Ever wondered what happens behind the closed doors of people’s homes? If you are in a business looking for new innovation opportunities you should. The private nature of the home may make it seem off limits, but all the more reason why you as a business should concern yourself with what goes on there.
Exactly because homes are our sacred places shielded from the outside world, they are vital to understanding the true nature and values that drive us as humans and as consumers. Getting insights into people’s lives at home can help uncover your business blind spots and thereby create the aha-moments that spark innovation, if you for a moment take on customers’ world views and leave your assumptions at the door.
At IS IT A BIRD we have visited more than 1000 people in their homes and found that the most valuable part of doing fieldwork in-home is embracing the intimate experience of entering another person’s private sphere as a way to actively let your own worldview be challenged.
As the open minded guest you become aware what is important to your host
When you step into peoples’ home, you automatically become just as much a guest as a researcher. As a guest you don’t have the mandate to fully control where the conversation goes or what happens during the research.
It might be a bit scary to partly let go of control like that, but the new dynamic creates a space for the research participant, who is now your host, to take the lead and highlight what is important in their life. This brings new perspectives to the table, that you might not have considered of importance before the research. When visiting a Spanish woman in her home to understand her experience of living with a chronic disease, she directed our attention to vacation photos on a central shelf in the living room. The pictures were from the many vacations she had been on, not only with her family, but with people from the whole village, who she went on many of her vacations with because they were a central part of her social life.
Our Scandinavian based client had up until then focused on the role of the immediate family as the main influence and supported system when it came to people’s health issues. But experiences like the above pointed towards the extent of important social networks, in which they had to help users take care of the health issues in. Embracing the fact that you are a guest will let the lives of your customers be centre of attention and will minimise your bias toward focusing on predetermined business-centred topics.
Embracing the fact that you are a guest will let the lives of your customers be centre of attention this will minimise your bias to focus on predetermined business centred topics.
Being on site provides insights on actual behaviour instead of ideals
In a person’s home, you are entering the scene where your host’s everyday life happens. This provides a perfect opportunity to use the physical surroundings as conversational probes to understand actual behaviour and motivation behind it. We often ask research participants to give us a tour around the house and talk about activities and considerations regarding the rooms we pass.
For a large international company that designs elements for luxury bathrooms, we did research in the homes of bathroom owners to get an in depth understanding of bathroom aspirations. Contrary to what our client thought, it was not marble counters and glass panes that drove aspiration. As research participants guided us through their homes and bathrooms, comparisons and descriptions of what we saw highlighted the many minor ways people altered their bathroom to create a combination of functionality and a moment of zen and privacy in the midst of a busy life. We realised that aspirational bathrooms were spaces that enabled people to hide things away, clean up, and air out – much more important than extravagance and exclusivity.
Research on the same topic outside the home would not have provided this look behind the scenes, and might only have provided the feedback that confirmed our clients ideas about ideals, rather than grounding it in customers’ reality. Being on site provides the conversational probes you need to understand how people’s lives really play out around your product and service.
Take it all in to build empathy that sticks
It is not only the unexpected stories and observed behaviour that can expand your understanding of people’s lives. Being present in people’s houses provides multi-sensory information. It is this holistic approach that drives empathy from the moment you approach the doorstep all the way to communication of the insights in the organisation.
The smells, sounds, sights and moods you experience are all important data and provide essential contextual knowledge to understand the world of your research participants.
If you take this holistic approach from the beginning, it will provide the empathy needed to create strong and convincing insights in analysis and the details that will make the communication of final insights engaging. It is this kind of empathy that fuels insights and gives them the power to live on throughout the organisation.
Getting insights on people’s lives at home is less about the questions you have prepared and more about letting your curiosity challenge your assumptions and biases. Doing so will lead to unique insights and game changing aha-moments that you will not reach in professional facilities or by reading trend reports.
Get in touch if you want to get to talk about how research in homes can create valuable insights for your business.
