January, 11

Is qualitative research really research?

Plus dishonest dishonesty research, turbulent times in 2023, and a case for customer intelligence over competitive intelligence.

👋 Hi friends,

Happy New Year! It's the second Thursday of the month and our first newsletter of 2024. We're happy to be back. We're happy you're back. This month, our topic is research—specifically qualitative research— what it’s worth and to a degree, whether this type of research is really research at all. So, is it?

To us, it's a question with an obvious answer—a resounding yes! But still, it’s a question we're often pressed on. One of the methods we frequently employ in our research is one-on-one user interviews— in-depth conversations with a select group of people. We often use this type of qualitative research to gain deeper insight into a problem space or to generate innovative hypotheses for further evaluation This insight helps us narrow our focus and find direction sooner—using a smaller sample size and lower budget than quantitative studies require. This accelerates and de-risks the design process, saving our clients time and money. 

Despite the obvious benefits, we still get questions about the validity of qualitative research: how can your findings be statistically significant with a sample size that small? Or: What can you learn from only talking to 12 people?

These questions come from a good place, but they might miss the point. While some forms of research allow us to make generalizations about a wider population, research isn't just about making generalizations. It is also about gaining a deeper, more nuanced understanding of our world and the people who occupy it—what motivates them, what frustrates them, how they think— explanations that cannot be gleaned from a simple survey. As Nielsen Norman Group put it, qualitative research helps us "understand the human experience in detail, not determine how many people have had a given experience or express a particular need."

The softer patterns that emerge from this research can help us, as designers, make informed, empathetic design decisions that ultimately help us humanize the experience we’re designing. 

And this is where insurance comes in. In an industry drowning in competitive intelligence, boatloads of consumer data, and downloads of market insights, analysis paralysis can make it tough to make moves that really connect with customers.  Insurance desperately needs not more numbers, but customer empathy—something that qualitative research rarely fails to awaken. While it can seem foreign and out of place—or as we’ve sometimes heard, not like research at all, it is the most direct path to better understanding and serving customers. So what does insurance stand to gain from investing in this type of research? We have some thoughts. Read on.

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🎂  THE BAKER'S TAKE

A year in customer research insights

What we learned from talking to customers through the sometimes turbulent times of 2023

"Throughout this year of highs and lows and all things unprecedented, we did what we always do: we talked to customers – our own and those of our clients (mostly across the insurance industry)–trying to better understand their needs, their challenges, their values, behaviors, and priorities so that we could help the industries we work with better serve them. The continuation of this work bears a particular weight now, as the pace of change seems to have quickened in recent years, making it harder than ever for industries like insurance to keep up with their customers."

Read more →

🛡️  THE INDUSTRY'S TAKE 

By the industry for the industry

As our CEO and founder Josh has noted elsewhere, when it comes to inputs into how insurance companies are thinking about their business, it's almost as if they are hardwired to place the utmost value on the business point of view, with millions spent every year on conducting and distributing competitive intelligence—by the industry, for the industry.

But as Josh points out, "this continuous desire to know what the industry deems an emerging trend or the latest technology to invest in won’t move us forward—it will only breed more of the same." Furthermore, it diminishes and in large part ignores the other side of the coin: customer intelligence. What are customers saying about insurance, what are they doing, what do they care about, what tech trends are they into, and how are their behaviors changing?

And while report after report after report is published year after year, advising the insurance industry to spend more time, more energy, more money looking to its customers to imagine the path forward, it continues, in large part, along the same path--with competitive intelligence guiding the way.

🗽  OUR TAKE

Our head of strategy explains the value of qualitative research

Kate Muth, Cake & Head of Strategy

“As human-centered designers, we rely on qualitative research methods to give us direct exposure to the subjective experiences, attitudes, and motivations of people who will use the products and services we design. It helps us swiftly develop design hypotheses so we can start making (and testing) sooner. Numerical data and statistical analysis about markets and behavior can tell us a lot about the ‘who’ our users are and ‘how’ they’re interacting — but we can only truly understand the ‘why’ through direct observation and conversation.”

🌐  THE INTERNET'S TAKE 

Best research-related reads out there. Sourced from our crew at C&A.

They studied dishonesty. Was their work a lie?  →

Dan Ariely and Francesca Gino became famous for their research into why we bend the truth. Now they’ve both been accused of fabricating data.

Why qualitative research is vital when measuring athlete marketability → 

The key to understanding the true commercial appeal of today’s elite sports stars.

Spotify's latest layoff is an opportunity to reconsider how we look at UX research  →

A UX researcher explores the implications for professionals in non-business crucial roles like UXR and asks questions about investing differently in research careers.

Elevating customer experience: a win-win for insurers and customers →

A survey of North American insurance customers offers insight into the challenges—and the value—of delivering a winning customer experience in insurance.

Oh, and in case you missed it ...

Learn how we use exploratory research to examine changes in the world around us and identify new opportunities for insurers.

In this webinar, we:

• Share our approach to exploratory research
• Discuss when and for what purpose exploratory research can be used
• Walk participants through a case study where we use exploratory research to help us think about workplace benefits in a new way

Cake & Arrow is a UX design & product innovation agency that works exclusively with insurance companies. We help carriers, distributors, and service providers to uncover new opportunities in unmet customer needs and design innovative products and services that drive change and business growth.

Visit cakeandarrow.com →

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