Name: DIY research hacks_how to make the best of your limitations
Uploaded: 2022-09-23T12:56:36.658Z
Description: Shrutee an Innovation Manager at Behr goes through research they have conducted and concludes their findings to offer DIY hacks and how to make the best of your limitations.

DIYRES~1.vtt

English

{{00:00:06}}
Hello, everyone.

{{00:00:07}}
I'm happy to be here and excited to talk to you about out
there has, adopted some DIY research hacks over the years.

{{00:00:20}}
So, just a little bit of me.

{{00:00:22}}
I have been at Behr for about four years now.

{{00:00:26}}
I have nine years of experience in innovation, user
research, kind of a hybrid background in economics.

{{00:00:32}}
And then, And design thinking cause I'm strategy.

{{00:00:35}}
And my team at Behr is responsible for the front end of innovation.

{{00:00:39}}
So we do a lot of , early stage research for new concepts, ideas,
services, products, you name it and, we kind of are a lean team.

{{00:00:51}}
So we have to use kind of do it yourself, approaches to research.

{{00:00:56}}
A little bit about Behr, if you're not
already aware, we're a paint company.

{{00:01:00}}
And parent company is Masco, which also holds other companies like Dr.

{{00:01:06}}
Faucet.

{{00:01:07}}
And we are in the do it yourself business.

{{00:01:12}}
So, homeowners all across the us use our paints.

{{00:01:17}}
We also are sold exclusively at the home Depot and you
may be aware of the Kilz brand for primer and Magnolia

{{00:01:25}}
home by Joanna Gaines,  chalk paint and aerosol paints.

{{00:01:28}}
So we kind of have a portfolio of architectural coatings products
and we originated in 1947 in Southern California and in a garage.

{{00:01:41}}
In packaging, actually.

{{00:01:42}}
So a little bit about our product.

{{00:01:45}}
When the pandemic hit and it really kind of pushed our team to
figure out how we can do things ourselves, do things remotely.

{{00:01:54}}
And so I'm going to be talking about a couple of use cases,
about how we kind of DIY and how we've hacked ethnography

{{00:02:03}}
one-on-one interviews, ideation, concept testing, and then
just some long run, tips that we've used over the years.

{{00:02:13}}
Starting off with ethnography, so, before the pandemic
hit, we did a lot of traditional DIY ethnography.

{{00:02:20}}
So,  in-person site visits across the US, really just
watching people and how they interact with our products.

{{00:02:26}}
And then we also did some demo desks at our headquarters,
with our colleagues, sometimes bringing in design students.

{{00:02:33}}
Everything that you would imagine in person,  with ethnography
and kind of observing people use our products in real time.

{{00:02:41}}
Obviously that took a lot of time planning and recruiting.

{{00:02:44}}
It was expensive required a lot of time commitment from our
product teams, our R and D teams, everyone else that we had

{{00:02:51}}
involved in up in our projects and, hours of video and transcripts
afterwards, just analyzing what we learned during our, our projects.

{{00:03:01}}
We figured out a way to kind of take that remote
and we kind of call it a hack for ethnography.

{{00:03:09}}
We've been using non traditional mobile
ethnography tools, basically online tools.

{{00:03:16}}
We quickly completed four projects over the course of a month.

{{00:03:20}}
We reached 204 homeowners who recently completed projects in
their homes and it was all done within a month under budget.

{{00:03:31}}
And it really kind of put things in perspective
for our team, in comparison to the 10 commitments

{{00:03:36}}
that we spent with traditional ethnography.

{{00:03:39}}
So, we shared our video clips with our product teams, our R and D
teams or brand teams, and everyone kind of benefited from seeing real

{{00:03:48}}
people,  basically taking videos on their mobile , of them after their
projects, showing us around their homes, showing us, you know, their

{{00:03:57}}
walls,  different projects that they've completed in their homes.

{{00:04:00}}
And , Took all of that information.

{{00:04:02}}
All of, all of the video clips that we had, we extracted insights
, that kind of said for some great conversation during ideation and

{{00:04:10}}
brainstorming, and that ultimately led to new product development.

{{00:04:14}}
We're also planning on potentially adding a machine
overlay, machine learning overlay so that we can see

{{00:04:20}}
if there were any patterns or anything like that.

