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Join us for a provocative exploration of how AI is reshaping human connection, expertise, and power dynamics across the globe. Through the lens of ethnographic research, we’ll examine crucial questions about cultural sensitivity, human agency, and the future of work in an AI-enabled world.

This session moves between groundbreaking research presentations and lively PechaKucha talks, culminating in a panel discussion with leading experts. Together, we’ll challenge common assumptions about AI and discover why ethnographic perspectives are more crucial than ever in shaping technology that truly serves human needs.

Whether you’re a researcher, practitioner, or simply curious about the human dimensions of AI, this session promises fresh insights that go beyond the usual narratives.

We’ll have a break before the panel and will start the talks at 6:45pm, please arrive from 6:15pm to mingle and have a snack/drink.

• A History of EPIC in 20 Unwritten Proposals (10 min)
• Decolonizing LLMs: An Ethnographic Framework for AI Alignment (15 min)
• How Commoditized Empathy Can Impede Mutual Understanding (7 min)
• Experts-in-the-Loop: Why Humans Will Not Be Displaced by Machines when There Is “No Right Answer” (15 min)
• Panel: Where have we got to with AI? Boom or bust? Threat or opportunity for researchers? (30 min)

Great facilitation takes practice! It certainly won’t be perfect the first time… or the second time, or the third time. At camp, I had plenty of brutally honest kids to clue me into when my facilitation wasn’t stellar. In a professional setting, it might be harder or more consequential to get that kind of feedback on your facilitation if you’re in a workshop with important stakeholders. So let me save you the trouble!

I’ve got some hot takes in here; I recognize some ideas might be a little counterintuitive. But all of these are tried and true methods for successful facilitation, some that I was taught and some that I’ve learned the hard way.

Tell, don’t ask, when giving instructions for the next task

Ask a kid if they want to clean up their toys and the answer will always be ‘no,’ but tell them it’s time to clean up their toys and they just might get up and do it without resistance. Framing what you say as directions rather than a request can increase the likelihood that a kid will listen to you the first time. As any parent will probably tell you, this doesn’t work every time, but it’s a good starting point.

If saying no to the request is not an actual option, then don’t frame it as a question. Young kids (and senior execs) might not recognize that your question is actually an instruction. Asking gives the kid the option to say no. We love that when it comes to important things like consent, but when it comes to things that a kid should do but probably doesn’t want to like chores or sharing, asking often backfires.

Now what about with adults? Well if you’re in a meeting and someone says, “do you guys want to do XYZ next?” rather than just saying, “Ok, the next thing on the agenda is XYZ,” just like the 5-year-old, your answer is probably going to be ‘no.’

With adults, whether they’re peers or superiors, the key to telling is explaining the rationale for why a decision has been made and how that will help the workshop move forward.

Making this switch in how you communicate can certainly be tough, especially if you worry about coming across as demanding or controlling. For many researchers, the first instinct is to ask questions since that is essentially the point of our job, but when it comes to leading a meeting or workshop, where you’re in charge of sticking to the schedule and hitting your goals for the session, telling is often a better, more efficient route.

Side note: Asking is better in many other workplace situations, especially for leaders, but that’s a whole other topic. Here we’re just talking about workshop facilitation.

With adults, whether they’re peers or superiors, the key to telling is explaining the rationale for why a decision has been made and how that will help the workshop move forward. By communicating in a matter-of-fact way and providing a rationale, you not only make things simpler for others, but you also demonstrate that activities have been well thought out, have a purpose, and won’t be a waste of time.

Remember, if you’ve planned the workshop intentionally, you likely have already asked stakeholders if certain activities are going to work with the group, so during actual facilitation you can skip the asking. This advice comes from experience of things going awry – a VP-level stakeholder said no to the activity because they thought it would be a waste of their time, but more on that in the next post. Here’s an example of how I would tell, not ask, if I were to run this workshop again:

“We’ve done the initial analysis, now we need your help. We’re the experts on this research, but you’re the experts on your company. Only you know the implications of these insights, the teams they relate to, or any barriers within your organization. Individually, you will have 10 minutes to review all of these emerging insights and add comments sharing your relevant organizational knowledge. After this activity, we’ll come together to use what you’ve all added to make better- informed recommendations for your product roadmap.”

Successful instructions provide limited choices

Ever asked a preschooler whether they want to finger paint, play redlight greenlight, make macaroni art, play tag, take a nap, or go on a field trip to the library? Odds are they will just stare back at you with no response.

