Episode 9: Meena Kothandaraman on Qualitative Research
In this episode, Lisa Welchman and Andy Vitale speak to qualitative researcher and experience strategist, Meena Kothandaraman. The conversation mainly formed around understanding qualitative research and why it's so important to be inspired by and learn from people when designing products.
Meena, also shared advice for teams who face challenges and constraints around getting research integrated properly into their development process.
Transcript
Announcer:
Welcome to Surfacing. In this episode, hosts, Lisa Welchman and Andy Vitale, speak to qualitative researcher and experience strategist, Meena Kothandaraman. The conversation mainly formed around understanding qualitative research and why it's so important to be inspired by and learn from people when designing products. Meena, also shared advice for teams who face challenges and constraints around getting research integrated properly into their development process.
Lisa Welchman:
Thanks for coming on Surfacing, Meena.
Meena Kothandaraman:
Thanks, Lisa. And thanks, Andy. I'm really honored. And it's just so nice to meet you, Lisa. I know, I know Andy. But we're going to have a rock in time.
Lisa Welchman:
Of course, we are going to have a rock in time. I mean, before we press record on this podcast, I mean, maybe we can just jump back in and finish this conversation that we started about Insta-Pot versus Crock-Pot, versus just let it sit on the stove. And you mentioned this is relevant because you said that the inventors and makers of the Insta-Pot-
Meena Kothandaraman:
Are from Ottawa.
Lisa Welchman:
... are from Ottawa.
Meena Kothandaraman:
They are. I was so proud of my peeps. I mean, it's a good device, except just sometimes I feel like if you know how to cook something with the right pots and pan-
Lisa Welchman:
Exactly.
Meena Kothandaraman:
... and you know your stove, then don't mess with it.
Lisa Welchman:
Thank you.
Meena Kothandaraman:
Yeah.
Lisa Welchman:
Everyone said, get an Insta-Pot, because they know I'm all about stocks and broths. And they're like, "Oh, you can do it twice as fast or three times, or you can do in an hour, what it takes you like 12 hours on the stove to do." And so, I did it and it just wasn't right. I would rather get up at 5:30 in the morning and put the pot on the stove. And I'm sorry vegetarians, put the bones in the pot. And Meena, I know you are a vegetarian. And let it go for 12 hours.
Meena Kothandaraman:
But do, as you do.
Lisa Welchman:
Do as you do. Yes, exactly. But anyhow.
Meena Kothandaraman:
I don't feel the need to update every process. Sometimes it's just fun and you enjoy it for what it is.
Lisa Welchman:
Well, that's an interesting thing that you just said, you don't think you have to update every process. So, maybe we can apply that to actually the design world. What? What?
Meena Kothandaraman:
Did I say that about the design world?
Lisa Welchman:
No, you just said, you just made a general statement. I'm sliding a sideways over into a more design centered conversation. So, we'll put that, let's extend that metaphor. Let's put that question on the back burner. And let's go to, how about you introduce yourself and tell everybody about what you do, what you're doing, who you are?
Meena Kothandaraman:
So, who I am, what I do? So, I am a qualitative researcher. I've been a qualitative researcher for over 30 years, and I just love studying people. I've always found human behavior fascinating. I love meeting people. I love hearing their stories. Some stories are very, very interesting. Some are just interesting, but there's always something that you walk away with that I find can very much inform how you shape your own life. So, being a researcher is really having a lot of fun and getting paid for it too.
Meena Kothandaraman:
But I've been a qualitative researcher for a long time. I have a micro agency in Boston Twig+Fish. I'll let you decide on which one I am, the twig or the fish. But I have a wonderful partner, Zarla Ludin, who is fantastic. And the two of us get to work together in really focusing organizations on leveraging qualitative research as a strategic tool.
Meena Kothandaraman:
So, making sure that it's not only the act of doing it. So, you want to make sure that it is done properly, it's conducted properly. It's really bringing together everybody and rallying everybody around the human story. And so often we meet designers, and Andy, you know this so well, we've talked about this before, we meet designers who don't have any connection to the human story and simply are just going down that process meaninglessly, like it's just, I'm doing what I'm doing and got the blinders on, and I'm just charging forward. But if you don't have something that connects you to the person that is going to benefit from what it is that you're creating, I think there's always something missing there then, not only for the person who receives the product, but also for the person creating, so for the consumers and the producers, basically.
Meena Kothandaraman:
So, our focus is on really helping organizations think a little bit more deeply about qualitative research, not just as this haphazard process that you can jump in and jump out of, and, "Hey, Andy, are you free? Because I got to ask you a few questions, because we have to do some research." It's not equivalent to the ask of a question, which is how so many people feel like, "What's the big deal? Anybody can ask a question."
Meena Kothandaraman:
But I think especially in today's world, we have to unravel people. Not everybody is present and top of mind on the topic that we seek to understand more about. So, how do we allow and invite people in like a guest into our home? How do we invite them in? The moment somebody walks in your house, you don't barrage them with questions and, "What are you doing and how are you doing? What is going on?" And it's not how you do that. You let them walk in, you let them settle in, you offer them a drink. You let everybody settle down, before you can get them to open up and tell you about what exciting events are going on in their life. That's the part that I love about conducting research, is it feels like inviting a guest home.
Andy Vitale:
Nice. So, Meena, can you explain for people who may not know what qualitative research is, and how do we study people to learn how to design for them?
Meena Kothandaraman:
Absolutely. So, qualitative research basically is understanding human data at its most basic level. And human data, when we describe humans, we talk about behaviors, we talk about aptitudes. We talk about attitudes and emotions. And understanding those four areas and characteristics of how we are as humans, qualitative research tries to do that in a way that is very story-based. It produces a lot of thick and rich data. So, we ask people, not just a pointed yes, no answer, but, "Tell me about the story of the last time you took a trip and where was it?" And it's unraveling a conversation so that people can really almost reveal some of those nuances that they take for granted in their own lives.
Meena Kothandaraman:
The act of doing qualitative research offers a platform for people to really articulate those thoughts and to be able to meander with you in a way, where you can guide them down a path of ultimately what your learning objective is, but that they can share that human story that is so integral to understanding why and how you're doing, what you're doing with your product.
Meena Kothandaraman:
So, qualitative research is that body of knowledge that generates that, versus quantitative, which is a lot more about numbers, about how many times you do something. It's all about different types of numbers. How much might you earn? What is your age? How many people do you have in your household? How many times do you click on a button? It's a lot of how many times. But the qualitative aspect is really the why, as it most commonly described, is the why behind your doing things.
Lisa Welchman:
I mean, that's really interesting to me, because when I talk to people about work on a digital governance project with people, I ask them a fundamental question, which is, "Do you know who in your organization is accountable for establishing your strategy, and then the supporting policies and standards, and other guidance that support execution of that strategy?" And around strategy, when they say yes, Mike, well show it to me, right? And then I say, "I'm looking for both a quantitative statement of your strategy, and then a qualitative statement of your strategy." And everybody puts their arms around the quantitative success metrics, KPIs, whatever your organization calls them, because they're not easy. I mean, getting a solid set of performance indicators in place is not an easy job, so I'm not belittling that at all.
Lisa Welchman:
But what fascinate fascinates me about it, and in an organization can make qualitative statements, particularly around their brand, like the mouth feel of their brand and how they want people to feel around their brand in particular. But when it comes to then transporting that qualitative aspect into the product development life cycle, right beyond just saying, "We want to be perceived as this as an organization." But actually bringing it in there.
Lisa Welchman:
And I might be showing my ignorance, but if I'm ignorant of it, it probably means there are other people too, we're never ignorant alone. That's what I've discovered. How do you make that translation? How do people use this information that you reveal? So, you're revealing all this kind of soft, fluffy, sometimes just easy to blow away type of information around an experience. And how does that get translated into the product development life cycle?
