‘Name One Thing You Are Awesome At'​

'Name one thing you are awesome at.'

It was an icebreaker question used at SEEK to help loosen up the research and client teams. 

I don't think SEEK realized how much I kept on using it.

From 2013 to 2017, I co-directed a non-profit with my wife called Project Downtown Cincinnati. It focused on eliminating hunger in the downtown Cincinnati area. We’d make bagged lunches, create hygiene kits and have meaningful conversations with Cincinnati residents in need.

Most of our volunteers were college students from The University of Cincinnati and Xavier University. For most of them it was their first time doing volunteer work, and they came from other cities hoping to make new friends while sharing a common interest.

They were college students fresh from a new city. They were trying to break into a new social group. They were about to engage with a marginalized portion of the population for the first time ever. You could imagine the uncertainty flowing through their head.

To help with this, we'd do an icebreaker Q&A at the end of each volunteer shift. I'd typically Google fun icebreaker questions to ask, or tie in something relevant to the season.

This tradition soon became known as ‘The Circle’, the group would make a large circle and almost everyone would have fun answering these questions. In the weeks we didn't have a good icebreaker ready, The question I would return to the most was 'Name one thing you are awesome at'?

It was almost always a hit and I would usually get three different types of different answers:

#1 A volunteer would be excited to show off a particular talent they have.

#2 A volunteer would humbly admit they had some special talent.

#3 Occasionally, a volunteer would refuse to admit any skill, and when encouraged by the group to share something, it might be self deprecating. Something along the lines of ‘I’m great at showing up late to volunteer’

In professional scenarios i’m often reminded of situations similar to answer #3.

When I make market research films, I often encourage the lead researcher to narrate the videos that would be seen by their teams/stakeholders. This narration would help guide viewers through the findings and would add valuable context to the video. This is similar to the experience you get listening to David Attenborough and Planet Earth.

A large chunk of researchers would refuse for one particular reason. ‘No I have a terrible voice’.

They felt comfortable presenting their findings live in front of a room of stakeholders. They were also comfortable speaking to large groups of people at conferences. But when when it came time for video narration, it was far too uncomfortable to have their voice tied to it.

To keep the project rolling through script development, i'd begrudgingly volunteer my own voice as a placeholder for the video, until either a professional voiceover artist or another researcher on their team would take my place.

When the draft videos were finished and came up for review, the lead client would say 'Your voice works great for this. Please voiceover the rest of them!'. I was shocked. In my eyes, I sound like a teenage skateboarder. Hardly the voice expected to sway the opinions of senior leaders.

This process would continue over and over. After a few years, a couple hundred research videos ended up having my 'skater voice' in the final shared version. A voice that started as a placeholder ended up ringing through the halls of Fortune 500s across the country.

I share this because these 'terrible voices' are some of the most talented researchers i've ever seen. They spent months of work planning, executing and synthesizing this research. No-one knows the ins and outs of the research, and could tell the story of their insights better than them.

Their voice was also plenty good enough to narrate a research video. I'd tell them if it wasn't.

If they are awesome at unveiling insights, they can be just as awesome at narrating them too.

Name one thing YOU are awesome at.

Yousef Hussein is the Founder of UX Films ...and recently found out he is awesome at narrating videos...

Applying Pixar's 22 Rules Of Storytelling To Our Everyday Work

Ever since Toy Story dropped when I was 10 years old, I've been fascinated with Pixar movies. It's evident I'm not alone. They are one of the most successful creative enterprises ever, owning 14 of the top 50 highest grossing animated films. Nearly all of their movies (24 of 26) are certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.

So what's their formula for success? In 2012, Emma Coats, a storyboard artist for Pixar tweeted 22 guidelines that Pixar follows when crafting the story for their films. 

I thought of ways these guidelines could be applied to our work. Many are nearly impossible to adapt to a business-related presentation or video, but here are a few that really resonated with me.

Rule #2: You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be very different.

We often bias our presentations to reflect the topics we are interested in. It can be incredibly difficult to shut off that part of our brain and empathize with what can engage our audience.

Back when I first created research films, I focused a decent amount of my time adding ambient background music to reflect the mood of what I was trying to communicate. I assumed it added polish to the video, but it just ended up distracting the audience. Some of the best presentations require some serious ego checks.

Rule #13: Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.

When pulling together films, researchers sometimes shy away from including that strongly opinionated or emotional respondent. There can be a fear of creating too many waves. When editing, I often struggle to strike a balance between engagement and compliance. In many instances, the engagement those particular respondents can create with the audience will outweigh the potential risks of alienating them with their strong opinions.

Rule #17: No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on – it’ll come back around to be useful later.

We often feel the need to shoehorn every little tidbit of information into our presentations. Sometimes that particular finding isn't relevant to your main story, and is bogging everything down or slowing down the pace of your presentation. Some of the highest budget films and TV shows suffer from disengaged audiences because the director felt the need to squeeze every single piece of cool looking video into the film *cough*Rings of Power*cough*

Rule #18: You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.