Or think of any streaming service you’ve used where you’re bombarded with seemingly endless shows and movies to pick from. If you’re like me, you harken back to the days when you turned on the TV and the decision was made for you based on what was live.

Too much flexibility can often lead to confusion rather than creativity, and in a group setting, it can also lead to unwelcome chaos.

In theory, it sounds like a great idea to give people as many options as possible – who doesn’t love empowering free will? But in practice, decision fatigue is real and can hinder people from completing their intended task. That overwhelm can even lead to task abandonment.

Remember Hick’s Law when planning your workshop: the more choices you have, the longer it will take you to make a decision. Too much flexibility can often lead to confusion rather than creativity, and in a group setting, it can also lead to unwelcome chaos.

When working with kids, it’s a good rule of thumb to give only two options, e.g. “You can either play inside with the blocks or play outside in the sand.” The mind of a 5-year-old can only handle so much cognitive load, and comparison and future-thinking require a lot. Similarly, adults in a workshop setting should be given limited options. It’s a fine line between flexibility and losing the plot.

Workshop attendees come to you for a structured experience to help facilitate their thinking and collaboration. As Dee Scarano explains,“giving your participants one clear way to do an exercise will help them focus more on their creative problem solving and less on trying to figure out how to do the exercise.” This frees them up to focus on what’s important – doing the work – and not get bogged down by what you can figure out for them in advance – when, where, why and how to do it.

Cut off an activity before it has run its course

In camp, we’d end an activity while kids still looked like they were having a blast. That way they were left with better memories of the experience, and they’d look forward to doing it again in the future. In a workshop setting, this might seem a little tricky to apply practically, but it can be done! If ideas are really flowing and attendees are engaged, it can feel like a risk to stop that momentum. At the same time, you want your attendees to feel empowered to continue this work once you’re gone.

By cutting a workshop activity off before it has run its course, attendees will remember the productivity and usefulness of the activity and will be motivated to keep the work going to reach their goals on their own. Consider whether a later activity should be shortened or cut to accommodate going over time. Consult with your stakeholders ahead of time to determine which workshop activities are of highest priority, and when creating the workshop agenda, make a plan to pivot accordingly.

To mitigate the risk of cutting an activity off, encourage attendees to write their ideas down on sticky notes at all times throughout the workshop. This serves two purposes: 1) they’ve offloaded the idea out of their brain and can focus on what others are saying, rather than what they want to say, and 2) if there’s no more time for the activity, the sticky note can be added to the parking lot and returned to later.

When facilitating your next workshop, remember you might need to do things a little differently.

1. Tell, don’t ask, when giving instructions for the next task.
2. Successful instructions provide limited choices.
3. Cut off an activity before it has run its course.

I encourage you to try these ideas out the next time you run a workshop or even just a regular meeting. Let me know how it goes! Did it feel counterintuitive? Did anyone notice a change? Was the event more engaging?

Want to see these tips in action? Hire us to run a workshop for your team! Whether it’s as a follow-up to a research project to help socialize learnings or as a stand alone event, workshops are a great tool to bring teams together to facilitate creativity and action.

In the next post, I’ll discuss what we can do when things go wrong in a workshop. Stay tuned!

Over the course of the design of the service, product, or feature that you are looking to release, which is often measured in years, there is a busy mix of activity in the lead up to launch. Much like the presidential elections, there are proof of concepts, alpha, or beta releases (primaries and candidate elections) conversations with colleagues and peers, the seeking of feedback, and building a story around the value proposition (manifestos, policies). This is all designed to put the product in the best possible position and light to be a success (or win the election).

However, much like the presidential elections or even the Brexit referendum, this throng of activity can be fraught with traps. The risk of misinterpreting feedback and data, and placing overly positive value to it is high. The risk of ignoring or devaluing negative feedback is also incredibly easy and often tempting to do, through the process psychologists call confirmation bias.

The end result if you fail to account for these risks and traps? An unexpected election result, or failed product launch.

User researchers can’t typically forecast the outcome of an election, but they are here to help with products and services. They are trained to gather, analyze, and interpret data impartially, navigating bias and surfacing it to stakeholders where it does occur. Conducting user research isn’t a complete 100% guarantee of no ‘election shock’ but it puts you in a much better position to be prepared for reality and design to win.

Ready to apply UX research to your business challenge? 

Get in touch with us today.

