Innovating Research Tools

Being completely alien to the language is not a very good idea if you are going on a survey. More than the difficulty to explain my questions to them I felt distanced and every intervention was more of an intrusion.
This survey didn’t have any form to fill. People didn’t have to answer questions about how much they earn or how much they spend. So I wanted to use a tool which didn’t make them feel embarrassed and helped them interact with me .

Coming up with the tool
The first thing that struck me after starting this assignment was that what should come first between what tool I choose or what do I want to know. For a while I couldn’t decide that should I first decide that what do I specifically want to know or should I come up with a tool and then see what information comes out of it.
But I realized that probably its neither of them and both of them at the same time.
My approach to find a tool then was to come up with something they can connect to on simplest of levels and something which would help me know much more than the most obvious things that I could get out of their answers.

Tool
I put in front of them 7 pictures – house, car, mobile phone, water, livestock, tools for their work, family. I asked them to put then in order of importance in their life. and I got some really interesting answers. My idea of using these particular images was to understand what are their desires and what they think is more important for them.

House

Car

Mobile

Water

Livestock

Tools

Results
I got pretty interesting results after using these tools.
It was surprising but in most of the cases family was last on the priority list.
Most of the women chose livestock as their first priority.
The men chose house to be the most important for them.
Some two old men said they wanted family prosperity
And very few people opted for some three things out of all the images.







Conclusion:
family being the last on the list can mean two things. One that they don't really consider it that important or the more plausible one that they take it for granted that their family is with them always and they don't need to choose it specially.

The women probably want to work with the livestock which would also mean that they could give more time at home and attend to their children.

I think there is nothing surprising in the men wanting a house. But what is surprising is that none of them wanted the tools to improve their efficiency and toys.

Also there were people who didn't want to have everything , after they made a choice for a certain things they just returned the other things to me. Like this person called 'Tayngalaiya' just wanted a house , family and livestock and he just refused to take anything else saying he doesnt need it.

It was interesting to see that how all these people of different age groups and gender had different priorities inspite of the fact that they all collectively work on the same thing all their life.

Revisiting the exercise:
I feel I should have probably added the “5 WHY” concept to it. Probably asking them why they chose one image over the other would have given me a better insight about what they think and at the same time it would have made them think a little more about what is actually important for them.

Including children in my study would have probably given me a larger picture as I would have known about what changes might come in the village depending on the needs and priorities of the younger generation.

I could have added choices like girl education just to see how practical and open they are about such issues.

by and large it was much deeper and much more informal than the previous one but I think again somewhere I restricted myself just to the tool and didn't try to get more than that.

Baseline survey

My first experience of a survey was in Narayanpura and was not like an amazing one. I shall start with my journey. Not knowing that there exist some four villages by the same name I reached the wrong Narayanpura . So it took me some 2 hours extra and some thrice the amount of money to actually reach the place of survey. So the first lesson learnt was that know the place and its location well before starting anything otherwise you end up wasting a lot of time.

Another thing which i realised after reaching there was that it was important that i should have read the entire form thoroughly and should have known what kind of information would i require from them for each question.






so i interviewd two people out of which the male knew how to read and speak english as opposed to the female who just knew kannada. So getting out answes was much easier from him than the female for whom I needed an interpreter.

But at the end of it quite a lot of the form was empty because - a large part of it was related to agriculture and also because i interviwed the younger generation who did not know much about the village as a whole.

What i gathered from the interview was that women in the village take part in all the activities relating pottery and share all the work with men. The younger generation (both male and female) have had a certain formal education and all the children go to schools.

It was a very brief interaction with those people. probably because i had the forms in my hands so it was just as long as i took to finish filling the farm. I think I should have spent more time with each person trying to know them beyond what they earn and how much cattle they have. But for having an informal conversation i think u need more time than just a day. otherwise if you are not familier to them the first question they ask is whta will I get out of it. What am i going to do for them or what will they get out of it.

After the entire exercise i wasnt satisfied with what I did that day because we may have the forms with us but the point was to know mare about the people and i just knew few words and numbers written against the questions in the form. I think I enjoyedtrying to know people for the first time when i went on asking them questions casually was much more fruitful than carrying a formal form.

