UX research & ethnographic design for humanitarian technology.

UX research & ethnographic design for humanitarian technology.

Welcome to this in-depth look at UX research and ethnographic design approach for humanitarian technology.

Peace + Tech. Disasters + Tech.

I’ll be covering two specific projects, one that was research only where the end ‘product’ was a discovery and a university modules/guidance/reporting on peace and technology and another project where the research and fieldwork was centred around a minimum viable product (MVP) and inputted into the second iteration of the product.

I’ll also be offering general tips and advice for undertaking UX research or ‘field work’ in a country or community that isn’t one of your origin or comfort.

Content warnings.

Violence against women, Manchester bombing, radicalisation of youth, terrorism, natural disasters, British colonisation, racism, education/social status prejudice.

Some slides will have ‘No photos please’. Please do not take photos of these slides, copy or redistribute in any way.

Introduction to Eriol (speaker)

Introduction to Eriol (speaker)

Hi, I’m Eriol. (Ehh-roll).

I’m humanitarian designer or a human rights centred designer. They/Them pronouns.

10 years in digital product design & UX. 7+ year in community development work.

Speakers previous place of employment.

Ushahidi is a non-profit, humanitarian technology organisation that makes mostly Open Source Software for human rights needs.

Founded in 2008 in the aftermath of election turmoil in Kenya Ushahidi’s mission and subject matter expertise is in building communication technology to empower people to raise their voices while delivering tools to help organisations better listen and respond.

Ushahidi platform is most commonly used for advocacy, transparency, corruption and accountability monitoring, disaster response, election monitoring, human rights abuse reporting, measurement and evaluation, and environmental monitoring, and other subject areas.

Introduction to Isooko.

Isooko means ‘fountain of peace’ in Kiyarwanda.

Isooko is a EU funded consortium project undertaken by universities, non-profits and companies to look at whether technology has an effect in peace education and peace building. Specifically looking at countries with a history of conflict or violence.

Organisations involved: KCL, UNI of Makerere, DotSoft, Leiden Uni, Aegis Trust, Kigali Collaborative Research Centre.

Isooko.eu

You can find more info at isooko.eu

Isooko explores the potential of digital technologies to support peace through testing and development in Rwanda and Kenya.

Team

The team was comprised of: Design Academics, ‘Theory of Change’ professors, tech professionals, Design ‘practitioners’, Program officers, Impact specialists…

Basically a whole lot of different kinds of perspectives and expertises that don’t always work in perfect harmony with each other…

Design Academics and practitioners notably have different needs from research. Academics need to be able to record detail and ‘code’ the results for papers and practitioners tend to be focussed on the insight and artefacts of research.

Why Rwanda & Kenya?

Rwanda’s history with Genocide led to a number of social policies and projects that worked on peace as with Kenya’s history of tribe-based, political conflict.

But when you’re looking at where to conduct your research ask yourself these questions:

Always ask yourself ‘Why is this the country and/or city I want to investigate this problem in?’

What can I learn from the community here that I might find more difficult in my country of residence?

What unique problems am I committing to solve by researching here?

Even if you’re likely to conduct the research in your country/community of origin or comfort this is good practice.

Grant funded activity is…often restrictive, prescriptive and at it’s worst 'proposal first’ instead of ‘human first’.

Even though Rwanda and Kenya are legitimately the best places to conduct this study, grant funding often stipulates in the proposal phase where the research ‘should’ happen.

This often restricts the opportunity to discover other places where research can be broadened to until there is further funding or a partner organisation in a new place to pursue a research ‘branch’ with.

I would often find myself ‘doing research on multiple projects continuously as I visited places that have relevance. Three of these places for Isooko were Kazakstan, Tunisia and Romania.

Living Labs Methodology.

For Isooko we used Living Labs Methodology.

’Living Lab’ is a term that was first used at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It proposes a research methodology that is not only user-centred but “carried by the users” permitting the formulation, prototyping and validation of complex solutions in a multifaceted real-life environment.

