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Research Methods
ShiftGlobal
3 Months
Client
Nsquare
User Research
Design Strategy
Experience Design
Concept Video
Team
4
Personal Contribution
Rersearch
Claire Chen
Jason Wang
Shelley Tao
Shafiqah Zulfikar
Primary Research
Secondary Research
Concept Development
Interface Prototype
ShiftGlobal is a futures thinking design concept which provides individuals around the globe to have more power and agency in global matters that are deemed as existential threats. The focus is on various design research methodologies and concept development driven by user insights.
Background
The question is
How might we create a nuclear weapon free world ?
but what are the current challenges
- The public is unaware and not concerned about nuclear risks
- The public lacks agency and power over nuclear decisions
- Conventional wisdom assumes power over nuclear decisions and this resides in governments and international institutions
- The threat of a nuclear weapon detonation feels too far fetched for public to act on it
Project Brief
Goal
- Conduct extensive research to understand user behavior and needs in the national security space
- Design a platform which empowers the general public with power and agency to make decisions in large scale existential threats
- Use interactive technology to create engaging platforms that can be deployed in the year 2030
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Research Objectives
- Understand the pathways to reach a nuclear weapon free planet by 2045
- Understand behaviors, patterns and mindsets of the general public who hold a large position in the territory map
- Analyze examples of successful strategies or initiatives in the field of nuclear disarmament
- Discover some of the challenges in achieving nuclear weapon disarmament
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Approach
Research Methodologies
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1
Exploratory
Research
Problem Space Discovery
Some examples of the questions we needed answers for :
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1. Who are the stakeholders involved and what are their relations with each other and with nuclear weapons ?
2. How has the Social, Technological, Economic, Ethical and Political conditions been in the past years ?
3. How much does the general public know about the importance of nuclear weapon disarmament ?
4. What are the general publics idea of the future world ?
5. How many people are optimistic about the future and how many are pessimistic ?
Stakeholder/ Territory Map
The objective of the stakeholder map was to understand who are the parties involved with nuclear weapons around the world and what is their respective power and authority. We wanted to understand the flow of financials, the flow of order and the amount of agency that each of these bodies have. Alongside we also leveraged various sources ( majorly the client's knowledge of the domain ) to gain information about the current challenges that each stakeholder faces and what impacts they make!
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Meanwhile, we also conducted an internal exploratory workshop with blocks, clay, scooby wires and other creative material to visualize, explore and play with the concept while trying to understand how these stakeholders may be related to each other.
Literature Review
To get answers to all our initial questions we did multiple readings online as a part of the literature review. We tried to get a deeper understanding of areas such as web3 technology, existential risks, theory of change, public power and agency, types of transformational futures
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STEEP Analysis
After reading about various topics during the desk research we realized the importance of understanding how different aspects of humanity have changed and progressed over time in order to get a fair prediction of what it may look like 50 years from now. We conducted a STEEP analysis to deep dive into specific incidents happening around the world starting from 1945.
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here is the breakdown of the big question
1. Future
- What do people perceive the future to be like, in terms of STEEP?
- What do people want the future to be like, in terms 
of STEEP?
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2. Power and Agency
- Who do people think has the most power in making large-scale decisions?
- How much agency do people think they have in making a change in a large system like nuclear warfare, individually and collectively?
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3. Awareness
- How much awareness and knowledge do people have?
- How much do people care about nuclear-weapon-related issues compared with other issues?
the main objective for our primary research was to understand
what opinion does the public have about the future of power and agency ?
User Surveys
The purpose of the survey was to gather opinions and perceptions about various issues related to the future of humanity, including the role of human actions in shaping it, the level of concern about different issues, the perceived power of various stakeholders in making large-scale decisions, and the knowledge and opinions about nuclear weapons. The survey aimed to identify areas of concern and potential opportunities for action.
Survey Protocol​
- Respondents were recruited from social media platforms
- Most participants were students aged between 21 and 35
- Online
- 45 Responses
- Objective and structured questions
- Takes 5-6 mins approximately
A few example questions
- On a scale of 1-5 how do you envision the future of humanity to be ?
- On a scale of 1-5, to what extent do you think human actions shape the future of humanity ?
- On a scale of 1-5, how much impact do you think YOU have in making a change within a large system ?
- How much power do you think each of the following stakeholders have in making a change ?
- On a scale of 1-5, how much do you know about the risks of nuclear weapon disarmament ?
- On a scale of 1-5, how necessary do you think nuclear weapons are ?
Analyzing Results
This was a quantitative form of research to understand what majority of the respondents thought about the questions that we asked. We tallied the number of responses for each question to find majority and minority's. This helped us get a general understanding of what users thought about nuclear weapons and the future of humanity.
