October, 2007 – How to create breakthrough products and services through Contextual Innovation

Susan Weinschenk: Hello, I am Susan Weinschenk, Chief of Technical staff at HFI and welcome to this live webcast presented by HFI's Usability Broadcast Network. The title of today's webcast is "How to Create Breakthrough Products and Services through Contextual Innovation" and I am very excited to have with me here today, Apala Lahiri Chavan HFI's Vice President of Asian Operations. And welcome, Apala.

Apala Chavan: Hi.

Susan Weinschenk: And before we get started on our topic on Contextual Innovation, I want to remind everyone that is listening out there to download our white paper from the HFI website if you have not done that already. It is called "Around the World with 14 Methods" written by Apala. You can also view a schedule of upcoming webcasts at our website and don't forget, after we have our presentation, Apala will be answering questions. You can submit your questions by using the link in the lower right hand corner of your screen, okay? So, Apala let's get started, right? You know, our topic is on Contextual Innovation. I am wondering if you can start by talking a little about what do you mean you know, what is innovation? What is Contextual Innovation? How is this different from those of us in the field are used to doing user centred design and usability. It sounds like it is not exactly the same thing. How is it different from what we are always used to doing?

Apala Chavan: Okay. Well, you know is it different from sort of user centred design and what traditionally we have been doing? Again, as always my answer is, it depends.

Susan Weinschenk: (Laughs) The typical usability person's answer to everything.

Apala Chavan: Yeah, that continues even if one is doing innovation. So you know, yes and no, there are differences and there are similarities between what we do in user centred design and what we do in innovation. So, to you know, sort of give you an example and try and see how these two processes are different. So what is it that we do with the innovation process? The whole idea is that we would like to come up with new product concepts or new service concepts and in order to do that one of the major differences between that and user centred design is, we have got to dig deep into the minds of our users and understand the motivation level needs of users, as opposed to the sort of action or task level needs that we try and figure out user centred design.

Susan Weinschenk: So you are getting us something different, not just the task or what they are trying to perform or what they are trying to do?

Apala Chavan: Exactly.

Susan Weinschenk: You are talking about their motivations.

Apala Chavan: Exactly.

Susan Weinschenk: Okay.

Apala Chavan: So what we you know, what we do in this process is, suppose we have a client who comes to us and says, "We would like you to design a new refrigerator - a brand new concept, a concept that does not exist right now, but is going to be used 5 years from now." In that kind of situation, we are going to really go into understanding the motivation level needs. In other words, we would like to know why is it that somebody uses a refrigerator at all? What motivates somebody to use a refrigerator? Is it that the refrigerator is just a functional appliance? Is it that the refrigerator allows the homemaker to take care of the family in a better way by being able to cook meals - fresh meals and then you know, keep all the vegetables nicely fresh in the fridge in spite of a busy schedule and not being able to go out and shop. So it allows all this to happen? Or, is it in fact the opposite? Is it that it allows people to suddenly be liberated from this whole idea of having to cook a meal every time because they can't store the meal anywhere and you know, sort of reuse it again because they don't have a refrigerator and now that there is a refrigerator they can do that? But is that making them feel guilty?

Susan Weinschenk: So, you are really getting at totally different types of information.

Apala Chavan: Exactly.

Susan Weinschenk: And then I know that you deal a lot with cultural issues, so I am assuming that some of these motivations might, what comes out might depend on different cultures. How do you take that in to account as well?

Apala Chavan: Very good question. So, there are several differences at very many levels as you will see on this slide, you know, from the deepest level where it's sort of taken for granted and so nobody can even really even articulate why they are behaving differently in a certain culture - different from another culture to the surface level where you can notice that the behaviour is different but nobody can explain why? So there are lots of differences and you know I have just tried to generalize on the slide and say, if you look at the West and if you look at Asia, the same parameters you almost have sort of, you know, polar opposites in some cases.

Susan Weinschenk: Really?

Apala Chavan: Yeah and you know to give you some examples say, the whole concept of time.

Susan Weinschenk: Time?

Apala Chavan: Yeah.

Susan Weinschenk: Okay.

Apala Chavan: So if I was going to be selling watch, what's the big deal? I want to find out how users are motivated to buy and use a watch.

Susan Weinschenk: And what's important to them about a watch.

Apala Chavan: Right, and so is that a big deal whether you in America or whether you are in India?

Susan Weinschenk: It keeps time.

Apala Chavan: Just keeps time?

Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Apala Chavan: No.

Susan Weinschenk: No. (Laughs) It's is not that simple.

Apala Chavan: Because the concept of time is so dramatically different. In Asia, time is a spiral. Time is like a circle. It's not some kind of...

Susan Weinschenk: I am a Westerner so I am trying to understand what you mean, time is a spiral.

Apala Chavan: Okay. So time is a spiral would mean - that explains why if you are in Asia, nobody is punctual.

Susan Weinschenk: (Laughs)

Apala Chavan: Yeah, it just means you know for me, what I can do at this very moment if I miss that for some reason? You know what, that moment will come back again and I can do that at some other time. So, I'm not that worried about whether I am on time or not whereas for you time is a linear progression.

Susan Weinschenk: Right, and it's – it's you know, whether the meeting was to start at 2.30 and you know if we miss it, it's gone.

Apala Chavan: Exactly.

Susan Weinschenk: So now how does this affect though...?

Apala Chavan: The watch?

Susan Weinschenk: Yeah. Why people would want a watch?

Apala Chavan: So if I was going to try and motivate my users of the watch in Asia by saying you know, this watch, it is so precise. It keeps time so very accurately that it's a major selling proposition.

Susan Weinschenk: Yeah, you see these ads with you know, that it will lose only 1/30th microsecond over 3 years, right?

Apala Chavan: Right. You know what? If time is a spiral for me and if it really does not matter whether I miss this moment or not, I am not going to be bothered how accurate that is.

Susan Weinschenk: That's not important?

Apala Chavan: No.

Susan Weinschenk: So what's important?

Apala Chavan: Right. What motivates me then? What motivates me is a set of different things which is for example; in Asia it is very important for me to belong to have the sense of affiliation that I belong to a group that I don't stand out. And in order to belong to a group, I want to make sure that perhaps you know the group that I belong to, the kind of watch that they are all wearing, I wear that. So if you motivate me by saying that buying this watch will make me belong to a certain group, I am going to be more likely to buy that watch and use that.

Susan Weinschenk: So this does get complicated.

Apala Chavan: It gets very complicated, yeah, and you know, similarly taking that whole theme of the refrigerator again, because you know we actually were working on a project and such interesting insights emerged from that. So a refrigerator in India is often to be found in the living room very much.

