Kitch Research Field Trips

Raquel Félix at UXDX Community: APAC Series: UX Process. Video: https://youtu.be/zh0qvDIaYxg

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

What Kitch does and what field trips are

[00:00:00] Thank you so much once again for inviting me to this session. I will be sharing a case study of the way we've been doing field trips at Kitch. But first let me give you a little bit of context around Kitch, just for you to have a notion, but you can also search and try to understand a little bit what we do.

[00:00:25] We are a tech company that works to empower restaurants to sell their dishes online. We also have this mission to help them preserve their independence, not just being dependent on the marketplaces. We also work with marketplaces, but we want also to empower them to make selling online a little bit more free. So we have a set of products, and our main product now is more focused on the store, where we help them create their own delivery website. We have an additional product that we can integrate with their POS, which is the point of sale system, the delivery radius, and also trying to integrate all the delivery channels that they are working with in just one tablet.

[00:01:14] This is just for you to have a little bit of a notion. We work directly with restaurants, and to work with them, this is a world of segments. There are so many different ways of working in a restaurant, so many different restaurants, so many types and different service models inside the restaurant. So it's tricky to come up with solutions and products that can serve this amount of segments. We started to acknowledge, and mostly be aware, that we needed to really get close to them, so field trips were the solution for this questioning.

[00:01:58] Just for you to have a notion, field trips are part of a research approach which is called contextual observation. What happens is you go where people are, you stay there and try to extract as many behaviors as you can, but in their environments. It can be in their homes, in their workplaces, it can be inside a hospital, inside the nursery, you name it. You go to where they are working or where they are living for you to better understand the ecosystem of things around the things they are doing. Not just focus on the products that you are providing them and how they interact on a daily basis with them, but also be aware of the other things that surround that, even if it's just a system, a tool, other people interacting with them. So this is the approach that we started to understand would be very essential for us to start to design and develop better products.

Why get out of the office

[00:02:56] Why do we do this? The questioning was very much around the fact that we were aware that we were designing things based on some assumptions. Not everything was an assumption, of course, but we based our feedback on the sales team, the support team, the AM teams; AM is the account manager teams. And that somehow was not enough for us to better understand how things were working in the field. So we felt the need to get closer to our stakeholders, not just the restaurant managers, the ones buying the solutions, but also restaurant staff and what happened with the clients.

[00:03:40] We wanted to see closely how they were interacting with our systems, and how the systems that we were providing them were interacting with the systems they had already there, and to uncover if there were different things that we didn't know. Because while you are in the office you are not aware of that; you are just working based on what people are saying to you. So we needed to really extract contextual behaviors. From this questioning we started with, "OK, let's do this."

[00:04:12] We talk a lot with each other. We are a very collaborative team, around almost 100 people. We are based in Portugal, but we have teams in Spain and in Italy, and we really talk to each other a lot. But it's different when you are sitting in the office and when you go to a food court and try to extract, in real time, in the real field, what's happening there. It's also different when you are sitting at a desk, in a chair, and being in the setup of a restaurant. Different things happen there, even if you have this goodwill of trying to get into your customer's shoes, which is difficult. Being in the field makes that even easier and closer.

[00:05:08] Also, we tried to reproduce inside the office, with the tools they were using, how they would manage them. But it's different when you think that the setup in the restaurant is also different. Why do they put their POS over there? Why do they put the tablet over there, and why do they have a smartphone or a telephone? This is the kind of thing that, when you are inside a restaurant, makes us more aware of the things that could happen around the systems. Also, even if you are in the office trying to talk with customers, when you are there directly observing you can ask them things directly. If you are observing something and you don't understand it, you can ask them.

[00:05:58] One of the other things that we were questioning with each other: we thought that we knew everything about our customers, and I think everyone likes to think that way. But we needed to, and we were aware, that people don't live in bubbles. Even if you create these demos and you try to reproduce things inside the office, there are other things happening in a restaurant. When you go on a field trip you have other things that are the distractions. You have other people coming in inside a restaurant, which you cannot reproduce in your office, or even if you are working at home. So we needed to put ourselves in this situation to understand what the usual distractions are that restaurants are facing on a daily basis, and what the other equipment is doing for them that we are not doing.