{{00:04:23}}
There were 204 videos, so there's a lot to look
through, but we used a couple of different tools.

{{00:04:30}}
Instapanel user interviews and D scout, which were
just really great for reaching everyday people.

{{00:04:38}}
while our entire team was remote.

{{00:04:41}}
So lessons learned from that experience, being a paint company, we
had to be mindful that mobile ethnography is, a little bit challenging

{{00:04:53}}
when it comes to, you know, looking at colors on walls, for example.

{{00:04:56}}
So depending on what product or service you're working
on, you'll want to keep that in mind, obviously.

{{00:05:03}}
And then when sharing out videos to our executives and other
team members, we wanted to kind of just level set expectations

{{00:05:10}}
that these are real people that are taking videos on their own.

{{00:05:13}}
It's not professional, it's not how we would typically do ethnography.

{{00:05:20}}
We also found some hacks for one-on-one interviews.

{{00:05:24}}
we really had an influx of,  Demand at the beginning of the year
when everyone was first remote, we wanted to kind of keep our

{{00:05:33}}
product R and D and marketing teams connected with our end users.

{{00:05:38}}
And it was important to have, or kind of be that life on
between everyday people and our teams,  within our company,

{{00:05:48}}
to make sure that we can connect them with our end users.

{{00:05:51}}
So,  we completed about five projects in five weeks
just using Microsoft teams,  having interdepartmental

{{00:06:00}}
conference calls, where we spoke to everyday homeowners.

{{00:06:07}}
Using user interviews using user testing, zoom and Skype.

{{00:06:11}}
And we really found that to be a helpful, easy way
to stay connected with our end users and understand

{{00:06:18}}
how they were reacting to their current situation and
how it influenced their home improvement behaviors.

{{00:06:24}}
So,  This is obviously very low budget, very affordable, really,
really easy and quick to, you know, plan and to send out a meeting

{{00:06:35}}
invite, for the next week, even, via user interviews and user testing.

{{00:06:41}}
We really learned that it was, it was important
to invite new parts of the organization to listen

{{00:06:45}}
in on these interviews , and to stay connected.

{{00:06:49}}
It was kind of, A benefit that we would connect with teams
that we had typically not connected while we in the office.

{{00:06:54}}
Now that we are remote, it was really easy just
to buy as many people as we wanted to listen in on

{{00:06:59}}
mute and,  still feel connected with our end users.

{{00:07:02}}
So we found some great success and I'm using these online tools.

{{00:07:09}}
Pre pandemic.

{{00:07:10}}
We did a lot of ideation and brainstorming sessions.

{{00:07:13}}
These were multi hour in person sessions
with lots of people and large spaces.

{{00:07:18}}
You know, it involved breaking out into
teams and having fuel and food breaks.

{{00:07:22}}
And, sometimes we would use inspiration from, you
know, tangible objects that you can touch and feel.

{{00:07:29}}
We bring a new consumers, real consumers.

{{00:07:33}}
Brainstorm with us.

{{00:07:35}}
It was really kind of hands-on interactive in
person, drawn out sessions, which were great.

{{00:07:44}}
So that was a huge challenge for us.

{{00:07:48}}
When the pandemic hit and trying to figure
out a hack for doing all of that remotely.

{{00:07:54}}
So some tools that we use, which can also be used in research,
doesn't have to be used in ideation, brainstorming, types of

{{00:08:02}}
activities, but we use a lot of mind tools virtually, so mural
MindMeister  and Miro, to really just have those ideations,  via you

{{00:08:15}}
know, Microsoft teams or zoom or whatever conference call,products
that you're using and, make it fun, make it collaborative.

{{00:08:25}}
We split up our sessions into three, one hour long
sessions to, prevent burnout while everyone's remote.

{{00:08:33}}
We would have brainstorms and then we would all vote in real
time using emojis, trying to make it fun and interactive.

{{00:08:43}}
And then we collected those insights and voted on them,
virtually, and really, we found a lot of success in doing this

{{00:08:53}}
almost, you know, just as much success as we would in person.

{{00:08:58}}
And it was.

{{00:09:00}}
Yeah, really just, you know, no cost, to us, no  additional
costs  it was efficient in terms of time and people enjoy them.

