A research method for understanding why people choose one communication tool over another.

1. Social Map

2. Ultimate yet impossible research goal To understand how humans communicate.

3. Communication products need to understand ‘human communication’

4. Need: to think beyond Gmail

5. Need: to think about broad communication

6. How, why, when, where people choose different communication tools

7. Why the need for two phones?

8. Meanwhile… Meanwhile…

9. Stopping self-referential design

10. Early vs. later research vs.

11. Need: user insight fast We need to start designing next week…

12. Field research not feasible

13. Only time to pick some people

14. 60 minutes to understand communication behaviour 60 minutes

15. Social Map

16. Social Maps in our offices

17. Social Maps on the street

18. Required materials: paper + post-its

19. Building layers of understanding over time

20. Layer 1: People + Groups

21. Layer 2: Communication Tools

22. Layer 3: Recent Events

23. Layer 4: Sharing Content

24. Layer 5: Mapping Actual Behaviour

25. Layer 6: Sticky dots

26. Social Maps in China

27. Meanwhile… Meanwhile…

28. Development team observing research Research Participant Researcher Product Manager

29. Early trumps later research vs.

30. Social Map

31. Strong buy-in from the development team

32. Research finding: People’s groups are almost always separate

33. To understand how humans communicate. in 60 minutes some