Susan Weinschenk: Refrigerators in the living room?

Susan Weinschenk: You mean that's where they keep the refrigerator?

Apala Chavan: Yes.

Susan Weinschenk: Why?

Susan Weinschenk: They are not cooking in the living room?

Apala Chavan: No.

Susan Weinschenk: Okay.

Apala Chavan: But what is important is that the refrigerator is a status marker. So, if my refrigerator is this foreign imported brand and it is big in size and it has got this color that's in vogue then you know what? Everybody who comes and visits me at home, they are going to go away with this whole idea about me.

Susan Weinschenk: So they put it in the living room so they'll notice it.

Apala Chavan: Right, right, exactly.

Susan Weinschenk: Well, you know, that's funny you know in here, some houses have a second refrigerator...

Apala Chavan: Okay.

Susan Weinschenk: In the garage.

Apala Chavan: In the garage?

(Laughter)

Susan Weinschenk: Yes, they keep it there. So you have one in the kitchen and in the garage it has an extra soda and beer and things like that.

Apala Chavan: Not likely to happen in India in a long time.

Susan Weinschenk: It won't happen in India?

Apala Chavan: No, not at all.

Susan Weinschenk: (Laughs)

Apala Chavan: Right, so because there are such fundamental differences in the whole cultural context of our users. So therefore their motivations are very different and to get to that you need to therefore be very aware that you may have to take different paths in order to get to that motivation level.

Susan Weinschenk: Okay, like such as what?

Apala Chavan: So, how do really, you know how are going to do anything by which you can get to understand that level...

Susan Weinschenk: Yeah.

Apala Chavan: That deep level of motivation? Well, one important that you've got to do is you have to talk with the user, right?

Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Apala Chavan: Without that there is no starting point.

Susan Weinschenk: So interview questions?

Apala Chavan: Right, interview questions.

Susan Weinschenk: And I bet you are going to tell me I have to worry about the kind of question that I ask, or the way I ask it?

Apala Chavan: Absolutely, just hit it on the head.

Susan Weinschenk: (Laughs)

Apala Chavan: Now actually before you know, I actually go in to the different styles that one has, in terms of you know, how people listen differently and therefore you need to know how you need to ask questions differently?

Susan Weinschenk: Okay.

Apala Chavan: There is one thing I wanted to mention. It always intrigues me when I watch films, particularly when I am watching a film that has been made in a certain culture which is different from the culture that I come from because the film will have communication styles which are alien to me and so to give you a concrete example. A few years ago there was a version of Romeo and Juliet which was directed by Baz Luhrmann and this was very interesting adaptation, modern and had a little bit of a Bollywood tinge to it etc., etc. There is one scene in that where Romeo goes to the apothecary and he wants to buy the poison, and by that time you know, viewers know that this is going towards tragedy. The apothecary is a poor person and so there is this whole tension in that scene where Romeo wants to buy the poison. The apothecary feels conflicted because he understands that if he sells the poison it's not going to be good but then he is poor, he wants that money. That whole scene consists of you know, may be three minutes of interchange of dialogues and you know the lines from Shakespeare. It ends where the apothecary you know, after listening to Romeo sort of exhorting him to sell the poison and make money says to Romeo, "My poverty, but not my will consents" but Romeo says to him, "I pay thy poverty, not thy will." And it ends there. Money exchanged, poison taken, end of scene. For an Indian viewer, this entire you know, like two minute transaction is really very, very difficult to understand, because what it has in it is this entire story about this poor apothecary, his poverty ridden background, his conflict and all that. If it were an Indian version of Romeo and Juliet, that would have been at least a 20-minute scene.

Susan Weinschenk: Really, that one little 2 minute?

Apala Chavan: Yes, yes and it would have not been such a direct dialogue you know, "Oh, my poverty does not consent, but my will does" and Romeo says, "Ok, I am paying thy poverty." I mean they're wonderful lines but for an Indian audience you know, I would want to know, I would want to see may be a flashback to see how poor the apothecary is. How his mother is ill and his children have to get education and I would feel terrible and so when he does sell the poison and take the money - trembling hands, I feel I relate with him but if it is you know, in the original format...

Susan Weinschenk: You don't relate at all.

Apala Chavan: I don't know what, this format is so unfeeling and cold I just don't like it. So you know that sort of a thing signifies this whole thing about communication styles and its difference. So, if you notice, you know, there are 4 different styles that I am talking about and these have actually been researched and developed by Watson, Witty, Barker and Weaver and there is a reference in the white paper so you can look up more on that.

Susan Weinschenk: Okay.

Apala Chavan: So these are very different styles.

Susan Weinschenk: So you are saying if I asked you a question, you said people would react to that question differently depending on which type of style they are?

Apala Chavan: Exactly.

Susan Weinschenk: So you want to try it?

Apala Chavan: Yes.

Susan Weinschenk: So, alright so if I want to ask you a question.

Apala Chavan: Okay.

Susan Weinschenk: Well, we have 4 styles. I will ask the question and you react as one of them and we won't know which one you are doing and then we will go through them all and then later you can tell us which one was which?

Apala Chavan: Absolutely.

Susan Weinschenk: But now I am going to try now, and it is the same question.

Apala Chavan: Okay.

Susan Weinschenk: So I will ask the question. I pretend that I am interviewing you about the refrigerator, alright?

Apala Chavan: Okay.

Susan Weinschenk: So I'll say let's see - Apala you know there are a lot of different features that the refrigerator can have and I want you to think about you know, the different features for instance there, it can make ice cubes automatically, there is water dispensing we can build in. We can have a display come on the front that actually gives messages that you can put in for your family and talk to each other, communicate throughout the day and you can change the humidity and change certain compartments in the refrigerator and things like that and so I am wondering that out of all the possible features that one might have in a refrigerator, which are ones that are most important to you?

Apala Chavan: Okay. So, I am going to do 4 reactions to this, okay?

Susan Weinschenk: Okay.

Apala Chavan: Reaction 1: and it is not necessarily in the order that I have listed, the listing styles okay. So, reaction 1: that's interesting so, you know, going back to that particular thing that you were talking about the humidity levels, I am very interested in that. Can you tell me a little more?

Susan Weinschenk: Okay so you probed. That's one. Okay.

Apala Chavan: Yes, that's one.

Susan Weinschenk: That's one I actually don't know which one that is. Give us another one.

Apala Chavan: Now this style, while she is actually speaking with you and she is questioning me so this is what I am doing.

Susan Weinschenk: (Laughs) Okay that's not good. That person looks a bit annoyed. That's number 2.

Apala Chavan: That's number 2.

Susan Weinschenk: Alright, what's the next one?

