Episode 19: Running a Remote UX Design Consultancy with Chin Chin (Tan) Burkolter
48:38 Share

Hi everyone, I'm Dalen, founder and design educator at Curious Core. Welcome to our Working in UX Design podcast series where we interview a UX design leader in the industry on their experience in this emerging field. We've had UX professionals from Grab, AirAsia, Google and more join us previously and we're bringing you more exciting interviews this year.

Stay tuned for this week's interview with our special guest who is working in UX design. Okay. Hi, good evening everyone and welcome to another session working in UX design, our webinar and live podcast recording. Over here this evening we have Chin Chin who is a owner of a UX design consultancy known as SOMIA Customer Experience.

Before I introduce our speaker, I'd just like to briefly speak about why we're doing this event and who we are. So I'm Dalen, I'm the founder of CuriousCorp, and we help mid-career professionals to transition into the field of user experience design and product management. We are based in Singapore, and

And we believe there is a lot of talent in the Asia-Pacific region. And they have stories worth telling to an audience out there who's interested in hearing. So just a brief background about why we're doing this event. This event started during the...

pandemic season when a lot of design events got canceled. So we decided to do a monthly design webinar so that the community could continue learning even during the pandemic. And we've decided to keep it as one of our anchor events. As we continue doing this event and this podcast, we realized there's just so many great talents to feature out there. So love to talk to all of them.

And if you're interested to be a guest, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. So for this evening, we have Chin Chin who started out as a visual communication designer with her role expanding towards strategic experience design. And she's definitely a person who's always looking to learn and acquire skills. Chin Chin is someone I've known for a while, and I've also observed her work running SOMIA Customer Experience with a partner in Indonesia.

doing this piece of work and operating this remote UX design consultancy since 2016. They specialize in product innovation and strategic design, and she has definitely honed her craft together with her team, with multinationals, new ventures, as well as her own startup. With her experience, she helps business to identify business needs, to rightly frame what is needed to generate thoughtful value propositions.

Chin is also an animal lover at heart and that led her to start and manage the brand and marketing of a social enterprise called Good Pet Callers in 2010. She also organized the Nigh Lives show, an art and design exhibition to bring awareness to care for community cats as part of the Singapore Design Week in 2017 and 2019. That's really exciting to hear. So today we're going to talk a little bit about how she manages to

run and maintain a boutique UX consultancy remotely, you know, and managing remote research and design teams because some of her team members are based in Indonesia and how she sort of works in the field of UX, especially across this region, not just in Singapore, but also in her team working in Indonesia as well. For those of you who don't know, Chin is a certified coach as well. So I'm going to ask her some questions about that.

Very glad to be welcoming you to this session, Chin Chin. It's been a while. How are you doing today? Well, I'm nervous. I was just sharing with Daylan that I haven't shared publicly about UX and what I do is my first sharing. So yeah, so I'm nervous.

Awesome. Well, thank you for being here today. I'm sure we're going to kind of unravel the story of how everything started. Maybe we can start off by having you share a little bit with what you do today as a business owner running SOMIA Customer Experience. What's your role there right now?

Well, I'm a generalist, I think. So right now, I do oversee projects. I'm not 100% in projects anymore, so I do oversee. I manage the team. I'm HR. I also do some hiring. If there are events, marketing efforts, sales. Yeah, that's why I say I'm a generalist. So I pretty much touch base across all the pillars in the business. I'm not specializing in anything because I guess given the number of hours per day, then...

I'm just trying my best to juggle everything and having that overview into everything. That sounds a lot like how small medium businesses operate and work. And as we're emerging from the pandemic, I was just wondering how has this COVID situation changed the way you run your business? I think pre-COVID, I and Sulis, my business partners, are the only ones not in.

Jakarta. Most of the team members are based in Jakarta. So we would travel into Jakarta every other month and we'll be able to have that face time with the team. I think once pandemic started, we always wanted to explore remote, but it just wasn't

We just felt like it wouldn't work because of the synthesis process, interview process and all that, right? It just wasn't possible. So well, when pandemic happened, then I guess it was, we just have to do it. We were forced to do it. Then of course, there were tools that started emerging that enabled us to do that.