Meena Kothandaraman:
Absolutely. And I'd love to take you through this sometime, Lisa, just for your own personal-
Lisa Welchman:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, maybe a lot of listeners know this, if they're all designers or whatever, but a lot of listeners aren't designers and I'm not a designer. And so, I know it's there. I see it, but it's almost like this magic that happens. Right? So, it'd be great.
Meena Kothandaraman:
Absolutely. No, absolutely. There is a framework that we have put together both Zarla and I, really a little selfishly actually, we put it together in order to be able to help, what we call non researchers, really try to understand the different asks that people have around qualitative research. And at the most basic level with this framework, what we've been able to get people to take a step back of is, most often whatever you are trying to come out with when you're learning, trying to learn from people is, you're either trying to be inspired by people or you're just trying to inform the product that you're looking to create. It pretty much ends up in those two camps.
Meena Kothandaraman:
A lot of times the informed the product starts to tend to word those quantitative kind of measures like, "I have three options, which one do you think goes well? Or, if we did it this way, how do you feel about this?" But it will always be very pointed towards the product. It's much more about the human connecting with the product.
Meena Kothandaraman:
But when we look to be inspired by people, what am actually looking for are patterns, like much larger patterns that I can see in order to be able to go, "Oh, it's not just me asking..." Again, if we pick on travel for some ridiculous reason that came into my head, but if I pick on Lisa and say, when was the last time you planned something where you were traveling? Let's talk about that. You could start talking about that. I could laser sharp you into that world of travel, but instead I want to take a step back and ask you about planning, about the act of planning. And if I give you a chance to dwell in that, and you can share different ways that you plan.
Lisa Welchman:
I see. I see. It starts to reveal things that aren't necessarily on the critical click path or on the task paths, all of these non-essentials. Yeah. Okay. That's probably some of the time that it takes for people who are doing product development, if they're doing it well. And maybe not having time to consider these things that you're talking about leads to some of the not great outcomes.
Meena Kothandaraman:
Well, a lot of times designers are pushed up, I mean, pushed up against the wall, where they are... We've worked with some designers who have been put under ridiculous constraints of, "We have six weeks, you have to come up with three new products." And I'm just like, "Wow, why and who does that?" But they do. And in those situations to me, I feel really like it's very unfair to designers. Designers are brilliant at what they do, and they love solving problems. They love creating solution for people to cover up a gap and say, "We took care of it." But when they just have to do this churn, where they're just going in and changing, and sometimes getting these kind of directives of, "Change that button to blue or change it to gray." Those kinds of things, where they're just funneled down this path that doesn't really allow them to explore, they then start to lose some of that sense of inspiration and connection with what they're creating.
Meena Kothandaraman:
But it's also, that if you ask them to do something, it's a skill, right? You have to hone that skill. You have to be able to look beyond and go, "Oh my gosh, these people are struggling with this. There's a better way to do this." And there's not enough inspiration, I find that's being given to designers. And it's quite unfair because at times it doesn't allow them to spread their wings and actually show how creative they can be.
Meena Kothandaraman:
But when you have them along with you, you're conducting qualitative research. Somebody is speaking through a story and going through the details of the story, I cannot even begin to tell you the number of times that people who are with us, be they designers or product managers, or engineers, you just see their eyes and their brains, the mice are running at hyper speed in their head because not that they want to solve it right there, but they see solution like that's what their brilliance is. They're able to see it. But the story gives them that inspiration. And if they don't have that inspiration, I find it's actually quite unfair to them. And then they're supposed to produce brilliance.
Lisa Welchman:
Well, probably then it's just a task list, right? It's just like, "Do this, do this, do this, do this, do this. Anyhow."
Meena Kothandaraman:
Absolutely.
Lisa Welchman:
Thank you for that. That's really helpful.
Andy Vitale:
Yeah. You talk about that inspiration and it is important being on a design team, having a design team, when we get to see, especially with our cross-functional partners, those insights first-hand and learn those things, they're so valuable. It helps us get aligned on really the problem that we're solving and understanding the people that we're solving problems for. But sometimes it's not just that lack of inspiration, it's what you call the age of immediacy, right? It's we have this desire to just churn and crank, and move really fast. And we often hear, "Well, we don't really need that much research. We understood enough about them." Or, "We have a subject matter expert that knows something. Let's just move past that right now. That's what we have is good enough." And for the teams that deal with that, what would you tell them?
Meena Kothandaraman:
Absolutely. I love that question. I'm just writing myself down notes, because I sometimes meander with what I say, and I don't want to lose track of the great question. So, the way we handle that actually, and that's a really excellent point that you bring up because it happens more often than not, is either there's a subject matter expert or there's just, "We know this, why do we have to go and revisit this again? What is research really going to offer us, any type of research for that matter?"
Meena Kothandaraman:
And where we always start any of our discussions is with understanding knowledge, knowledge sources, and confidence in that knowledge and confidence in the knowledge source. And the reason we always start there is because at times there are teams that actually will look at what they know and go, "Oh yeah, yeah, we know this, we know this." But the question is to actually ask everybody on the team, how they feel about something, "Do you know this? Do you feel good about this knowledge? Where did it come from? What was the source? What were you trying to answer? And then what is your confidence in it?"
Meena Kothandaraman:
The thing about confidence is it's binary. It's either high or low. You can't have medium confidence, this really means you have low confidence.
Meena Kothandaraman:
So, we approach it from that point of view, where if people are pushing the research aside, go through a knowledge confidence exercise. Because if there's even one or two people in the room who are just like, "Yeah, but why are we doing it this way?" Or God forbid, it's the newbie who has joined, which I always love, when the newbie is like, "Yeah, I'm really new to this, but I don't really understand why you're doing it this way." Those are the people I love actually, because they start to challenge whatever our assumptions are, how much of that knowledge is based on assumption, how much of that knowledge is based on high confidence. And if everybody is high confidence, rock on. Everybody go to town, do what you have to do.
Meena Kothandaraman:
Research does not need to be done in gratuitously because it just sounds grand that you did it. It really needs to be employed where it's needed. But if even a few people are medium confidence, feeling [inaudible 00:17:40], then it behooves us to ask ourselves, how do we reach that sense of high confidence and what must we do? And what are our knowledge sources? Is it enough to go to a subject matter expert internally and ask them? Do we feel that they really know what's going on? "Well, they're not really in, they're not actually a nurse that's practicing now. They're just a nurse practitioner that's on our board." "But do they really know what's going on? Are they actually going and dealing with COVID and hospitals now?" "It's not quite the same. They done trauma work, but this is a different level of trauma." So, can they be that proxy? If we start to feel "eh" about it, then that's a very good sign that you actually do need to go out and get some more qualitative data.
Andy Vitale:
Great. That goes back to the, you are not the user, right? You may have experienced that at some point, but you're not going through it now. And your experiences are still going to be different than other people. And it really does take hearing a lot of perspectives to understand the problem in depth.
Meena Kothandaraman:
And context is changing, you both know so well, how fast context is changing. Context is changing so rapidly on us, that we have to somehow keep up with that, but in a way that we feel confident at every step.
Meena Kothandaraman:
So, I was talking about when we study people, we look at those behaviors and aptitudes. We look at attitudes and emotions. Behaviors and aptitudes, if we look at that data, that data changes constantly. We're picking up new behaviors. We're learning new things on a day-to-day basis. We don't even realize that. And yet so much of our designs are based very behaviorally, but we don't realize then that if we focus on that, then we actually realize our designs have to change to keep up with people.