Apala Chavan: The number 3 reaction is at the end of her question.

Susan Weinschenk: One thing, which of these – what are the features of most interest to you?

Apala Chavan: Okay.

Susan Weinschenk: (Laughs).

Apala Chavan: That's number 3 style.

Susan Weinschenk: I think I've had some of all these people, that is umber 3 - just okay?

Apala Chavan: Yeah.

Susan Weinschenk: And what is number 4?

Apala Chavan: Number 4, this is again as she is questioning,

Susan Weinschenk: As I am questioning, during the questioning.

Apala Chavan: As you are doing the question, "Excuse me?" This is even before you finish.

Susan Weinschenk: I had to finish...

Apala Chavan: That's number 4 reaction.

Susan Weinschenk: So that person was annoyed but also interrupting. Okay, so I don't know even if I could guess which one was which one? Let's go back, the first one wanted to know more about the - you know, seemed very interested and very engaged and then was asking about the humidity feature.

Apala Chavan: Correct.

Susan Weinschenk: So which one is that?

Apala Chavan: Okay, that is the content style. So the content style, really what that means is that the listener expects a lot of detail - complex and challenging information packed together unless there is a lot of detail there is not going to be an adequate response.

Susan Weinschenk: So that really liked that I was giving all this possible and that possible examples. So they were engaged.

Apala Chavan: Correct. So, therefore, you saw that I connected with some part of what you were saying and I immediately sort of asked you more, right? Because that style of questioning and because I am pretending to be a content stylist now so it was an optimal connect.

Susan Weinschenk: That was the only one that seemed to have a good reaction. (Laughs)

Apala Chavan: Correct.

Susan Weinschenk: Now the second person was very annoyed but annoyed and kept looking at the watch. Let's see - a time style.

Apala Chavan: Yes, correct. So that's the time style, you know.

Susan Weinschenk: Okay.

Apala Chavan: So, that's the kind of listener who wants everything to be brief and even more interesting, a time style listener wants to be told upfront how much time is going to be spent on this and how many things are you going to ask. So, if you don't tell the time style listener, "Okay, I am going to be asking you this question and it will take perhaps a minute or so to go over the question", the time style listener is very, very perturbed.

Susan Weinschenk: And I was a kind of purposely wondering around a little bit.

Apala Chavan: Yes, yes.

Susan Weinschenk: I didn't seem – it was not structured and I was making it up and that would make them even more annoyed.

Apala Chavan: Very, very annoyed. But you saw that the time style listener didn't you know, sort of interrupt you but was just getting perplexed because it was not, he was not sure of how much time it is going to take.

Susan Weinschenk: He didn't even seem like he was paying much attention.

Apala Chavan: Right, right.

Susan Weinschenk: Like I had lost him.

Apala Chavan: Yes, because there was such a dissonance like what that listener expects. The opening in fact, and what was happening, it was a complete switch off.

Susan Weinschenk: Right. Now, one of the other ones, or you have to tell me about the one that just the kind of gazed away, I mean it's - he didn't even, he just said "okay" or something and didn't answer the question.

Apala Chavan: Right. So, that's the people listening style. So the people listening style is very much you know, is the style I am used to personally because that's a very Asian and very definitely very Indian listening style.

Susan Weinschenk: Really?

Apala Chavan: Yeah. So what that kind of a listener expects is a concern for my emotions and feelings, an attempt to try and connect with a common interest between the interviewer and the interviewee.

Susan Weinschenk: So how would I, if I was talking to someone like that, how should I change that particular question?

Apala Chavan: So, a) if that question was in the form of a story, so if you said you know, I really am very interested to know about how you use your refrigerator, for example, in my house my refrigerator is sometimes a matter of major conflict between my mother-in-law and my children and me. Connection!

Susan Weinschenk: So in part of that you know, we know about connecting with people is that personal disclosure...

Apala Chavan: Yes.

Susan Weinschenk: And by telling a story that is going to make that connection?

Apala Chavan: Yes, absolutely.

Susan Weinschenk: And then in the last one that person was also annoyed but then was interrupting, right?

Apala Chavan: Correct. So, that is the action style. That is the Romeo and Juliet conversation - very action style right? So what that means is not only does it have to be concise but the listener gets very impatient and frustrated if they perceive the content of the question is being disorganized. So it is not to do with time so much. It is as if it is wandering all over the place.

Susan Weinschenk: Yeah, I was purposely wandering. I don't always ask my question like that, by the way.

Apala Chavan: (Laughs).

Susan Weinschenk: When you are doing an interview, you don't necessarily know which these people are, right?

Apala Chavan: You know the interesting thing is that you can map cultures with the predominant listening styles.

Susan Weinschenk: Okay. So as you said the Asian styles often are people listening. So if I knew that I was going to be interviewing people from Asia, I would want to pay attention to that. Okay, I see.

Apala Chavan: Correct, yeah. So based on these issues of cultural context and the communications styles leading to be different, we've worked very hard to come up with different kinds of methods. And when I say methods, what I mean is sort of qualitative ways that we can dig deep in to the user's mind.

Susan Weinschenk: Okay, tell us a bit about that.

Apala Chavan: So, I am going to talk a lot about the methods though you find that all the methods that we have developed so far are described in detail in the white paper. So I am not going to talk in that much detail but I am going to talk about some of the methods. I will mention them here and give you a little bit of an idea how you know, they really play out in terms of actual user research. So the first one I am going to mention is the one on "rasas". It's one of my favourites and rasas really comes from performance theory which was developed thousands of years ago in India that is the Indian version of Aristotle's poetics. It's the theory of drama and the theory of drama as developed in India depended on the optimum balance of nine emotions. So every performance was supposed to be really, really good and would engage the audience very well if all nine emotions were balanced and much of our Indian sort of stories and drama and films still very much follow this theory. So what we did was, we borrowed from this ancient theory and we decided why can't we actually have a method where we want to make Asian users, particularly Indian users, who are very hesitant to speak their minds. Sometimes, of course they don't even know what exactly is driving them to behave in a certain way. Why can't we use the rasas to try and connect with what is really happening? And so what we decided to do was - these nine emotions that you can see here, the project was for an ATM where we had to explore how people felt? What emotions they felt when they used an ATM? And these were users who were sort of new users of ATM, right?

Susan Weinschenk: Okay.