{{00:09:12}}
We have ideations pretty often, and we see
participation,  really kind of increase over time.

{{00:09:20}}
People really like this, this type  of break, and their  day-to-day.

{{00:09:26}}
We did learn that we should pressure test new tools and send out those
invitations with any type of new tools well in advance for, for our

{{00:09:34}}
participants, so that they can familiarize themselves with the tool.

{{00:09:38}}
And,  we know that,know people work better earlier in the day.

{{00:09:44}}
So we do warning brainstorms to prevent that
fatigue from, being remote all day long.

{{00:09:52}}
We also, do concept testing.

{{00:09:55}}
So after ideation, we bring those concepts to
life, and get real feedback via online surveys.

{{00:10:02}}
So,  just doing those surveys ourselves, kind of what  worked for us.

{{00:10:11}}
so having to focus less research efforts and invest less
time and effort and budget into these online surveys,  really

{{00:10:20}}
resulted in, you know, answers to the questions that our business
units would have, in a short amount of time at a lower cost.

{{00:10:28}}
And, you know, this is a time when we may have more
limits and uncertainty is really high, so it really

{{00:10:35}}
was a bonus to be able to just do it ourselves.

{{00:10:42}}
Just to be, just to clarify, we, we do
have a traditional market research arm.

{{00:10:47}}
We kind of compliment them.

{{00:10:49}}
At there wework together with our traditional research arm.

{{00:10:55}}
So we try to do it, do a lot of these things ourselves.

{{00:10:58}}
And, and then obviously, not let that replace, larger scale research
efforts where you know, more money and time as needed or invested.

{{00:11:09}}
So during this time, we've, we've found that, you can
DIY survey tool, you know, we use survey monkey asked

{{00:11:19}}
your target market, Google sheets and poll everywhere.

{{00:11:23}}
These are some of the tools that we used.

{{00:11:26}}
And that we've used over the years that have
worked for usand we found doing it ourselves.

{{00:11:31}}
We can do more AB testing, with new feature sets,
you know, branded versus non branded concepts.

{{00:11:38}}
You name it, we kind of, can do it all ourselves
and,  kind of experiment as we go along.

{{00:11:45}}
We also found  that having, Really kind of scheduled
out quarterly share outs with our executive team and

{{00:11:55}}
then allowing them to kind of, weigh in on our, our new
concepts and our new ideas, via an online polling tool.

{{00:12:06}}
Well everywhere where, you know, you can see real time feedback.

{{00:12:10}}
During our presentations was really helpful, a really
helpful way to kind of gauge our research and get

{{00:12:18}}
feedback for the research that we were, we were doing.

{{00:12:21}}
So that was, Something that worked really well.

{{00:12:25}}
And our executives loved kind of, you know, giving us their opinion
in real time and, and then seeing the collective feedback on screen.

{{00:12:34}}
And that chart that you see in the lower right-hand
corner and again, some lessons learned, Really benefited

{{00:12:44}}
from including open-ended questions and our DIY surveys,
and then being able to kind of sift through that data

{{00:12:51}}
and, help answer the why behind some of our questions.

{{00:12:56}}
Also having those, having those, you know, quotes from, from real
homeowners was always helpful during, our executive presentations.

{{00:13:08}}
And then in general, some hacks that have worked for our team,
over the course of the last couple of years, when it comes to,

{{00:13:17}}
DIY research, we, had some training with AMS applied marketing,
marketing science in Boston on voice of the customer training and,

{{00:13:28}}
you know, really learning how to talk to consumers one-on-one.

{{00:13:33}}
Also having an ethnography training that kind of
prepped us and signed us for,  for mobile ethnography.

{{00:13:41}}
I think that really helped, with the success of using
the mobile tools and then training and training,

{{00:13:50}}
what extracting and building and statements.

{{00:13:52}}
So, you know, once we did all this research, how can we,
ubuild insight statements that make sense that we can

{{00:14:00}}
then launch off of, you know, whether it be ideation,
new product development, whatever may come next and then.

{{00:14:11}}
This practise is talking to people, when we first went, you know,
having mock interviews with,  our team members and building out

{{00:14:21}}
interview guides, and surveys together as a team really helped.

{{00:14:25}}
All of us on our team have kind of, you know, different backgrounds.

