Getting to what could be

One of my very favorite things about qualitative research is it deals with the “what could be” — not just the “what is.”

Let me explain: of course, we are really, REALLY great at understanding the what is. Using all the tools in our toolkit like direct questioning, not-so-direct projective techniques, storytelling, etc., we can really frame up a comprehensive understanding of who people are, how they live their lives and what is important to them.

Whether we’re in their homes IRL or virtually, in a focus group setting or one-on-one interview, we can cover a lot of ground that helps us to understand the what is. And the way we do this in qual — by triangulating, e.g., gathering the same information via multiple sources, gives us a high degree of confidence that we’re getting the truth, often the full(est) picture, from people compared to other types of research.

But also — here is the exciting part — qual is also really good at predicting the future.

Can we predict the SuperBowl winner or the winning lottery numbers? Of course not. But by gathering a deep understanding of what is important to people — their values —and how they want to live their lives — their “ideal” — we can get a sense of what kinds of product and service innovation is likely to resonate with them.

But of course we can’t expect people to tell us what kinds of products they’d like to see in the future. Instead, we rely on projective exercises to help consumers articulate what kind of lives they’d like to be living in the future, and we extrapolate themes from what they tell us to help identify innovation areas that are ripe for development.

My favorite projective technique involves visualization of the ideal life — an exercise in which we guide consumers through envisioning an ideal day in the future. The exercise goes something like this:

Imagine it’s 10 years from now and you are living your IDEAL life. Where are you? What are you doing? Who is with you? How do you spend your time? Walk me through an ideal day from the time you wake up to the time you go to sleep at night, giving me all the details about what you do and how you feel.

In a well-probed exercise execution, we’re able to understand how much of the ideal is possible today given the resources available, and identify unmet needs necessary to achieve the ideal life — including those that may be met by product innovation.

And, like much of qualitative research, we don’t really expect to get the answers as much as we expect to gain hints that can help lead us down paths where the answers can be found.

In other words, what we hear from consumers is general, along the lines of “I want to be able to prepare great dinners for my family faster so I can have more time for my writing” — which might lead us to territories around efficiency in meal prep, kitchen appliances, shopping and pantry organization.

A crystal ball? No — but certainly rich insight worthy of developing and building through additional research and development.