Apala Chavan: So they hadn't been using ATMs for more than 15 days. So, we designed a set of what we called emotion tickets and these were nothing but a sort of booklet which consisted of like the tickets that you see here. These mimicked the format of our cinema tickets and so they were very familiar to users. On each ticket one emotion was very prominently portrayed. So, if you look at the visuals on the tickets, the visuals are taken from very popular Bollywood films. So again, they were very popular to people so you know, they are very familiar to people. So looked at it and you knew whether this was portraying fear or this was portraying pity or this was portraying compassion and all we did was we asked the user to carry this book of tickets along with them everywhere they went for 15 days and every time they interacted with an ATM, they needed to fill out what emotion they felt after that transaction, out of those nine emotions. They would select that page and they would simply answer the questions we have there. Every page had the same questions. It said if you selected the ticket where you know, you felt very happy. It says, "Why did you feel happy? What happened? Just write that down." That's it. So after 15 days we collected these emotion books from everyone and then we analyzed what were the predominant three emotions that everybody felt.

Susan Weinschenk: So do you remember what the findings are?

Apala Chavan: Well one of the, in fact, the most predominant emotions was awe, was surprise.

Susan Weinschenk: Really?

Apala Chavan: Yes, it was not fear, it was not happiness. We had expected fear because you know; they were new users interacting with technology.

Susan Weinschenk: And money.

Apala Chavan: And money, no it was awe. So we went back to question because that's how we use these techniques, you know. We get - we analyze and get the data which people have recorded without thinking about it really. They have just recorded what happened. Now when we see an interesting pattern that we don't understand then we go back and ask them. Dig in to that particular area and what emerged was people felt that the ATMs almost liberated them and it was interesting because these users were users from predominantly lower middle-class income levels and so they were using the ATM and now what was happening is they would go to the ATM and in spite of all the difficulty in using against how to use the card and all that, the good thing was it was a machine. It did not pass any judgment about how they were dressed because they were not particularly well off, that they were just wearing you know shoes that really looked as if that did not belong to a high status family. Their clothes were not all that sort of good. It did not matter anymore. So they were so happy, they were in awe.

Susan Weinschenk: That's why they were in awe.

Apala Chavan: Yeah. So this is the way these methods help a lot because they help uncover emotions and therefore connected with that deeper need that otherwise does not surface as easily if you just ask questions. This next method after the rasas that you know, I just want to briefly mention, is where we use storytelling to find dissonances that users had, but again being India, users were very reluctant to say anything that they perceived would reflect negatively on them. So we wanted to find out how they use computers at home and our client had a very clear data they had got from market research which pointed out that people buy computers but don't use them. And so they wanted us to know, can you dig deep and find out why are they not using the computers? And as we tried a few interviews, we were visiting homes, sitting there with the users and asking them you know and when we tried the direct method questioning and saying, "So we see you having a computer and how long have you been using it?" And they would say whatever one year or two years and "so, are there instances when you don't use the computer at all?" Immediate reaction was "No, we use it all the time." And it was interesting because some of the homes we were visiting, the computers were packed, tightly wrapped-up, things kept on top.

Susan Weinschenk: (Laughs)

Apala Chavan: Obviously, for six months nobody touched the computer.

Susan Weinschenk: (Laughs)

Apala Chavan: But there they were just sitting and they were just telling us you know, straight – "No, we use the computer all the time." And we realized but we are stupid.

Susan Weinschenk: (Laughs)

Apala Chavan: We are asking them a question in a format that makes them look bad, makes them lose face, it's a very cultural thing. So the instinctive reaction is to say something that logically makes sense, that's positive. So instead we turned it around and made them tell us stories you know, so we started to say, "Give us a story which tells us how you had a great time with the computer" and so they would say something, "Really it was very good and we did this and that". Then we would say, "Tell us a story where you had a very bad time with the computer." Now, they didn't realize it's all about your performance and so they would go in to, you know "Oh, yeah my daughter, she was in the college and she called and she said mama, can you just switch on the computer? There's a letter that I need you to read out." And I just couldn't even switch on the computer because I did not know where the switch was and I did not know what was the front and what was the back. It was terrible, I was so annoyed." whereas before that, the same demographic, the same kind of families, they were not forthcoming.

Susan Weinschenk: They were not forthcoming.

Apala Chavan: So storytelling which is also very deeply related to our oral culture, you know, elicits an instinctive connection response because we are very familiar with storytelling.

Susan Weinschenk: Right, right.

Apala Chavan: So that format works very well.

Susan Weinschenk: Now all cultures are familiar with storytelling, right? So that should work.

Apala Chavan: Absolutely.

Susan Weinschenk: In many cultures.

Apala Chavan: In many cultures. So some of these methods, we may design them because they particularly meet you know, a gap in one culture but they could actually be used in several other cultures.

Susan Weinschenk: Various other cultures.

Apala Chavan: So these are all the methods the funky facilitators where we found out by accident that when we are doing user research in the bottom of the primitive India, in other words, the lowest income groups in India, it works very well if the interviewers, the user researchers are people who look very young like kids. It's just amazing how the users would start to form an instant connection with those user researchers who they perceived as being real kids. And as it happened once or twice we suddenly spotted the difference when somebody who looked older and more experienced the way that the family would just be frozen and would not talk as opposed to when it was a younger kid who was doing interviewing, they would all be so interested in chatting with that kid because it seemed like it being very hierarchical culture, somebody who looked very sort of.

Susan Weinschenk: Professional, an expert that would be better.

Apala Chavan: Yes, yeah.

Susan Weinschenk: But it wasn't?

Apala Chavan: No, they felt judged and scared and there was a kid who was lower down in the hierarchy in that culture and so they felt more equal in talking to that person.

Susan Weinschenk: Interesting.

Apala Chavan: So similarly you know, strangers in a strange land where it sometimes pays to be a foreigner and that gives you the liberty to ask a lot of questions which being an insider, I would not even imagine asking.

Susan Weinschenk: Okay, yeah.

Apala Chavan: Because you are a foreigner so you know you are excused.

Susan Weinschenk: Right, you know this person is asking a lot questions.

Apala Chavan: Cranky, stupid.

Susan Weinschenk: But they answer?

Apala Chavan: Totally. They will go in to great detail and say, even if you say, "I notice that you don't get along with your wife at all and you still seem to have this situation in the house where nobody talks but still there is a facade there." Now as an insider, I wouldn't even go that way. I wouldn't even ask.

Susan Weinschenk: Yeah.

Apala Chavan: If you ask they like, how stupid?

Susan Weinschenk: (Laughs) But they'll tell me anyway?

Apala Chavan: They'll tell you anyway but they will just tell you, "Yeah, I just can't stand this whatever, whatever."

Susan Weinschenk: (Laughs)

Apala Chavan: So you know pays a lot. That helps and the Bollywood technique which I have done so many times and I am really tired of doing it.

