We use a variety of qualitative research methods to address your core questions and inform your business and product decisions.
Our Approach
Curious
We don’t take the mundane or obvious for granted - we reframe and explore the problem space with an open and curious mindset to reveal new, fresh, and actionable insights.
Collaborative
We believe that research done in close collaboration with you is key to translating insights into strategic and product decisions.
coaching
We help you achieve your objectives and goals not only with actionable insights, but also by encouraging and developing your curiosity and inquiry skills.
Triangulating
We triangulate data using multiple data points to provide you with a complete picture of the motivations and goals that shape human behaviors.
Relevant
When appropriate, we draw on established work from the social sciences to reinforce and bolster insights from qualitative research.
Translating
We distill and translate data into meaningful visualizations, guiding principles, or frameworks to empower your organization to make strategic product and design decisions.
Our Results
We tailor deliverables to allow for immediate action, meet the needs and schedule of your organization, and evoke an emotional connection with your users.
Artifacts can include journey maps, behavioral frameworks, models, personas, user stories, experience goals, core principles, wireframes and tools for you to continue to deepen your understanding and empathy and make user centered decisions.
Lines of Inquiry We Love to Explore
What are the key milestones that people go through when evaluating a new product? What are the key drivers and barriers to adoption?
What matters to people? What are the motivations and goals that drive people’s behaviors? What are their latent and unmet needs?
How do people respond emotionally and relate to a product? How do they perceive a product’s role in their daily lives or work?
Does the product have a clear focus, solving a core problem that matters the most to people?
How well does a feature or product fit within or enhance people’s existing contexts and workflows?
How easily and quickly are people able to learn, understand, and perform core tasks that a product supports?
Featured Projects
RELATIONSHIP WITH ORGANIZATION PLATEAUS OVERTIME
HOW CAN THE ORGANIZATION EVOLVE THE RELATIONSHIP WITH USERS?
HELPING PEOPLE CREATE CHANGE
Our client, a worldwide leader in civic technology, wanted to better understand the motivation and goals of an active segment of their user population. Additionally, they wanted to identify opportunities to engage with this segment through membership.
Key Questions: What is the user’s awareness of, expectations for, and attitude towards paid membership? How can the organization convert them to paid members? How does membership augment their value proposition, if at all?
How: We conducted a series of 1:1 remote interviews with active signers. Using recall of specific moments/petitions, we gained insight into actual catalysts that trigger the signing of petitions, and what happened surrounding those moments. We also used a combination of a prototype and rating exercises to elicit discussion on membership and the organization’s value proposition.
“Aha” Insights: We deepened how stakeholders think about “membership” by clarifying that, for people engaging with organizations that support their positive change-making goals, “membership” is more than financial support or a transaction. A particular relationship with the organizations to which they contribute money is expected. There are two key facets to this relationship: 1) An intimate understanding of who change.org is, and the people involved; 2) A feeling of a being part of something larger.
Outcome: Prompted an org-wide commitment to developing content with the goal of cultivating a deeper relationship between the organization and the people at each touch point on the journey to membership.
Supporting customer journeys to standardization
A construction tech company was looking for insights to help identify and prioritize opportunities related to standardization within construction projects, teams, and companies.
The client wanted to identify key roles involved in the creation and consumption of standards and to deepen their understanding of the motivations and processes around standardizing within a construction organization.
When and how are standards developed, refined, deployed and adopted?
What/who are the inputs?
Reframe: Through conversations with key stakeholders and Subject Matter Experts (SME’s), we reframed the research goal as: How can the construction tech company support customers along their standardization journey?
How: We conducted 1:1 remote interviews with existing customers in a variety of different roles related to standardization in order to understand motivations, needs, and processes related to standards. We also encouraged participants to share artifacts to help ground and contextualize the conversations.
Outcome: We distilled findings and developed visual artifacts to illustrate the motivation, drivers and pain points experienced while maturing through and towards standardization. We expanded personas and identified their evolving needs at various stages throughout the standardization process. We developed a model (fig on the right) depicting the journey to standardization maturity, identified Experience Principles, and recommended a number of product opportunities and priorities.
“Curious Two worked with two of our product teams to develop a foundational understanding of the range of user archetypes, their workflows, and their needs.
From the start, Marsha and Heather were invaluable partners in developing a plan for answering the team’s questions, and leading the team through the research process. They quickly ramped up in a complex space, which allowed them to facilitate productive conversations with both the product teams and customers. Throughout the project, they showed their expertise and professionalism by flexing to the needs of the teams, and engaging collaboratively with stakeholders at all levels, and ultimately providing clear and actionable product and design recommendations.”
More Projects
Foundational/explore
Through in-context interviews, participant observation, and longitudinal studies, we illuminated insights into the customer adoption journey, informed product directions and messaging, and focused the problem space.
Evaluative/Define
We’ve used storyboards, card sorts, and low- and high-fidelity prototypes to quickly and iteratively evaluate early-stage concepts, interfaces, and products. We prioritize user needs to proactively steer designs in the right direction.
Summative/Refine
Through baseline and iterative usability studies, we inform improvements to interfaces, information architectures, technology implementations, and experiences to ensure final products are not only usable, but also delightful.