Finding Insights & Themes
Over the past two weeks the team had done a huge amount of research, primary and secondary. Our interviews helped feed into our personas and it was now time to help form potential themes that we could use as starting points for ideation. Before beginning this process we understood there would be a lot of converging and diverging of thoughts before we would find our emerging themes.
To ensure all insights were captured and as we all were involved in different interviews, we decided to have a whole class exercise. Using colour coded post-it's (pink for industry, blue for secondary & green for user research) we revisited all the work we had captured on our walls and noted key insights across the areas. We hoped to have a blend of insights and have them all feed into our emerging themes.
This activity took 30 minutes ( a lot of research to digest :) ) and at the end we had a very colorful white board. To start moving towards seeing patterns we grouped similar thoughts together and gave them a category heading. We took in turns to read an insight you had captured and placed it on a new white board. If someone felt they had a similar thought they would read out that post it and add to that grouping. Doing this resulted in large categories but did make tackling the number of insights a bit more manageable.
Next a steps were to diverge again by breaking apart a grouping to find anything distinct inside and see if there was a lose connection to some where else. This was a slow and thoughtful process, questioning each post it and maybe asking other team members for clarity when needed. This activity was done by a smaller sub group over a number of hours. At the end we had 5 emerging themes that we recognized needed more work to present at our research client briefing on Friday.
Emerging Theme 1: Education & Awareness
“I never really think about the quality of the air I breathe”
This emerging theme came from insights about lack of education in air quality.We feel there are different ways to generate awareness around a topic, something to explore further and how to adapt solutions based on personal situation.
Emerging Theme 2: Making data more accessible to others
“No I wouldn’t know where to begin to look for that type of thing”
From research we found that citizens did not know where to find the information. There’s an opportunity to investigate potential digital or physical locations so it is integrated more seamlessly into people's daily lives.
Emerging Theme 3: Making the air quality visible
“They were all going around with face masks in China, it made it very obvious”
Resulting from rural and urban interviews it became evident that there is a perception around air quality that if the problem is not visible it is not an issue that demands attention.
Emerging Theme 4: Future understanding of Air Quality
“People need to see the problem to make things better and think of their grandchildren”
After gaining substantial knowledge on the subject of Air Quality both nationally and internationally, the exploration of citizen science has the potential for user to create, understand and impact on air quality.
Emerging Theme 5: Making data understandable and relevant
“The information that is provided is not relevant to me”
Further user research is needed on this emerging theme but from initial findings we discovered that there is an opportunity to adjust the data to meet the user's interests in a more emotional way.
As part of our research presentation we ran an activity which gave the attendees from Intel and the EPA the opportunity to do a SWOT analysis on each theme.
After the briefing, on Monday we broke into 3 sub teams. 1 team revisited all the research again for insights that may have been over looked and capture any insights that came up as part of Friday's discussion. Another team depacked our SWOT analysis on each of the emerging themes with the clients to ensure we were gathering all the feedback. The insights from the activity were added to the master insights board. The final team continued to break down and re-evaluate the emerging themes and examining the new insights.
At the end of this process we came together again as a whole team and looked at the now 9 themes to see where we could merge or if any could be discarded. To help frame the final 6 themes we then wrote them as problem statements, starting with "how might we..."
Next stop ideation!
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