Polak Game Workshop
We conducted an in person workshop to investigate individuals' perceived level of agency across various domains within the context of the STEEP framework. The workshop took place in the following manner :
- Participants plot their future vision on a cartesian coordinate system by physically moving across coordinates in the room
- One axis represents pessimism vs optimism
- The other axis represents influence vs essence.
- Participants discuss and share their visions of the future on questions prompted by the facili
Workshop Protocol​
- Participants were recruited from the responses from the user survey
- In person 30 mins workshop
- 2 Facilitators
- 5 Participants
- 1 In persona and 1 online workshop
More details on how we conducted the workshop : https://medium.com/@shengtit/the-polak-game-4a89fd0febb4
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Analyzing Results
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Most participants have little to no agency and awareness about society in the future
- 4/5 are positive about technology development in the future
- Some have concern about the use and application of technology
Most participants are worried about widening disparities in the future
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- Most participants thinks that the environment would get worse in the future
- Some participants think that corporates have more power in changing the environment
- Some participants think that awareness about environment is increasing in young individuals
Participants generally don’t have awareness and agency in future about politics
User Inteviews
To gain different perspectives on disarmament of nuclear weapons and Power and agency from individuals who have above average knowledgeon the topic.
Interview Protocol​
- Participants were recruited from the responses from the user survey
- In person 30 mins workshop
- 2 Facilitators
- 5 Participants
- 1 In persona and 1 online workshop
Interview Questions​
- Participants were recruited from the responses from the user survey
- In person 30 mins workshop
- 2 Facilitators
- 5 Participants
- 1 In persona and 1 online workshop
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Analyzing Results
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Step 1 : Note down everything we heard from the interviewees as "Quotes", "observations" and "thoughts"
Step 2 : Forming affinity groups by connecting common thoughts
Step 3 : Discovering high level themes which were :
- Individual power
- Measurable efforts by large orgs
- Lack of individual agency
- Challenges in achieving disarmament
Findings &
Opportunties
The way we synthesized our entire discovery process was using the STEEP framework. We found high level insights from across all the data that we gathered to see which aspect of STEEP do most of the insights fall under. We realized that we would have to tackle that area particular in the generative phase when brainstorming ideas as that would be the aspect that concerns our users the most and hope to see innovative solutions in.
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Insight 01
Users have more awareness of Political, Technological, and Environmental issues and tend to make connections with these three when thinking about the future.
Insight 02
When it comes to Political factors, the audience feels they have little awareness and little to no agency or power but want to see change within this
Insight 03
Participants think that there is a lack of coordination among efforts and that the opinions and bodies of power are too fragmented.
Insight 04
Participants don’t think NGOs have any power in causing a change in large-scale systems.
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Since we found that most users see a problem in the political structure, the question to investigate in the generative research phase was "what are the ways to bridge gaps in the fragmented political structure using future technology to provide more agency to the general public in large scale decision making"
2
Generative
Research
Idea Generation
Some examples of the questions we needed answers for :
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1. How does the power hierarchy exist between the different international organizations ?
2. What kind of systemic changes would users like to see in the next 20 -30 years ?
3. What kind of technology are users familiar with ?
4. Why do users feel like they have less agency in making political changes in the world ?
5. Who are the main target audience for driving change ?
6. What kind of ideal world are users envisioning for themselves in the near future ?
Expert Interviews
The expert interview served two purposes, one is getting answers to some of our pressing questions from industry experts and two to validate some of our findings from the exploratory research. We leveraged their knowledge as we started thinking of ways to solve the problem.
Interview Protocol​
- Profesor Kathleen Carley
- Online
- 30 Mins
- Structured and note taking
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A few example questions
- What do you think of the possibility of achieving nuclear weapon disarmament in next 25 years ?
- How do you think we can make systemic level changes ?
- How much power and agency do you think the general public has in large matters ?
- What steps do you suggest we take in order to achieve nuclear weapon disarmament ?
- Which of the 5 forces from STEEP are most influential in making a change ?
- How much power and agency do you think NGO's have in this matter ?
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Liz Sanders Co Design Workshop
This in person workshop with the renowned researcher, Liz Sanders. The purpose of the workshop was to stimulate creative thinking and help us explore and visualize potential solutions for complex issues related to nuclear disarmament.
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Analyzing Results
We were stuck...
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This was one of the most challenging phases of as we were unsure of the direction to proceed in after working on our collage. To create the collage were provided an assorted set of images, words, characters and shapes. We used literal and figurative meanings to represent ideas through the images. The above image that you see is one that falls on a timelines from 1940s to 2050 about how humanity needs to come together to fight for a common cause.