So I think the first big change is everyone then couldn't go into the studio. Then pretty much everyone went remote. I think one of the biggest learning that I found was because I've been remote for the longest time since day one. I'm the one who's remote, but the team isn't. So then when the team had to go remote, we were getting a lot of feedback.

like Zoom fatigue, being cooped up in a home, feeling a bit depressed. A lot of these things started coming up as feedback to us during one-on-one. So I was quite surprised and I was sharing with my partner and said, hey, what's going on? What's wrong with working from home? And only then we realised, because we've been doing it for so long, it's second nature to us, it's our work. But for our team members, it wasn't. So then we had to talk to different people,

or just google and see hey how could we get the team to be more engaged i think that was definitely one of the biggest change the second change will be well the research work itself right i mean research has always been in person even if it's remote it's a very small part of it online i mean so i think that was the other thing about managing the logistics administration vetting the people i mean all the nitty-gritty stuff right of managing like how to run and if clients wants

to observe then how do we manage that as well and also not being able to even observe the entire person in their environment I mean it is their home now how are we going to do that so I think with the client with the project site that was another big

The third is the clients. The clients are also very used to face-to-face, especially with the bigger establishments. A lot of our clients are Indonesian-based, so then a lot of them would want to see you in person. That's also one of the reasons why I fly in.

because sometimes there are very important clients that we felt like, oh, they want the FaceTime. So I think that's the third bigger component that we've had to change. And luckily, they are experiencing the same thing, right? So they're very willing to go online as well. So that helped.

That's really interesting and thank you for sharing your experience. I'm sure many could also empathize with the situation that you just described. Now that we're sort of emerging from COVID, are you guys still working remote? Are you still doing field research remotely or what's happening?

Well, the thing is, across the last two years, we have expanded the team. And when we were recruiting, we thought, oh, we don't have to recruit from Jakarta anymore. So we could recruit from other parts of Indonesia. And so that happened. Therefore, we have a handful of team members who are not based in Jakarta. So coming out of this situation now, it is a hybrid situation. I think the thing is, then the team, funnily enough, some

found the value in working from home too, but still crave engagement. So for us, the hybrid model seems to work really well at the moment.

However, for colleagues who are not in Jakarta, then that makes it a little bit harder. So we try our best. We couldn't do a monthly kind of face-to-face at the moment yet. But for example, two weeks ago, we all gathered in Bali for our Somia boot camp. And then that's the first time. Well, I was really pleasantly surprised everyone could make it, which is really nice. So then we could meet each other in person, those who haven't met for more than two years.

and those who've met for the first time but have been interacting on a daily basis. Well, that sounds really amazing. I think magic happens in Bali, isn't it? That's true.

That's true. Yes. What about the realities of running a business? I've heard many small businesses struggle and they close down, you know. How is your trade doing? Because you're running an agency, it's pretty much a cyclical business. How did the trade go? When it first hit, we were affected, of course, because everybody was like, okay, we're not doing anything, let's wait and see. So for three, four months, we literally had projects cancelled. We had nothing. The whole team was free. So then we panicked. We were like, oh, what do we do? What do we do?

So that's how SOMIA Academy online was birthed. We've always had SOMIA Academy. We conduct public classes and in-house training. But when that happened, then we were like, let's go online and started developing content because we've had content already. So it's more about, hey, how do we convert it to digital? And we've never done online. We don't even know how to keep students engaged. Sharing might be one thing, but I think engagement and making sure they learn, that's the other big component, right? Big, big effect.

So we were scrambling to build that material and then to market the cost. That was one way to get income, to at least have some revenue coming in since project was a big part of consultancy anyway. So we were looking at a different possible revenue stream. So we started that.

That worked quite well till today. We also started another small effort. So since we are researchers, we thought, hey, let's continue the research. Let's see how we can create another product where... Because what we heard from clients sometimes is they don't know the ins and outs of Indonesia, especially from the ground. It's very hard for foreigners to also search in English for Indonesia's insight. So we thought, well, why don't we do this? Why don't we collaborate?

compile reports maybe have to do more work and compile reports where we can sell right so we tried doing that but that didn't work out very well but it was fun exploring I think the process of that it's that spirit of just trying something Suze and I worked

Hello, Satya!

That sounds really lovely. When we talk about sort of like innovating and coming up with new business models, coming up with new products, there's always like element of risk attached to it. And I know you do this work for your clients. Doing it for your clients and doing it for yourselves are a little different. So you mentioned that one project sort of took off and one project sort of filled. What are some of the lessons you'll be willing to share about like trying to create a new product or new service? I think

for clients who come to us, they kind of know what we do or at least have heard from others. So a lot of times they already come to us with a certain mindset of wanting to explore and therefore I think that really helped. Of course, we're not saying all our clients are like that. There are still some who are quite close but when that happens then during the early conversations that would already show up, then they either would not be comfortable with our approach

or if they're comfortable, then we will be able to explore further. So I think like sometimes when we give some approach and they're not comfortable, then they would immediately voice. Then we would know, okay, it's probably not a good fit anyway, or that they will be negotiating and at some point they will change. But of course, we also have clients who decide to embark on the journey with us and then say, okay, like in the beginning, we're willing to go very exploratory. We want to explore.