This process contrasts with the design-by-committee many creatives encounter in the consulting space. When an approach is aligned on, focus on creating the best possible presentation with the constraints given to you. Be open to testing a new approach if it has the potential to produce the best possible output, instead of constantly re-tweaking a presentation to the point where it’s over-budget, over-timeline and overly-formulaic.

Rule #22: What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.

When creating research videos, we throw our story into a barebones script template. We start by identifying the key learning/insight spaces. We then flesh out the main supporting quotes, sprinkled with storytelling elements and supporting b-roll where needed. 

Finally, we go through a process of paring down any unnecessary video, word by word, to get to the essence of what needs to be communicated. 

There is certainly a time and place for extra details to help engineering and design teams. But if engagement is your goal, keep things to a minimum.

Why I ditched my insights notepad and picked up a video camera

I’ve worked extensively with data and digital content in various industry contexts, pouring over information, drawing patterns, conclusions and using this analysis to make recommendations to my clients. Projects would often-times take months to complete, cost clients hundreds of thousands of dollars and result in a 30-60 slide PowerPoint reports shared with a C-level Director or VP.

Soon, I discovered that no one wanted to read these overwhelming reports (I don’t blame them). We would respond by condensing detailed findings into executive summaries to make them more easily digestible; but in doing so, reduce their potential to add value or influence decision-making.

It is a paradox: companies are willing to invest massive amounts to generate insights, but often fall short of effectively leveraging this investment to drive change in their organizations. Why is this? One of the biggest challenges agencies face involves transitioning insights and ideas: from researcher, to decision-maker, to implementer.

Over time, I developed a stronger understanding of how to better engage clients and share the richness in our insight work: use a video documentary. If key decision-makers haven’t the time to read a report, then don’t ask them to – and instead put them in the same seat as the researcher, face to face with their consumers speaking to them directly. This way, we are asking them to have empathy through sharing our experiences as researchers.

Here are four benefits of transitioning to using a video documentary to share insights:

1. Using video captures nuance in your findings that can’t be shared in a typical PowerPoint report. This includes the spectrum of emotions, the non-verbal communication and the context behind the insights and ideas identified.

2. Great storytelling drives engagement with decision-makers within your organization. It is much easier to effectively share your findings through a well-edited short documentary. It stands out far better, and is much more impactful than the standard PowerPoint report.

3. Great insights deserve to be shared without a filter. Hearing the insight from the consumer first-hand – and in the original language it was offered – invites stakeholders to experience for themselves an authentic ethnographic research process.

4. It makes you look like a rock-star. It’s much easier to engage your team members with your research output in a ten to fifteen-minute documentary, than to ask them to sit through an hour of slides.

Yousef Hussein is the founder of UX Films

Five BIG Reasons Why VR is the Future in Consumer Research

Over the past few months, I’ve had the opportunity to use Virtual Reality (VR) to complement my consumer research video work. During this time, I’ve largely focused on figuring out all the technical challenges involved with producing videos that bring lasting value to my clients. I didn’t fully realize the distinct benefits of filming in VR until the first few videos were delivered to our partners.

I'm a tech geek and regularly trial new technology when in-field on research. This is done partially to justify my regular visits to Micro Center and B&H. However, its also to potentially discover new ways of bringing my clients closer to the people they serve. Its rare that the latter reason becomes so apparent, so quickly.

With that in mind, here are five compelling reasons to consider using VR video to capture your next consumer research project:

VR provides context

I’ve cut important shots from my traditional video reels because there isn’t enough context in the footage to clearly articulate what the researcher is trying to communicate. Its one thing when a respondent complains about a television show being “dumb”. It’s another when you can turn your head in VR to see what the respondent is talking about, then turn back and watch their body language.

YOU are in control of what YOU want to know

In a single unedited shot, a UX designer can see how a user is interacting with an app, a hardware engineer can observe how they are holding the device and the marketing team can observe the physical stimuli that is influencing the users actions. Each member of the team can see what’s most relevant for them and glean what they need from the same video.

Smaller research teams but greater participation

There is often a false perception among researchers that to actually effect change within an organization, key stakeholders need to be present during the actual research. VR can change that. You no longer have to be physically present to be part of the experience. VR has the potential to recreate those impactful moments for stakeholders who could be thousands of miles away.

Furthermore, many VR cameras are small and unobtrusive, great for filming in small homes without overwhelming respondents. In one shot you can capture the interviewer, the interviewee and their surrounding environment in its entirety.

Novelty of VR creates opportunities to share richness vs simple sound bites

When producing traditional video, editors are often forced to piece together one to two second quick hit clips to make a point. Why is that? Videos are ubiquitous and our attention spans have become shorter and shorter. Instead of giving video clips the time to truly connect you with the consumer, we are often encouraged to “skip to the good part!”

With VR, you are strapped in and fully immersed. It gives filmmakers the opportunity to share stories in unique ways. You are experiencing the insights versus just watching them.

The immersion

This one is hard to explain unless you've had the opportunity to already use a VR headset. Being transported into a completely different environment with multiple sensory cues, creates a unique experience that traditional video cannot replicate.

With that said, VR is certainly not an end-all solution for all research challenges. Tried and true traditional video is still king - for now, but VR will soon become a powerful tool in your research arsenal.

Yousef Hussein is the founder of UX Films