1. UNCOVERING HIDDEN INSIGHTS USING EMERGING TECHNOLOGY
Miranda Newbery, Simon Moss, Alma Terrones, Mike Paton
“A connected world allows us to see through
users’ eyes”
ADDING RICHNESS TO STUDIES
Smart use of technology in usability studies and user research is
not new and the ability to measure human performance, physiology
or even emotional state and crunch large amounts of data has been
around for many years. However, with recent advances in mobile
communication technology and consumer appetite for social
media, advanced forms of technologies and apps are far more
readily available for consumer use. This has created a great
opportunity for the way we can collect new forms of data to
add richness to the studies and research we run at PA and to
enhance our usability research.
ABOUT PA
An employee-owned firm of over 2,500 people, we work with
business and governments worldwide through our offices in North
America, Europe, the Nordics, the Gulf and Asia Pacific.
We are experts in a wide range of industries and we bring in
specialists from across our whole firm to ensure you get the right
team. Our specific expertise is in energy, financial services, life
sciences and healthcare, manufacturing, government and public
services, defence and security, telecommunications, transport and
logistics.
Our deep industry knowledge and our skills in consulting,
technology and innovation allow our teams to challenge conventional
thinking and overcome every obstacle to give you exceptional results.
This is not something that ends with the assignment for 70 years we
have shared our knowledge to create real and lasting impact.
We are one of the world’s leading multi-disciplinary design
teams, specialising in an insight driven, human-centred approach
to support private and public organizations in growth and
innovation.
CONTACT:
Miranda Newbery
miranda.newbery@paconsulting.com
RICHER INSIGHTS
Breakout opportunities in market research through the application of
new technologies have clear benefits and enable richer insights to be
gathered around product use and patient behaviour.
PA is uniquely placed by drawing upon its combination of in-house
technology and design. PA’s human factor team have gathered consumer
and patient insights over many years from multi-sector work. Our human
factors philosophy is integral with the way we work whether
designing consumer products, medical devices, IFUs or packaging.
Enhanced usability delivers great consumer experience and improves
user compliance.
Our human factors services cover ethnography, VOC insight
gathering, consumer research, ergonomic studies and usability
studies through to regulatory submission.
SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE CONNECTED WORLD
Mobile communication offers a huge opportunity to
connect with study participants remotely. We can
interact with them via virtual world such as augmented
reality or specifically tailored apps and games to mine
new insights from hard to reach subjects. The advent
of smart glasses such as Google Glass also offers
a socially acceptable way of directly seeing what a
user sees and even direct and ask questions discretely
to them in the field.
Applications and PA case studies
• Gamification diary study app to engage children
and get unbiased feedback
• Smart glasses combined with wearable bio-monitoring
to view surgical procedures and see what the surgeon
sees (and feels)
• Remote global ethnography
• Discussion with difficult to reach patients e.g.
patients suffering from Cystic Fibrosis)
63%OF PEOPLE WHO USE
SOCIAL NETWORKS ARE
FACEBOOK USERS
31
MILLIONTOTAL NUMBER OF
ARTICLES HOSTED
IN WIKIPEDIA
1.15
BILLIONMONTHLY ACTIVE
FACEBOOK USERS
WORLDWIDE
“We are sharing our unbiased thoughts &
feelings freely online”
Socialmediarecordspeople’slivesandtheiraffinitywith
others.1.5billionpiecesofcontentareproducedeveryhour.
Thisprovidesahugesourceofpersonalisedinformationand
unprovokedopinionsaboutthemedicaldevicestheyuseand
theirthoughtsabouttheirconditions.Socialintelligence(SI),
usingkeywordsfromcomments,canbuildarichpictureof
peoplenetworkssuchastheirgender,location,age,association,
hobbiesandmuchmore.
Applications and PA case studies
• We’ve used SI to find patient and doctor
sentiments on different medical procedures
• We are using SI to uncover feelings about a
pharmaceutical company and this could easily be
applied to products, medicines and devices
• We’ve predicted shopping trends and
behaviours
• We’ve uncovered what people really think about
new technologies
• We’ve identified clinical study participants
1 1 0 1 2 3
1 1 0 1 2 3
1 1 0 1 2 3
1 1 0 1 2 3
64MILLION UNITS
BY 2017
$381AVERAGE
PRICE (USD)
WEARABLEDEVICESAREABLE
TOMONITOR/RECORD:
Movement, specific events, emotions,
concentration, activity, sleep, location,
bio-monitoring and more
AREAS OF
MARKET FOCUS
Medical
Fitness
Gaming
Industrial
Entertainment
“Wearable technology allows us to quantify
and measure our physical & emotional states”
WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY
In the last few years there has been a huge
explosion of consumer based products and apps
that measure many aspects of human performance
e.g. how well we sleep, our activity levels, heart rate
levels, other objects we interact with, concentration
levels and even our emotional state. Sensor technology
is low cost, easy to incorporate and offers a huge
opportunity in user research to measure and quantify
performance or mine insights that were previously
unavailable.
Data from: http://vandrico.com/database,
https://blogs.cisco.com/news/the-internet-of-things-infographic/
Applications and PA case studies
• Monitoring control of use (e.g. through accelerometer
based devices)
• Monitoring whether people are really doing what
they say they are doing via activity sensors or
programmable smart chips
• Identifying pinch points in procedures using ECG
and heart rate
• Testing concentration during IFU studies
• Seeing people’s non-verbal responses to products
e.g. delight, stress etc
• Ensuring a simulated situation is representative e.g.
testing products for anaphylactic shock
f
@
500
MILLIONTWEETS PER DAY
f
THE INTERNET
OF THINGS (IOT)
During 2008 the numbers of things
connected to the internet exceeded
the number of people on earth.
2003 2010 2015 By 2020 there
will be 31 billion
devices & 4 billion
people connected
to the internet
Lifestyle