Meena Kothandaraman:
When we're looking at attitude and emotional data, it changes things up because they're longer lasting. If you think about your attitude towards certain things or your emotion with, or on certain things, you'll realize actually that they've stayed with you a long time. They're harder to change. They're not as fleeting. So, it's important for us to then just, you keep on stepping down. It's confidence, it's understanding that data, is what kind of data you're going after. You have to uncover all of that in order for the team to have transparency into, what are we actually trying to answer? And is it just something we can whip off the top or do we have to dig a little bit deeper? And that's the exercise that we go through even before thinking about what method and all this stuff.
Meena Kothandaraman:
People love to start with method. There's several books out there. I will say this on air, several books out there that when you open the book, it's all about how to ask the right question. It's not the ask of asking the right question first, first you have to establish the parameters of, why you're even doing this research in the first place? And making sure we set that up first.
Lisa Welchman:
This is really interesting. I want to back one step back a little bit, because one of the things that's sticking with me that you mentioned is, the newbie in the room, who's saying, "I don't know why we do this in the first place." And I'm laughing to myself because I'm often that person who's like, "Why is it like this?" Kind of person. I'm sorry, my phone beeped. I think it's interesting because I'm wondering whether or not there's anything that you do that helps solve the problem of a lack of inclusion in the room when that is being addressed.
Lisa Welchman:
So, everyone in the room, you're saying, if there's a high level of confidence, that's great, we can proceed. Maybe we don't need to do this. And I'm sure when we think about a lot of the online disasters, I won't list any, but everyone fill in the blank with whatever online social media company or whatever you think is the disaster of the day, that those people in the room had a high level of confidence to do. But the challenge for them was that the room was not particularly inclusive, right? When they're making decisions.
Meena Kothandaraman:
Absolutely.
Lisa Welchman:
And so, that may not be in your world. You may be taking your research marching orders from a client or from someone for a particular product, but is there anything in that space where you get to help address that aspect. And how would that work?
Meena Kothandaraman:
Absolutely. Absolutely, it does. So, even when we are taking our marching orders from all sorts of people, so we work with like marketing engineering, C-level, C-suite people, it just is all over the map, research teams sometimes. So, when we get our marching orders, the one thing, and I don't know whether this is an artifact of having done this for long enough now, but if somebody is going to invite us in and ask us for our expertise, then I actually want to give them my expertise. I want them to hear both what I have to say, what Zarla has to say.
Meena Kothandaraman:
We have to share earnestly and honestly, and transparently what we're seeing. Sometimes it might go over well and sometimes it might not. But I feel it's almost insincere of me to not say, "Hey, so we have to hear from everybody." "Oh, well, don't want to invite this person because they're problematic. They always ruffle people's feathers." "That's great. I like the problematic people. Please invite them in. I'm not scared of them. I'm not worried that they're going to step on anybody's toes. That's for us to manage." But sometimes we have to get behind that. Maybe they haven't been heard enough. Maybe there's frustration. We don't know.
Meena Kothandaraman:
So, sometimes it's really important when we are having this align phase that we call, we have a five phase process, and our first phase is aligning. We always ask that there is inclusion from the people that have to be the table. And it's not enough for people to just come, and people to be chewing their pen and just [inaudible 00:23:53] with it, not really saying much. Not saying much doesn't mean they're not engaged, but we do make sure that there is activity from everybody. Everybody has to get up and do something with us.
Meena Kothandaraman:
And often, the best compliment we've gotten quite honestly, is that the session was therapeutic, which makes me smile. But people feel like they've had a chance to get things out of their head, partly because they barely ever get a chance to reflect on their own work. They're always moving from one meeting to the next. And it's just go, go, go, go, go. And they don't even get a chance to look at their own work. But it gives them a chance to dwell in that moment, see what's going on here, hear what other people are seeing, and actually gain some clarity, to the point where they can have some contribution. So, it's a bit of them being able to contribute and us wanting them to be a part of things from all aspects.
Lisa Welchman:
Yeah. But I maybe asked my question poorly, so I get that. No, no, no, no, no.
Meena Kothandaraman:
Oh, I'm so sorry.
Lisa Welchman:
You answered the question that I asked. I guess, I'm asking in particular, is it in your domain to ensure that the user research being done is broad enough? Do you know what I'm saying? I mean, yes, so right then it's broad enough.
Meena Kothandaraman:
I know where you're going. Yes, yes.
Lisa Welchman:
I mean, an episode can't go by where I don't say algorithmic bias. I think that'll be a theme, Andy. Every episode Lisa will say algorithmic bias, because it just gets me upset. But that's I think just a really good example of, we know research had to happen in order for these products to be developed. And some really big things got missed on that front. And often did, we had a conversation with Regine Gilbert on accessibility. And there's another example of things that aren't happening higher upstream in the product development process in terms of inclusion.
Lisa Welchman:
And so, I'm wondering, is there an aspect of the work that you do that advises or helps organizations do a better job at that? Because I think it would be invaluable for folks, particularly when you have a fairly homogenous product development team, that could very well be nodding their head and going, "Yeah, it all looks good to me." Right? Kind of thing. When in reality it looks good to them because they told you to talk to three people that look like them. So, and they said it looked good to them too. So, I'm wondering, is there anything in your process where you address that?
Meena Kothandaraman:
Absolutely. So, I'm so sorry. I was talking at that first step of internal, but yes, once we decide on what the learning objective is, and we "get our marching orders," if that's fair to say, and what's the scope of study that we're going after, there is a big part of recruiting participants. Understanding who we seek to learn from. And in doing so, yes, a lot of times people go with that convenience sample, "Oh, we'll just go with these five people that we've always gone with. Or we'll go with these 20 people because they're on our voice of customer board." That's something that we bring a lot of detail to. And I don't know if there are links that you can attach to the podcast.
Lisa Welchman:
Yeah, we've got show notes, so throw them out there.
Meena Kothandaraman:
Yeah. Fantastic. I will send you an article that we actually wrote just as important as it was for Black Lives Matter. And just talking down that path of what is the responsibility of researchers as we try to support this movement, as we try to raise awareness, really important for us to consider who we're recruiting, because some of it has already been baked in, as you rightly said. Not only is it that the people creating are all homogenous, but the people we go and learn from are also homogenous. So, it just keeps the cycle of homogeneity going at a point where we have to ask ourselves, "Wait a minute, is this the right way to do things?"
Meena Kothandaraman:
So, when we are actually doing our participant recruitment, there's heavy detail in terms of, not just behaviors, aptitudes, but psychographics, demographics, really looking at it and scrutinizing all four, where demographics, unfortunately seems to always fall to the, are they this age? It's important for us to capture this age group. Or they need to be from this geographic region. But when it comes to race and when it comes to that discussion around a balance of race, even though we all say, and we need a balance of race and ethnicity, it often tends to skew one way.
Meena Kothandaraman:
Now, you go back in that process of looking to your recruiter and you look at their lists, and their lists are also, I'm going to use the word tainted, for lack of a better... just to work it backwards. You notice that the list they're also quite homogenous in nature.
Meena Kothandaraman:
So, it's on us to push a little bit harder to not just say, "Oh, well, hey, we filled the recruit. Woo-hoo. Fantastic." But to scrutinize and to look to those details and say, "Are we really getting a balance of this here?"
Meena Kothandaraman:
When I was talking earlier about the two sides of our framework, where we have inspire and learn from people, especially on that side, we find it's incredibly important to make sure that that diversity is there, that true balance is there. Because we have to appreciate that when we are being inspired by people, people from different backgrounds, even though we might come out of our house and do things a certain way, that seems fairly fluid and the same, there's culture. There's details that we bring from our houses with us, that we don't really overtly recognize. And we need to learn from those people because often they have different ways of doing things, that could actually.
Lisa Welchman:
And solutions to problems. Yeah.
