Framing // Grounding challenges in their context.

This phase is focused on understanding the challenge at hand. Here we work with clients to identify the drivers that help this challenge persist, as well as the stakeholders impacted by it. We achieve this through interviews and workshops with the client team, as well a review of pertinent documentation involving the identified challenge. This allows a clear articulation of the challenge as well as the development of a clear plan of action in addressing it.

This is the initial fieldwork phase where we engage with stakeholders in their context to develop a keen understanding of their daily realities and routines. Through in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, participant-observation, workshops and other primary research activities, we are provided a window into the habits, activities, interests, constraints, and drivers of behaviors of those most directly affected by and connected to the challenge. This allows for an empathic understanding of the existing challenges and potential opportunities.

We consolidate the learnings and outputs from the field research activities and synthesize them to begin identifying potential solutions to the identified challenges in this phase. After presenting the insights gleaned from research engagements, we work with our client team to ideate and co-create potential solutions. We then identify the most salient solutions to prototype for further investigation through field testing. This allows for understanding of the challenge and its drivers, but more importantly for answering the “so, what?” of research findings by translating them into actionable solutions.

Now that we have collaborated in understanding the challenge and developing potential solutions, we re-engage with stakeholders to evaluate the effectiveness of the co-created solutions. Utilizing in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, ideation sessions, and workshops, we learn directly from the stakeholders where our solutions are desirable and effective, as well as where there are opportunities for improvement to make them even more impactful.

This phase of the process involves taking a call with our client team as to the best path for the prototyped solution, i.e., is it ready to pilot, does it require further refinement, or do we need to revisit the translation process and develop new solutions to test? Whatever the conclusion, these decisions are arrived at through focus group discussions and workshop activities. This allows us to ensure that we move forward with the best solution possible, identified through collaborative engagements.