My talk from Lean Day London, hosted by Made by Many & Neo, March 25-26, 2014, on how Lean approaches to qualitative research make it more useful and scalable.

1. lean research
will set you free*
#leandaylondon
@farrahbostic
* but first it will piss you off

2. happy birthday

3. Hi, I’m
@farrahbostic
!
!
I run...

4. i come from advertising.

5. we bet only on holes-in-one

6. this guy.

7. but…

8. $30,000,000,000+

9. information request
research RFP
study design
recruitment
fielding
Analysis
Brand/product team
research & insights
research company
recruiter/panel
moderators
research company

10. why?

11. because marketers want roi,
but avoid defining what that is.
You’d think it might be cost per acquisition,
or customer lifetime value, or revenue.
But often, KPIs are less about business
results,
and more about media performance.

12. exhibit A:
“passion” is a kpi.
http://www.cmo.com/content/cmo-com/home/articles/2013/9/26/KPIs_CWTK.html

13. we’re not designing for data.

14. “those numbers won’t
count themselves.”

15. what are we using the data for?

16. how (a lot of)
marketing people deal with data

17. data v.
prestige
Who cares about affluent baby boomers &
the advertisers who love them?
I want the 18-24 demo!!

18. there’s a fear of small numbers
Marketers worry about the signal-to-noise ratio.
The smaller the sample, the more they worry
about noise (wrong people, inaccuracies or
untruths, groupthink, etc.)
So they compensate with bigger sample sizes.
But more numbers often make more noise.

19. 20,000 people surveyed in three countries.
100 shop-alongs and at-home interviews.
Post-hoc analytics.
More?
leading to… analysis paralysis

20. how marketers
‘get out of the building’

21. “why do we even do focus
groups anymore? it’s so
weird.”

22. because, tradition.

23. because, tradition.
but also, because, bias.

24. “statistically significant”
“rigorous sample method”
“information with authority”

25. “The data will tell us what to do.”

26. market research isn’t as
sciencey as it pretends to be.

27. research ≠ design
Research is the process by which we understand problems.
Design is the process by which we solve problems.

28. The CEO’s Kids
“I keep a lot of kids around me and ask them questions and peek around the corner
when they think I'm not listening. My master plan was I had a lot of kids. I have six kids.
Three girls that are six, a 15-year-old, 18-year-old and 22-year-old.
I have the perfect research team in my house."
http://acupofteawithphd.wordpress.com/2013/06/19/live-from-cannes-cannes-lions-2013-so-farpart-4-its-diddy/

29. It's really hard to design products
by focus groups. A lot of times,
people don't know what they want
until you show it to them.
- Steve Jobs

31. you ≠ steve
jobs.

32. over targeting leads us astray
“[M]ost companies with a practiced discipline of
listening to their best customers and identifying new
products that promise greater profitability and growth
are rarely able to build a case for investing in
disruptive technologies until it is too late.”
- Clay Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma

33. research ignores switchers,
rejectors, fringe & new users
“Generally, disruptive technologies underperform
established products in mainstream markets.
But they have other features that a few fringe
(and generally new) customers value.”
- Clay Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma

34. it’s complicated.

35. “people lie.”

36. it’s not these people’s fault
focus groups are artificial.

37. people are great.

38. 1. we ask them to.

39. 2. but often, they show us
how we’re lying to ourselves.

40. we’ve sacrificed the
truth for ‘science’.

41. how lean can help fix
research.

42. what is a lean company for?
1. To specify customer value.
2. To identify & implement the actions that create value.
3. To remove anything that doesn’t create value.
4. To analyze the results (and repeat).

43. why does feedback & customer pull matter?
Feedback and testing (a.k.a., research)
help teams settle questions and make decisions
based on evidence not preferences.
Continuous feedback helps teams see progress.

44. people are data, too.
(and vice versa)

45. cool story, bro.

46. we need to understand people and
behavior so we can make better
predictions and measure outcomes
more effectively.

47. theory v. information
“Who needs theory when you have so
much information? But this is categorically
the wrong attitude to take toward
forecasting, especially… where the data
is so noisy. Statistical inferences are
much stronger when backed up by
theory or at least some deeper
thinking about their root causes.”

48. we should always be checking our bias

49. and we should use data to trigger behavior

50. validation

51. scripts

52. statistical
significance

53. stop stockpiling data

54. stop trapping insight
in powerpoint decks

55. empower the
research manager
We have to transform the research manager from a
project manager into a Scrum master.
Their role is to remove obstacles to progress, and to
facilitate communication.
Their responsibility to the team is to facilitate hypothesis
testing, and to create opportunities to challenge
assumptions.

56. Do less, more often
Lean research is about continuous
customer, partner & team feedback.

57. Use right-sized tools
that are closest to hand

58. Go and see.
This is the new intimacy.

59. the whole team can do this.
http://giffconstable.com/2010/07/12-tips-for-early-customer-development-interviews/

60. forget the horse’s mouth
Don’t count on users to make
your decisions for you -
that’s not their job.
Don’t let the report be the end
of your learning process - it’s just
a way to memorialize what you’ve
learned and provide a reference
when you encounter similar
issues again.

61. To make research meaningful to the whole team,
the whole team needs:
Investment
Access
Accountability
nothing beats a conversation.

63. make information
reusable, not disposable.

64. data should make us more empathetic
If we design for data that helps us make decisions,
that helps us create value for our customers,
and that helps us develop empathy for people so
deep that we can anticipate solutions to problems
they can’t yet express…
That will enable the kind of analysis sufficiently
advanced to be indistinguishable from magic.

65. be nice, and listen.

66. what’s next?
#leandaylondon
@farrahbostic