the presence audit..
Yesterday Wyatt, one of my coworkers came to me with questions. He does this a lot. Its kinda nice really. I'm not really in the design research click per say. I mean sure I've been around the block a few times, done my share of focus groups, note taking, listening, ethnography, brainstorming, word pondering, affinity matrix making, report writing, client dealing, sense making, plan writing, proposal wording, far left concepting but its always nice when one of the deep flock members asks for a bit of aid.
And before you say, research doesn't have clicks, just take two steps back - of course it does. Ya got interactive folks, product people, phds, captain excel kids, participatory gurus and so on. We all got clicks. We design social networks.. 2.0 click soft gone wild!
Anyways the question was in regards to a new gig. One of the things I love about small business, always a new gig. Its alot like when I worked in animation. I recall the days of working in texas for ADV. The biggest high outa that job was that whatever you were working on now, was gonna end, and some new was coming. We had to turn around films from their total japanese yadda into an all american dadda in as little as 4-6 weeks at times. In research, it this business at least, its kinda the same, today yer doing heuristics on complex applications. Complex applications... let's tell it like it is.. stuff that 2 guys wrote for them and only them to use, but wait lets sell it 500,000 other people and they can use it too.
My brother and I always joke about how some of this stuff, these complex applications, require the "teacher" from Star Trek. There's an episode in Star Trek where McCoy puts on this helmet with like 5 dozen little spikes in it, its the teacher, it will teach him how to operate on Spock's brain so that he doesn't die. The apps i'm playing with today, need the teacher, they are soooo far out of my domain, that even as a researcher i'm grasping as to what that thingy does and who would do this and that and that other thing.
Ok back to Wyatt. Wyatt is pretty savvy. He's a model for the casual male curious one. If he had his own business I think he'd still be in research or maybe a record label. He's got ideas. We all got ideas. Have you ever met anyone that didn't have any ideas? I've had soo many ideas lately.
They've been looking for new interns lately. I can hear the chatter, the "this and that" of the business. Small business is like that, you can hear a sneeze from across the room. Taylor last night needed a dvd burned. Because of my geekyness, and yes oh ya baby I am geek, people with tech questions tend to kinda flow into my room. Sure i can burn a dvd, and it still amazes me most others cant, come on people.. I think many of them actually have dvd burners too. I feel sorry for the pc users, hell I was there, burning on dvds on a pc.. pfooooy!
So Taylor comes in and I start asking him about the interns. I'm curious really, who does he like? Taylor is like science officer in Star Trek, he knows his science, but he's also like.. knows the prime directive. He's wise to the underlying goal. He's almost like a plant. He knows abc, sure, ya, but he also secretly.. knows... EFG!!! So what if we skipped d. He'd make a good spy though i guess not cause i see the spy in him so thats not very spy like. He's got a bit of a business administration stint in him. And sometimes i wonder if stint is really a word. Anyways my questions begin. Very round about questions. Part of the reason why some people don't take me seriously at times, I never ask the obvious questions like "who did you like and why" I always ask questions like "if x intern was an album cover what would she be like?" or "what kind of myspace page does x have?" or "you see x at a bar, does x buy you a drink?". Of course at first this is can be clearly be seen as humorous, but each answer i get helps draw this persona of the person in a unique light, which that data alone, i believe can offer more truth into not only who that potential person is, but through what type of lens is it being seen by.
I think sometimes with research we ask too many canned questions and as a result we kinda miss the real human aspects of what we're saying, thinking, feeling, doing. Its the same reason why I'll make jokes in meetings with clients sometimes. First, break the ice, who here has a pulse. Second, who laughs and who doesn't - that tells me who has flex in my dealings with them. Third, its a frickin meeting people we're human, be human damnit!!
Part of this factors into the fact that i've never had training for research. I don't have any human factors degree. I have like a lesser science stint on the whole game. I tend to go back and forth on science. I like the simple straight to the point aspect of it. My fathers work all like that. Take x, divide by y, and thats what happened people, thats what happened. Nowadays research is more a bunch of shit went down, we heard about it, summed it up, and we think x is yer best bet. More translation for the common man in todays research.
Back to Wyatt. He's got some questions on this gig, and its all good, good stuff. Lately on a few projects i've been trying to source up some sauce on how we could be giving our clients the presence angle on things. Specificly the web presence angle. A kind of web audit presence map - dude that is smokin, aww ya. Dare I say that today, and yes today and no so much say back a few years ago, but today is a great time to take the pulse of the web. Ya got a billion people hardwired into their twitters, facebooks, myspaces, blogs, vlogs, tubes, tvs and so forth. Evidence people, there is a crap load of evidence on the web. And all the players are there, if you want to talk to people and yer not on the web you either dont care cause doesnt impact yer bottom line either way or yer soon to be outa business or you havent launched yer idea yet.
Harnessing social networks for research worthy goodness, thats about it really. So i offered that to Wyatt, whether it gets used or not, hard to say, presence audits or anything that deals in getting a vibe without directly asking people is typically avoided a bit rersearch. You cant control the group. Its a unique time really, you cant control the word of mouth, but this time the word of mouth is documented, its in digital ink, its indexed, searchable, taggable and so on and so on and theres a crap load of it out there. Its also abuseable, spinable, and potentially messy and who wants to bring messy data to the party. Yet, i can't help but to think about how real it is and how many millions are doing it right now, every day in some blog, twitter or tube near you. I mean this post alone is data, soon to be searchable in google, my thoughts poured out here in digital text - are they not worthy, are they not real enough for you?