Scenario

This is just another day in the life of “ not so ordinary” pampha from Assam. She gets up in her red nighty and runs to the door to get the newspaper. There her daily planner, her horoscope on page number six awaits her arrival. Her horoscope reads “ Your marital status might change for you by the end of this week. Jesus himself couldn’t have done a better job than what you will do today. Today might see a need for you to call attention to yourself. You will injure yourself mysteriously while you are asleep. Prepare yourself because your life is set for a change that you have never seen. Lucky color: green”. After reading her daily bible starts the ritual of getting ready as she prepares herself for not just another day after all.
It starts with her picking up the greenest sari she owns and goes on to actually preparing herself for all that is going to come her way today. She proudly opens her priced collection of lingerie to find the finest and the most perfect one saved for such a day. From color to the cut everything had to be thought about in minutest of details. The next is to decide how to enhance her beauty so that she is all ready to meet her perfect guy today. All set to leave home she looks at her self in the mirror for one last time bright and confident knowing that she will beat Jesus for sure.



incomplete...

Persona

To come up with persona we first listed down all the characteristics of all the five people we interviewed.The things we included were:

-skill
-behavior towards customers
-intelligence
-age
-reaction to what we were doing
-characteristics
-quirk
-physical appearance
-experience
-attitude
-where does he stay
-weakness

The first step

IFTI RASSAQ KHAN
- he is 42 yrs old
-binds books
-thin and tall
-has a mehandi colored beard
-wears long loose kurta
-neat freak
-wants everything to be in his control
-has five kids
-he keeps yawning
-has lot of mirrors around him
-intelligent but doesn't share much of his wisdom
-he is a leader





PAMPHA
-from Assam
-she is 37 yrs old
-sales woman selling cosmetics
-loud makeup
-insecure and conscious about herself
- obsessed wit her lingerie
-begins her day wt horoscope
-heavy built
-Uses "by God!"
-good communication skills

Our final Persona build around the character Pampha.

FEEDBACK: persona can be more imaginative. they don't have to be taken out from something very structured. what we did was very structured. though our personas did not really come out of those five people alone still probably the way of starting to make a persona is different. also we should not try working on a lot of personas together. look at the minutest of details to give life to your character.

Validation

My first approach to this assignment was technically incorrect. Instead of coming up with an enhancement which can be tried instantly i discussed with her all the enhancement which i thought could be worked out and were practical enough. Though she actually agreed with some of my ideas and wants to incorporate them in her business, nothing could be done right then or over a day or two. But in this process i did come to know a lot more about her. I realized how important it is to keep going at your work place. I also learned that a lot of thought does go into starting anything and all these people also try to do the best possible for their shop. So in a way my validation exercise was successful to some extent.
The things she agreed with :

• the board needs to be repainted in brighter colours for a better visibility.
• business strategy - special discount for students and packages consisting or three or four services most frequently asked for.
• more space for people who are waiting outside the parlor
• the shop needs to be painted in lighter colors and should be kept cleaner
• there should be poster on the ground floor as well.

another thing which i realized after my second visit is sometimes talking to the owner you get to know a lot about customer reactions and customer satisfaction level which helps you know the place much more.

So i again visited the parlor to see what else can be done to enhance the place. The board besides being dull in colour also doesn't give the entire information. The people actually have to climb up an entire floor to know the timings of the parlor and that Tuesdays are closed. So i thought we should have these posters giving all these details. Also the staircase has no indication or directions mentioned. It needed a poster for that as well.



when i asked her if i could do it she said she wanted to do it herself. i think it was a very nice response as she was actually taking interest in whatever i was doing for her parlor.



Another thing which i did was putting a suggestion book in her parlor.





everyone has their own opinion about a thing like a parlor and i thought it will be nice if she could get their feedback and try to improve her parlor that way. also she could take down their phone numbers and and addresses to inform them about any new schemes she comes up with.



One of my earlier enhancements was to work out a business strategy where she could make these packages comprising of two or three services. This surprisingly worked as well. She plaaned out these offers where she made somethings free in those packages.




Besided this the only thing she let me do in her shop was putting up these tiny posters which sha has been saving for some time.

Data Visualization

Manisha Beauty Parlor

CONTEXT : what do people come in the parlor for the most?

CONCEPT : i have shown different parts of the body squishing the one under it in order of what is in demand the most.

DRAWBACKS : Though what i did was fine according to the definition but it needed to be more effective. also i think it needs to be more self explanatory. at the same time my illustration should have also followed some hierarchy, say size of the body parts or the weight every element had.