{{00:14:30}}
So from chemistry to product management, we're not really,
professional researchers, so really having to weigh on each other,

{{00:14:40}}
and figure out how I like surveys can really be, you know, their bus.

{{00:14:49}}
And then just again, practicing with those one-on-one phone calls
we have had, we've done hundreds of calls with ed users,just

{{00:14:57}}
all over the states and paints is such a unique, unique product.

{{00:15:01}}
We need to kind of understand how people, that live in, you know,
places that have really bad weather, for example,  or what they're

{{00:15:10}}
experiencing, what pain points they have with our products.

{{00:15:12}}
So that practice has really helped, over the course of the years.

{{00:15:18}}
And then obviously taking from design thinking, and the
lean  startup we in our team, you know, consistently,

{{00:15:27}}
test and iterate on our, on our new concepts, our new
ideas, and that's really worked for us, taking that lean

{{00:15:37}}
approach and taking, from tools that startups are using.

{{00:15:43}}
Behr is a pretty mature company, we've been around for a while, but
that doesn't mean that we've limited ourselves, as to what types

{{00:15:53}}
of tools we use and how we kind of, how we behave within our team.

{{00:15:59}}
That's helped a lot and we also all have a copy
of,  the three strategizer books that you see in

{{00:16:07}}
the lower right-hand corner, a business model.

{{00:16:10}}
Generation and then we also use the value proposition canvas when
we're, when we're conducting our research to kind of summarize

{{00:16:20}}
pains, gains, and jobs to be done after, after we have these research
calls or interviews, ethnography, whatever it may be, that's really

{{00:16:29}}
helped kind of our team has that, DIY startup mentality to be
lean and to be, you know, efficient with how we do our research.

{{00:16:42}}
So in conclusion, just wanted to reiterate that, if you do have
limitations, like budget time, head count, really we have all of the

{{00:16:55}}
above and, Your research insights, innovation, your press development
that you're doing, whatever it may be does not have to suffer.

{{00:17:04}}
It's okay to go non-traditional with your
research methods and get out of your comfort zone.

{{00:17:10}}
Really it worked for us and it's, it's really
having, it's really having us kind of reevaluate

{{00:17:15}}
how we do our research when we're in the office.

{{00:17:21}}
We're talking about, you know, what online tools we'll continue to
using after things are back to normal and we are back in the office.

{{00:17:28}}
We may still, you know, go ahead with some of these online
tools that have worked really well for us or this time.

{{00:17:35}}
So, it's really important to stay connected, obviously
with your end users and collaborate with those that

{{00:17:42}}
you may not usually consult within your, companies work
in harmony, Lizzy or traditional market research arm.

{{00:17:50}}
If you have one, I think it's really helped us to be
kind of the lean DIY arm of market research, while

{{00:17:57}}
complimenting our traditional market research team.

{{00:18:01}}
And, really it was talking about some of the changes
that you've adopted, using DIY tools and how you

{{00:18:10}}
may, you know, continue using them going forward

{{00:18:17}}
And that's all I have today is there
any questions I can answer, happy to do?

{{00:18:22}}
So

{{00:18:26}}
let's see.

{{00:18:27}}
Thank you for that great presentation.

{{00:18:30}}
So if anyone has questions, please enter them in the chat now.

{{00:18:33}}
But our first question for you is how did you recruit
quickly and cheaply for mobile ethnography and ideas?

{{00:18:43}}
Great question.

{{00:18:45}}
So using those online tools, Instapanel for example, it's fairly
inexpensive and, you kind of just create your screen or like you

{{00:18:56}}
typically load with a survey and, the recruiting those done for you.

{{00:19:02}}
And, same with user interviews.

{{00:19:05}}
We, you know, put in our, our screener, what
our criteria is for what we're looking for.

{{00:19:11}}
And, you know, being a paint company, we've been
very particular about who we need to speak with.

{{00:19:16}}
You know, it's gotta be someone that's painted in
the last X amount a month, that lives in this region.

{{00:19:22}}
And that's used, you know, this type of paint.

{{00:19:26}}
Actually it worked out really well, surprisingly,
and it wasn't, a challenge, using those online tools.

{{00:19:32}}
So it's all integrated with the tools and it comes in the cost is
all integrated as well, so that's kind of how we went about that.