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Unfortunately we could not synthesis something very solid as we the collage felt very surface level to us. We decided to proceed with designing with users and conducting workshop with our target users to see if they could help us generate some ideas.
Magic Device Workshop
To explore the topic of nuclear disarmament through a creative lens by inviting participants to imagine and design magical devices that could help promote peace and prevent nuclear war.
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Interview Protocol​
- Four participants from different backgrounds
- Separate virtual sessions
Prompt
In a world where power is determined by strength, conflict is rampant, nations are unstable, and the environment is neglected. People live in fear of those who hold the biggest sticks.
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Work in Progress...
here is the breakdown of the big question
1. Future
- What do people perceive the future to be like, in terms of STEEP?
- What do people want the future to be like, in terms 
of STEEP?
​
2. Power and Agency
- Who do people think has the most power in making large-scale decisions?
- How much agency do people think they have in making a change in a large system like nuclear warfare, individually and collectively?
​
3. Awareness
- How much awareness and knowledge do people have?
- How much do people care about nuclear-weapon-related issues compared with other issues?
the main objective for our primary research was to understand
what opinion does the public have about the future of power and agency ?
User Surveys
The purpose of the survey was to gather opinions and perceptions about various issues related to the future of humanity, including the role of human actions in shaping it, the level of concern about different issues, the perceived power of various stakeholders in making large-scale decisions, and the knowledge and opinions about nuclear weapons. The survey aimed to identify areas of concern and potential opportunities for action.
Survey Protocol​
- Respondents were recruited from social media platforms
- Most participants were students aged between 21 and 35
- Online
- 45 Responses
- Objective and structured questions
- Takes 5-6 mins approximately
A few example questions
- On a scale of 1-5 how do you envision the future of humanity to be ?
- On a scale of 1-5, to what extent do you think human actions shape the future of humanity ?
- On a scale of 1-5, how much impact do you think YOU have in making a change within a large system ?
- How much power do you think each of the following stakeholders have in making a change ?
- On a scale of 1-5, how much do you know about the risks of nuclear weapon disarmament ?
- On a scale of 1-5, how necessary do you think nuclear weapons are ?
Analyzing Results
This was a quantitative form of research to understand what majority of the respondents thought about the questions that we asked. We tallied the number of responses for each question to find majority and minority's. This helped us get a general understanding of what users thought about nuclear weapons and the future of humanity.
Polak Game Workshop
We conducted an in person workshop to investigate individuals' perceived level of agency across various domains within the context of the STEEP framework. The workshop took place in the following manner :
- Participants plot their future vision on a cartesian coordinate system by physically moving across coordinates in the room
- One axis represents pessimism vs optimism
- The other axis represents influence vs essence.
- Participants discuss and share their visions of the future on questions prompted by the facili
Workshop Protocol​
- Participants were recruited from the responses from the user survey
- In person 30 mins workshop
- 2 Facilitators
- 5 Participants
- 1 In persona and 1 online workshop
More details on how we conducted the workshop : https://medium.com/@shengtit/the-polak-game-4a89fd0febb4
Analyzing Results
Most participants have little to no agency and awareness about society in the future
- 4/5 are positive about technology development in the future
- Some have concern about the use and application of technology
Most participants are worried about widening disparities in the future
- Most participants thinks that the environment would get worse in the future
- Some participants think that corporates have more power in changing the environment
- Some participants think that awareness about environment is increasing in young individuals
Participants generally don’t have awareness and agency in future about politics
User Inteviews
To gain different perspectives on disarmament of nuclear weapons and Power and agency from individuals who have above average knowledgeon the topic.
Interview Protocol​
- Participants were recruited from the responses from the user survey
- In person 30 mins workshop
- 2 Facilitators
- 5 Participants
- 1 In persona and 1 online workshop
Interview Questions​
- Participants were recruited from the responses from the user survey
- In person 30 mins workshop
- 2 Facilitators
- 5 Participants
- 1 In persona and 1 online workshop
Analyzing Results
Step 1 : Note down everything we heard from the interviewees as "Quotes", "observations" and "thoughts"
Step 2 : Forming affinity groups by connecting common thoughts
Step 3 : Discovering high level themes which were :
- Individual power
- Measurable efforts by large orgs
- Lack of individual agency
- Challenges in achieving disarmament
Learning and
Reflection
1. Design considerations to be aware of when designing for voice interfaces
2. The impact of voice, tone and speech in a design feature
3. Ways to design icons which have motion and their implication on the way the user percieves the design
4. Benefit of using explainer videos to pitch your concept and its features to audiences
5. A lot of video editing skills!
Artium : Extended Reality Museum Experience