And then suddenly when the project starts and things happen, then that's when you start seeing them closed off again. So we've had to deal with many types. I mean, some we were able to still communicate and manage to convert them back to the path, but some who don't. So we've had projects that failed as well. Like at some point, the clients didn't know what to do with our findings. I mean, it's also part of our learning. And then we'll come to a point where it's like a stalemate that we're not moving at all.

then it's also having the courage to say, hey, I think this is not working out. So that's something that we, I guess in the path of innovation, that indeed there's a lot of risk and there's a certain mindset that's needed to play with, to have that courage to play with it. That makes a lot of sense. And I think that's also because the client is paying you, right? So in some way you have to be able to guide them or to listen to them and get their input.

What about for your own projects? Let's say like for the academy or for a research report that you wanted to do in Indonesia, what did you learn from creating your own products? I think with, for example, with the research report one that we did,

It wasn't like we had a lot of time to plan or to think it through, right? I think that's part of the iteration. So for example, the first one we did was since it was the COVID. So then we were looking into the hygiene practices or mindsets of Indonesians. It was a report that got put together in less than two weeks. So it was a very shallow report, if I have to say. Because then once we published it, it was like, just publish it. So we did. And then some of the feedback were

oh, it's great to kind of see it. But if you look deeper into that report, then you'll realise that, hey, there's nothing that is really telling me besides what I can easily find out. So it was more like a collection that we just put together. So I think with that and with the feedback from the people,

from the crowd, then we realized, okay, let's not be so reckless. Let's reiterate this. And then that's when we wanted to look at healthcare in a deeper way. So then we started again exploring, okay, healthcare. But besides looking at the current, then we decided to look at healthcare beyond, right? 10 year plus. Then again, just take, then we did some proper research this time, then translating what we feel into what healthcare looks like 10 years from now.

Then we could play with it a little bit more. Again, publish it with good and bad feedback, of course. But it was a nice activity to do for the team. But I think we did one more report. But after that, we felt like the traction, we didn't gain a lot of traction from it. And then it was also when we started getting busy. So that was when, from a business standpoint, we decided, okay, we've played with it enough.

it didn't manage to get to where we wanted like selling the report I guess one of the learning is perhaps we didn't do our homework very well really talking to business owners further to ask them hey what is it that you really need and then crafting the work towards that goal right yeah so we were just being a bit more

fun and although it was a desperate desperation thing you know I think for that project it was definitely one of the learnings there thank you for being so open and vulnerable about sharing your failures for us to learn from I think as a fellow entrepreneur I can also relate to it a lot because not every single thing that we launch is going to be successful or has been successful in a commercial terms some of it is just like

"Oh yeah, it's a great process to learn from and to kind of get the team to work on it, but it just doesn't land as well in the market." And that's just like the market really determines which products or services is really needed. So I think this is great to learn from. I can hear that your team is growing. I can hear that your business is growing.

It sounds like you guys are doing a couple of things right. Can I just get a sense, like how big is the team now aside from you and your partner Sulis who's in the business with you? So apart from me and Sulis, we have 16 people now. It's still considered a small team but our team kind of doubled during the last two years. So that was something

that I guess we didn't expect. It wasn't planned to grow. It happened when we were getting projects requests. So then it was, should we hire just so that we can meet? And then actually now that you ask, in my reflection right now, I think it was, we were coming from four months of drought, right? Like no projects, right? Then when business started coming, then it was like, oh, okay, okay, we're getting all these inquiries now. It's time to, well, because you have been hungry for so long, right? Then we started taking it again.

And then at one point, we were like, hey, actually, to reflect again, it's so much reflection going on, I realized that it's probably better to suffer from hunger than to suffer from indigestion. So that was something that we

our learning as well. So what happened was in the last two years, it doubled and then we slowed. We definitely slowed down in our growth. That was what happened in the last two years in terms of how we've grown. Yeah, I want to say congratulations for that. And what an interesting quote about indigestion and hunger. I think as I know, I used to work in

the agency business as well so I know it's cyclical nature it really is very dependent on demand may I ask what do you think is like the special sauce for Somia customer experience why do you think your clients come to engage you and your team I think one we are