Feeling the pain: the order-entry video

[00:07:10] I'm also going to share a small video. This is how we could acknowledge that this person is typing the delivery orders for a person that is at the counter. She also has a tablet on her left side, and delivery orders are dropping on that tablet. Since this tablet doesn't have a direct connection with the main screen where she's typing, by being there we could acknowledge the amount of time that she needs to perform this action. This was something that, if we didn't go to the field, we wouldn't be aware of. People would say, "Oh, it would be so nice if we could interconnect these two solutions," but once you are there you can feel the pain. You are observing the pain.

[00:08:08] Bear with me a little bit, and there she goes, and she tries to put all the orders there. Each order takes around 30 seconds. So imagine that at the same time there are 10 delivery orders dropping, each one takes around 30 seconds to insert in their POS, and you also have people in front of you ordering things. This can be chaotic, and while we were in our office we weren't quite aware of that. So we go to the field and try to feel the pain.

Making it transversal across the company

[00:08:48] We also thought, "Yes, this is good for us, the product team," but we also thought, "No, this is not just something that matters to the product team, so we need to involve everyone." Because we're already collecting information from other teams, we know and understand that it's essential to make this transversal. Different eyes, different perspectives: if you put those people in the field they could bring us different insights and different findings. If I go with the perspective of an account manager, maybe I can observe different things from the perspective of a product person, or an engineer, or a product designer, or even someone from sales.

[00:09:39] This is why we wanted to bring different disciplinary knowledge when bringing people into the field. Not just, "OK, we went to the field with just a researcher, or just the product designers, or just engineers, or just the PMs." No, everyone goes on a field trip. So we did that. Involving an entire company and bringing such a diversity of people into the field, and making them embrace this initiative like their own, was crucial to make this a success.

[00:10:17] We had people from the onboarding teams, product designers, the VP of brand, marketing teams, the head of Portugal, the head of Italy, the head of Spain, even our CEOs, engineering managers, operations managers, delivery managers. Everyone was participating, and each one of these persons had a different perspective. We could understand how enriching this was, because when we are so focused on product, doing this micro action, when someone comes from a field trip with the perspective of a salesperson, it gives a different layer. So this is important: transversal.

A weekly cadence and an extra layer of information

[00:11:01] Once we started to do the field trips we realized that this couldn't be just, "OK, we do this once in a while because it's fun and it brings us some data." We made this a good cadence, and now we are doing this on a weekly basis. Because we acknowledged that this was a real good source of extra data and extra information that would bring a different layer to the things that we are designing and developing. On top of the other sources of information that already exist inside Kitch, we had another layer. This is a very qualitative layer, but this is also the part that we were really missing from all these different pieces of information that we needed.

[00:11:57] Once again, much of the data that we were already collecting from other sources of information, when you go to the field you can also see if that is really happening. When we were interviewing people, I'm not going to say that people lie, but yes, people do lie, not intentionally of course. People were saying some things, but when we were going to the field we could see that there were some nuances. "OK, it's not quite as this person is saying, but now I understand better what this means." So having an extra layer of information was also very important for us to better understand what to design, when to design it, and why we were designing and developing different things.

How a field trip is organized

[00:12:50] For you to be more aware of how we organize this, this is a toolkit that I'm providing to you; this is how we do it. We work a lot with Notion, and we have this page where I organize, on a weekly basis, an open list of field trips. We have it by the name of the restaurant, by country, the status, whether it's planning or it's already running and happening, the type of restaurant, and when it's going to happen. And here is where the incentive is: I share this on the Slack channel where everyone is involved, like, "OK, we're going to have more field trips, so if you want to go, feel free to drop your name there." So this is where people drop their names.

[00:13:46] We do this with no more than two people. You see that we have three people here, but this is a different segment; it's a bigger place that we are going to explore, so having more people there is fine. But when you go to a restaurant, having more than two can be confusing. We do not want to interfere with the restaurant operations, so keep it a little low profile there.