Living Labs diagram

This diagram illustrates the intention of Living labs methodology well. It sits closely with a participatory design approach.

Academia ≠ Practice

Another tricky thing with research that has an academic focus is that the methodology you used can be restrictive. As practitioners, we often use the methods that will gain us the pathways and results we are interested in exploring whereas academia is also testing the methodological relevancy.

I’ve had many a heated debate with academic partners about the essential flexibility needed with methodologies. Not only from a ‘needed outcomes’ perspective on a practical project where the organisation I was part of was required by funders to deliver certain ‘artefacts’ but also due to the complex nature of traumatic events I prioritised comfort of attendees of purity of research every time.

Public + Civil Society Orgs - What works for public might not work for CSOs.

CSO’s are an integral stakeholder of ‘Peace’ and therefore a key group to include. However, from previous experience of a team member, we found during the research/workshop planning sessions that CSO’s will have vastly different needs from the subject matter, Peace and Technology as well as format-wise and, in order to attend, we needed to offer them value beyond participation.

‘Public’

User Journeys. Personas. Stakeholder mapping. Rapid prototyping. User Scenario.

We were ‘required’ to do some activities as part of the academic structure but we decided to omit one activity as well as to adapt other activities to be more engaging and relevant to the attendees.

CSO's

Defining peace. Understanding User Journeys and Personas. Tech tool demos. Impact mapping.

With CSO’s we really focussed in on the shared value of the research as well as being very sympathetic to their needs.

We spent the entire morning taking them through the ‘public’ user journeys and personas in order to connect with the people that they serve. This enabled them to build empathy and critically analyse their current peace building activities and rapid prototype from a technology perspective much more easily.

Working with trauma in design activities.

Polycom women are a group of women across generations and backgrounds dedicated to peace building in Kibera (informal settlement or ‘slum’ in Nairobi Kenya) where a lot of political, social, economical issues arise.

Working with Polycom and the other attendees at these workshops about peace was one of the first times I was confronted with my own experience of trauma as well as other peoples and how to manage that in a research context.

Homework*

Think of a deeply upsetting event in your life and try to begin to ‘Journey map’ this event.

So, if you can try this out.

Think of a deeply upsetting event in your life and try to begin to ‘Journey map’ this event.

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/journey-mapping-101/

Journey map image from participant 1

Here’s an example of a journey map from a participant. It’s separated into before the incident, during the incident and after the incident.

Journey map image from participant 2

On close up, you can see elements from the participant/s listing events like ‘war’ ‘tribal conflict’ ‘high food prices’ and ‘sound of bullets’

I’m not sure about you but I struggled to truly understand these circumstances and how to respond as a researcher.

How did we make sure we did this ethically?

There were ways we ensured that what we did was as ethical as possible.

~ Researchers went through the same process ~ Researchers examples used in workshop for compassion ~ Attendees notified pre-workshop of subject matter ~ Psychological support on site ~ Confidentiality ~ Researcher supported post workshop

Eriols' Manchester arena bombing journey map

Here’s my own journey map of my ‘experience’ with the Manchester arena bombing at the Ariana Grande concert.

General tip #1 Countries used to an ‘aid’ presence are ‘non-profit’ language proficient.

Something to be aware of when working with populations that have been influenced by ‘receiving aid’, these participants are ‘non-profit’ language proficient and in my experience, use certain language and phrases with ‘researchers’ (especially those from ‘the west’) to appear ‘fundable’.

General tip #2 Don't assume written, spoken or listening language level.

How I learned this was through a persona exercise as part of the public workshops. The persona activity had a great deal of written and reading as part of the process. I found the public participants spend a long time on these (about 30 mins extra for a 45 min task) and many attendees asked me to ‘check their work’ like a teacher would!

I quickly realised that some of these folks might have been more comfortable in their first language or benefitted from a more conversational and lighter structure for the personas.