We've always been very strong in the research part. So doing really deep and thick research, that's what we're famous for. Another thing we are famous for, or other people talk about it, right, is that not only are we able to get the right insights for them, we're able to translate it into recommendations, action,

for them and very tangible. So that's always what we consider always when we are running a project because we've had a lot of these in the past when Sulis and I were working in MNCs, right? So we've worked with a lot of agencies and a lot of time they deliver a hundred over pages report and then we'll read

Like, wah, so interesting, we're weird. And then at the end, we said, okay, okay, what do we do? And so we were often very disappointed because that it's such rich data, right? And then after that, we as clients don't really know how to use it. So we felt like, oh, there are such a waste and it's so expensive really to hire these people. And therefore, when Somia started, it has always been that it has to end and land with very actionable solutions, yeah. So I think that's something that people talk about.

And that's something that we continue to carry through to today as our ethos. That's one. The other one is, I feel like it's the people we hire, the team itself. The team itself is very passionate to a point, right, if I may be very transparent, to a point where we also had the issue of perfection.

Being perfect. Now, being perfect is, most people would think it's good, right? But actually then, it's also causing burnout in the team. So I think we went through that. We went through that phase where a lot of team members were feeling the burnout, especially when pandemic hit. Because then, it's all the more there's no formal or sporadic side conversations that happen.

Yeah, so that was the other thing that came up for us in the work we do. So, sorry, sorry, I digress. So coming back to your question about that. So I think, yeah, the team itself and the attitude is also very important. But I'm sure that comes with a lot of, well, all of us here are very passionate about our work. ♪

I think that was an important point when you talk about people feeling burnout from the pandemic and working remotely for way too long. Usually in the office, you have the water cooler conversations, you have the lunch conversations, and it's kind of like an outlet of release for people.

So when that is missing, it needs to be kind of reintroduced back into the work schedule in some ways. So really, really good points. And I gather your point on research and I do remember you guys being really strong at research, meeting you all many, many years ago when you were just a very, very small team. So today, like who do you work with more? Do you work with more Indonesian companies? Do you work with more Singapore companies or are they bigger companies or are they like smaller companies?

Sorry, sorry. Before we move on, I did forget one point that I wanted to share, which is I think having, when we engage with clients, we also, if we can't do anything, we don't try to say we can. But there are always this other gray area where that's super interesting. It's something we want to do and we haven't done before. Shall we do it? And then we learn along the way. So there's this conversation that will happen in

internally and then there's one where we know it's really complete out of our scope it will not even be a stretch it's just not there at all so i think having that honesty with our clients they often really appreciate nothing to do with the world but i guess it's just the way we engage with clients yeah

And so they come back to us with other things because we were being honest in the first place. That's great. Thanks for sharing that additional context. So going back to the question I asked earlier, what's the profile of your client like right now? Are they more from Singapore or from Indonesia? Are they bigger or are they smaller companies? I think...

I think it feels like 50% are Indonesian company and the other 50% are international companies. So then they want to do work in Indonesia, like whether it's an expansion or whether it's, hey, I want to start a product and I want to do it in Indonesia. So a lot of the clients, I think,

in general, maybe it's because of our rate cuts. So therefore, sorry, I don't mean to say this in an obnoxious way, but it's the bigger companies. And also because when they have the means, they can look into research, right? They can look into innovation. And because we're smaller companies, then they are looking into, like, I just want to get the product out, right? That's more important to us at the moment.

I think particularly this year, well, in the digital space, then the winter is here. So we are getting, they still want the work done. Then they would look for, well, we need to find at least three vendors and, you know. So then we observe that we are losing out on

those type of companies. So to answer your question, they are generally bigger companies who wants to invest in innovation and wants to invest in research. Thanks for sharing. And I do remember when I was working for Unilever, that's always been a very strong culture of research. So I wouldn't think it's unusual that you get commissions from like larger companies trying to go into one of the largest growing markets in the world, which is Indonesia.

Would you have any, you know, coming out of the pandemic, coming out from the pandemic as a stronger team, do you have any tips for people who are running remote setups right now? They have a small team and they're doing like boutique agency work. Do you have any tips as a leader for them?