Susan Weinschenk: (Laughs)

Apala Chavan: But it is just dramatizing scenarios you know, really making it like a Bollywood film and you will see how the user, plonked in the middle of what seems like a Bollywood plot, starts to behave like a character there and forgets all the hesitation and all the fear of losing face, being judged.

Susan Weinschenk: So they will talk more?

Apala Chavan: They are more engaged and immersed in that. The final one, I would like to just mention this, this one - the Jungian folk type archetypes switch which we designed for China. Here what we did was, the sort of assumption was that in a country the country's cultural myths are really sort of like psychological templates to which its citizens respond unconsciously. So we took the cultural myths in the form of folktales and folk characters represented as little pewter figures. So the project was that there was a website – a financial services website that had been just launched in China and we had to test that site. While we started testing we realized it's a completely useless exercise because the users don't even understand the whole concept of this website. They are like, what is this? I mean forget about the tasks where there were impediments and stuff. The whole concept was alien but they would refuse to give any opinions when we used to ask them how satisfied they were, it was always, "Yeah, it is good."

Susan Weinschenk: Everything is fine, right?

Apala Chavan: "Everything is fine." So then we changed it. We stopped the testing midway. We converted it into user research, data gathering and you know, got these little puppets. What we did then was to bring in a user one at a time. We would keep all the pewter figures at one end of the table and little cards with labels which really were the names of features of the websites. So that was on one side and we told the users, take every label and put it alongside the figure that you associate naturally. And so what they did was all the features that were frustrating, all the ones where they have negative experiences those are the first ones they picked and they would put it against a figure that stood for a lazy archetypal person and they would say, "If that feature..." you know, when we started to talk to them, "If that feature it just made me fill in so much data and then when I went to the next page and came back all the data was lost, I mean, it has really behaved like a lazy person. It should have just kept track of all that." All this did not emerge when we did the direct question.

Susan Weinschenk: Isn't that interesting?

Apala Chavan: Yeah. So, you know that sort of just a brief idea about the methods and there is so much more that you can read in the white paper.

Susan Weinschenk: Wonderful. Okay. Well, as we wrap up and before we - because we are going to get to our questions and answers, let me remind people submit questions if they have not done so yet. There is lots of techniques then you have been using.

Apala Chavan: Yes.

Susan Weinschenk: What do you say as you know, you think about contextual innovation and coming up with new methods? What's the challenge here? What's in the future? Do you think of methods in terms of getting in to this?

Apala Chavan: Okay. You know as far as I am concerned, I feel very intrigued with the whole idea of probing the unconscious and therefore you know, I look at Carl Jung's archetypes - universal archetypes. And I really wonder are they universal and just dressed up locally? Or are there differences? I would love to see more research in that area and primarily because you know, the forces of our unconscious mind really color the wavy act, really influence our actions and if you don't get there and you don't get to understand that level of influence then it is very much like all the polls and surveys which are often so misleading and so useless because they reflect on the way people are saying something, not on the way they are feeling. And somebody said that people will buy with emotion but they will justify with logic. And what we would like to do with these methods is to go beyond that logic. Why? - Because we want to find the unarticulated needs and what is even more important? Provide solutions for those unarticulated needs, solutions in the form of breakthrough products and concepts or even services. What is interesting to me is while we have taken this direction of designing and researching qualitative methods, HFI also has another direction in which I think we are trying to do the same thing, go beyond the logic and maybe something that's you could tell us now.

Susan Weinschenk: That is something that I am interested and we did a webcast a couple of months ago with Mona Patel who's doing work with emotions and persuasion. The emotions you talked about somewhere with some of our new methods which we call PET scan – Persuasion, Emotion and Trust and to measure this. I am very interested in how do we start to look at these non-conscious processes? We will have a couple of webcasts in 2008 dealing specifically with that. Yeah, I think that's fascinating. You know, as psychologists and usability professionals we are used to dealing with these conscious processing and what people were saying but as you have pointed out, people react in an unconscious way and then have to rationalize back to themselves and others and so they will talk but what they are saying is not exactly, not necessarily true, right?

Apala Chavan: Yes.

Susan Weinschenk: That is why they did it.

Apala Chavan: Exactly.

Susan Weinschenk: They may never even know why they did that.

Apala Chavan: Exactly.

Susan Weinschenk: So I think that – personally I think that's very fascinating and we are working on that here at HFI. We have some questions coming in. So shall we move to questions?

Apala Chavan: Yeah.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS:-

Susan Weinschenk: Alright. So, the first question I have for you, Apala. What type of background is required to conduct these methods? Do we have to be ethnographer, usability specialist or researcher? I really like you to specifically talk about this term ethnographer because I do not know even a lot of people may not know what is ethnography?

Apala Chavan: Okay. So I think you know, ethnography really what it does is it provides a structured way to describe what used to be say, an ethnic group, but today we are not always describing an ethnic group, but we are describing a group of users. And so it's a method where you go in to a deeper engagement with that user group that you want to describe. And again you know, it provides you with different ways that you can do that and much of it used to be actually being there, staying in the midst of the users you would like to describe because you need to observe them, be one of them, experience that whole way of life of that particular population that you want to describe.

Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Apala Chavan: Now that naturally becomes very difficult to do in a business setting. So one applies techniques from ethnography such as shadowing, such as you know, visiting the home and being there and then you pick up what ethnography would tell you to do when you are actually in the midst of the user population and you describe that experience in those formats so that it helps you analyze that better and to really pick the most important insights that you will need from that very deep understanding.

Susan Weinschenk: Okay. So do you think that people need that kind of - back to the question, what type of background is required?

Apala Chavan: You know it's interesting because I honestly feel that in order to conduct any kind of user research; you could come from different directions. You could come from a- you know, market research direction, a more usability orientation. You could come from ethnography. It doesn't matter as long as, a) you completely and passionately believe that you need to understand the user. It is not about your own opinions and judgements. It is really about being in the user's shoes. So, I have had you know, people who come with - from a background of you know, literature but they have been trained to understand how to do user research and they are so very interested in just sort of getting in to the minds of the user that they do a very good job. They are not – they have not come from any specific background.

Susan Weinschenk: So they can learn the technique.

Apala Chavan: Completely.

Susan Weinschenk: You know this is interesting. Actually I think in here it is a little subtle but very important. You know we think of doing user research, I think that sometimes you know, we have our collection of questions. Here is the data we want to gather and we are going to go out and we are going to gather that data and we are going to ask questions. That's not necessarily the same as having the intention to really understand the user. When you can go out and gather data and ask your questions and write down the answers and come back without the passion of "Can I really?"

Apala Chavan: That's it. You know, digging on and so I think that is really important distinction here when I am hearing what you say.

Apala Chavan: Yes, correct.