General tip #3 Can I relate to you?

Can I relate to you? ~ Race/Ethnicity ~ Perceived Gender/Sex ~ Social Status ~ Interest/Circumstance ~ Education

Finding a way to relate to your participants is key to rapport building and therefore what knowledge you are able to gather from them.

Especially in circumstances where you do not share a country of residence think beforehand about where your commonalities lay.

Food is often a good universal value :) (but be careful with folks with food-related trauma)

General tip #4 Be willing to adapt activities for other groups.

We adapted the persona activity after witnessing a mistake on our part. That people were less comfortable with long form writing in a second, third etc language.

We changed it to an interview process and this both built rapport among the group and also allowed for discussion on deeper persona topics.

Fixers.

“Someone who’s typically hired by a journalist foreign correspondent or researcher to make arrangements in an unfamiliar place to them. They are experts at navigating, politically difficult and sometimes unsafe landscapes.”

Intro to Dispatcher.

Dispatcher, unlike Isooko was a shorter research project with a product focus. Something was being built and improved on via research.

We were looking at community cohesion and how people globally help each other in response to a crisis. This is linked to an idea of resilience in both an individual way and a group way.

'Deep ethnographic’ vs ‘Ephemeral researcher’

These are the terms i use for the two types of research approach from myself and my colleague while working on this project.

Neither are right or wrong I think it’s a preference/inclination but do be aware of where you operate more and it’s affects on the research, you and the community.

Deep ethnographic.

A colleague seen here sat around a low table with community members in Kathmandu Nepal helped me understand an ethnographic and anthropological approach to design research when he spent months in a community in Nepal working on a research and tech project.

Community projects: Fox Lane Project: Adamsdown.

I’m bias towards a more ‘deep’ approach where I play a longer game of embedding in a community to learn about their wants, needs, problems. But this can form ties that you, as a researcher need to decide how far to pursue with honest intention.

And my community background has informed the approach I take to UX research.

Community projects: WSAAG, Homework club, Community garden

The kinds of activities i did as a community volunteer are Homework clubs for kids and parents new to the UK, community gardens, women seeking asylum groups and mapping projects.

Community projects: Team Rubicon UK

As well as volunteer work with disaster response non-profit Team Rubicon. https://www.teamrubiconuk.org/

Community projects:

Search and rescue organisation SARAID has a community resilience team I joined and the marmalade trust is a loneliness charity for older people.

Dispatcher: ‘Ephemeral’ researcher.

My colleague was more ‘ephemeral’ clear and honest that their approach was dip in, get the information we need and dip out.

We took more of an Ephemeral approach to dispatcher research but I still leaned towards creating bonds with the participants during and after the project.

Dispatchers problem statement was:

In a crisis, discovering the needs of people who are affected is complicated and communities come together in times of crisis.

You might think it’s simple, but it’s not!

For a number of reasons

1 - Multiple aid organisations going in and doing separate, or combined needs assessments. Sometimes digitally, sometimes paper based.

2 - Sometimes local NGO’s and partners are involved but not always.

3 - Top down approach. e.g. We have water and mosquito nets to give out, but what the community might need is reliable power more than water & mosquito nets.

4 - Often lengthy application to deploy officially.

5 - Needs change depending on events. In Cyclone Idai mozambique there was a second cyclone Kenneth that hit a week later so you move from capacity building back to crisis mode.

6 - Focus off of community led resilience response. When aid organisations drop back out after 2-4 weeks the community still struggles to recover.

7 - Some incidents are difficult to ‘drop into’ such as political and civil incidents.

Crisis, incident, disaster.

When I say Crisis i mean:

Disaster: Typically natural disaster like a hurricane/cyclone/typhoon/earthquake/flood/fire.

Crisis/Incident: Can include human made disasters like terrorism, community violence, hate crime, govt. organisational corruption.