Like I mentioned earlier, when you hire the right people, you also need to create the right culture. By the time I joined, SOMIA was already around for about a few years. That culture was very strong and how I would describe in a few words, it's a very learning culture, a culture that shares with each other, that help each other. And it's a very fun culture to be with. So very lighthearted, very fun-loving culture.

team. I think having the right culture is very important to create and to look at and to invest time in. So I think, yeah, first that. And then I think it's to look out for interesting collaborations or interesting projects, because I think that's also something we often consider like, hey, are we keeping our team motivated? Are we keeping them healthy in terms of like intellectual kind of stimulation? Because if we keep accepting jobs that are

actually not very exciting that over time they're just gonna get bored so also looking out for interesting collaboration of projects and sometimes it could be yeah indeed at the expense of it's a pro bono project but if it's interesting we'll do it and of course then the balancing of the books but yeah that's what the business owner have to do I feel these two things as a sorry it's not very like magical or anything but

I think for us it was that. And I think one thing that we have always been encouraging the team is training. So growing and training. So the team's growth is very important. That's something that I try to ask the team like, hey, what do you want? It's a constant thing. Because when the team gets very busy with their work, then...

then even I tend to forget about growth. I think besides the project learning, there's also these other soft skill learning and whatever not that needs to come into place. Definitely agree that learning drives growth, although it's not often immediate, it does drive growth over time and it helps keep people engaged and staff members are generally quite grateful for that learning opportunity. And it sounds like you kept a culture whereby you balance

the work being interesting versus running the business type of work. And you sound like you're the one wearing the business hat in the agency. I'm not sure if that's true. So what role does Sulis play then? Sulis and I used to be definitely 50/50. We're like partners in crime. Also during the pandemic,

one of the other side projects was this company called PharmaCare that we started to explore. It then started gaining a bit of traction and managed to get some funding. So then that became a side project that was a product company. So then Somia is one of the three founders because we really don't have the bandwidth to do this 100%. And so we got two other founders and

One of them is an ex-Somian. So he was very interested in a product and he also joined as a co-founder. So there were three parties involved in this new product, PharmaCare. And so Sulis is actually 100% on PharmaCare at the moment. You have a successful business venture spin-off from your company. Yeah, we're trying, we're trying. It's an infancy, but I think Sulis is working really hard on that, yeah.

I mean that's walking the talk. That's super important and that's really interesting. Can you tell us in a few words what exactly is PharmaCare? It sounds like a pharmaceutical product. I think it started because Suli's mom owns, I hope she doesn't mind me saying this, but her mom does run a pharmacy in Bali.

And so she started to see that there were some, I guess, pain points in smaller pharmacies since Indonesia is such a big country, right? And a lot of them are still relying on pen and paper to document stuff. And so she saw that as an opportunity and then we decided, hey, why don't we just explore this space and see how we can use digital to serve the pharmacies in Indonesia. So that was how it started.

That's really interesting. And this product was a side project you mentioned, and then it wasn't initially 100%, but then now it's sort of like 100% for Sulis, and now you're running Somia CX, and I'm excited to hear more. You raise a lot of good points, like in the Chinese, there's this saying, right? In every crisis, there is opportunity, and

it does seem like your team has taken advantage of those opportunities to grow even further. So I'm just wondering, as you're growing your team in Indonesia and as you're growing as a leader as well, I do recall you

taking on a coaching certification. Can you help us understand a little bit more about why you did that and how does it help you be a better leader? I think the coaching program was a big accident because I took this 4D program called Facilitating Powerful Conversation with Tong Yi at the Thought Collective. When it says Facilitating Powerful Conversation, my idea of that was, okay, I'll be able to have conversation with like the C-suite to the cleaning auntie, right? Like I'll be able to have...

whatever conversations I can have with different people. So I went in with a mindset, but it was a completely different content, which I was blown away. And that's how I got to know about coaching. But even then, coaching is still a very vague idea. I think it's still quite new in Asia. I mean, it's not completely new. I think it's starting to have more and more traction. But there's a stigma to coaching, I think, still about like, oh,

oh, do I need help? That's why I'm getting a coach. So it's that. And then in our work, we were also trying to rethink our in-house training. So we do a lot of training, short training, four-day training.

I'll get to the answer by the way. So the four-day training right but then we thought we hang out we hit and run. We're hitting people and then we run and they don't get a chance to continue the learning. We started introducing the component of coaching but on a very transactional level right. It's just performance right. So then I realized that wow we are offering coaching but don't really know how to do it properly. When I got into the coaching conversation with Dong Yi then I thought oh

coaching to me is like it's the same thing so then I sign up for the coaching program and then to realize wait hang on these two are very different type of coaching one is a sort of a live coaching and one is a transactional coaching which is completely different so anyway that's how I stumbled ontological coaching and how

How has that made me a better leader or a better manager? I think it's the conversations that I get to have with my team members. So some of them are here, so I hope I'm saying the right thing. But I think it's, say, during our one-on-ones, especially asking the right question,

And I also feel like the way you show up as a leader, because one thing I learned from coaching is I looked at myself first, right? And so that really helped me to see how I show up in every meeting, how I show up in every circumstances. Like not only how, I also ask myself, how do I want to show up? So not just being an observer, but I do ask myself how.