Meena Kothandaraman:
Yes, could really get us cranked in a particular direction. That's brilliant. That nobody would have paid attention to before because it wasn't the accepted way. And so, it's so much fun to be able to push for that, but to also emphasize the importance of what you're getting back, which is that variety in thought. And race itself is interesting. Race and diversity is interesting as a topic, just because, then you ask, "Well, are you Asian? Are you African-American?" You can ask these. And then you have people who are mixes, who really don't know where they fall. So, the question is, is there enough representation across the board? And that is on us. That is our researcher responsibility to make sure we don't just shove whoever we get into the table, that we really make sure we're thoughtful about the people we bring and that we learn from. There are times you go up to a particular people, but other times you really, really want to be as open as possible.
Andy Vitale:
How have organizations been that give you this homogenous list? The last time we talked, we talked about how organizations shifted from, their focus has gone away from humans and more about just creating products and delivering. It may have been, I think, the Bring Your Humanity to Work, talk that I saw.
Andy Vitale:
So, taking this organization, that's so focused on outcome and not the people involved, and then going to them and saying, "You know what? We need to really be human focused." But then taking it the step further to like, we really need people from diverse backgrounds to get true insights. Have they been open to that? Or are they like, "Here's the list." Is it a battle every time? Or how has that changed?
Meena Kothandaraman:
I see. And so, that's sort of a double-edged question for me to answer personally, because I feel like we choose our relationships very carefully, so it could be a bit of the people that we like to listen to and hear from, and interact with and collaborate with, because they have that open mind. But whenever we are faced with people who don't feel like they want to go that road or feel shut down, we will attempt to try to get them to understand, to open up. But if they push in the direction that we're not comfortable in, quite honestly, Andy, we say we're not the right people to work with them, because the goal is not to be the ramming rod. I don't think at this point in my career, I want to do that.
Meena Kothandaraman:
I really love working with people who are so eager to cast the net wider. And so, we tend to work with those people more so. So, I don't know if that's a fair answer to your question. But when we do find, we either bring it up to people. Most people I will say, and especially in the last year to two years, I find that people's ears are much more open and attuned to the importance of this. But when people shut us down, I find we walk away from it because it's a hard discussion to try and suddenly have them convinced them.
Meena Kothandaraman:
You've been on the consulting end as well, where if you start on that foot and you're at odds with each other right off the bat, then it's hard to continue and really be collegial, collaborative, whatever the right word is to move forward.
Lisa Welchman:
One of the things that I find interesting in consulting and that I find myself repeating a lot is that, we all have a methodology or approach, or the thing that we believe in, the way we think it's right. I've got my digital governance framework methodology, and I'm hell bent on saying that is the right way to do it. And I'm always open to conversation, but that's the way that I do work and solve problems.
Lisa Welchman:
And one of the things I always think when I talk to a prospective client, the first time is, are they getting it? Are we in tune with things? Or are they being forced to do this work? Right? A lot of times people in the UN space might say, "We got an audit and we did an audit, and we found out that we're not doing X, Y, and Z, and we need to govern our digital spaces better. So, we're calling you." Right? But culturally, they're not actually interested in doing the work. And so, I hear a little bit of that flavor. And I've learned that it's just better to step away. Right? And not take on that work, because if people really aren't primed for it... And I think the work that you do, it's even more like that, where it's just like, if they're not interested in looking at things through an inclusive lens, it's going to be hard to convince them to do that.
Meena Kothandaraman:
If it's just to check a box.
Andy Vitale:
Yeah, exactly.
Meena Kothandaraman:
I mean, not to belittle what you're saying, not to reduce it down to that, but there are a lot of people who want to just check the box. And there is so much that we have to learn. Sometimes and especially when you look at a product, you see that it's struggling, and you realize that it's lost its connection with people, and that you see other products that are comparable, or maybe analogous in an analogous space that are making that effort. And you see that they're connecting with people. When people have a wonderful relationship, they can't shut up about it. They keep on talking about it, "It's just so wonderful that this happened to me. These people took care of me." It's almost a surprise when that happens.
Lisa Welchman:
You're right. So, you're like, "What? That worked. Oh my God." Yeah.
Meena Kothandaraman:
But why? With the millions of products that we have out there and the services, and all the things that we're talking about. My favorite question to ask in a lot of conferences when I speak is, "I'm giving you three minutes on the clock. I want you to come up with five products or services that just blow your mind away. That just are like, wow." The average number that people get to, what do you think it is? Two. Two is like, oh my God. I go five, "Anybody five?" And there might just be one person, they're just doing this in the background. I'm just like, "Okay, no, that doesn't count. This doesn't count." Right? But it's barely two overall. Think about from morning to evening, how many products and services you guys touch, and you're only really satisfied and excited about two. It's really sad. We can do better.
Andy Vitale:
Yeah. No, that is sad. And although I tried to think of how many and it's hard. I mean, there's couple of close by.
Lisa Welchman:
Well, just in this conversation, we've been talking about maybe this is before we hit the record button, but I think the bulk of the conversation was about products that we don't like.
Andy Vitale:
Right. Exactly. So, Meena, a lot of what you do was face-to-face. It was in-person. It was having conversations. And then the pandemic came and that went away. But when we last talked last week, you mentioned that you were about to do in-person research for the first time-
Meena Kothandaraman:
Yeah, that's right.
Andy Vitale:
... since when?
Meena Kothandaraman:
A year ago. A year ago. A year and two months almost actually. Yes.
Andy Vitale:
Nice. So, how was that?
Meena Kothandaraman:
Well, you're catching me literally that tomorrow morning I had to pull out my pilot. So, we're going to see how it goes, but I'm very excited. I'm very excited. It's a really, it's a very fun space to be in. It's shopping, so it's grocery shopping. And it's just very fun to see where this goes. But I think it's going to be interesting just because it's that re-entry. I wonder what it's going to feel like. We're taking all the precautions. We know our participants will be taking all the precautions. The team is going to be taking all the precautions. And it's quite a big space that we're in. But I have to say, it's going to be really exciting. I miss it. I miss learning from people face-to-face because it's funny, you can connect with peoples. And I mean, there's an energy that you feel like person to person, face-to-face, that's a little different than remote.
Lisa Welchman:
A lot different.
Andy Vitale:
Yeah. It'll be interesting, because you won't, I mean, maybe you will, but maybe you won't see people's whole faces. So, that's going to add another dynamic, just seeing how they react and what that looks like.
Meena Kothandaraman:
I was laughing though, because I told Zarla, I'm like, "Man, I got put on some other things than pajama pants. This is not good." So, I'm going to have to apply my [inaudible 00:38:28] too. I was laughing about it. And she's like, "Oh, good question. What are you going to wear?" So, but yeah, I think it's going to be really exciting. It's going to be very exciting. And just being able to be with people and see what people are doing. And things have changed.
Meena Kothandaraman:
Things will not be exactly the same, but that's half the fun is in this field, we've been through changes. We've been through moments where people have endured very traumatic situations. We work on so many different types of projects. Right now alone, we're doing this grocery shopping discussion. We have a discussion on pets for something else. We have a discussion on military personnel going into the battlefield and what do medics do, if there are medics that are actually going into the battlefield to take care of wounded soldiers. We're talking with the City of Boston on developing anti-racism language into their processes. So, it's just so different. And each one is just so fascinating. So, we are really fortunate.
Lisa Welchman:
I mean, one of the questions that keeps repeating on me is, how did you get into this line of work? Right. So, that's a really... There might be people out there listening who we're like, "Oh, that sounds really cool. I want to do that when I grow up." What path did you take and what recommendations would you have around that?
