Building rapport and expanding their imagination
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For the success of the IBCO project, we need to get familiar with our users - small shop owners' pain point, but at that scenario, I am not able to get any feedback from traditional user research, Inviting them to talk formally about an app idea is so hard as…
“They are so busy running the store!”
After getting denied so many times, I changed my strategy. I started to tag along with the salesman when they visited the client’s shop.
Takeaway 1: When inviting participants formally does not work, we will need to take another approach to meet and greet our potential audience.
Most of our target audience are middle-aged Asians and are very experienced in running their store in a traditional way. So when I first entered the store and asked them about what pain points they have when they are running the store, they said
“Nothing.” “Business as usual.”
After receiving these replies two, three, and four times, I feel like it is so hard to gain any data from them, but, just by looking at their busy lives, I still think that I can do something. So I asked my Bangladeshi colleagues why that would be the case.
"Well, it may be that they have been doing it for 30 years and it is now in their blood, or they just don't want to be vulnerable. They wanted to be regarded as strong, and saying their troubles seemed to be something a weak person did."
I gave it a thought and realized that people may actually realize some of the pains in the process, but they think that it is "as-is", so they omit it and live with it, or sometimes, it is just their esteem that makes them hesitate to say that "it intrigues me."
Takeaway 2: When a person works in the same place for too long, he may get used to the status quote too much, and forget that the process can be changed to make things easier.
Takeaway 3: It is important to build rapport. It can be hard for some people to admit that something is hard for them.
So, for the upcoming journeys to the shops, I change how I launch my conversations. Instead of asking what troubles you the most when you are operating the store, I talk about their daily lives and, if needed, try to help them with the work they are doing. So to build up the rapport,
“Oh, is that your daughter? She's lovely! (a few questions later), I believe it would be a sweet and joyful moment to spend time with her!”
“May I help you with it? Let me help you! Is it hard to manage to do this on your own?”
Then, I let them talk about their daily lives and tasks, and I extracted insights from them.
“Stocktaking takes so much time that you need to go home lately and can't spend time with your daughter? Such a pity!”
“Does that take a lot of time and effort? Can we do something to help?”
By building sympathy and befriending them, their attitude started to soften, and I extracted a lot of insights from how they describe their daily lives, and I can offer a pinpoint solution for it. Humans sometimes have a self-defense mechanism, especially when talking about hardships in their lives, but that's what informs us to build and improve our product as well. Hence, knowing how we can break the self-defense brick wall is important. Please share with us the ways you took to relax and befriend your users or research participants when studying them :)