Image credit: https://www.istockphoto.com/portfolio/bizoo_n

‘Games Research 101’ began with communicating the crucial role games research plays in the development process. While many of the audience members had run playtests in the past, we demonstrated how games research goes well beyond playtests and how a range of methods can help studios avoid disaster and create amazing games.

After a crash course on the fundamentals of putting together a research plan, attendees, ranging from developers, educators, and students, broke up into groups and tackled a research brief. Ranging from trying to decide which ideas to invest in to identifying the source and behaviour of toxic communities, our facilitators enabled attendees to think critically about what kinds of questions they should ask, what methods to use, and who they’d recruit as participants.

At the end, groups presented their research plans to the audience followed by a Q&A. During the following networking hour, someone brought their game to be playtested! It’s called YOYO PUNK and it’s a multiplayer fast-paced platformer where you take players down with your trusty yoyo! Be sure to wishlist their game on Steam.

Stay tuned for future collaborations with GDL, or find out more about our Playtesting and Games Research services.

Event Details:

Theme: Shaping Tomorrow’s Experiences: UX in the Era of Evolving Customers
Date: 24th October 2024
Venue: Dubai Knowledge Park, UAE

This full-day conference is designed for:

• Experienced UX Practitioners
• Product Managers
• Designers
• Researchers
• Digital Leaders and CxOs
• Marketing Executives

This in-person event will feature global UX experts, engaging discussions, and valuable networking opportunities. Exciting details about speakers, schedules, and more will be announced soon.

The UX Masterclass is a prestigious event held by the UXalliance, the global network of leading UX companies working together to establish and promote standards of excellence in UX internationally. With 32 partner companies all over the world, the UXalliance was co-founded by Sutherland Labs in 2005.

Don’t miss out on our early bird offer—purchase your tickets for just $175 if you book before 30th August 2024!

We look forward to welcoming you to Dubai for a day of learning and inspiration. Stay tuned for more updates!

Our client, Iris ®  Identity & Cyber Protection (powered by Generali Insurance), wanted to increase awareness among prospective clients and partners. We used B2B video to boost engagement and increase sales conversations.

Iris Identity & Cyber Protection offers comprehensive solutions which protect millions of consumers worldwide against identity theft and cybercrime. They needed a way to showcase their product’s features and benefits while educating potential customers about the importance of identity and cyber protection.

Our Solution

To better engage and educate our clients audience, we created a B2B ‘Explainer’ video as part of Iris’s ongoing campaign. Here’s what we did:

Full-Service Production: We produced the video from script to screen, offering a complete service from beginning to end. This included developing the script, creative direction, and using both 2D and 3D animations to clearly convey the product’s value.

Spreading the Word: The video was strategically placed online, including on YouTube, and personalized for direct mail.

The Results

Boosted Engagement: The explainer video successfully highlighted the value of Iris’s services to potential clients.

Industry Recognition: Our video won a Silver Telly Award in the B2B category, demonstrating its quality and effectiveness.

Wider Reach: By being available online and on YouTube, the video reached a broad audience, becoming a key tool in Iris’s marketing strategy.

This case study shows how a well-made explainer video can make a big difference in client engagement, effectively communicate product value, and even win industry awards.

We partnered with Corporation Pop to help them develop Xploro®, a pioneering patient app that combines AR, AI and gameplay to make patients feel empowered and engaged, and improve clinical outcomes.

All images: Sutherland Labs

The Challenge

After his daughter Issy was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer in 2011, Dom Raban (Chair of Corporation Pop) found there was a significant lack of information for parents and children faced with long-term cancer treatment.

What information there was, was directed at us as parents, which left my daughter feeling isolated and ignored. She was resistant to treatments because their purpose wasn’t explained to her beforehand and she was scared of going to hospital as she didn’t know what to expect.

Issy was not alone in this experience. Research shows that patients who are not well informed about medical procedures and treatment experience increased levels of stress and anxiety, which can lead to delayed procedures or lost hospital resources and often results in poorer medical outcomes.

While clinicians often advise that children attend play therapy prior to treatment, resources in hospitals are spread thinly and play therapists themselves are asking for solutions fit for a naturally digital audience. Building on this, Corporation Pop decided to develop a solution which would improve child patient experiences by giving them access to a wide range of information in a fun and engaging way.

The Approach

To ensure that the digital solution would meet the needs of its users, Sutherland Labs worked closely with Corporation Pop developers across three rounds of research. Ethnographic research took place in hospitals involving children with serious conditions, families, clinicians and support staff to understand needs and responses to initial design concepts for what became the Xploro® app. In subsequent rounds we reviewed the iterated concepts with similar user groups.