CLASS LEARNING : while choosing symbols to represent the data we should be careful about what we are choosing. The characteristics of the symbol should compliment the data. otherwise something completely vague can bring a completely different dimension shifting the focus from the data. Its better to mention the context of the data in your visualization in order to provide a better understanding to the user. But most of the times these visualizations are supplements in presentations or with text so the context is well know by the user. The clearer the visualization is the better it is.

Enhancement

To design an enhancement for anything you first need to identify the problem areas. So i first listed down all the problem areas where i thought some improvement was needed.

Problems...
• Improper utilization of space
• No privacy for customers
• Bad approach to the place
• Board not very noticeable
• Needs cleanliness
• Display- untidy, worn out posters
• Interiors very dull
• She is not ambitious
• No strategy or extra-ordinary skill
• Not publicized

The probable reasons for not paying attention to this includes lack of resources for sure. Also knowing her personally after that chat, I think she is not very ambitious. I looks as if not much of thought has gone into how the place has been set up. And she hasn’t ever looked the place from a different angle and never thought of bringing any improvement to the parlor.

So as a designer I looked at bringing improvements both with whatever she already has and also what she could add to it.

Space Utilization
The present set up of the place has a lot of tiny spaces that can be filled up so as to utilize the maximum space possible. Also while looking at space utilization I thought of working on privacy as well.

So i came up with a lot of arrangements that can be worked out with the existing furniture that she has. I added mirrors and some curtains for privacy so that people have their cabins to get their things done.


The present set up

The final set up which i thought of would have the following benifits

• More mirrors
• privacy for every customer
• more presentable
• comfortable to be used
• another chair
• proper washbasin
• more space to move around
• products better displayed

Storage
She could use box furniture so that all her boxes can go in and she can display more products there.
lesser furniture = more space to move around
her ready made clothes should be displayed in an open rack so that people waiting for her to get free from other customers can have a look at them on their own.
another way is making a normal bamboo stand which can be used to display all the clothes.

• it will be light in weight
• easy to be made
• reasonable cost of making
• can be dismantlement easily
• does not occupy much space
  

Approach to the parlor
the way to the parlor is not very good. you have to go through a dirty staircase which does not have enough light. A lot of things can be done to improve that place.

• the wall along the staircase can be painted
• the staircase should be cleaned everyday
• in the corner of the staircase there can be a poster giving direction to the parlor and can be done up nicely
• there are a lot of plants just outside the parlor. probably that can be shifted as well.

the place just outside the parlour looks somewhat like this. now a lot of place is being consumed and its of no specific use.

on the other hand if we have the staircase just outside the door and leave the remaining are on the same level then probably she can put benches and make it into a waiting area. this would reduce the rush from inside the parlor as if there are a lot of people waiting inside it becomes very suffocating and it becomes very difficult for her to move.

If nothing can be added due to lack of resources, then a lot can be done with whatever is there already as well.

• the wornout posters can be redone and can be placed in a better way
• the certificate has to be reframed and put properly
• there aren't many products on display. She should rather put them on display and put the boxes inside.
• there should be regular cleacing of the entire parlor so it looks more hygenic

i think the colours and interiors of the place are very dull.Where as in a parlor you ned lighter colours like white and pastel shades. she could also keep all her tools and accesories colour coordinated so that it gives a more professional picture.

Business strategy
A lot of students stay in yelahanka. So a strategy around these students could earn her a lot of perminent customers.
she could make these packages with three or four regular services put together for a little lesser price. This will attract students as it will be affordable. Also people will tend to get all the things done and as its all in a pack.
Also she can have something like a student discount which again can earn her more customers.

For her regular clients she could probably maintain her own planner so that her work can go smoothely and the customers have their personal time with her. she could probably remind the customers every month about their appointments if she mqaintains the planner.
also she could plan a discount like 10 % for the ones who come everymonth for sure.

All this can help her improve her customer satisfaction level.

Board
the board which is there now is white in color with the text in a faded blue. noe because the building is also white the board is not very noticeable. so the board can be made in a brighter colour and with attractions like different offers and low prices written on it.