Susan Weinschenk: But you did not say anyone can learn – anyone from these backgrounds can learn these techniques if they are really interested.

Apala Chavan: Yes.

Susan Weinschenk: But obviously, I think having a background in for instance, usability or marketing research would be very helpful.

Apala Chavan: It helps a lot. Yeah and what is important is they need to learn the techniques. It's not that you know, I am very interested and I passionately believe that the voice of the user should be heard. I have no training. I have you know, - nobody's told me how to do this and I can march off in to a user's home and...

Susan Weinschenk: You can't do that.

Apala Chavan: No, you can't do that. You have got to learn.

Susan Weinschenk: Yeah, alright, next question. How rigidly do you adhere to predetermined interview protocols when applying these techniques?

Apala Chavan: So, most of these techniques require you know, some sort of a discussion guide, which we use really as a guide and a lot of flexibility is expected when you run these kinds of methods. You just cannot you know, sort of go about okay, "Question number 1. How do you use the refrigerator? I want to know about the usefulness of the handle." And then no matter what their answer is, I go on to the next one. "When you open the fridge, do you like the way the shelves are arranged?" It just doesn't work that way

Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Apala Chavan: Because here you don't know at some level you don't know what you are going to get from the user because you are uncovering a lot of stuff that is not on the surface. So you've got to have a lot of flexibility.

Susan Weinschenk: Let's go to the next one. We have a lot of questions coming in. I see how these methods would help you study users in different cultures but how does this translate in to breakthrough product ideas?

Apala Chavan: Okay, so there is a very critical link in that whole process of creating breakthrough products in terms of the process that we use for Contextual Innovation where we go from first trying to understand whether there is a case for innovation at all. Is there any business requirement for a new product to be designed in a particular market? Is there a user population that could fit in to sort of the category where that product would be useful? Going from that part of the process to an actual new product, there is a very important middle that we touched upon today. That middle section of this innovation process is all about understanding the needs of your users. If you cannot understand the needs of your users particularly needs that they cannot articulate, you cannot create a new concept. You're not going to be able to come up with a breakthrough idea if you don't know what lies beneath there.

Susan Weinschenk: So if I have done this work and I get this data, what's my next step after this?

Apala Chavan: The next step is we take the data and then of course, we go through our process of analysis where we employ our sort of own proprietary method of using an ecosystem to that we have created where we map all the data that we collect during user research in to that ecosystem tool where there are different sort of different filters that we apply such as, are there choke points that we have found out – choke points being are there physical obstacles that the users face in their you know, interaction with the kind of product that we are talking about? Are there emotional obstacles called pressure points? Are there cultural strain issues where the culture they live in dictates a certain kind of behaviour but they want to behave in a different way. Is that causing attention and therefore is there a need that a product could fulfil? So we filtered everything into the ecosystem tool under these different categories and then on the other side of it, comes out a sort of picture of what are the main opportunity areas that emerge from all those needs? So we look at the list of opportunity areas and then see how, what opportunity area would actually meet our clients goals the best?

Susan Weinschenk: As well as business goals.

Apala Chavan: As well as business goals the best and at the same time, is one of the - one opportunity area that majority of the users seem to want to go to? So then from that opportunity area emerges concepts of actual products.

Susan Weinschenk: Right, what those products might be. And these details on all of this that you just described, I know that you teach at workshop that kind of encompasses all this – everything that we are talking about here but also what you were just talking about the ecosystem tool.

Apala Chavan: Yes, yes.

Susan Weinschenk: And I will mention while I am doing this that you are going to be teaching in that workshop in Singapore October 25th and 26th.

Apala Chavan: Correct.

Susan Weinschenk: And I hope you will be teaching that in the West here at the United States in 2008.

Apala Chavan: Absolutely.

Susan Weinschenk: We will have to keep people informed of when you are going to be doing that here for those of you who are here in the US and not anywhere near Singapore, right?

Apala Chavan: Absolutely, yes.

Susan Weinschenk: Next question. Are these methods applicable to North America as well or do they just apply in Asia?

Apala Chavan: So some of these methods you know, as Susan mentioned, like storytelling for example, could very well apply to North America. I haven't tried it out but you know, one could try that and see and maybe with a slight variation in the way you run that actual method but the basis that is the storytelling code, could work just as well or drama could work just as well though the flavour may be different. There are also methods which would be distinctly different for a North American audience than you know, an Asian audience. Of course the "think aloud" protocol is a very, very you know, American method.

Susan Weinschenk: Exactly.

Apala Chavan: Because the "think aloud" protocol does not work very well in India which was really the basis of our think aloud.

Susan Weinschenk: So that's what got you started about doing new things

Apala Chavan: Yeah.

Susan Weinschenk: Because you were doing the usual, right?

Apala Chavan: It wasn't working.

Susan Weinschenk: And it wasn't working well. Well, I mean I am worried about the "think aloud" method even over here based on what we were talking with non-conscious processing because people are thinking aloud they rationalize everything.

Apala Chavan: Rationalizing everything, correct.

Susan Weinschenk: I worry about that one. I am working on that.

Apala Chavan: (Laughs).

Susan Weinschenk: That is where we have got to mention Kath Straub, our Chief Scientist? I had a meeting with her and she had a device that you hook up to your ear and it would measure stress.

Apala Chavan: Oh, wow!

Susan Weinschenk: So you know, we were trying to see if we could get some methods of measurements – some measures but don't involve talking. Okay, so this is kind of a long one, right? I am impressed with your presentation and found that they are enlightening. We always like getting compliments in the middle of broadcast.

Apala Chavan: Thank you.

(Laughter)

Susan Weinschenk: We do a great deal of global research for websites and often struggle with customers not always share how they really feel, similar to the examples like you have given. I am wondering where do you fit these messages into an overall research plan that includes focus groups, contextual inquiry, you know where you go and observe, surveys and usability. So, if you are doing all these normal usability research things where would some of these methods fit in to that? Do you replace – I'm interpreting the question – do you replace some of this with these methods or do you add them in somewhere?

Apala Chavan: So these methods can sort of really fit into existing categories. So in other words, if you are running a focus group, there are actually different ways that you can run a focus group than the one traditional way that you run a focus group because that way of running a traditional group even in this culture, doesn't often work because in their group there will be somebody who dominates the whole discussion and all that, much more so in Asia. One you know, sign that there is one participant who is strong and is dominating, the others are going to just quiet for the rest of the session. So in Asia, we often do focus groups where that we will a ) have props that make people individually interact with those props and then write down their opinions on a piece of paper before they can share. So there are ways that you can customize the traditional categories to design new methods. The methods that I talked about fit quite well if you are doing a contextual inquiry, if you're running a contextual inquiry process because again, what you are doing there is you want to talk to people, talk to users, you want to visit them. These methods lend themselves very well to fitting in to those categories. Usability testing, absolutely, Bollywood method is something that we actually tried in a usability test scenario. So, all the methods also fit in to the traditional, of course.