{{00:19:45}}
Thank you.

{{00:19:48}}
Do we have any other questions, please enter them in the chat now.

{{00:19:51}}
We do have one question asking if you work
with partnerships in the Brazilian market.

{{00:20:00}}
Oh, that's a great question.

{{00:20:02}}
Fortunately we are not in Brazil, they know that we're
in China and Mexico and,  QA but hopefully in the future,

{{00:20:17}}
My next question is, have you used grounded
theory methodologies in any of your projects?

{{00:20:25}}
We have not actually, great question as well.

{{00:20:30}}
No, we have not, I believe that our traditional
market research arm, so which is another team.

I'm happy to be here and excited to talk to you about out
there has, adopted some DIY research hacks over the years.

I have been at Behr for about four years now.

I have nine years of experience in innovation, user
research, kind of a hybrid background in economics.

And then, And design thinking cause I'm strategy.

And my team at Behr is responsible for the front end of innovation.

So we do a lot of , early stage research for new concepts, ideas,
services, products, you name it and, we kind of are a lean team.

So we have to use kind of do it yourself, approaches to research.

A little bit about Behr, if you're not
already aware, we're a paint company.

And parent company is Masco, which also holds other companies like Dr.

And we are in the do it yourself business.

So, homeowners all across the us use our paints.

We also are sold exclusively at the home Depot and you
may be aware of the Kilz brand for primer and Magnolia

home by Joanna Gaines,  chalk paint and aerosol paints.

So we kind of have a portfolio of architectural coatings products
and we originated in 1947 in Southern California and in a garage.

When the pandemic hit and it really kind of pushed our team to
figure out how we can do things ourselves, do things remotely.

And so I'm going to be talking about a couple of use cases,
about how we kind of DIY and how we've hacked ethnography

one-on-one interviews, ideation, concept testing, and then
just some long run, tips that we've used over the years.

Starting off with ethnography, so, before the pandemic
hit, we did a lot of traditional DIY ethnography.

So,  in-person site visits across the US, really just
watching people and how they interact with our products.

And then we also did some demo desks at our headquarters,
with our colleagues, sometimes bringing in design students.

Everything that you would imagine in person,  with ethnography
and kind of observing people use our products in real time.

Obviously that took a lot of time planning and recruiting.

It was expensive required a lot of time commitment from our
product teams, our R and D teams, everyone else that we had

involved in up in our projects and, hours of video and transcripts
afterwards, just analyzing what we learned during our, our projects.

We figured out a way to kind of take that remote
and we kind of call it a hack for ethnography.

We've been using non traditional mobile
ethnography tools, basically online tools.

We quickly completed four projects over the course of a month.

We reached 204 homeowners who recently completed projects in
their homes and it was all done within a month under budget.

And it really kind of put things in perspective
for our team, in comparison to the 10 commitments

that we spent with traditional ethnography.

So, we shared our video clips with our product teams, our R and D
teams or brand teams, and everyone kind of benefited from seeing real

people,  basically taking videos on their mobile , of them after their
projects, showing us around their homes, showing us, you know, their

walls,  different projects that they've completed in their homes.

All of, all of the video clips that we had, we extracted insights
, that kind of said for some great conversation during ideation and

brainstorming, and that ultimately led to new product development.

We're also planning on potentially adding a machine
overlay, machine learning overlay so that we can see

if there were any patterns or anything like that.

There were 204 videos, so there's a lot to look
through, but we used a couple of different tools.

Instapanel user interviews and D scout, which were
just really great for reaching everyday people.

So lessons learned from that experience, being a paint company, we
had to be mindful that mobile ethnography is, a little bit challenging

when it comes to, you know, looking at colors on walls, for example.

So depending on what product or service you're working
on, you'll want to keep that in mind, obviously.

And then when sharing out videos to our executives and other
team members, we wanted to kind of just level set expectations

that these are real people that are taking videos on their own.

It's not professional, it's not how we would typically do ethnography.

We also found some hacks for one-on-one interviews.

we really had an influx of,  Demand at the beginning of the year
when everyone was first remote, we wanted to kind of keep our

product R and D and marketing teams connected with our end users.

And it was important to have, or kind of be that life on
between everyday people and our teams,  within our company,

to make sure that we can connect them with our end users.