Meena Kothandaraman:
I think the path is much easier. So, I just want to say that now in advance, if anybody is listening. It's so much easier. There's so many great programs. I didn't mention in the beginning, I'm also a graduate lecture at Bentley University, and I've been there for over 20 years. And we have an awesome, awesome program. I'm adjunct, so I can tell you, I teach in other places, but I really do love the program here. And it's why I've stayed with them for so, so long. But my path personally, I actually was an undergraduate in computer science. I'm a really terrible coder.
Lisa Welchman:
But you can code, can't you?
Meena Kothandaraman:
I just want to say that on recording. I can code, I can code. But I was one of the earlier cohorts for a co-op program in Ottawa, where I went to the University of Ottawa. And one of my first work terms, I was at then company called Systemhouse. It was a very, very big consulting firm. That and Anderson Consulting were the two big consulting firms in Canada. And this was when we were just embarking on getting applications onto computers and stuff like that. And my first project that I was assigned to was for Bell Canada to redesign the payphone.
Lisa Welchman:
That's interesting.
Meena Kothandaraman:
And there was one, oh my God, it was so fun. But there was one woman, her name was Banda McClelland, and she was a human factors engineer, and she was there. She was doing her stuff. Basically, basic ethnography. I found it fascinating, learned a ton from her. And she got me into this path of, this is just really interesting.
Meena Kothandaraman:
And I've been so fortunate. I got to do my graduate work at Syracuse. They had a special program, what is now called The iSchool, but it was the Information School before. And they had a program in this as a graduate program. So, I went to Syracuse. And then I just started working at different organizations because people were eager to get into this. And everything was all about usability testing.
Meena Kothandaraman:
But now the sad thing is usability testing has its own woes, where everybody wants to stuff everything into usability testing, which has also got its problems. But it was just from there, was moving around the world, living in a lot of different countries, learning about different cultures, how different people view different problems, how they describe different problems. And it's just been a fantastic ride. I'm really fortunate.
Andy Vitale:
You made me think two different things. One really about payphones. I think I travel with my dad to go see football games. He's a Rams fan. So, we usually travel somewhere to an away game or to LA. And every time he encounters a payphone, he takes a photo with it. And I'm always like, that's strange to me. But I guess, I never asked him why. I just think he thinks it's funny.
Andy Vitale:
But I have a payphone memory too. When I was younger, I used to go to the arcade with a friend. We were in eighth grade and we used to spend all of our quarters playing this wrestling game. And we would have to walk home miles. Right? But one day it was just pouring, it was wet, half snow, half rain. And we get to this payphone and we used all of our quarters to play the game. So, we had to make a collect call of the payphone to see who would come and pick us up. I don't know why I'm talking so much about reminiscing, about payphones, but I'm curious, what were some of the findings about those payphones? Because people might not even know what they are anymore.
Meena Kothandaraman:
I know. Do you know I actually can answer that, because I remember it so well, was we were observing. So, do you remember the older payphones used to have those really hard to press brown buttons. Do you remember that? They were almost, if you look at the cross-section of it, it looked like a triangle. And you had to really go [inaudible 00:43:43], really push your finger down on it.
Lisa Welchman:
Yes, I remember that.
Meena Kothandaraman:
Well, that was the old payphone. So, people often were misdialling. We would basically be eavesdropping, is what we were doing, and milling around people with their payphones. And basically we would hear them, "Oh, I'm so sorry. It's wrong number." Then they have to pull out another, whatever it was, put it in, do it again. And then it was fun to see how people were jimmying system.
Lisa Welchman:
I want to say that's probably what Andy did to get his ride home. He's not saying that he stuck a wire down the phone.
Meena Kothandaraman:
Or we would do things like, "Okay, once you get to your friend's house, dial us and let it ring for three times." And I remember doing that. So, we noticed that people were doing, and we're like, "Oh, I wonder what they're doing." So, it became apparent that a bit of loss of money there too going on. So, they actually built it in a better phone, much more beautiful keys. I'd like to just brush my shoulders a little bit and say, it's still the same design in 2021.
Lisa Welchman:
I can't remember the last time I saw a payphone.
Meena Kothandaraman:
This is a beautiful payphone.
Lisa Welchman:
But I believe you. I believe you. We'll have to get a picture of this beautiful payphone and put it in the show notes so that people can see this beautiful payphone.
Meena Kothandaraman:
But the keys, and then it had a screen and you would see the number, and then once you committed to the number, you've committed. And you get charged. So, I'm sure the public didn't like that as much, but that was their way of... And yeah, it was so much fun, but basically studying people and seeing how people were literally using and abusing the phones was fantastic.
Andy Vitale:
That's funny still. But the other thing that you mentioned that I don't want to walk away from is, how people are cramming so many things into usability testing now. And I just wanted to hear a little bit more about that, or go a little bit deeper on that, because we've got a research team that we're evolving where I work and it's like, how do they get caught up? What is considered usability testing? How much stuff is being crammed in there is what I'm asking? And how do we stop that?
Meena Kothandaraman:
That is precisely why we put that two by two framework together. So, again, I'm happy to send you the link on that article as well. But the rationale for that is the amount of times people would call us and say, "Hi, so we need you to come and run a usability test. And here are the five people you'll have to talk to." Without even telling us what they're trying to-
Lisa Welchman:
"Just execute on this."
Meena Kothandaraman:
... solve for.
Lisa Welchman:
Yeah.
Meena Kothandaraman:
Exactly. So, we'd be like, "Okay, well, let's talk about first, what you're trying to learn, back them up a little bit." And often what we found was, is that they basically want to sell their bottle. They have their bottle that they're selling. And after putting it in front of somebody, I'm going to look at Lisa and say, "Lisa, this is a bottle. But before we talk about this bottle, can you tell me how you drink water at home?" And suddenly we're taking the person to a different place. We're talking about their context, we're talking about... That's actually just really biasing and it's not the right way to get that data. So, that's where the research team has to say, "No, it's not the right way to go. In fact, we're actually getting bad data by doing it this way."
Meena Kothandaraman:
What we really need to do is go to that person's home, if we're talking about water, and have them like, show us where they drink water, right? Take a diary study of them doing a log of drinking water and where do they drink water, and what do they drink it? There is a different way to capture that context, but often because they think they're doing research, they're "around that research word," they literally shove everything into testing.
Meena Kothandaraman:
So, what we did, Andy, was that's why we came up with this framework, where it literally takes the question that people are asking and teases it down to the point of really exploring, are you trying to learn about somebody's context, somebody's world? Are you just trying to validate the product? Because the question should be a yes, no answer then. "Does this cap screw on easily?" "Yes. No. Great." That's your usability test. That's as direct as it should be.
Meena Kothandaraman:
And what we were able to do is we put this two by two together. It became a visual canvas, where when people look at it then, and they start to see that their questions have visual distance, they actually got the fact that they couldn't be shoved into one study. And sometimes people will still ask, "So, can we do this all in one study?" No, because the study design dictates, if you want to get again, high confidence data, this is where the confidence discussion comes back. You really want to learn from people this way, so that they can articulate all of that detail about drinking water and more.
Meena Kothandaraman:
So, it was really to have the stakeholders, whoever's asking, sponsors, whatever we want to call them, whoever's asking the questions to really tease apart the questions before we even think about method.
Meena Kothandaraman:
And the good thing is, is that where we've worked, we have our approach. We have a five phased approach that we use in everything that we do, and we've literally left it behind, so that they can keep using it. And now, it's become a language. Now, it's become transparent to people of, "Oh, now we have critical, massive questions. Let's get the people together. Let's have them replot the questions. And we can see where the grouping of questions are." It also tells you a lot about the organization. What kinds of questions they're asking. If you're always asking validation questions, then how is the company growing? How is the design team able to grow beyond that?
