Problem

Gojek has always invested in research to go along product, business, engineering and design functions. As a design driven organization it is a natural conclusion for us to rely on research to fuel innovation and customer centricity through insights from the real world. The problem we discovered was that the utilization of research did not match our actual capabilities. We realized that research is mostly leveraged only on specific stages in the product development lifecycle and not throughout it. There was a gap in understanding how research can be applied effectively and with the right intentionality corresponding to the stage of product development. This ultimately led to the potential of insights being either irrelevant or delivered too late. We saw a big opportunity in strengthening the application of our core principle of customer centricity through evangelism and education. So our key question became: How might we ensure that the relevant research questions are being asked at the right time? And how might we educate and inspire team members to be conscious and deliberate in leveraging research?

Actions and Interventions

At the core of our discovery was our internal product development lifecycle (PDLC) we call GoDesign. Our PDLC is not defined by specific steps team members need to take, but is rather defined by specific outcomes we want to achieve in a given stage. Rather than defining a stage as “do wireframes”, we define that an outcome of this stage needs to be clarity on approach, flow, edge cases and feasibility constraints. This difference is critical as it allows us to see a much stronger correlation in the nature of questions we might want to get answered through research. For this we also had to re-emphasize the difference between foundational-, generative- and evaluative research. 

Foundational Research

Foundational research tries to answer big open-ended questions. It captures large insights, opportunities or market trends and influences the broader strategy of the entire organisation. As an example for foundational research we might want to learn how an entire generation looks at their financial planning or how well a specific geography responds to digitalisation of financial institutions and instruments. 

Generative Research

This type of research is aimed at generating specific insights into a specific market or customer segment. It answers questions that we do not know the answer to. In the example of financial products this could be questions like how millennials plan their finances and what kind of tools they use or what kind of challenges they currently encounter. It can also include specific market segmentations or competitive benchmarking studies, allowing us to get a more detailed understanding of specific opportunities and their viability. 

Evaluative Research

Evaluative research is always driven by a hypothesis or by assumptions that need to be validated. The most common examples are usability studies but even early in the PDLC evaluative research can play a pivotal role in validating the viability of ideas and concepts. 

Considering all research methods we usually apply in our PDLC [LINK] we mapped the methods to the stages and developed a questionnaire that helps team members to decide what the right research method is for the specific stage. By helping team members understand the nature of questions they need to get answered we enabled them to leverage research in the right way.

We evangelized this playbook internally through town-halls, workshops, and targeted 1-1 education. 

Outcome and Impact

The planning and Turn-Around-Time (TAT) for any research study was significantly reduced. This was the result targeted utilization of our research bandwidth. Overall we noticed that research was leveraged more upstream in the PDLC, meaning that we relied less on late-stage usability studies and focused more on early-stage concept evaluation. The earlier we can increase our confidence in a hypothesized approach the less course corrections we need to make later on, ultimately leading to faster delivery. 

Insights

We were able to save time as well as cost through more targeted application of research studies. We also realised that in many instances we did not have to rely on specialized talent to conduct relevant research. This was the result of skill building and education and allowed us to move much faster with less dependencies in the PDLC. This effort also strengthened the relationships between designers and researchers ultimately fostering collaborative insight generation as well as interpretation.