5 Lives

Mr. B.R Patel

Mr. Patel, a middle aged man from Rajasthan is the owner of a small shop in Yelahanka New Town called Mahalaxmi Metal House. He repairs gas stoves, gas lamps and almost everything related to gas. Also, he sells products like cutlery, steel containers and other household items. A man of his own opinions and principles, he started to work at the age of ten and travelled through the country until he reached Bangalore to get a job in a company where he used to sell and repair home appliances. He pursued this job for fifteen years after which he gained inspiration from his boss to start his own business.
This two year old shop is not centrally located due to lack of funds. In spite of this Mr. Patel doesn’t seem to get bothered and believes in taking life as it comes. He has a son who is doing second year B. Com and he doesn’t want his son to live the same life that he has lived. He doesn’t seem to have a planned strategy for his business, but his skill and years of experience make up for lack of strategy. Being so good at what he does has earned him a lot of regular customers which is what is keeping the business alive. He thinks that his journey from Rajasthan to Bangalore was his biggest “project” in life which taught him whatever it takes to make a living.
Looking at his shop it looked as if the sales were not very high because his stock looked old and untouched. Mr. Patel’s tools were not outdated but since he could not afford latest ones he works with cheaper tools. Initially, Mr. Patel was very hostile to the fact that we as students wanted to know how he established himself, but as the conversation progressed we he became more comfortable and it was clear that he enjoyed the attention.
Before we left he said, “If I wanted I could have spoken in kannada to avoid you.” This sentence clearly showed that he wanted us to learn about from him. His tip to us was that we should learn Kannada and he agreed that talking to people about their life experiences helps to gain a wider perspective.

Raj Shree Sweets (Halwai)

Mr. Raj, a man of many talents has owned this shop for six years. Before this he was in the clothing line for twelve years, before which he dealt with electronics. He claims to have learnt everything himself by purely observing others. Raj Shree Sweets is a shop which sells Rajasthani sweets and chats and is known for its jalebis. He gets his staff from Rajasthan so that he can have authentic Rajasthani taste which ensures that his shop is different. He is so adamant on having authentic Rajasthani food that he even makes living arrangements for his Rajasthani staff. When the staff is away his business runs mainly on chats.
After getting into so many fields he finally thinks that he has come into a line where he wants to spend rest of his life. You can always see a smile on his face and you can say that he gets immense pleasure in feeding people.
Besides his shop he is also into catering business and provides his catering services in parties as well as weddings. Due to the nature of his work his business has its own highs and lows. In the wedding season and festival season like Diwali his business does very well and on the other hand there are times when he can just meet his costs.
He has two sons out of whom the elder one works in the city and the younger one still studies. He doesn’t plan to get his children into the same business probably because he has better future plans for them.
On asking him about his income consumption we came to know that around 50% of his income goes into buying all the material for the shop. Some 20-30% he spends on maintenance and staff. And remaining is his profit which includes school fees of one of his children as well.
On the whole he looked quite content with what he had and his life.

Mrs. Pampha (Manisha Beauty Parlour)

After staying a housewife for most of her life Mrs. Pampha now owns a tiny beauty parlour in Yelahanka New Town. Being a wife of someone who worked in the Air Force, she has travelled a lot and finally did a beauty course at Delhi and then opened her own parlour after her husband’s retirement in Bangalore.
She had problems for the first two years after which she found regular customers to stabilise her business. What started as a hobby course is now a means of livelihood. She has a diploma and probably would have studied more if her husband wouldn’t have transferred. Her life is a perfect balance of professional life and personal life. She is originally from Assam and is a mother of two children who are presently studying in Yelahanka.
She runs the parlour herself and occasionally is helped by her sister. Recently she has also started selling readymade clothes as she has also done a course on tailoring.But talking to her we realised that she is not very ambitious. She has no further plans of expanding her business because she is quite satisfied with the way her business is going. She firmly believes that patience is the key to run any successful business.

Mau pasha (fruit seller)

When we began conversing with maupasha, initially all he said was mangoes, Bangalore for everything we asked. We thought he was probably trying to ignore us but later we realised that he could not understand us. We had to buy a few mangoes at a bargained price to instigate a conversation. He did not want to be photographed either.Coming from Andhra Pradesh, maupasha has two children and 3 brothers. Two of them sell fruits and the third one works in a factory.
His strategy is to buy fruits from Andhra Pradesh since it’s not very far from Karnataka and also to sell fruits where there are no other fruit sellers. Banana’s and papaya’s were the other fruits that he sold during mango off season, which also he gets from Andhra Pradesh. Earning enough for his family made him quite happy. Selling mangoes for 25 bucks got him a satisfactory number of customers.

B.K. Glass and Wood

The owner of an established garment shop took the courage of stepping into a completely new business of raw wood and glass.