So,  we completed about five projects in five weeks
just using Microsoft teams,  having interdepartmental

conference calls, where we spoke to everyday homeowners.

Using user interviews using user testing, zoom and Skype.

And we really found that to be a helpful, easy way
to stay connected with our end users and understand

how they were reacting to their current situation and
how it influenced their home improvement behaviors.

So,  This is obviously very low budget, very affordable, really,
really easy and quick to, you know, plan and to send out a meeting

invite, for the next week, even, via user interviews and user testing.

We really learned that it was, it was important
to invite new parts of the organization to listen

in on these interviews , and to stay connected.

It was kind of, A benefit that we would connect with teams
that we had typically not connected while we in the office.

Now that we are remote, it was really easy just
to buy as many people as we wanted to listen in on

mute and,  still feel connected with our end users.

So we found some great success and I'm using these online tools.

We did a lot of ideation and brainstorming sessions.

These were multi hour in person sessions
with lots of people and large spaces.

You know, it involved breaking out into
teams and having fuel and food breaks.

And, sometimes we would use inspiration from, you
know, tangible objects that you can touch and feel.

We bring a new consumers, real consumers.

It was really kind of hands-on interactive in
person, drawn out sessions, which were great.

When the pandemic hit and trying to figure
out a hack for doing all of that remotely.

So some tools that we use, which can also be used in research,
doesn't have to be used in ideation, brainstorming, types of

activities, but we use a lot of mind tools virtually, so mural
MindMeister  and Miro, to really just have those ideations,  via you

know, Microsoft teams or zoom or whatever conference call,products
that you're using and, make it fun, make it collaborative.

We split up our sessions into three, one hour long
sessions to, prevent burnout while everyone's remote.

We would have brainstorms and then we would all vote in real
time using emojis, trying to make it fun and interactive.

And then we collected those insights and voted on them,
virtually, and really, we found a lot of success in doing this

almost, you know, just as much success as we would in person.

Yeah, really just, you know, no cost, to us, no  additional
costs  it was efficient in terms of time and people enjoy them.

We have ideations pretty often, and we see
participation,  really kind of increase over time.

People really like this, this type  of break, and their  day-to-day.

We did learn that we should pressure test new tools and send out those
invitations with any type of new tools well in advance for, for our

participants, so that they can familiarize themselves with the tool.

And,  we know that,know people work better earlier in the day.

So we do warning brainstorms to prevent that
fatigue from, being remote all day long.

So after ideation, we bring those concepts to
life, and get real feedback via online surveys.

So,  just doing those surveys ourselves, kind of what  worked for us.

so having to focus less research efforts and invest less
time and effort and budget into these online surveys,  really

resulted in, you know, answers to the questions that our business
units would have, in a short amount of time at a lower cost.

Shrutee an Innovation Manager at Behr goes through research they have conducted and concludes their findings to offer DIY hacks and how to make the best of your limitations. 

thumbnail_Shrutee-c127fd855403c8165321070a75c0fa35.jpg

Shrutee-c127fd855403c8165321070a75c0fa35.jpg

Shrutee Gondha 

Innovation Manager  

Shrutee explains her background and experience along with explaining Behr as a company. 

The video will entail DIY hacks for Ethnography, 1-on-1 Interviews, Ideation, Concept Testing, The Long Run

Chapter 1: Introduction

Ethnography research was conducted on how the interviewers would interact with their products. The research was analyzed, findings and limitations are broken down.

Chapter 2: Ethnography 

Behr breaks down what they learned from 1-on-1 interviews and also discussed their limitations.

Chapter 3: Hacks for 1-on-1 Interviews 

Shrutee explains how they conducted traditional ideation pre-pandemic vs non-traditional ideation, during the pandemic and hacks they gathered from the sessions.

Chapter 4:  Hacks for Ideation & Insight Gathering

Research is broken down and what limitations they experienced for concept testings. 

Chapter 5: Hacks for Concept Testing

Extensive training with applied Marketing Science and practice, the voice of the customer training, ethnography training.
Mock interviews, 'consumer' interviews, and insight gathering with co-workers.

Chapter 6: Hacks for the Long Run

All research types are summarised and broken down and explained that limitations like budget, time, and headcount don't have to suffer