So then I think with that, every time I come to a meeting, even tonight, the question before is that, hey, how do I want to show up to this webinar session? I think that really helped as from what I learned from coaching because I think prior to that, okay, it's a webinar. I'll prepare all this list of things that I want to share. But I never really looked at myself as a human. And I think with this coaching distinction, then when I engage with someone, I'm fully present with someone and the engagement then becomes a lot more deeper.

So I think in then it does build a lot of trust with people. And I think that one of the benefits definitely I got from coaching.

That sounds amazing. I happen to have gone through the same workshop as you did. So I'm aware of what you meant. And I recall after going through the workshop, I had some very important or powerful conversations with my dad. It was just talking to him and trying to unravel and unwrap certain things that we didn't talk about. For the course that's running in Singapore, that's great. For those of you who are more international and more regional, ontological coaching sounds like something you could check out if you're interested.

Assuming that you're gathering data in Niger, right? You're working in the field, trying to gather data. What are the challenges of doing so in context of COVID right now? I think definitely the in-person thing that was taken away from us at that time. Right now, it still is. Oh yeah, I think I didn't quite answer you. I think right now, if possible, we will look at the nature of the project brief and see if it can be managed remotely.

And also clients are a lot more open about that now too. So that has enabled us to continue to run remotely. And if they're open, we for sure try to because it's still in the air. So we try to not go in person. But if it needs to be like, for example, any workshop facilitation or sometimes it's really in, for example, a farm where we need to

look into their environment, right? Then there's no way we can get them to even walk around because we might also have connection issues. So at this point, I mean, past COVID, we do go in person on field if can. But during the two years, we will hire local fixers. We will hire locals who are in that place to go down for us.

And then we will brief them what exactly are we looking for. So they become our eyes and our ears. We will still dial in remotely to conduct the interview. That sounds like a really good strategy. And I've heard of the strategy of using fixers, whether doing in-field research or doing remote research, especially because sometimes the people you work with may not be as proficiently trained

in the research methods that you mentioned. So that's on the external environment, gathering data from the external environment. Do you guys do work as well where you try and gather data from the internal environment within the company or whatever data is available from the clients? - Yeah, so we will check in with a client to see

if they have the data in the first place. So that's definitely something we consider. So for example, if they want us to do research for a particular feature, then some of the basic questions we will ask is for sure, which area are you looking at? Are you looking at an area where you're thriving? Therefore, there will be a good usership and we can have

good data but if it's somewhere where they want to enter then obviously there's not going to be any data available or it would also we will look at the data to help inform us where we should go let's go back to where should we go and then they will say these are the top three cities that we want to explore because we want to introduce a new feature for example then that will inform us also about like hey where do we go with this piece of project scope or project brief

If I'm a practitioner today and I want to improve the way I do research in my work, what are some of the things that I should be doing to improve the way I do field research or the way I do user research? It's a very broad question. I would say, I think first it's managing the expectation of the client, really getting very brief, a very specific brief and outcome of what they are after.

How are they using the outcome? What do they expect to use with the results? So I think that will guide us in how we craft the approach and how we craft the deliverables. So then we know exactly how they intend to use it. That's one, engaging with the client.

Of course, other conversations like, hey, what are your limitations and all that? I think those are quite fundamental questions. Then doing your homework first about the place, the place that you're going to go. To give an example, we are on this project now where it's financial inclusion. There are a lot of areas that the client has requested that we've never been because they are interested in the unbanked.

If they're interested in the unbanked, then obviously these are areas that perhaps infrastructure-wise, savviness, where interventions are really low. I mean, digital intervention. So our team then had to go make a recce trip a couple of weeks ago just to kind of understand the ground, find and connect with a local kind of expert. And even finding the expert is critical. Then that person can give us more feedback into like, hey, where should you go?

Who should you talk to? And in Indonesia especially, connection is quite important. You can't just go intercept someone. They will be wondering what you want. There's a lot of mistrust then because they don't know you just simply because of that. So yeah, so there's a lot of homework to do as in planning and all that as a user researcher. For us, it was quite funny to hear because to me as an outsider, I'm like, Indonesia, everybody speaks Bahasa Indo but of course in different... And as with Chinese, right, we all have our dialects, right? So in the same...