[00:14:12] This is where everything starts. You drop your name, then I book a training session with the people that are going on the field trip. Sometimes at the beginning I would go and do this training with them in the field, but now I leave them to go alone, and I instruct them on best practices, some tips on how to run it and how to take notes from the observations, like taking good pictures or doing some videos, trying to understand what kind of things we want to learn in the field and what to observe, like creating a list of things.

[00:15:00] It's also important during this session to talk a little bit about the restaurant they are going to visit, so it's also very important to do some homework. What type of restaurant is it? What's the connection with Kitch? Are they Kitch restaurants? Because we also go to restaurants that have nothing to do with Kitch. This is also us exploring different segments, because we really want to learn with them. And we also take care of some logistics. So this is an important moment, around 30 minutes, and we share knowledge around this theme.

What to observe: shifts and the observation frame

[00:15:37] What do we share while we are doing this training, and what is expected when you are in the field? We have this kind of operation flow, and this is very important, because when you go on a field trip you can go during the first shift or during the last shift, which is lunchtime or dinnertime. You catch different types of operations there, and you will for sure observe different things. This is just for my colleagues, when they go to the field, to be a little bit more tied down in terms of the things they are going to observe.

[00:16:14] If you go in the first shift and you go a little bit before opening the restaurant, you can see how they prepare food, how they prepare the operations on their POS, what other systems they need to put on, whether they have all the food items. We can see providers coming in and the employees starting to have their rituals. This is something that we also like to observe. Then the first clients start to come into the store or the restaurant, and the first delivery orders start to drop on the tablets. Sometimes there's a peak, sometimes there is not a peak; it floats a lot, because inside the restaurant a lot of things can happen. You can have a good day, you can have a bad day, you can have a lot of customers or not.

[00:17:08] If you go during dinnertime, you can see the way they close the operation. What do they need to do? What is the last thing that they do? Why do they do it? Does this matter to Kitch in terms of solutions or services? This is the kind of thing that we want to observe.

[00:17:31] This is the observation frame that I instruct my colleagues in when they are there. Look for actions: if they have routines, some unpredictable actions that you thought would never happen there, just register them. Regarding those actions, who are the people doing them? What are the stakeholders? There can be a lot of stakeholders: restaurant staff, couriers, the customers, providers, you name it. When they are doing these actions, what do they need in terms of tools or systems to perform them? And why are they doing this? Can we extract a little bit more information if we are observing something and we cannot really understand it?

[00:18:20] I created this observation grid just for them to be more organized in terms of notes. It's interesting because we do not impose a way of taking notes. At the beginning it was also with the purpose of exploring and understanding how different people with different perspectives take notes and how they organize them. So this was just a base for them to take notes in, if they wanted to organize them by themes, or just like a diary: "I'm seeing this because of that, this person is doing this, put a picture, put a video, next action." So we have different ways of taking notes.

Interview scripts, emotions and etiquette

[00:19:09] Something that's very important, as I mentioned before, is having some homework done regarding the restaurant, because sometimes restaurants don't have a lot of customers. So just write down a small interview script: what kind of questions do you want to take there and ask that particular restaurant? Which of the restaurant staff would I like to ask these questions? Would I like to talk with couriers, with their customers? What kind of questions, and what do they want to extract from this field trip? Having more in-depth context around the restaurant makes it easier for us to build this script around the restaurant, around the things that they want and need to extract.

[00:20:07] Let's not just make it an observation without any kind of emotions. When you are observing, try to understand and see how that person reacts to the things they are doing, if it makes them mad, if, I don't know, they have some kind of behavior that is visible. If you don't understand it, you can ask, but be reasonable, because people are working, and restaurants' daily life can be really intense. So if you have a question, just write it down, and when you see that that person is a little bit more at ease, you go there and ask, "Oh, I saw that you were doing that and you reacted that way, but I couldn't quite understand. Can you explain what happened there and why?" Being reasonable is very important, because we don't want to interfere with the operation, of course.

[00:21:07] Also, this is the hard part: how am I going to take notes? It's very easy: always with a pen and paper. Because if you take a computer, you know that's a blocker. Even if you try to write everything down on your smartphone, it's easier, it's more fluid when you have a pen and paper, and you can also draw things around that and use the smartphone just to take pictures and do some small videos. We always make people aware to be careful while they are taking pictures not to expose identities, because people can be mad about that, and we are not asking permission. If someone asks us to delete something, of course we will delete it.

