Blending quantitative and qualitative research to make stuff people love.




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Designing_with_Numbers_

Hybrid Research Inspires Impactful Outcomes

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As practitioners of human-centered design, we aspire to design products, services and experiences that people love unconditionally. To do this, we must build empathy for the users as they are, understanding what they think, feel and need. Doing the right research helps us make informed, evidence-based decisions throughout our design process.
Spend any time with product managers, entrepreneurs or designers and you will likely hear strong opinions and fierce debates about the merits of quantitative market research versus qualitative design research. At frog, we don’t view any one method as strictly superior. Instead, we take advantage of every technique we can find, regularly blending quantitative and qualitative methods to design, build and ship stuff people love.
How we tailor the right blend of methods for a particular challenge is an art form—it’s impacted by the challenge itself, what we’re trying to achieve in that moment, and who needs to love what we’re making. The following examples of recent work illustrate how we’ve mixed quantitative and qualitative research effectively for three different purposes: to inspire ideas, to inform design, and to guide execution.
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<h2>Inspire ideas</h2>
Last year we published a <a href="https://go.frog.co/en/crossing-the-cannabis-chasm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">study</a> on business opportunities in the emerging legal cannabis market. Generally, the exploration phase of service and product design relies on qualitative research to uncover unmet user needs, but we began our research by doing a nationwide survey of American consumers. This survey enabled us to develop a foundational understanding of how the nation felt about cannabis. We asked people a wide range of questions about their lifestyles, from how they manage stress, to their likeness to adopt new technology, and even their perception of authority. One finding that really surprised us was that the biggest indicator of whether someone would support the legalization of medical and recreational cannabis was if they knew a cannabis consumer—more than age, wealth, region or even political beliefs.
When researching what people need in a completely new market (and especially one that is still taboo, like cannabis) we can’t directly ask people want they want. It’s our job to understand what users are trying to do and identify opportunities to help them get there. By beginning our study with a survey, we could indirectly observe users’ needs, motivations and values at a large scale. Our quantitative findings informed us of impactful opportunity areas, fueling our qualitative design research that followed.
A few tips for those blending quantitative and qualitative research to explore new market opportunities:
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<li>Go wide with your audience target to learn about nuances between populations. Don’t limit your scope to particular demographic and interest-based information, otherwise you might miss some of the extreme users.</li>
<li>Design questions with as much relatable language as you would in user interviews. Ask survey respondents to identify with emotive statements or opinions.</li>
<li>Approach clustering and data analysis with insatiable curiosity. Use a method like K Means to group different respondents together and identify patterns.</li>
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<h2>Inform design</h2>
We recently worked with a company that connects independent plumbers, electricians and engineers (i.e. service providers) with businesses like fast food restaurants and quick service restaurant chains. This client wanted to categorize the service providers in its network so they could better meet the needs of each type of service provider through new features and offerings.
We used a combination of survey responses and interviews to identify potential new features that our client could offer, as well as three distinct client types to target with these different offerings. The outcome was that our client was able to prioritize future business decisions, including which types of service providers to support and which new features to develop first. While qualitative research helped us identify what service providers need and expect from our client, quantitative research informed what design decisions would be most impactful to both service providers and our client’s business success. When you’re in the process of making something new, using a blend of quantitative and qualitative research to gain a deeper understanding of your customers can ultimately help you make better design and business decisions.
A few tips for blending quantitative and qualitative research methods to inform design and build momentum for business decisions:
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<li>Ground both your quantitative survey questions and your qualitative interview activities in the same initial research so that the results of both research methods are better aligned.</li>
<li>Refrain from viewing the results of your quantitative survey in order to avoid biasing your qualitative interviews, even if the survey is complete before you finish your interviews.</li>
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<h2>Guide execution</h2>
Our final example comes from our experience designing a workplace collaboration tool, which was an important leap into a crowded software space for our telecommunications client. We conducted in-person interviews with workers across the US and Europe to learn what they value most, and designed a product that we knew they would love. However, the workers who would use the product weren’t the only group that needed to love it—we also had to win over the IT departments that would buy it and the channel partners that would sell it.
To understand whether our collaboration tool would speak to these two groups, we conducted a global survey in which we presented variations of our product that emphasized different features. Through conjoint analysis, we learned the distinct selling points for each group: users cared most about functionality and ease of use, IT departments loved tools that were easy to test and implement, and channel partners wanted low-cost products that would integrate with what they already sell. Armed with this understanding, we designed a go-to-market strategy to ensure the needs of users, sellers and buyers would all be met, ensuring all three segments would love what we created.
As products like this get close to becoming a reality, we think not only about what users will love, but also what else needs to happen for the product to succeed. By combining quantitative and qualitative research, we help guide execution with our clients, evaluating last minute design tradeoffs, developing winning go-to-market strategies, and ensuring our products achieve large scale market success.
A few tips for blending quantitative and qualitative research methods to guide execution of new ideas:
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<li>Go wide (again) with your audience, so you can accurately predict how the market will respond.</li>
<li>Think about every group who needs to love your product – not just the end users – so you can ensure incentives are aligned.</li>
<li>Test specific hypotheses that impact the final decisions around what you build and how you sell it.</li>
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There’s no one-size-fits-all approach when blending quantitative and qualitative research to gain greater insight into your users. But the best advice we can offer is: don’t get hung up on methodologies. Instead, use the benefits of both types of research to meet the challenge you are facing. We explored three approaches above, but there are many more opportunities to blend research practices to get closer to your users. Bring your curiosity and appetite for empathy, and most importantly—keep experimenting!

