Do different people in different companies have the same conversations? That’s what Reach recently tried to determine in a major project conducted for Nokia. Three network partners, Apogee, Fuelfor and STBY, worked together to design a global study analysing how the cultures people live in can influence the type of language they use.

Working on such a broad topic was a challenge in itself – as indeed was conducting a simultaneous study in 3 separate timezones – and required a great deal of planning and preparation. One of the benefits of the network however is the experience each company has in working with each other; regular, close and open collaborations mean projects like this often feel like working as a single entity.

Each company maintained their own clear areas of responsibility however. Amongst these, the first step was to create a matrix of existing knowledge, developing a framework of relevant issues from a wide range of literature (in 3 different languages no less). After coming together to refine and synthesise this data, it could then be further focused on the topic at hand via a series of in-depth expert interviews. We spoke to a range of leading academics, journalists, and designers from right across the world, and the insights we gained allowed us to build an analytical framework that refined a hugely complex issue into a series of testable hypotheses.

Once developed, we then applied this framework to a series of in-depth ethnographic immersions. Going out into the field in London, Barcelona, and Shanghai, each company conducted a series of intensive interviews with a wide range of different people. This generated an incredibly rich amount of data, which our framework helped shape into a workable format for a collaborative workshop held with Nokia and all the partners in London.

This complex, multi-phase project proved how design research techniques can be applied to even the most complicated, abstract issues. It also proved how the network-company approach adopted by Reach can allow such projects to maintain a global focus, incorporating cross-cultural differences (and universal similarities) into the earliest possible stages of a design process.

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Reach recently completed a project for Cisco, in which several Reach partners compiled a report detailing the benefits of cross-cultural research. Cisco wanted to know exactly what they stood to gain from developing their own cross-cultural research program, and asked Reach to provide a general introduction to the field. They also asked for a number of compelling case studies detailing the problems and opportunities encountered by companies already conducting cross-cultural research, and for each of these to be related to specific area’s of Cisco’s business.

Reach’s report drew on the personal experience of several partners, providing in-depth analysis of programs undertaken by HP, Philips, General Electric, and Nokia. These projects covered territories from North America, Europe, Asia and Africa, with each case study focusing on specific aspects relatable to Cisco’s operations. Liaising with members of Cisco’s User Experience Team allowed Reach were able to tailor the report around their specific needs, with the final presentation being made in the form of a compelling Powerpoint presentation that could be presented and circulated internally.

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All Reach partners participate in a global study on how people use electricity and think about energy use, with a focus on charging devices. This study takes place in 8 countries: USA, Brazil, The Netherlands, Spain, Denmark, Hungary, India, China and Japan. The study is ongoing and will include more countries later on, but most field work has been done and we are now creating the insights. Later, we will also develop some opportunities and ideas for several industries.

We are currently working with an energy supplier, but other companies and organizations can make use of the materials to develop concepts too. The results are due in July and will be available as a short visual presentation from this website. If you would like to know more because you think the results can be interesting for your company too, please email or call the Reach contact in your country or if there isn’t any contact Bas Raijmakers in London.

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Most people have fully integrated their mobiles in their everyday life nowadays and would have a hard time imagining how to organize their social circles without it. Yet, it is not the mobile that sets the norm for how social life is organized, it’s still people who do that. Therefore companies like T-Mobile can learn a lot from how people actually organize their social life a broad sense (as opposed to how people use their phones) when they want to develop new concepts for mobile internet. Spur and STBY did fieldwork in Berlin and Tokyo and worked with a T-Mobile team to set up the research and organize the workshops that used the results to create insights and ideas.

We worked extensively with video in this project, using the small and easy to operate Flip Video which we gave to participants to film moments in their life for us. In the picture you see Bas Raijmakers transferring the clips one participant made onto his computer, to discuss them during the home visit. To prepare, participants had received the Flip camera and a set of nicely designed instructions a few weeks before. They each made some 30-40 clips for us. We edited those clips into short films of 1-3 minutes each.

Later in the insights and ideas workshops we used the short films in two different ways: as inspiration for creating the insights and ideas. And later, once we had developed these in more detail we used the films to back them up, as evidence. Because we used a video diary approach, the films became often very personal and intimate which was great for the topic we wanted to explore: how do people organize their social life. From this research resulted almost 30 detailed ideas for new services which are currently further developed by T-Mobile.

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The Italian region of Cuneo is transforming its health system and wanted to identify propositions for sustainable innovation based on local needs and harnessing local resources.

Fuelfor created an active collaboration between Ezio Manzini and the Politecnico di Milano, Bruce Mau Design Chicago and local healthcare stakeholders to address issues around Obesity, Rehabilitation and Access to Care.

Applying an innovation framework that connected health care experiences at the individual, community, facility and urban level, fuelfor led a team of 30 international designers through a 6-day innovation workshop; using collaborative research to understand the health issues of local people from city to home, design thinking to identify innovation hot spots, and design skills to communicate compelling future propositions.

Our work provided the client with a new way to explore issues from a human level and apply local resources sustainably. The resulting eight sustainable health care propositions collectively offered systemic change, and revealed an unforeseen opportunity for the client to transform their local health care brand.

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Belkin was preparing to develop the second version of its mobile audio recording product, Tune Studio. Portigal Consulting interviewed recording engineers, teachers, students, podcasters and musicians in their studios, classrooms and homes.

Our work identified the critical tension between the semantics of gear and the need for creativity, and we worked with Belkin to translate our insights into product implications, including features, design, and product semantics. Belkin recently launched their Podcast Studio, informed by insights uncovered through out research.

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Nokia wanted to gain insights into what women want from mobile phones and find design directions for phones with a female perspective. With the Nokia Insight & Innovation Tokyo team we devised ‘collaborative innovation’ processes that started with internal “share and discover” workshops in 4 countries, and then continued with consumer insights intervention with consumers in Bangkok, including “homework’ exercises, home interviews, and co-creation workshops.

Bespoke tools were used to elicit insights and directions on both motivations and materials and shapes. The team supplemented this process with ad-hoc street interviews and Nokia internal expert interviews.
The results were presented in an internal sharing tool presenting bite size videos, slideshows, photos, where the audience in Nokia can see and hear first hand what women want. There are also executive summaries in form of PowerPoints. Workshops communicated the 5 key themes and design directions further internally and have resulted in successful product improvements.

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Reed Elsevier, one of the largest academic publishers on the planet, engaged STBY for an open innovation project, to explore new opportunities for their business based on current customer practices. Working across multiple countries (UK and Netherlands), we focused on lead users who we identified through a process of snowballing.

We conducted fieldwork and followed-up with meetings for the identification of opportunities (insight creation) and a co-creation workshop (idea generation). The results have been used to inform the vision and strategy for a new portfolio of services targeting a specific market segment. The concepts that came out of the workshops are currently being prototyped.

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