Notes, artifacts and the field trip repository

[00:21:55] Notes and artifacts: when they come back from the field trips, each field trip has its own Notion page, and each of the persons that go has their own Notion page where they can drop their notes and artifacts. This is the only thing that we ask them: when you come back, just drop them there in English, clear and clean English. If it has some language errors, no problem at all, but just drop them there.

[00:22:21] This is the kind of thing that people are sharing. They do drawings, they do beautiful sketches of what's happening inside a restaurant, they take pictures of Post-its, they take pictures of things they are doing in terms of marketing, what the different systems are that they are using, tickets, QR codes, things that we feel are important for us to explore in terms of the things that we are already doing. Taking pictures of where they receive the couriers and how they put the bags out for delivery, how the setup is, and if there's a specific place for couriers to pick up the orders. How do they interact with Kitch systems? What's happening when they put the bag down and they put the ticket there and they write things over there? "OK, this is curious, so I'm going to take a picture." A lot of different perspectives. If it wasn't for this diversity we couldn't have these different perspectives.

[00:23:38] After all that, when they drop all the information on their Notion pages, we have this field trip repository, and this is the second version, where the UXR team, which is me, will try to pick up the observations that they brought, and I will see if we already have an observation that's connected to that, to start to establish patterns. We write the observation, some insights or context around that, and the cause. The status: whether it's open, whether it's already being worked on by a squad or a specific team, whether it's in a roadmap or not. The type of observation: whether it's a pain, a behavior, an opportunity, or a suggestion. In what part of the journey this happens, whether there's a specific theme, the type of character that is involved, and where this happened.

[00:24:40] This is important for us because we can be aware that it's happening in five restaurants, and these are the restaurants where this is happening, whether it belongs to a specific segment, and we can write some recommendations around that. Also, this is an open document, so everyone can go to the field trip page and see all the open field trips. There's also a specific part where you can request a specific field trip, just to observe a more focused thing. And everyone has access to all the completed field trips if they want to go through them one by one.

[00:25:23] We also have this Slack channel where from time to time we share a little bit of information from the field trips, which we call the Nuggets UX research Slack channel. In there we can share if someone brought some good insights from the field; we put a picture or a small video. This is also a way of making information flow through the company, making people aware that things are happening on the field trips and that we can bring valuable information.

Results so far and expanding to other countries

[00:25:56] We've been doing this for eight months. We've done 35 field trips so far, which involved 56 different people. It's a lot of people; it's more than half of the company. And this is also bringing impact into our products. As I mentioned in the video that I shared previously, in the field we could feel the amount of time people would take to register an order. But we also had the issue that people couldn't hear our tablets when the delivery orders were dropping there. People said, "Oh, we cannot hear," but OK, we need to go and see, in different types of restaurants with different volumes of people, what's happening there.

[00:26:52] And yes, we could prove that the sound was not in the right place, and we even had people that were using Bluetooth speakers to make it louder. With us being in the field, we could prove to ourselves that this was a real pain for restaurant staff. Because we were deprioritizing this: "Oh, it's just a little component, a little feature of the product. Oh, it's just sound." But no: if you don't hear delivery orders dropping on the tablet, you are not aware that they are dropping there. So this had quite an interesting impact on the product.

[00:27:40] We are also starting to expand this to the other countries where we are working. The main team is in Portugal, but we already have 10 people working in Spain and five people working in Italy. We are aware that for those countries it's not possible to do this on a weekly basis, so we need a different frequency. It's very crucial for us to have a person that is your wingman, or your wingwoman, of the field trips, and is responsible for them. So far we have already made four field trips in Spain with different people. None of these people is directly involved in UX research, but they had this training and they have this will and understanding that this is important, and that it's not just for the product teams. It's not just for PMs and product designers, or even engineers, and for sure it's not just for UX researchers. In Italy we also started our first field trip, but since the team is so small we go at an easy pace. This is what I had to show you in terms of our field trips. Thank you so much.