Meena Kothandaraman:
So, there's a lot of meta level data this framework has helped us in tremendously. We call it the gift that keeps on giving, but literally that has been our focus. So, that is the way to avoid everything ending up in a usability test.
Lisa Welchman:
All of this is just making me very sad in a way, because I'm realizing I'm around teams that make digital products all the time. And I know that I'm... and I talk to designers all the time and I talk to developers, I talk to everybody on the team, the people who are funding the products, and because it's governance, the compliance department, legal, IT, everyone's in the mix, and they talk about a lot of things, but they never talk about this. When I ask them about how they work and what do you need to get your work done, and how do you make good products and services or ask them about service design, this part never really comes to the front as an aspect of what they do. It's always a very, very strong execution path of like, "Oh, we've identified a need in the market. We've built a tool and we've deployed it."
Lisa Welchman:
And I know that built a tool, that's a big container. And I understand a lot of stuff goes in that container. But I hear about a lot of the things in that container in a lot of granularity from developers, and a lot of granularity around data handling, and a lot of granularity around content strategy, and a lot of granularity around visual design. Right? I hear all of that, but I don't hear this. So, do you think that's because I'm just not hearing it or do you think compared to those other things, this is really de-emphasized in the process, particularly in an agile environment?
Meena Kothandaraman:
Yes. Yeah. A lot of people don't believe you can do qualitative research with agile. And I'll debunk that myth and say, it's absolutely possible. It just means we have to plan and plan better. And again, the two way too helps us to plan. So, that's the other reason why we love it because the result of that two by two is a roadmap of all of your study scopes. So, if you have knowledge of what you have to ask, then it's just a matter of planning it out with whatever sprints you have, and you should be able to align it.
Meena Kothandaraman:
So, if your design team needs to hit the ground running on June 1st, your research needs to inform them by May 31st. Make sense, right? So, it just means you have to be able to plan better. And we do, I will say, I'm a bit hard nosed about this, so if somebody keeps on calling us and says, "Oh, I only have two weeks, oops." Or, "I just can't fit it in this budget." We will help them through it once. But then once we'd gone through the motions of doing that planning, and if they keep on calling us back with this kind of oops situation, that means you're a bad planner. I don't want to take that burden on myself. And that's something we push back on.
Lisa Welchman:
But doesn't it also mean that people just have to... And Andy and I talk about this a lot. People just have to realize that to a certain extent, they just have to work more slowly.
Meena Kothandaraman:
Yeah. Oh my God.
Lisa Welchman:
I mean, it's not about stay up longer and sleep less, so that you can do research. It really is, it just takes longer to build good product. And what's wrong with that? Right? I mean, not everything is an emergency.
Lisa Welchman:
One of the stories that I like to tell a lot is, people will call me up and say, "Hey, Lisa, we're getting ready to do a CMS replatform. And as a result of that, we realized we have no idea who's on the team or what they do, or who makes decisions. Can you come in and do a governance project for us to help us understand that?" Because basically, if you don't know those things, you can't really design that system that encompasses the entire team. And I'm like, "Sure, it's going to take some time." "But, well, we don't have any time. We don't have any time because this thing has got to be stood up in like 18 months."
Lisa Welchman:
Then fast forward like three years later, and usually when they say that, I'm like, "Well, I can't help you because the work that I do takes time. Right? Do the best you can." Three years later they call me and they go, "Hey, Lisa." And I'm like, "Well, how did that CMS replatform go?" "Oh, we never got it done." Right? And so, it's just, I mean, the number of times that story has happened, because the reality is, you can't do a good job on something.
Lisa Welchman:
And I would imagine with product design, if you deploy something that's not good, you're not actually winning. You're just going to have to go jerry-rigged later on or retrofit it, or turn it into the board by piling stuff on it. Or worst case scenario, it's so bad, you have to gut the thing and start all over again and do it right in the first place. And so, I don't know if, I mean-
Meena Kothandaraman:
I'm smiling with you.
Lisa Welchman:
But that seems like a not good thing to say in the product development community, because you almost get just pushed out of the room by default, by saying, "Could you slow down?" I mean, they almost look at you like a nerd or something because you're saying, "Just take your time a little bit and build something better."
Meena Kothandaraman:
Yeah. I've so many things that I wanted to say, and there's things popping out of my head. The first thing I'll say is, yes, absolutely, yes. I'm trying not to swear, but yes, yes, yes. Because it's imperative for us to appreciate that some things just take time. The research world response of that, that we get all the time is, "Well, you finished collecting the dat, so can you give us the report tomorrow?" And you sit there and you're like, "No, actually we have to take the whole team through this. We're going to story-tell. We're going to dwell on the data." Soaking it a little bit and see where this data takes us.
Meena Kothandaraman:
It's like, I always use the metaphor of climbing a tree. You go up a branch, and you probably climb trees as kids. I used to do it all the time. And you go up a branch and you get on that first branch. And you're like, "Yeah." And then you go halfway up and you're like, "Oh no, I can't go anywhere with this branch." And you come back down. And then you go to a different bench that you think didn't look so solid in the beginning, but oh my God, it just opens up like a ton of plethora of opportunities. And you know you can climb that up. And it's getting to the top of the tree.
Meena Kothandaraman:
But actually the act of going up and down every branch is what the team needs to be there for. That's when the magic actually happens, because everybody's talking the story. And then suddenly they're like, "Oh my God, you know what? This actually connects here. We can do this, this, that, that." And the next thing you know, everybody's brains are just exploding. They're exhausted by the end of the day, but in a really happy kind of, when your muscles sore and you work out, and you're just like, "Oh, my muscles are sore." But it's a good feeling. It's that kind of feeling that we love, but it takes a little bit of time. So, that is time we won't back down on.
Meena Kothandaraman:
The other thing that I would say that is really important to us is that whenever we have people who approach us with the study, we do the two by two exercise without fail. And it's not something you have to do all the time. But with clients like the first time, just to get that roadmap out, we do it. And then once we do it, if they select a study scope, we always present the ideal approach, the ideal timeline. And this is not to say that I'm going to take a year because I think I have it. But reasonably, what is an ideal timeline? What's the ideal approach? How many participants? What kind of methods?
Meena Kothandaraman:
And when they go, "Oh, no, we need to know half the time." Then we'll say, "Okay, we can cut this back and you can do it iteratively, but this is what you're going to lose." And that's the part that we forget as researchers, we don't tell them what they're going to lose. So, they think it's all awesome, but they're going to lose something, because you cannot take 40 hours of work and make it 20 hours of work magically. It just doesn't happen that way. So, having that discussion is super important, and making sure that sponsors understand that right upfront, even before anything has gone too far down the path, before wasting a dime, is to make sure that that is there.
Meena Kothandaraman:
And often to be honest with you, because researchers haven't done a good job of communicating that to people, they don't know. So, now that they know, the next time they call us, they're like, "Well, now I actually have the six weeks you need." So, it's almost turned the tables a little bit on expectations. Sometimes it's a bit of a hard swallow, but then they know they can plan for it and budget. So, both of them help.
Andy Vitale:
You mentioned two things that I thought immediately, the tree analogy of going through things together, learning, trying something, going back another way, making a mistake, failing, picking it up and iterating. Right? Iterating was the other thing you said. There's not a lot of iteration. There's talk of iteration. There's, "We're going to go ahead and we're going to launch this thing. It's going to be our MVP." Which is a shitty term. And then we're going to go back and we're going to learn, and we're going to fix it. And then when it's time to do that, it's like, "Wait, we could release 10 more features instead."
Andy Vitale:
And so, there's that pain that teams experience. But then there's the actual thing of like, as a team, when you're off running in separate directions and it's very chaotic and you're not taking the time to really do things right. And you could get from point A to point B just in the same amount of time, going like aligned and going through shit together, which teams have to do to grow, as you can going in 50 different directions. Because that is just what I see as one of the biggest pain points is, there's no alignment, and then there's also no prioritization.