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Sally Darby

Sam Haddaway

Kristina Phillips

Sally Darby is as strategist with a background in architectural design. Based out of the frog studio in San Francisco. At frog, she has delivered value for people and businesses through design and innovative projects in the healthcare, retail, and real estate industries.

Sam Haddaway is a strategist, a systems-thinker by nature, passionate about creating innovative solutions to complex problems by combining the powers of design, technology and business.

Kristina Phillips is a strategist, researcher and brand-builder at frog. She has over a decade of experience bringing truly life-changing products and services to market, from white-space identification and concepting to campaign management and analysis. Kristina spends her time making sense of data and people to tell a compelling story. Bring on the ambiguity.

Illustration created in collaboration with Doug Chayka

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Rethinking the Housing Experience with San Francisco’s Government and Residents

The San Francisco homeless crisis has long been a topic of both local and national attention. For many frogs, San Francisco isn’t just our place of work—it’s our home and our community. Research validates the crisis with numbers, but as we go about life in San Francisco, we feel the weight of the problem acutely. That’s why fellow frog, Eve Weinberg and I looked for a way to be a part of the solution. In 2018 frog established a partnership with San Francisco’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH) to help further the Department’s focus on human-centered design, ideating improved experiences and systems to tackle homelessness.
The HSH is a branch of the San Francisco government with singular focus on preventing and ending homelessness for people in San Francisco. Solving homelessness doesn’t stop at providing shelter. Once someone is housed, there are case managers, nurses, physicians, building managers, and countless other support systems to help ensure a resident stays housed and that their quality of life continues to increase. Ultimately these support functions dramatically help decrease the burden of residents on city funds.
Much like in our broader society, many of San Francisco’s aging residents that live independently have trouble taking advantage of available services and support. This September, HSH and frog hosted a workshop to focus on how we might improve the experience of people aging in place in permanent supportive housing (PSH). We brought together people across government departments to generate ideas that would help improve our community’s response and support for those aging in place. Most importantly though, we invited the residents themselves to sit at the table as participants in the problem solving process. The residents candidly discussed their lived experience and ideated with the architects, case managers and nurses that would be designing their environment.
In advance of the Learning Lab, Eve Weinberg (frog Interaction Designer) and I approached preparation as we would with a client project—we dove into reports, interviewed stakeholders and toured permanent supportive housing locations around San Francisco. We learned that many single residence occupancy (SRO) buildings are converted hotels, community centers or apartment buildings, not originally intended to accommodate the elderly or those with specific needs. We observed that these buildings house a vast range of ages and needs, from young adults struggling with addiction, to the elderly relying on mobility assistance, like wheelchairs. Through this research we started to understand the monetary, structural and political factors the PSH community encounters when trying to improve support for those aging in place. Gaining this context helped us understand the importance of giving the community a chance to ideate solutions without constraints. There would be plenty of time for guardrails and limitations later in the day, but we wanted to give attendees the opportunity to design the solutions they always wished they could provide. With help from HSH, we identified three opportunity areas to ideate around: Spaces, Services and Community. We designed hypotheses and activities around these opportunity areas to help workshop attendees ideate new, human-centered experiences for those aging in place.