Over the course of development our insights were used to guide the application of AR in a way that was compelling and useful, as well as optimising features such as chatbot advisors to suit the particular linguistic, cognitive and contextual needs of this audience.

The Results

The launch and continued success of Xploro® – a health information platform that uses AR, gameplay and AI to deliver health information to young patients, in a way which makes them feel empowered, engaged and informed, whilst having fun at the same time.

As well as winning several awards, the app has been proven to:

• Reduce patient anxiety
• Improve patient health literacy
• Lead to better engagement with health services
• Improve clinical outcomes
• Reduce need for sedation
• Reduce in repeat procedures
• Improve overall patient experience

And, while the app was initially designed for children with cancer, the team behind Xploro® are building a health information platform for any age of condition. For further details visit the Xploro® website.

Xploro, is one of many services we have worked on in the Health and Wellness industries – learn more by contacting us below: 

Our client wanted their digital customer support to work better for customers.

They began by looking at the current experience in a holistic way, involving both their customers and their own support agents.

Customer Journey Maps and Personas identify pain points and reveal opportunities for innovation

The Challenge

Our client, a major technology brand, needed to make improvements to the support experience for their digital work tools. While analytics had identified pain points in distinct areas of the experience they lacked a full picture of how customers were using their digital support channels, or the role that customer service agents played in that process.

To build an effective strategy for the future they needed to understand real customer behaviors around support.

The Approach

Over a series of engagements we helped our client gain a better knowledge of the end-to-end support experience of customers, as well as gather intelligence from their own customer support agents.

Workplace Shadowing with Agents and Home Visits with Customers

We spent time with both customers and agents in their own environments, observing each as they dealt with support issues in real time. Immersive research methods helped us to reveal both the issues users could vocalize, plus unspoken needs and desires. Furthermore we explored problem solving strategies and the language or terminology used by customers and agents to feed into the design of a future support experience.

Customer Journey Mapping and Personas

Our team translated research insights into Customer Journey Maps, providing a holistic view of support journeys for key customer types. These maps, alongside rich behavior based personas helped to identify further pain points and opportunity areas – such as the desire among users for greater self-serve.

Prototyping the Future Support Experience

To inform future design direction, our UX designers produced wireframes to be used as tools to illustrate, test and refine design recommendations as they might appear in future support journeys.

The Results

Our engagements have provided the client deep insight into what makes an ideal support experience from both customers and their own agents. This has been instrumental in shaping their future digital experience.

70+ design recommendations were implemented to improve the overall support experience, including navigation, page design, terminology, content.

40% reduction in support volume since improvements to navigation, self-serve channels and UI design.

Our client wanted to rethink their entire approach to hiring graduates.

The global healthcare and pharmaceutical brand was investing in graduate programmes in EMEA, but a low proportion of these graduates converted into full time positions.

The Challenge

Leaders were questioning the effectiveness of graduate hiring in EMEA, and wanted to see a more strategic approach that would better serve the needs of the business. The hiring and retention of new capabilities is critical to the long term health of the organization and for building a talent pipeline for the future.

We devised an approach to help our client understand pain points in the current graduate experience, identify opportunities for innovation, and to build a strategic roadmap for the future.

The Challenge

To develop a strategy to meet these aims and increase the likelihood of employee adoption, we needed to ground ourselves in the needs of their employees. Our goal was to understand employees day to day challenges and pain points, their preferred tools and workarounds, and to do this at scale to account for employees in multiple locations across the world.

The Approach

To capture insights from a large number of employees we began with a survey, which helped us to refine the focus for subsequent rounds of immersive fieldwork. Over the next 2 months, our team travelled to six countries to interview and shadow a range of employees in their own work environments to understand their workflows, day-to-day working practices, tools, and obstacles. We also used remote interviews to reach employees in another six countries, and to ensure we covered a representative range of roles and responsibilities.

I used to think innovation was in motion here, but I just don’t see it happening as quickly as it should be. Or it’s change for no apparent reason.

The Output

The insights from all rounds of research gave our client a rich picture of how employees really work, including the organisational culture, tools and processes, and current challenges. This fed into their overall digital workplace strategy, with more specific outputs including:

• Behavior-based personas as a tool for creating empathy for employees amongst stakeholders making strategic decisions.
• Digital channel strategy recommendations including collaboration tools and internal communications, broken down into quick wins and long term goals.
• Employee experience best practices which were rolled out as use cases across the business.