Meena Kothandaraman:
Yep. So, the other point that I'm going to bring together to what you just said, Andy, and also Lisa, what you'd said earlier, is that we did a fun study last year. And we have to further it. We just had it slowed down because other things took over. And that was actually my presentation at Flexible last year was about the study. And basically, it was about the cost of not doing qualitative research, because everybody's always talking about the ROI of qualitative research. You hear about that all the time. But there is an actual cost for not doing it. And to summarize really quickly, the cost of not doing it actually results in people sometimes, either coasting or caving in, and just quitting, because they just are not being enthused or excited or inspired by what they're actually creating, because it's sort of this, "We're just going to do the MVP path."
Meena Kothandaraman:
And what we found is, is that if you actually conduct qualitative research, and if there is that sense of emotional connection and relationship that you're building, and that as a team, you have this moment of analysis, and also even that moment of going and observing people real time and seeing your product, and use sometimes, is really thrilling to some people. When you have that on board, we came up with the term called the happiness dividend. And the happiness dividend starts to go up. People are happier. They come back from studying, listening to people or learning from people, coming back with just ideas popping out of their head.
Meena Kothandaraman:
And we've found that that is very important to recognize who is measuring the happiness of people at an organization, because then we took it a step further and we said, if somebody leaves, what's the average cost of a person leaving an organization? That is costly to replace a designer on a team or a researcher, or whoever we're replacing. It's costly to do that. Especially if the market is tight in some places, you're flying in... There's all sorts of additional costs. It was really interesting. We started to add up the costs. And it was fascinating to see, you could easily just conduct some qualitative research and maybe make people a lot more excited about what they're doing.
Lisa Welchman:
It's so funny because just listening to both of you all talk, and in particular, when Andy just said the word team, and we've been saying team all day long on this one, but I'm wondering whether or not this tree climbing component is the equivalent of what other teams, like say an athletic team, or I'm a singer, a choir, or whatever would call practice. And so, I'm wondering when do teams get to practice. And in practice, you're allowed to experiment. You're allowed to do things improvisationally. You're allowed to do, what if. I remember one choir I sang in, the choir directors, whole thing was having the different sections sing the other sections part. Right? Great. So, you really got a sense.
Meena Kothandaraman:
Been there, done that.
Lisa Welchman:
When I was in soprano, so we often had the melody, and it was really hard to sing tenor, right? Because tenor, seldom has the melody. And so, and just hearing those things, but it also gave me an appreciation for being a tenor, and it gave the tenors an appreciation for always having to hold that melody out, which is also another responsibility. But I'm just thinking maybe design teams in particular and digital teams on the whole, and maybe just teams in general, in a for-profit organization, don't get to do that. I mean, playing in practice used to be like research and development, or the innovation lab, or all of these other sorts of things, but in the natural product development life cycle. And I don't hear about, I hear about some, but not a lot of digitally focused innovation labs, right? Where we're actually trying out things.
Meena Kothandaraman:
Not enough.
Lisa Welchman:
Usually people are like, "We're trying to make this thing hot and live fast." Right? And so, there isn't really any sense of play. And so, as a result, then the consumer or the customer, or the citizen, or whatever, who's participating in that experience ends up being consuming a lot of people's practice material, stuff that really wasn't quite ready, wasn't quite ready for the main performance. I don't know if that sounds valid or not. But do you think teams have that space to practice?
Meena Kothandaraman:
I think we need it desperately because with practice comes reflection. And there's no time to reflect on anything. You're just moving so fast. You don't get a chance to see. And it's not to diminish the value of a team lunch or having a beer together after work. That is important, but that needs to actually be non-work stuff, but there's no time to have play during work. And that has to happen too, because then you see the hidden strengths of some people as well.
Meena Kothandaraman:
We've seen some people who, as part of our work, we always, always have our clients there. It's really not an option. You have to listen in. You have to listen in, if it's a remote, or you have to come with us, or you have to attend, or whatever it is, you have to be there with us because firsthand is very powerful. But as you go through this, you see that some people have these amazing capacities. You're wondering, "How long have you had this for? And why were you not going to tell us?" Like, "Oh yeah, I was a journalist in my earlier life. So, I'd love to actually do this with you guys, if you don't mind." "Yes. Good. Come." That's a thing because your team is going to need more of you and they should know that you have this capability. But it's not entertained, it's not encouraged. Everything seems so contrived. Everything seems so hyper planned and has to fit into a perfect box. And sometimes that serendipity is lost and the fun goes away then. I don't know. Sometimes just by chatting about nothing you end up with so much.
Andy Vitale:
Yeah. You definitely need room for what I like to call creative oxygen on teams like this.
Meena Kothandaraman:
Oh, I like that term.
Andy Vitale:
I didn't make it up.
Lisa Welchman:
It sounds like the name of a band, Andy.
Andy Vitale:
Yes. It's just the time and the space. And as a leader, I try to create that space or that time. I even block out time for myself that I do put on my calendar as reflection time at the end of the week, so that I'm not scrambling to wind down and prepare for what I have to do next week. But it's so important to provide teams that space, to be able to just be themselves, and experiment, and learn, and play, and share. And that's how they just get re-energized.
Meena Kothandaraman:
But I also think Andy, and I feel like I know you well enough to say this, that you are a great role model. You're doing that. And your team is seeing that you're doing that. So, it gives them that quiet permission to do the same thing. There's plenty of people who I don't think do that as well as you do.
Andy Vitale:
I also set some bad examples from time to time.
Meena Kothandaraman:
Yeah. You know what?
Andy Vitale:
I'm always on working, doing a lot more work than I should, but I don't expect that of my team. But I should set a better example in that way too.
Meena Kothandaraman:
And I think right now, especially with, we're finding definitely that this division of home and work, and everything just blending in and people having to work in their bedrooms, and basically just roll off of their chair and roll onto their bed, and they're off to sleep, so they have no separation of space or anything. People are definitely, it's a struggle. It's not easy. But I think the fact of what you just said was so spot on, people need a chance to just breathe. And it's funny, you go for a walk, and why is it that you come back sometimes?
Meena Kothandaraman:
One of my dearest, dearest mentors, he's in the same town as me in Boston. And I worked with him, oh God, very long ago now, 25, 26 years ago. And he's like my dad. He's just absolutely adorable. His name's Hal Miller Jacobs. And we would get into these hideous fights. I can't even begin to tell you like, "No, you don't know what you're doing. That's not the right design." "Don't tell me what to do. I've been in this field longer." And we'd fight like an old couple, is pathetic. But literally he'd go running on the bike path. I go rollerblading in the opposite direction, because I just didn't want to see him for awhile. And then we'd come back and we'd be like, "Oh my God, there's a way to bring this all together." He'd be like, "Okay." And I'm like, "I'm really sorry, I yelled at you." "No problem. I'm sorry, I yelled at you." And then we just go back to being best buddies. So, you have to do that. You have to have space to just to... I like that creative oxygen, I'm all over it.
Lisa Welchman:
Yeah. I mean, this has been such a great conversation and it's just reminding me, what you're describing. And I think we brought this up in our episode with Mike Monteiro, which is just, we old fogies in the web world, right? Reflecting on about what it was like in the early days. So, I started doing work with the web in the mid nineties. And so, I think what was great about that time, wasn't just that it was new and nobody knew what they were doing, so you can make mistakes and make things up, but it wasn't very clearly tied to the revenue stream. Right? So, people were doing it, and if they were doing it that early, there was really no expectation. I mean, I was at Cisco Systems, so it very quickly turned into e-commerce. Right?