In Indonesia, there's also different language nuances, differences in different parts. So then how I hear my colleagues who are Jakartans say that they don't even try to speak there. Like don't even try to be friendly and use their language because once you start with even one or two words, like they think you know, and then the whole interview is, it's gone, right? Because they will speak in that dialect and actually we have no idea what they're saying.

So there are all these things that we learn along the way as user researcher when you hit the ground. But I think in Indonesia, I'm personally also hearing a lot of these other stories. Whereas versus Singapore, you go in, if I hear a person speaks English a lot, I'm going to switch to Singlish. If a person speaks proper English, maybe the person prefers, sometimes the Singlish starts to leak, then I would start engaging in different ways with the respondent, right? Just to always catch what they're saying and speak on their level.

I don't know if that answers your question. I think it does. I mean, in summary, you're saying, hey, let's set the correct objectives with the clients and also let's work with experts on the ground, especially experts who are very familiar with the local language and nuances as well. And I think that's definitely something to be mindful of.

Have you guys or have your team actually done research outside of Indonesia or in the region? What are some of your learnings in doing so? I would say a lot of our projects are in Indonesia. There are some in Singapore and if it's Singapore, I do conduct the research. A few years ago, we did conduct in China. So I was there because I've done research in China before.

But I definitely cannot conduct the interview. But what really helps is I could understand what they're saying unless it's a local slang that I cannot. Yeah, the thing with research is you need to be local, right?

And if you're not, then you have to find a local to engage. I mean, that's at least from my personal opinion, because that's what the client also engages for, that local understanding and the local insight. So a lot of times, the most common question is, so what's your team makeup? Where are they from? Because they want to know they are dealing with local researchers. That makes a lot of sense. And it sounds like your team actually handles a lot of qualitative research and

And I was just wondering, do clients come and do they ask, hey, you know, do you do quantitative research? Can you put stuff together and make sense of trend lines and stuff like that? They do, they do. But we've always, like I mentioned earlier in the call, that we will always tell them very honestly, no, it's not something that we do. So we would either recommend partners to work with us or, you know, they would try to find partners to work with us. So we're not expert in that area because we see that it is a different area of study. So unless we are willing to invest in it,

there were conversations around, do we want to go there or do we want to continue to deepen our craft in qualitative? So that's the path we chose. And I think that's fine because it's good to be a specialist and be an expert at what you do and be very good at what you do. When it comes to qualitative research, you know, what's the most common mistake that you see junior UX designers or people who are not familiar with this view make very often? As of now, I think with...

In general, if it's a very young researcher, sometimes it's the details. For example, even down to planning things, like there will be some things that gets missed. But of course, if there's a senior there, it's very easy to point out those. So really, the doubles and the detail, like...

It's even just communicating. Don't forget to communicate. And we always talk about over-communicating to the client as well. So that's one. The other one is the DG. The DG, I guess there's still a lot of the questions, right? The questions that are asked. And it takes some experience and it takes some guidance.

I don't mean to be trivial, but I guess it's like close questions or sometimes questions that are asked that are too direct. The other one is when you are in a session, I notice young researchers, when they get nervous, then they tend to forget a lot of questions or they tend to babble, ask very close questions. So that's also another very common trait that I see. Then as a senior, when you're on the side, you're like, ah!

but then you can't really jump in so you're like typing like you know things like that which is quite fun but i've learned that you know as a senior then what we do is you model just show them a few times if you have eight respondents then show them six times how it's done if it needs to be that show them six times run all six i mean it's a little tiring but run all six at one go you do it then they get to see then by the seventh let them do it then immediate feedback is given our

will give feedback right after a session so that it's so fresh also for me it's still fresh and then then they they get a lot of value from that then the next session I'll ask are you comfortable to run again then it's up to them because I know it's quite stressful as well so having the opportunity to kind of

give feedback very quickly. It really helps them learn very fast. Yeah, really good points over there. And I think a lot of people underestimate how much work it takes to do the preparation. And it's actually the preparation, as you said, the details that really separate the more senior researchers from the more junior researchers. Just out of curiosity, right, looking at how things are developing, you know, we're going into a recession right now.