Susan Weinschenk: So what you are saying you have a certain set of methods that you normally use? Look at those and see how can we fit these in to them?

Apala Chavan: Yeah.

Susan Weinschenk: Okay. Can you apply these methods for offering an existing product in a different industry in the same country (cross-work rather than cross-culture)?

Apala Chavan: Yeah. So the point is you can apply the methods anywhere in any situation where you need to be able to get deeper into the user's mind. Doesn't matter what the ultimate objective is. It's the most useful when we are doing innovation because there you really cannot skim on the surface. However, even in this situation where you've got one product, now that product has to be perhaps completely revamped because you want to offer it in a different industry, you need to touch base with users who are going to be your new user category and so again, these methods worked very well because you want to get deeper in to their minds to see if this product really is going to make any sense for them.

Susan Weinschenk: Here is kind of what I think is a somewhat related question. How do you apply these methods for new-to-the-world products versus new variation of existing products and how do we do that if we don't know who the user is going to be?

Apala Chavan: So, first things first. I don't think there can be, in my mind, any project where you don't have any idea about who the users are going to be. There's going to be a starting point, there's going to be a starting point which may narrow down as you, you know, delve and as we carry out our innovation process that happens a lot of the time. A client will come with a brief saying, "I want you guys to design a breakthrough product for children in the 10-16 year-old age group school going students. 10-16 year-old age group in India." That's the starting point and as we start to apply our innovation process, we invariably figure out that that is a very broad definition.

Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Apala Chavan: That has so many other sub-categories that then we go back to the client and say, okay, your big superset can be broken up in this way. Now tell us which ones are you more you are interested in?

Susan Weinschenk: So you've got to start on something so you always have to know something about the user but you may not have to be as precise.

Apala Chavan: Yes.

Susan Weinschenk: You need not be that precise. You can get precise later.

Apala Chavan: Right, exactly.

Susan Weinschenk: Okay, alright. Can you explain the Bollywood technique in more detail?

Apala Chavan: Okay, so maybe we can take that as the last question because it always takes me a little bit of time.

Susan Weinschenk: Alright, so should we wait?

Apala Chavan: Yeah, we can just wait and we will get back to that one.

Susan Weinschenk: We will get back to that one.

Apala Chavan: Yes.

Susan Weinschenk: By dramatizing the situation, how do you know the response you are getting is based on their practical problems rather than charged purely by emotions?

Apala Chavan: Okay. So remember that when we dramatize the situation, the drama that we are putting in there is very connected with the particular task that we are trying to investigate. So we want to evaluate, say if I take a website, a specific feature, the drama that we create is not some generic drama. That is that goes all over the place. The drama actually focuses on the use of that feature as it would happen in real life, in daily life. So the emotion they experience, we are just recreating that in an artificial situation but the moment they walk out of the door and they try to somewhere and they try to use that website and try to use that feature, they are going to go through those emotions because the context, the drama will be very similar. So it is very important to make very sure that the dramatic scenarios are very tied in, are very carefully constructed in time with what we want to evaluate.

Susan Weinschenk: It is not just that applying drama in order to get them going.

Apala Chavan: No, no, no.

Susan Weinschenk: Okay, alright. This is kind of a long question. It is an interesting one. When the target audience is of mixed cultures, how do you best approach that without having different discussions or interviews for the various cultural backgrounds? For example, in corporate America, we are not able to say, "Hey, are you from India or Asia?" So we can't simply target based on what their last name sounds like. You're going to be interviewing a lot of people possibly from different cultural backgrounds. How do you know, you know, how do you know...?

Apala Chavan: How do you know what method or how to do an interview?

Susan Weinschenk: Yeah, how will I change my question? Should I ask the question this way or that way because I may not know ahead of time what cultural mix is there?

Apala Chavan: So, there is one way that you could do that. There is a host of instruments which are called a sort of measurement of acculturation to a particular culture. In other words, you can measure through the administration of just a questionnaire, but a very carefully constructed questionnaire, how each person, how much have they become part of a certain culture. So, in other words you know, for large studies it's often very much part of the design where you first administer a question to see acculturation and see okay, 60% of the target audience is actually American in their completely American, in their cultural face...

Susan Weinschenk: Oh, I see.

Apala Chavan: Whereas you know, this 20% is very Hispanic and there is this percent.

Susan Weinschenk: So you would do that first and then it does not matter what their last name is or where you're basing it and how they respond.

Apala Chavan: Exactly because I may have an Indian surname but, I have lived here for generations and then I have become really part of this culture...

Susan Weinschenk: Yeah, Americanized.

Apala Chavan: So it does not matter to them.

Susan Weinschenk: Are these methods being accepted more by Western culture? I assume they mean that as time goes on, it is becoming more and more accepted over here in the West?

Apala Chavan: I think so. I mean I get very good response particularly from clients who want us to run international usability research for our innovation projects, even for international usability testing. They are very, very keen that we really focus on customizing the methods.

Susan Weinschenk: You know, I think that this is interesting. I know - I think there is a difference between acceptance by the people that you are running the research with versus the acceptance by your client. What I mean by that is I think sometimes, we think that people will find this strange. If we bring people in and we have some people match the figures, or if we do it with a story. You know, they are going to look at us like we're crazy. You brought me in here, right?

Apala Chavan: Right.

Susan Weinschenk: But people don't expect anything when you recruit them for a study and you bring them in and they find it just as weird to sit in front of the computer and talk aloud as to put a piece of card with a figure. I think we kind of forget that that might sound like strange methodology to us because we are not using to doing it but as far as the persons concerned, they are people coming to do a study there. Actually I have found that they find it more interesting. It's like "Oh! Now I've got to cut-out pictures, that's kind of fun.

Apala Chavan: Totally, absolutely.

Susan Weinschenk: They're into it but they think we're crazy for the all the stuff we do so you might as well go for it and try something different.

Apala Chavan: They just love it because it seems so much like a game.

Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Apala Chavan: So they don't think so much as being about immersed in it.

Susan Weinschenk: Right, so I think it is time for our last question. We're ready for our last question, which is the Bollywood technique?

Apala Chavan: Okay. So the Bollywood technique you know what it involves basically is, we run a usability test where we replace the usual think aloud task-based protocol with a more dramatic sort of a scenario that replaces the exact tasks that we would have got in a think aloud protocol. So the example that I will give you is, we ran a test the first time when we were sort of experimenting with this. We ran a test in a very traditional usability test, think aloud protocol mode with users, and what we were trying to look at was a site where you could buy train tickets in India and it was a terrible site. It was just terrible, I have no words to describe how terrible it was except saying it was terrible.