Lisa Welchman:
But still, but even with that, just like the website and all of this others kind of stuff, I just remember with the immense amount of time, we spent speculating on how to do this. How might one build a 300,000 page website in management? How might one get multiple languages? How do you do the translation process? And it was just all white boarding and making stuff up. And we would try it live. So, it's not in my pretending, there was actually a usability lab there, but we try it live. But there just wasn't the weight of having the CEO, turn to you and say, "And here's the KPI, and you need to hit that sucker." Right?
Lisa Welchman:
And so, maybe not for this podcast, but it feels like an interesting conversation, maybe some time to pull that apart and understand how the monetization of the web just pushes the team in ways that are maybe counterproductive, like you were saying.
Meena Kothandaraman:
Absolutely.
Lisa Welchman:
Looking for the return on investment in the wrong place.
Meena Kothandaraman:
I'd love to talk that through. I'm with you all the way.
Lisa Welchman:
Yeah, yeah.
Meena Kothandaraman:
I'm with you.
Lisa Welchman:
It's just fascinating.
Meena Kothandaraman:
I think all of us are on the same page here.
Lisa Welchman:
Yeah, it is. I think we're really at this inflection point right now, what are we like, almost 30 years in, on this 30 years into the commercial web, where everybody is just like, "You know what? This is not working."
Meena Kothandaraman:
We're missing out on some of it. Some of the connections, some of the people that we meet, even now when we talk with them, and then even if we're just with them for like two or three weeks, we all leave like a family, which is really precious. I can't stress that enough, that feeling of, "Wow, I meet some really nice friends. There's really good people here. And thank you so much for coming." And they're all excited that we did this study together, that we all bonded together, that we all had a chance to think out loud. And they really love the process. And that is, it just honestly is worth its weight in gold. It's so invigorating, it's so inspiring. And then we see what these people are doing and they just do great things with it. And it's even more exciting then. So yes, I completely agree with you wholeheartedly.
Andy Vitale:
So, Meena, we're really getting close to the end Unfortunately.
Meena Kothandaraman:
You've been so patient. Thank you.
Andy Vitale:
We started to talk about the Crock-Pot and the Instant Pot. And I didn't want to end this without talking about your cooking show. And it was something that I didn't know about you, I'm surprised that it never came up. But as I was doing some research, I'm like, "I want to hear about this cooking show a little bit."
Meena Kothandaraman:
Oh my God. Yeah. I have to say, I'm not doing it quite as much anymore. I changed it into a little bit more of a philanthropic approach, which I like. But the original cooking show was basically, I've been vegetarian all my life. My parents are incredible cooks, just, oh my God, too good. And my whole family is really into cooking. But my mom and dad, my dad was definitely more traditional, South Indian cooking. My mom, all different types of South Indian and North Indian cooking. And I'm not sure how much of the diversity of Indian cooking you've had, but it is crazy diverse. It's just nuts how different it goes, state to state in India.
Meena Kothandaraman:
But then we come, my parents immigrated to the US, and then they ultimately immigrated to Canada. And I was born in Ottawa. And I was the brat who always wanted, I'd come home and I'd look like Moby. And my mom would be like, "Did you have a bad day at school?" And I'm like, "Somebody was eating pizza. How come we don't eat pizza?" And my poor mom would be like, "Okay, pizza, got to figure out what pizza is." And she figured how to do it. Why? Because I was the brat. My sister and brother apparently are much older to me. And they never got away with that kind of stuff, but clearly I did.
Meena Kothandaraman:
But my mom would just learn. She started making tacos. She started making all sorts of lasagna, all sorts of stuff. And it was amazing. She just didn't stop. And she was so adventurous in her own right for making Indian food of, you have certain vegetables that you need, but you don't get them in Ottawa, Canada. So, she'd find like a comparable vegetable and try it. And it would taste really good. And she'd share her recipes. So, she and my dad were just such big inspiration. But they kept us vegetarian because it was very important to them religiously to keep us vegetarian.
Meena Kothandaraman:
But to be honest with you, I've never had meat in my life. So, I don't really feel the need to go to it, because the food that I've had has been incredible. And my dad was insistent that all of us learned how to cook, which was probably a big gift that he gave us. So, we all are, myself and my two siblings are big into cooking. So, it's just like cultivating that fun of being able to eat vegetarian food and still be able to have a variety of dishes.
Meena Kothandaraman:
So, I had a friend who just was like, "Why don't you just do a cooking show?" And I'm like, "Who's going to watch?" But I did want to make it, so I polled people. I did my research, and I polled people, and of course, they're like, "Don't put the word vegetarian because it ticks people off." I'm like, "Okay." So, I made it, all about what more you can do with your vegetables. And I called the show, Com Veg With Me, which was so corny, if you think about it, but it worked.
Meena Kothandaraman:
So, it was a ton of fun. I did that for a few seasons. And then basically just turned it into, there's another wonderful effort in town by these three women who teach young children how to cook. And they go into Boston and ask children at the Boston Public Schools, they will teach you how to cook. So, they do cooking stuff there. But then we work together and we got kids to bring whatever sort of a list of ingredients of things that they naturally have in their fridge, to teach them how to make healthier food with what they have. And so, that's what it's turned into now, but it was a lot of fun.
Lisa Welchman:
This must mean that you are the twig in the Twig+Fish.
Meena Kothandaraman:
No.
Lisa Welchman:
I got it wrong. I had a 50/50 chance.
Meena Kothandaraman:
Andy, what's your guess?
Andy Vitale:
I knew you were the fish.
Meena Kothandaraman:
I'm the fish. I'm the fish. It's because we went with our names. It was so funny, oh my God, the naming of our company. God help us. The names we came up with. And Zarla, I always say she's so academic. She knows more about language than I ever do. And she'd say a word and I'd be like, "I have to look at that in the dictionary. I don't even know what it means." And then she started laughing. She's like, "No." We tried all sorts of stuff. And then she's like, "Why don't we go with our names?"
Meena Kothandaraman:
So, my name actually, my full name is Meenakshi, and it means I shape like a fish. I'm named after a goddess in the South of India. So, there's my goddess straight. And Zarla's name, her full name is Zarlashta. And her name, it's basically a metaphor for blonde hair. It means golden twig.
Lisa Welchman:
You guys went deep.
Meena Kothandaraman:
So, we were going to be Fish and Twig, and she was like, "That's not a very good acronym." I'm like, "Okay. Let's go with Twig+Fish." And to date we've only lost one contract because the person said they didn't like our name.
Lisa Welchman:
Oh, what are you going to do?
Meena Kothandaraman:
And I was like, "Oh, okay. I guess, we're not working together. Sorry."
Lisa Welchman:
So, Meena, how can people get in touch with you, find you, what are your favorite ways that you like people to seek you out?
Meena Kothandaraman:
I love getting in touch with people, new people. So, if anybody is interested, I am on Twitter. I'm a bit of a Twitter junkie, I have to say. So, I can share my handle with you. It's Meena_Ko, so you don't have to remember my whole last name. And I'm on LinkedIn as well. And if you ever have research questions or you're challenged by something, research-wise or anything like that, feel free to just email me at meena@twigandfish.com.
Andy Vitale:
Awesome.
Lisa Welchman:
Thank you so much for your time.
Meena Kothandaraman:
Oh my God.
Andy Vitale:
It was great to chat and catch up for sure.
Meena Kothandaraman:
Thank you so much. Thank you both so much. This was such a fun conversation. I really appreciate it.
Announcer:
Thanks for listening. If you enjoy Surfacing, please rate, review and follow us, wherever you listen to your podcasts. Also, consider supporting the podcast on Patreon at patreon.com/surfacingpodcast. If you have suggestions for guests or a topic you'd like to hear about on Surfacing, please reach out via the contact form found at surfacingpodcast.com.