What are your plans for SOMIA CX in the coming year? I'm actually quite glad you asked that question. I was wondering when I should share this. So I was telling you in COVID, we did really well. But actually this year, we observed that we're not doing so well. So if I'm very open to share. But what came up as a really great reflection with the team is that

well, when we were doing so well, we were so busy, we were just all heads in on projects, right? So there's no time to think about marketing strategy, sales strategy, none of that. I mean, yes, there's some, we're still doing the work, but it wasn't from a strategic point of view, like, hey, who do we want to aim for or target? What sort of messaging do we want to put out in our marketing channels? How do we reinforce that message? So I think

By the way, this is just something that is ongoing for us at the moment because as the economy is sort of slowing down and we have requests but then we are not necessarily converting them, it made us stop and think like, hey, okay, what's going on? It gave us an opportunity to step back and like,

okay, let's look around and re-evaluate what's going on. So I think that's one of the things. We have always been very active in marketing ourselves and of course doing all the sales work but I also realised that the two hasn't always been aligned. So that's also something as a leader of the company to kind of like see that and then

try to strategize and come up with different action items to bring that together again. And this is not going to be overnight, so it might take time and having the patience to like, let's do this and consistently until we get somewhere.

Once again, thank you for being open and telling us more about the realities of what we're going into. I think that makes a lot of sense to me. And as a fellow business leader, I always tell the team there's a difference between strategy and tactics. And it's really important to recognize whether this is something that requires a strategic tweak, as what you say, like what's the messaging? What's the positioning? How are we doing? What's the process for us doing our sales versus like something that's more tactical or

versus like, hey, actually, we should just be talking to more people or whether we have to just get on Facebook or something like that. So that's something that's really important. I think all teams need to figure that out at some point in time. But once you have that clarity, it's very consistent in terms of the messaging. I think people really get it and they understand your value. And hearing your entire conversation tonight and knowing your strength is in research and knowing that your rates are higher than some of the other competitors that you have out there.

We had to readjust too, yeah. So it's not like we're not... I wish for the days when we could just put a recut out and people would still hire us. You know, with this tweak, one of the tweaks is because of the competitors also. Competitors are getting ready. That makes sense. But yeah, I think it's a matter of positioning, right? Like helping your clients and your prospects to understand the value of what you're delivering as well. So that certainly makes a lot of sense.

So we're sort of a channel whereby we advocate learning and we have a lot of aspiring UX designers. We have people who are junior UX designers who are still kind of like in their first or second year in the industry. As someone who's been a practitioner for many, many years in the field of research, I was wondering if you have any advice for them transitioning or getting

being better as a researcher because I think there's something a lot of people overlook when they do UX design. They think like research is easy but it ends up being, you know, a lot more than what it is. So I was wondering if you have any advice to share to your juniors. Well, first it's the learning, I think. The learning never stops and it's first that, asking for feedback because I think sometimes it's hard to hear critique but not being

Because that's where the gem is. I think that's where the gift lies in feedback. So ask for feedback. The other thing is the courage to practice. I've come across junior researchers and I will ask them, hey, so you want to do it now? They say, no, no, no, you do it, you do it. And I feel like I can do it, but it's also a missed opportunity to practice.

practice because with whether it's interviewing or whatever not right it's presenting and everything it all comes down to practice and I recently heard this which is a it's like oh a new framing for me confidence is to be caught I was like how do you mean well it's like even me being here now I told you it's my first time sharing and so I kind of remember that quote he shared me confidence is to be

So I'm here sharing, trying to catch my confidence, right? Because the more I share, I'll be able to catch my confidence and collect my confidence in this one area. So I think with any practice, really, it's not just in UX. It's really just keep doing it until you feel like, okay, then something else will happen. And you know, it's a lifelong journey, really. Yeah.

In a way, it's about the spirit of taking risks. And with that, I would like to really thank you this evening for sharing with us your adventures, your endeavors for taking risks. And it sounds like some of them went really, really well. So all the best to this new venture of yours in the pharmaceutical area and industry. It sounds like some of them didn't work out, but it created a lot of learning opportunities for you and your team. This is really, really wonderful that we got to learn firsthand from

practitioner and firsthand from a business owner who built a company since 2016 from scratch and went remote with that. Thank you so much, Chin Chin. And thank you so much for sharing your stories with us this evening. If you'd like to learn more about our series, you can check out our YouTube channel. We're on Apple and Spotify as well for the podcast editions. We aim to release new episodes every month. So feel free to subscribe if you're listening to this. And

with that i wish you well and everyone a good day ahead and we'll catch you very very soon and hopefully next month we'll have a new guest join us and share their stories with us thank you and have a good day thanks for having me and thanks everyone for listening thank you i hope you enjoyed this episode if you did please let me know what you think get in touch with me over email at mail at curiouscore.com i would love to hear from you

Do also check out our previous interviews and other free resources at curiouscore.com. And until next time, I'll see you on the next episode. Take care and keep leaning into change.