What to research

There are two strands to focus on, and both are equally important:

‘Out there’ – the context and audience for your project

• What’s already going on. Who are the competitors, or potential collaborators.
• Who’s writing about the issue (both for research, and later for getting the word out).
• What has succeeded and failed before – and why.
• The needs of your audience, users, partners, the people who will be involved.
• Where they are, online and offline, and how they currently interact with each other.
• What’s working already that could be expanded, improved or scaled.

‘In here’ – your team or organisation

• What has been tried before by your team, and by other teams.
• What policies and attitudes might get in the way of doing something new.
• How something different got started successfully last time.
• The people you’ll be working with, their enthusiasms, skills, mindsets.

Try to involve all your audience and stakeholders in the research – partly to cut down the work, and partly to because it really helps to develop good working relationships early on. Talk to them, survey them, and if possible bring them ‘in here’ to become part of the design of the project.

We can learn a lot about stakeholder engagement from the past 30 years of participative design and development in the non-tech world. Prepare well, build trust, allow enough time, use language and methods people can understand, and mix formality and sociability. Be open and explicit about how much say people have, be humble about not having all the answers, specific in your questions for people, and open about why you’re asking.

Create different options for engagement too, so people with only 5 minutes can still help, and those who can commit 5 hours can help you more. Put the time commitment up front by labeling options as ‘5 minutes to help’, ‘1 hour to help’, ‘half day to help’,or ‘full day or more to help’. People can self-select what they feel comfortable with and you’ll also avoid people signing up for something they can’t finish.

Your research work isn’t just about gathering information: it’s also the first point of contact between your project and the outside world. Right from the start, try to be open and communicative about what you’re doing rather than keep your ideas to yourself. The more people understand what you are trying to achieve, and get to know you and your team personally, the more time they will give to helping you. Be personal, be honest, be polite, and offer your own opinions before seeking theirs.