10 years ago he felt the need to change his business because he thought that a garment shop demanded too much labor and gave less returns.
He sent his brothers to work with a furniture company for 15 days to see if they could successfully handle that business. Getting a positive response from them he wrapped up his garment shop and came to Bangalore. His reason for choosing yelahanka for setting up his business was that it was not a very developed area, so that they get time to establish their business. But within six months their business picked up and they decided to have branches in all four corners of Bangalore-Banergetta, Banaswadi, Yashwantpur and Yelahanka.
His strategy is honesty, variety, choice and quality.
His products come from different suppliers from Gujarat, Bombay and Bangalore. Also his keen interest in customers feedbacks and his will to help them made him very popular amongst all customers. His understanding of the technicalities of every product that he has ensures that the customer’s needs our met. He personally chooses the range of products that he keeps in the shop.
We realised a lot of thinking goes into whatever goes around in the shop, because he said that whenever a car leaves for anywhere they make sure that everything needed for the shop is bought.

“RESEARCH IS THE FIRST STEP TO BUSINESS”
“BUSINESS TEACHES YOU BUSINESS”

assignment 1- Earning Exercise

So not an easy job was to earn "100 bucks" in more than 24 hours . So seven of us came up with quite a lot of things out of which some of them actually worked because we could finally reach almost Rs.700 with just 10 short from the final collection.

Following are the ideas that we thought might work:
- challenging people to make us laugh
-getting ourselves slapped
-telling funny fortunes
-selling stories
-decorating match boxes and match sticks
-baby sitting
-making kids paint on us
-helping people carry their shopping bags to their cars
-giving love messages to a person from a perticular person like a performance
-music performance
-giving people massages
-making greeting cards

-making block printed wrapping papers

- making trinklets, bracelets, accessories for hair etc.
- doing slipper art
-putting mehndi
-writing messages for foriegners in Hindi on beetle leaves
-sketching portraits for people
-challenging them for a game of Uno
-teaching kids how to play a song on guitar

So besides obvious learning that its not easy to earn money there were a lot of other things that i realized and learnt from them.
so we tried to earn money boht the days. though we didnt really earn anything on the first day i think it was important to go through that process because we realised how important it is to think of who your buyers would be before heading for a business . the place where you work. Aa what time of the day you are doing it. And of course how do you approach those people. I mean i actually realised its so very difficult to convince a customer about your service. Not to forget only after we went there it came to us that even what we wear and how we present ourselves makes such a difference. What shall we do so that we are different from all the other people out there trying to sell things. i think going ther on the first day also helped us know our audience. being there for few hours and observing people did help us think what might work and what might not.

Then another thing that popped up was how sometimes you can't help it and your business just ha to stop. something simple like weather. we planeed to go to a park in the evening on the frst day to give people shoulder massages but when we were about to reach there it started raining. Nothing actually went wrong but we just couldn't earn because of an external factor and we couldn't help it any way.

So out of all the ideas that we had we actually did the following
-Giving massage: while working on this we kept in mind the location . i mean where would people want to get a massage done. then what time of the day.also would they be carrying money in a park while they walk? then a place where people have more time and they are not rushing.

-Make me Laugh: the location we thought of worked biut then not the strategy. we realized that why would people come and take the challenge if they are not getting anything in return.

-Beetle leaf: this one we paid more attention on chosing our customers. we approached the foreigners because we thought thwy would be the ones who might be interested in something like getting messages written in hindi.

The next day...

So we came back home and decided what to actually do as what we did really didn't work. so we made these wrapping papers and cards using block printing technique. we tried to use whatever we could reuse and cheapest possible raw material like newsprint sheets.
so next day two of us- varshita and myself went out to sell all this. now from our first day's experience we knew we had to think about a lot of things before actually going out to sell.

Our customers could have been anyone because everyone uses wrapping papers and cards. but the kind of thing we did wouldnt sell anywhere. it was ethnic and handmade so we needed a certain kind of people to buy those.
we first thouhg of going to a stationarty shop and seeing if they are interested and buying all our papers and keeping it in their shops for sale.then we went to a residential area and tried going door to door but we soon realised people didnt realy have time to look at something we did.
so we thouhg tf a place where there are all kinds of people and who actually come there to have fun so we headed to brigade road. there too people did stop to look at our stuff but the business didnt really work. so finalyl we went to Mount carmel COllege and it worked.
in the exercise i realised that how important it is to approach people in the right way. they dont give you time so you have to tell them everything about your product in a quick and impressive way.

the biggest learnign was that discuusing proposals in a room and actually going out there to work on them is so very different.