Mobile Ethnography: Business Continuity for Qualitative Research
Category : Mobile Ethnography ; Qualitative Research
Over the past few months, for most of us (in the West at least) the Coronavirus was something that felt like it was a world away. The impact is devastating for those on the front line and our thoughts and best wishes go out to them.
We have friends in China who have spent weeks in either imposed or self isolation unable to leave their homes or only being occasionally allowed out on a strict schedule to shop for essentials.
Restaurants were closed (and many still are). Food delivery services went from an elective choice to critical infrastructure necessary for getting food and groceries delivered to peoples’ homes.
As of today, if you want a McDonalds in Hangzhou, you need to preorder it on their app and staff place it on tables that block the entrances of their partially shuttered restaurants (see image).
Now that the virus is spreading across the globe to 58 countries (and counting), the reality of the virus is starting to hit home. Without doubt, in the coming weeks and months, the Coronavirus will significantly impact the everyday lives of people all over the world.
Although China is slowly getting back to business, there are hundreds of millions of people in China who are still not able to return to work.
If this plays out the same way it did in China, we need to plan for the possibility of weeks spent at home with restricted movement in order to contain the spread of this virus.
With experts saying that a vaccine may be as long as 18 months away, the longer term impact of Coronavirus on our everyday lives is still unclear. If the recent plunge in markets is anything to go by, the commercial impacts will be significant and far reaching.
What prompted this blog.
At Indeemo, we literally work with clients from Shanghai to Seattle.
In the past few weeks, we have had multiple calls where clients mentioned that they had to cancel projects that required them to fly to another country to do an in-person ethnography or attend a focus group.
Other clients are reporting that they cannot get UX researchers to attend labs because people are unable or (understandably) unwilling to travel outside their homes.
Business Continuity Planning for Qualitative Research Consultancies
Chances are, if you are in a business that has less than 10 in the team and do not deal with enterprise clients, you won’t have a documented or tested business continuity plan. In our first year as a startup, we didn’t have one either.
But as we started to onboard enterprise clients, we implemented a raft of policies and procedures that at the time felt like overkill but today are central to how we operate our business. We provide our clients and their respondents with an always-on, safe place to do their research and Business Continuity planning is a critical part of this.
However, most freelancers, independent consultants or small agencies / consultancies will likely never be asked to complete a Business Continuity Plan. If you are a team of one, it can seem in a way ridiculous, but in the context of the Coronavirus, this is likely to change.
We believe freelancing is the future of work
Qualitative Research and UX are very flexible industries. In many ways, we see them as the template for the future of work.
Being able to work with experts when you need them is critical when building an agile business. Freelancers enable you to tap into expertise when you need it and switch it off when you don’t.
It’s a win win.
From the freelancer’s perspective, you get to work with a myriad of clients on an ever changing set of business challenges and have the flexibility to travel when you want and work wherever you like - most of the time any way :)
A lot of our clients work from home, a WeWork or small offices. All they need to run their businesses are a smartphone, a laptop, decent wifi and coffee!
Keeping the show on the road
In a way, freelancers are ideally set up for being able to work from home in a business continuity scenario. However, meeting participants in an IDI / Focus Group / UX lab, observing them in their homes or intercepting them while shopping are still heavily utilised methods of understanding consumer and user behaviour.
Even in an era where half of the worlds population has an internet connected smartphone, in-person research is still the bread and butter of Qual.
But what happens when you are unable to travel or when projects start being cancelled? This might not impact you financially if you work in a large multinational with deep pockets where the wages will still get paid.
However, if you’re a consultant who relies on a steady flow of projects to pay the bills, then any cancellation has an immediate financial impact.
That is what we discovered this week.
Our customers are now reporting that projects are being cancelled because firms are placing restrictions on travel.
Hence the blog.
Digital Ethnography as a Business Continuity Strategy
If you are in the business of Qualitative or User Research and your clients are either postponing or cancelling projects, then Mobile Ethnography might be a way for the projects to still go ahead without the need to travel or the need to meet respondents face to face.
Mobile ethnography is a powerful alternative to in person research given that it is a remote form of qualitative research undertaken by the respondents themselves without a need for a Researcher to be present. In practice, this means that respondents can continue to record their in-the-moment needs and behaviours using their mobile phones rather than having to meet with researchers.
With Digital ethnography solutions that are delivered as a smartphone app, it is possible to conduct remote qualitative research in context, across multiple markets without worrying about travel restrictions or compromising personal safety.
Our recent blog on the Benefits of Mobile Ethnography for Multi Country Qualitative Research will explain how this remote, digital qualitative research methodology is already being embraced by multi national brands to better understand culture and context at scale.
To date, our clients have viewed Mobile Ethnography as something elective, supplemental and sometimes, a nice-to-have.
It is only in the past few days that it dawned on us that far from being an elective supplement to your research toolkit, Mobile Ethnography might actually prove to be a necessary Business Continuity solution for Qualitative Research.
Contact us
If your research is being impacted by the restrictions on travel, or clients are considering cancelling projects, please get in touch with us and we can advise on how an existing in person project can be reconfigured to be carried out remotely using the same respondents.
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