A simple way to process qualitative research
This article may be useful for novice managers, analysts and designers. It describes an approach that will help structure and organize information obtained from various sources, such as “one to one” meetings, in-depth interviews and other similar research tools.
Stage 0. Collection of information
Having found myself in a new company, I decided that it was necessary to conduct a one-to-one meeting with all employees. These meetings were necessary in order to learn about the problems encountered by employees and begin their work on solving them.
The company employs only 50 people, but after conducting interviews, I was faced with the fact that everyone has a large number of ideas and problems that are important not to be missed.
When conducting interviews, I did not want to record our conversation on a tape recorder, since one to one, unlike in-depth interviews, touches on more personal issues and recording could confuse and discourage the desire to share important things. So I tried to write down as much information as possible that the person said.
As a result, at the entrance I received 20 A4 pages quotes and clippings from the conversation.
Stage 1. Structuring information
I used Miro to work with information, but you can use other tools: Figma Jam, Draw Io, or even just a board with sticky notes.
At the first stage of information structuring you will need:
Transfer all quotes to a sticker in miro;
If the quote is not clear, then it needs to be rewritten so that in a month it will be possible to understand its meaning;
Grouped quotes according to their logical structure.
It’s important to note here: don’t be afraid to make mistakes! As you work, you will often come across things that could be grouped differently. The advantage of electronic boards is that you can always change everything 🙂
When conducting in-depth interviews, it is convenient to group stickers by sections of your project (in accordance with CJM or UserStory Map).
In my case, I grouped by processes within the company.
Stage 2. Grouping quotes
This stage is required in order to group quotes. This requires forming solutions to the problem posed and/or determining what idea is common to the collected quotes. This stage allows you to narrow the number of ideas by grouping them.
Unlike the last section, we move on to working with the groups that we have identified.
Each section requires:
Group tasks that have a single solution (general idea)
Make a new sticker on which to formulate options for solving the problem (general ideas)
I recommend making certain colors for different solutions (ideas). For example, in my case, I marked the stickers that are responsible for meetings with pink, and the ones that are responsible for documentation with black.
An example of how I described the solution to pain identified at one to one.
Stage 3. Structuring solutions
Then you need to group the solutions again by type. To do this, in the last section we highlighted identical solutions in color.
In my case, I reduced the number of quotes enough so that it was already possible to work with so many. Therefore, the last grouping was done in an Excel table. This is a little more convenient, since in the future it will be possible to quickly generate a report from a table.
The result was a table in which the stages of pain solutions were formed, which were announced at one-to-one meetings.
Conclusion
This method is very simple and allows you to quickly structure the information obtained during qualitative research. If two iterations are not enough for you, then you can repeat the grouping and draw clearer conclusions, but the more you combine, the greater the risk of losing the main essence of the problem.
For example, I put links to miro and google disk so that you can customize this approach for yourself.
