Gamers

Product Market Research

Telecommunications

Survey Recruiting

Survey Programming

Brand Equity

Brand / product / service launch

Conjoint Analysis / Trade-off/Choice Modeling

Product Development

Advertising Effectiveness

Brand Image Tracking

Media Market Research

Price / Pricing

Field Services

CATI - Computer-Aided Telephone Interviewing

Bulletin Boards

Focus Group Recruiting

African-American

Hispanic / Latino

Construction Industry

Pharmaceutical - Prescription Medicines

High Technology

Utilities / Energy

Segmentation

Statistical Analysis

Asia

HIPAA Compliant

Panels / Communities

Software & Technology

<p><strong>Fast, Reliable Answers for Insightful Decisions.</strong> OvationMR is a trusted place where research practitioners find their target population via engaged global survey panel audiences and significantly improve outcomes on B2B &amp; Consumer studies.</p><p><strong>QualibeeOE</strong> is our AI-enabled online survey question probing tool that gives you deeper, more meaningful insights from regular quantitative surveys. <strong>Qualibee</strong> also provides response scoring for better survey data quality.</p><p><strong>EthOS </strong>is our Mobile First UX, CX, and Employee Experience Platform for conducting Ethnographic Research, Journey Mapping, Concept Testing, Qualitative IDIs, and Video Surveys.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Use OvationMR Solutions for...</strong></p><p>Brand Tracking</p><p>Concept Tests</p><p>Mobile Ethnography</p><p>Segmentation Studies and more</p><p><br></p><p><strong>OvationMR delivers Global Online Survey Audiences and Services</strong> to both Marketing and Social Science Researchers. An experienced team will build your sampling plan using probability and/or quota sampling methods and find feasibility for real respondents at the best value compared with any provider in the marketplace.</p><p>Try our Sample Size Estimation Tool</p><p><strong>We deliver quality products...</strong></p><p>B2B Online Sample - Most Feasibility - Over 140 Industry Verticals.</p><p>Consumer: Low Incidence &amp; Hard to Reach Audiences</p><p>Children/Teens/Young Adults: GENZ/Millennials - GENX/Boomers &amp; Seniors</p><p>Brand and Wave Tracking Sampling for B2B and Consumer Audiences.</p><p>Public Opinion &amp; Political Polling</p><p>Passive Metering Capabilities for tracking behavioral data.</p><p><strong>Committed to our Client's success</strong> and your ability to win in the marketplace with reliable data &amp; products. Our service model offers consistent value and the ability to expect full deliverables; on time and to meet or exceed your expectations.</p><p>Every project, whether it's a sample only project, or we program your survey and translate into multiple languages, is handled with precision and confidence by a professional who works with you as a partner.</p>

OvationMR

IT'S A GREAT DAY FOR DISCOVERING WHY... Connecting great Audiences, Insight Practitioners, and Research Tech—you tell your exceptional story. 

Northstar Research Partners

About

Research Solutions