Lifecycle of a crisis diagram

The typically lifecycle of a crisis is ‘before’ ‘during’ and ‘after’ and then time elapses and typically the cycle loops within X time dependant on frequency of crisis.

Before = Resilience

During = Response

After = Recovery

We were looking at the before phase into ‘resilience’

Local research: Nailsea Firestation: www.avonfire.gov.uk

I did local research in Bristol and my colleagues in their hometowns before we planned the field research.

We also studied Belfast, Birmingham, Kigali (Rwanda), LA (California), Bechoko (Northwest Territories of far north Canada)

This was the structure of the product + research project:

Desk research. Research Q’s. Dev scope. Fundraising. Design+Dev iteration x 5. Field Work prep. QA testing. In-country field. Funder reporting.

We planned the field research ourselves and did not hire a fixer. We relied on our in-country staff members to do planning, recruiting and logistics.

Research questions

The research questions we went into our field research with were:

What are the deep motivations for helping members of your community?

What are the opportunities for our system to supplement / enhance those existing practices?

How do users mitigate risk to their safety?

What are the micro decisions you make in a voluntary exchange?

How might we use ML/AI to semi-automate some of the friction points in response?

Why Nairobi?

1 - Access to Informal Settlements like Kibera and Kayole. Crowding often leads to fires. There is also historical political and tribal based conflicts that still play out in complex ways today that many wish to find peaceful alternatives too.

2 - Nairobi gave us access to people who had experienced a breath of incidents as well as a desire to affect change within their own communities quicker than identifying a community where we would need to hire a local fixer as we already have people ‘on the ground’ in Kenya.

3 - Solving needs for our ‘home base’ is important to an organisations mission.

Evaluative & Foundational

45 mins guides a participant through a set of tasks and learn about the ways in which the system/product does and/or does not match their expectations. Sometimes called a ‘user test’.

Foundational, in-depth sessions, which took the form of 1-2 hour semi-structured interviews. Where we dig into the deeper questions like: “How can a tool help you feel safe while using it?”

Explorative & Promotional

A full-day, exploratory group workshop to probe potential use cases, points of friction, and unexpected ways the system may or may not fit into pre-existing patterns of community support. This included a user journey mapping exercise.

Promotional activity was going into two high-foot fall locations with leaflets. We spoke to, and demoed the product for, approximately 500 people over 2 days.

Don’t underestimate promo activity! we discovered new and interesting data when speaking to these audiences.

Sense making

We conducted two full days of sense making activities with the internal team that consisted of synthesising our notes and finings and the grouping these into themes to answer our research questions.

General tip #5

Safety + Health.

Take burner phones, extra devices, do interviews in pairs or threes.

Choose public or safe areas to conduct interview and vet the areas beforehand. Do this for yourself but also your participants! Also make sure a participant can reasonably get to a location within their financial means or make sure you compensate them. Also understand cultural differences. In Kenya there was something we were told about acceptable ‘lateness’ so we expected participants to be within the locally accepted lateness standards.

Look into the local police and hospital structures and simulate/discuss what to do in these circumstances. Make sure you have both a company and field study travel and safety policy.

Be sure you’re careful of different laws like LGBT+ criminalisation.

Investigate local happenings like mugging areas and how they happen.

Get your vaccinations and take ample medication. Expect a certain amount of travellers sickness.

General tip #6

Resist the temptation to do back to back research trips. Build in breaks.

Can be exhausting for the researchers and team but also can ‘blur’ the research topics and focus can be compromised.

Schooling your reaction

Something to practice as a researcher is your physical and emotional reactions to what participants tell you or how they react. Practice this amount yourselves as best you can. Again, simulate, play any and role play in safe environments and pressure test each other have strategies in place for when certain things might happen.

Mitigating surprises

Sometimes regardless of all your planning surprises will happen! Try to plan for surprises as best you can. Ask yourselves ‘What could go wrong?’ and do something called a ‘risk assessment’ for any potential unknowns.