The Spaces team focused on how we might redesign buildings and communities to better reflect the needs of those that occupy them. During the workshop, residents and architects worked together to create a concept for a home that felt truly unique, with ample storage, modular furniture options, and personal touches like art or photographs for each individual resident. The plans included an oversized elevator and flexible spaces for different types of audiences to gather. There was a visiting room for families with toys and books, and a technology lending library. Nurses and case manager offices were placed in highly trafficked areas, complete with private rooms for one-on-one meetings with residents.
For Services, the team ideated around how we might develop programs that residents would fully utilize. Instead of asking for another program from their building, the residents on the team wanted to play a part in the services offered to their community. The team designed a breakfast program, where residents could teach and learn cooking skills, while offering meals to both the residents and the community outside the building. During the workshop we realized how important it is to involve residents as participants in these solutions—not just recipients.
Our last group discussed how we might play a role in bringing residents together to develop camaraderie and community. A nurse told a story of how two residents, Jo and Barb, developed a friendship. During the course of this friendship, Jo discovered that Barb had a peanut allergy. Jo checked every meal for Barb and alerted the nurse, who previously did not have this information on Barb’s medical record. Inspired by this story, the group focused on how they could play a role in bringing residents together and develop friendships between those who lived in the same space. The team brainstormed possibilities around an analog Craigslist or Newsfeed in the lobby of buildings where residents can browse interests and happenings among their neighbors, and contribute postings of their own.
As each group presented their ideas, a common thread emerged. Residents want to use their history as a way to make connections and give back to the people in their community, both inside the building and out. We went in to the workshop with the mindset: What more can we offer to help those aging in place? But we left knowing that we can do the most by helping facilitate lasting connections between the residents and the surrounding systems of support. When the day transitioned to creating a tactical plan, fighting isolation became our number one priority.
In designing the ideal experience for those aging in place in permanent supportive housing, we uncovered the deep, unmet needs of residents. Some of the concepts from this session required longer-term planning, but most of the concepts boiled down to ideas we could take action against immediately. At the close of the workshop, each attendee identified one small change they could make in their work tomorrow to improve support for those aging in place.
A few months after the workshop, San Francisco voters passed Proposition C, a ballot measure to raise corporate taxes to fund housing and help the homeless. While this is bringing more attention and funding to the homelessness problem, it’s our responsibility as designers and San Francisco residents and community members to take action and start designing solutions that users actually need. As we plan the next workshop topic with the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, we are looking to understand how to better incorporate the people we design for. Stay tuned for move developments under way as we continue our work with the community and HSH on using human-centered design to find real, tangible solutions for affordable, adaptable housing for San Francisco’s most vulnerable communities.

Kristina Phillips is a strategist, researcher and brand-builder at frog. She has over a decade of experience bringing truly life-changing products and services to market, from white-space identification and concepting to campaign management and analysis. Kristina spends her time making sense of data and people to tell a compelling story. Bring on the ambiguity.

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Kristina Phillips

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