Susan Weinschenk: (Laughs).

Apala Chavan: But we got our users they were very Indian and they came in and we said, "Okay, task. The first task is" and exactly in these words said, "can you go to the Indian Railway site and buy a ticket for a journey starting tomorrow morning, a journey from the city of Ahmedabad to the city of Bombay." And so the user, when they heard the question, it was a very typical reaction. They wanted to instead of going towards the table with the computer they slid a few paces back and that is very typical because we found that out later, the moment you put the question that way, it's like a test and a test in front of all these people who seem very professional and sort of you know, as though they are very high status and these people were scared. So you encourage them and say, "Why don't you come forward? Why don't you try this task?" and they try very gingerly tapping on the keyboard and not being able to do anything. Not because of any fault of theirs because the website is terrible and it demands that for a train that you have to travel to, you need to know the train number. It is as if the train is your best friend and you need to know the number or by which it is called you know, whatever.

Susan Weinschenk: (Laughs)

Apala Chavan: What do you know of what the train number is? I mean, it is just a train. So, naturally they couldn't get anywhere because you cannot retrieve any information about a train if you don't know that number. And they didn't know the number. They didn't know where to look it up and so they looked here and they looked there and it was cluttered and things were dancing here and flashing there and so they were just completely did not know what to do? But at the end of the time when they gave up they said "No, there are lot of features on this page. It is very, very good."

Susan Weinschenk: (Laughs)

Apala Chavan: "Who designed this? I think it is very good. If we had more time, we would absolutely be able to use it" and that was that.

Susan Weinschenk: (Laughs)

Apala Chavan: No data really. Because so frustrated were, they couldn't move beyond first part of the task. But that was the feedback. Next we tried with the same user, bringing them in and then one by one. Now giving them this scenario but presenting it in a very different way. So user comes in and this time again, the task is the same, buying a ticket for a journey except that we, since they had already used the site, we replaced the site instead of the train site, it's the - you know, the national air carrier. Indian Airlines – no, it was Air India actually. And the Air India site actually was a jot better than the Indian Railways site. So there was a little bit of an issue there, but it was better. So they were not giving us any feedback as they did in the Railway site. They are not going to give us any feedback with a site that is a little better. Anyway, we tried this. The scenario changed and the scenario now given to each user was Bollywood plot. Imagine you and your friend have gone to Ahmadabad as consultants. You are working at a client's organization. You have been sent there to work as a consultants. This morning when both of you are just about to go to the client's office your friend comes in a state to you and says to you, "Oh god, my life is going to end because my parents called late last night and said that they are trying to arrange a marriage for me and so this boy who has come from the US. He is a green card holder." And this green card holder is very much the part of the villain, very much thought of in the Bollywood plot. "This green card holder, I don't know who he is, but my parents think I am the perfect match for him. So they have ordered me to go to Delhi to my house and we are going to be engaged, but you know that I have a boyfriend in Bombay. What am I going to do?" - Very Bollywood. Now, the user is the person who can save the heroine. So now you are explaining the scenario. So now she tells you, "What do I do?" You tell her, "Okay listen, you have to go to Bombay. You have to take your boyfriend and go to your parents and make them meet your boyfriend. He is such an eligible person they will agree to marrying you to him. If you don't tell them your life is really doomed so do it." And so your friend says, "What will - how will I go to Bombay?" So you volunteer.

Susan Weinschenk: (Laughs).

Apala Chavan: You call up Air India on the phone and you try and get a ticket. Find out if there is a ticket for a late night flight to Bombay. Air India, as we all know is least interested in selling tickets.

Susan Weinschenk: (Laughs).

Apala Chavan: So you ring up and after it is busy several times. Finally you get it and get through. The man who picks up the phone says, "Air India." And you ask, "Can you please pass me on to reservations?" and before you have even completed it he has disconnected the phone because he is reading and you are going to make him work. He does not want to, so he is like, "Okay." Now you advise your friend, "Forget the phone. You go for the meeting and I will get on to the Air India site and I will check if there is a ticket available for a journey to Mumbai." Now it is your duty to get on the Air India site and get the ticket. Before you ended describing the scenario...

Susan Weinschenk: They are on?

Apala Chavan: They are-instead of being like that they are there and they like "Okay, yeah, okay." "What is that?" and they are looking at the dropdown and getting so angry because they missed the fact that it is a dropdown you know and so they couldn't see the date. They are like "I wasted 2 minutes because I could not see it. Who designed? Did you design this website? Why is the color like that? I cannot see. I can't read it properly. You know you should have really have made it bigger?" And it is so surprising because...

Susan Weinschenk: You get out so much more information. They're really engaged.

Apala Chavan: Yes, absolutely. It is a barrage of information and it is all critiquing which is what an Indian user finds very difficult to do. To critic anything but you cannot.

Susan Weinschenk: Really?

Apala Chavan: Yeah, in unfamiliar surroundings.

Susan Weinschenk: So is there much research going on as you are talking and as I was reading some of the questions. I am thinking and I don't know if Kath Straub, our Chief scientist is watching this webcast. I hope she is, if she isn't, she will have to watch the archived one so I'll ask her question in here which is, I am just wondering about the research here about methods of cross-cultures. I mean it would be wonderful research to do, wouldn't it? To find out which of these, you know I can imagine and I know you have had some experience with Bollywood, not other cultures but I can imagine that some of these methods would be very useful in some cultures and would perhaps not be so useful in other cultures. It would be great to have you know, a kind of a matrix.

Apala Chavan: A matrix, right.

Susan Weinschenk: We're working in India and in China these methods work well and in the UK these methods, and in States these methods, that would be interesting.

Apala Chavan: Oh, that would be fascinating.

Susan Weinschenk: Okay and as a part of the listening we thought it would be another research project for you.

Apala Chavan: Yes, yeah great!

Susan Weinschenk: Well, I think we are just about out of time what I want to do is a couple of things. First, I want to thank you, Apala for coming and this is really interesting and fascinating topic. I want to remind people to see our course in Singapore on October 25th and 26th. I also remind you that an archive version of this broadcast will be available at our website in about 2-3 weeks. The white paper is available now for download and I invite everyone to our next webcast. Our next webcast is on November 15th. It's me and Dr. Phil Goddard and he is the - the topic of the webcast is "Who is keeping score? The value of Usability Scorecards and Metrics." So that's November 15th and I hope you all will join us then. Thank you.

Apala Chavan: Thank you.

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