In this case we had a group of 10+ young people show up on the wrong day expecting to participate in a group activity. They were more comfortable with Swahili and not English and expected their travel and lunch to be paid. We hadn’t planned for this so we had to decide then and there do we cancel and turn them away or try to facilitate something? We decided to facilitate and it was difficult but successful!

General tip #7 Many subjects come into play when researching, history, culture, politics. But some surprising subjects can arise.

When you’re doing work in countries that are not yours by origin, many difficult topics can arise during your research conversations, especially if you’re doing work in behalf of a non-profit. Because I’m white with a UK accent there is inherent historical context around colonisation when doing work in countries that are former colonies of the UK. The best way to approach this is (I believe) with complete honesty and transparency. The more you don’t want to address a topic which is part of the cultural and historical context between country and individuals the less respect you are showing to a person, even if they are ‘part of research’

Spend some time understanding and reading about the history and culture of where you are going.

Subjective poverty was a topic that came up in conversations. Poverty and the class system are different in different places and you should be ready to understand and listen to those differences and battle any biased/ill-informed reactions and opinions you might have.

General tip #8 Take a note book everywhere.

A small book in your pocket for recording any notes or an audio recorder if you prefer will help you capture research ‘on the spot’

General tip #9 Designated photographers and note takers.

Designated photographers and note takers will help you as the researcher.

A blurry photo

You’ll end up with blurry photos like the one pictured here. A photo of three people that is out of focus.

Slide visual of ways developing countries are labelled

The names and labels for ‘other places’ typically those in poverty and developing are numerous and there is no perfect language here. Be aware of what the rest of the industry calls certain places and use that language as best you can.

Doing your own field study in an emerging market. Some resources + tips.

Jan Chipchase studiodradiodurans.com

Jan Chipchase has published many books and templates and also organises global trainings and field trips for designers.

They also run a slack community: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScEDRtJ5DAxjTe57Cg7P06FuOLqHPk-anaebvTuveN6G7oXbw/viewform

Read reports.

Many NGO’s and organisations publish reports. Some tech related and some not. Here are two fantastic ones:

Leaving no one behind: Lessons from the Kerala disasters: https://www.preventionweb.net/publications/view/69992

The Mobile Economy Sub-Saharan Africa 2019 https://www.gsma.com/r/mobileeconomy/sub-saharan-africa/

Practice on your next holiday*

~ Community research online ~ Photography ~ Ask taxi drivers about your topic

When/if you go abroad or to a far destination, here are some (optional!) things to practice.

Look into the location through community research online. This can be looking at meetup, facebook groups and event write or any local equivalent. I also use couch surfing and interpals to explore other cultures and communities. Take lots of photos of interesting cultural things. Posters in cafes, graffiti, notice boards. Talk to and ask taxi drivers about your topic of interest. Most Taxi drivers (that can speak a language you’re comfortable in) will happily offer you their insight and the insight of those immediate to them, especially if its a large scale important topic. But be careful! in a Taxi you are in a strangers vehicle! there is a power imbalance here and you will need to be careful with probing into deeper values.

Conferences + Events

These conferences and events have a focus on the interaction of tech/digital and human rights/humanitarian/non profit.

~ Rightscon ~ Internet Freedom Festival ~ Mozfest ~ Peace tech labs ~ Tech4Good

Good orgs to follow.

These organisations actively work in the human rights and digital/technology intersection.

~ Electronic Frontier Foundation eff.org ~ AccessNow accessnow.org ~ Advocacy Assembly advocacyassembly.org ~ Centre for humanitarian data centre.humdata.org

Books!

There are lots of projects I haven’t been able to talk about like health related projects looking at HIV and AIDS across East and Central Africa but we’ll save those for another time!

Here are some great books on emerging markets and ‘the next billion users’. Highly recommended.

Thanks folks.

Please follow me and consider hiring me as a consultant/freelancer :)